instance that comes up to my notions of the Gran gusto, as displayed by the Italians; but so it is nevertheless, and I must be content to abide their wrath. Handel's well-known air from Jeptha, "Deeper and deeper still" does come up to the mark. "In sweetest harmony," "My father, ah, methinks I see," (from Hercules)," Ye sacred priests," (Jeptha) and "Thy rebuke," from The Messiah, are all equally fine examples. The Italians however have a totally different manner of executing Handel to ours-and as usual they claim the pre-eminence, though the words are English, the music written in this country, and the traditionary mode of singing it handed down to us from the composer himself. Nevertheless Italians contend we are as much in the dark in respect to singing Handel as Rossini. "O," said an Italian prima donna not long since to me, "if you could but hear how we sing Handel in Italy!" Upon this point however I have a little of John Bull's obstinacy. It will be exceedingly difficult to convince me that all our advantages have been thrown away upon us. Yet I must own it militates somewhat against my theory, that Mara, a foreigner, should surpass all the English that ever attempted Handel. But her style, be it remembered, was ours; and even Catalani, in "Comfort ye my people," has yielded to our prejudices and adopted our chaste manner.

What then, to return to the question, is the distinction between the Gran gusto and the great style? Simply, I conceive, that the Italians require more vehemence in the expression than the English. We look upon this degree as extravagant-they feel it to be a part of their manner both of thought and of action. What to us appears theatrical and overstrained, is to them merely national, for such is their every day conversational manner of exemplifying thought by action. The English, on the contrary, study to subdue their feelings, and chasten and repress every exterior symptom of the workings of the soul. Passion, high passion, is the life and soul of Italian singing, and consequently of the Gran gusto. An Italian woman never employs a moment in considering what her auditors will think of her. She delivers herself up wholly, solely, and entirely to the rising emotions, while the technical means she has acquired by long practice upon a certain and regular system of progression, minister to her feelings with a facility and an accuracy so mechanically formed by

habit that they cannot be disturbed. On the contrary, I am very apt to believe that the first consideration of an English woman is the reserve which her auditors may think necessary to the delicacy of the English character. This consideration disturbs and divides, if it does not annihilate, her sensibility. She dares not indulge in" the noble rage" which art demands in order to enable us to move the affections of others. The same hesitation attends the appliance of the voice, Her tone being formed upon no precise, no determinate, absolute system, she has to consider whether it is too much from her head, or too much in her throat, and to remember that her mouth must not be rounded, and that she ought to take breath in this place and not in that, and a thousand other such nice considerations, which are fatal to fine feeling. An Italian is spared all this by being kept for months and years upon scales and passages till the execution is fixed unalterably, and if she be well taught, rightly fixed.

It is not, Sir, to the mind alone that the Gran gusto belongs. Technical power has a vast deal to do with it. A note a little more or less prolonged, a little more or less attenuated, or given with a little more or less force, makes all the difference between an ordinary and a magnificent effect. These matters do not solely depend upon the judgment; they depend scarcely less upon physical force and systematic attainment.

The elements of the great style have been so well described in your pages that I need not enumerate them here. The capital difference between it and the Gran gusto of the Italian, is, that the latter, according to English notions, is essentially dramatic, consequently more vivid in the expression of passion, and less rigid in regard to the means. I suspect, moreover, that the moment we become sufficiently acquainted with Italian feeling and manner to enter into their representation, English singing appears to us cold, unmeaning, and spiritless. The change is not so much in art as in manners. The same principle will account for the reception of the florid style.

MEDIATOR.

I

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR.

THINK you and your Correspondents are often a little hard upon singers for the want of variety in their songs. There can be no doubt but you have considered the necessities of a singer's public life, but I venture to question whether they have been sufficiently considered, and as indiscriminate or unjust censure is the last thing I should expect from one who must think so much about the subject, I am the more surprized. I admit that amateurs are sometimes more extensively read in musical authors in general perhaps than public singers. Where the former err is for want of estimating the accurate-the particular-the detailed knowledge and practice indispensable to professional people. This it is that makes the one seem learned and industrious, the other uninformed (comparatively) and idle. The fact may turn out upon examination to be much otherwise.

Amateurs are attracted towards art by an inclination often amounting to enthusiasm, if accompanied with the praise of tolerably successful performance from partial friendship, or the moderate knowledge which the million of auditors possess: they skim over the surface of things. If gifted with a tolerably tenacious memory, they very soon acquaint themselves by playing, or by hearing or conversation, with the names and perhaps the melodies or parts of a considerable proportion of all that has been fashionable for a series of years, or is in present vogue. One season in London-an attendance at one or two grand provincial meetings, or the inspection of a number of concert bills, gives them the clue to these titles, and to the prominent beauties of these things. Hence though in reality their knowledge amounts to very little that is substantial, it appears to amount to a great deal. They imagine much more, and consider that if their acquaintance with favourite recitatives, songs, duets, and concerted pieces is so wide, what must or ought to be the knowledge of a public singer, whose business it is to study nothing but music?

See

Ah, Sir, therein lies the very whole and sole difference! how much seven years will accumulate for an amateur in this way! But what can a professor do in the same period.

I am very much misinformed, if in the education necessary to reach eminence a public singer can employ less than three hours a day for three or four years in the practice of solfeggi, during which period, almost as much time must be given up to the practice of the piano forte, and this merely confers the power of accompaniment and some knowledge of harmony. Italian must also in a degree be mastered. This portion of study is quite sufficient to occupy as much mind as can constantly and unremittingly be devoted to solid serious acquisition. Yet how much more remains to be done? Amateurs are perfectly unconscious of the time, labour, fatigue, and perseverance it costs to obtain even the rudiments of skilful professional execution. I say they are perfectly unconscious of the patience to be exercised to make such acquirement, because their scheme of instruction proceeds upon totally different principles. Masters know, that there is not one amateur pupil in five hundred who would consent to undergo the drudgery necessary to begin, merely to begin, the advancement of a professional student, and therefore adapting their method of tuition to what is generally required, they content themselves with doing what they perceive their scholar will attempt and perhaps attain, and what will be insofar creditable to themselves; but to train an amateur like a professor-Bah!

When the professional pupil first begins to learn a song—which is not till the difficulties of execution are somewhat overcome and fixed, and till some knowledge of reading music is attainedthis song is studied and practised with the same earnestness that the solfeggi have been laboured. Every passage is tried over and over till the whole song is mastered. At first it takes weeks to get up one tolerably, and thus time glides away. Even when the professional career begins, so much is given to practice, rehearsals, and the various business rising out of first engagements, that little is left either of time or power for voluntary study. What must be done is to be learned, and this is almost enough. All even that the amateur knows must be in a state of preparation, must be got up, or woe to the singer at a country meeting or a series of London concerts. What the singer does is commanded either positively or by implication-for if not positively commanded, the novelties of the day must be acquired and given. It takes a long succession of concerts to make the public,

the whole public, acquainted with even one air. Then comes the pleasure people have in hearing what is associated with their recollections and lastly the fact, that it is only in but very few things a singer can shew his utmost skill. In what can Braham shine so much as in Deeper and deeper still? What can Vaughan do like Alexis or the Soldier's Dream? What can Mrs. Salmon find like From mighty kings? What Miss Stephens like Auld Robin Gray? Now, Sir, singers like always to shine, and generally to do their very best. How much music must be waded through before any thing like these can be found? How much time-valuable time to those who teach at half a guinea or a guinea a lesson-must be lost to no purpose?

If they take direction from the fashion, fashion very soon makes the thing selected common-yet they must follow the fashion. If they do not follow the fashion, they must sing superlatively well, or hit upon some extraordinary composition to render their choice popular; and when they have so done, they draw themselves into the very repetition of which you and your Correspondents so bitterly complain, because every one desires to hear that to which they have given eclat. But the fact is, they must follow the fashion, and therefore they do.. This word fashion, Sir, comprehends also custom. It is the fashion, or the custom of the ancient concert, to repeat certain airs of Purcell, Jomelli, Handel, Gluck, &c. &c. and no others. It is the fashion in the winter concerts and oratorios to repeat many of the same things, with some novelties of the time. Thus we have had Rossini and Weber from the opera-house and the theatres. These high authorities give the tone (or the ton) to all other places of musical resort-benefit and private concerts, and provincial meetings; and here, Sir, is the primary cause and centre of the censure so liberally poured forth against the professional singer. Only then let yourself and your Correspondents do me the favour to consider the calls upon the time and need of a public singer, who from February to August has probably some inevitable engagement either to hear or be heard six nights out of seven, which prevents all chance of retill hours after midnight-consider rehearsals, teaching, inpose terviews and correspondence, with certain indispensable attentions to family, friendship, or connection-consider all these things, and the wear and tear of mind and body incident to all these things