The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860

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It need not discourage ministers to accept the fact that there will be
failures in the ministry,--and a great many failures among those who
rely for their success mainly upon the weekly production of learned
disquisitions. Discouragement is not in accepting a fact that accords
with all just theories of truth, but in adopting a theory which is sure
to be invalidated by the almost universal experience of men in, as well
as out of, the ministry. A right-minded minister _may_ have many falls
in struggling up his Hill of Difficulty; but the Lord will lift him
up, and will save him from adding to the temperate grief proper to any
measure of short-coming the intolerable poignancy that comes of cheating
by false pretences,--of assuming to do what he knows or should know that
he cannot do, namely, produce any considerable number of great sermons.

Let it, then, be frankly owned, that men, very good men, very capable
men, have failed in the ministry. A. failed, because he did not study;
B., because he did not visit his people; C., because he could not talk;
D., because he was too grave; E., because he was too frivolous; F. could
not, or would not, control his temper; G. alienated by exacting more
than he received; and all of them because of not having what Scougal
calls "the life of God in the soul of man."

It is not worth while for any man to go into the ministry who cannot
relish the Apostle's invitation, running thus:--"I beseech you,
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies _a living sacrifice_, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your
reasonable service." If that seem not reasonable, ay, and exceedingly
inviting too, better let it alone. All men cannot do all things. Better
raise extraordinary potatoes than hammer out insignificant ideas. You do
not see the connection? you were a Phi-Beta-Kappa man in college, and
know that you can write better than many a man in a metropolitan pulpit?
Very likely; but we of the few go to church to be made better men, and
not by fine writing, but by significant ideas, which may come in a
homely garb, so they be only pervaded with affectionate piety, but which
can come to us only from one who has laid all ambitious self-seeking on
the altar of God. There is a power of persuasion in every minister who
follows God as a dear child, and who walks in love, as Christ loved
us, which the hardest heart cannot long resist,--which will win the
congregation, however an individual here and there may be able to harden
himself against it. You think that the great power of the pulpit is in
high doctrine, presented with metaphysical precision and acuteness. We
have no disparagement to offer of your doctrinal knowledge, nor of your
ability to state it with metaphysical precision and hair-splitting
acuteness. But we know, from much experience, that there is a divine
truth, and a fervor and power in imparting it, with which God inspires
the man who is wholly devoted to Him, in comparison with which the
higher achievements of the man who lacks these are trumpery and rubbish.
Many, _many_ men have failed in the ministry, are failing in the
ministry every day, because their principal reliance has been upon what
they deem their thorough mastery of the soundest theories of doctrine
and of duty. They were confident they could administer to minds and
hearts diseased the certain specific laid down in the book, admeasured
to the twentieth part of a scruple. Confident in their theoretical
acquisitions, they could not comprehend the indispensable necessity of a
large experience in actual cases of mental malady. And for the want of
such experience, it was absolutely impossible that they should be _en
rapport_ with the souls they honestly desired to benefit. Can you heal a
heart-ache with a syllogism? There is no dispensing with the precept and
prescription,--"Weep with those that weep!" "Be of the same mind one
toward another!"

Theories of doctrine and of practice are not without their value; but
the minister who is merely or chiefly a theorist, whether in doctrines
or in measures, is an adventurer; and the chances against him are as
many as the chances against the precise similarity of any two cases
presented to his attention,--as many as the chances against the
education of any two men of fifty years being precisely alike, in every
particular and in all their results. The soul's problems are not to be
solved by theories. Such was not the practice of the Great Physician;
"_surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows._" Theories
shirk that. "_In all their affliction, He was afflicted; in His love and
in His pity, He redeemed them._" And precisely in this way his ministers
are now to follow up his practice. Our age is growing less and less
tolerant of formality,--less and less willing to accept metaphysical
disquisition in place of a warm-hearted, loving, fervent expansion of
the Word of God, recommended to the understanding and to the sensibility
by lively illustrations of spiritual truth, derived from all the
experience of life, from all observation, from all analogies in the
natural world,--in short, from every manner of illumination, from the
heavens above, from the earth beneath, and from the waters which are
under the earth. God is surely everywhere, and hath made all things, and
all to testify of Him; and the innumerable voices all agree together.

And when this is both understood and felt, what rules shall be given to
guide and control the construction and the delivery of discourses? Shall
we say, The people must be brought back to the old-time endurance--ay,
_endurance_, that is the word--of long-drawn, laborious ratiocinations,
wherein the truth is diligently pursued for its own sake, with an
ultimate reference, indeed, to the needs and uses of the hearer, but so
remote as rarely to be noticed, except by that very small fraction of
any customary congregation who may chance to have an interest in
such doings,--some of whom watch the clergyman as they would the
entomologist, running down a truth that he may impale it, and add one
more specimen to his well-ordered collection of common and of uncommon
bugs? Our neighbors in the South do better than this; for they hunt with
the lasso, and never throw the noose except to capture something which
can be harnessed to the wheels of common life.

No, the people are not going back to the endurance of any such misery.
They have found out that still-born rhetoric is by no means the one
thing needful, and care far less for the _art_ of speech than for the
_nature_ of a holy heart. They want a man to speak less of what he
believes and more of what he feels. The expectation of bringing the
people again to endure prolonged metaphysical discriminations, spun out
of commonplace minds, cobwebs to cloak their own nakedness and universal
inaptitude, if indulged, is absurdly indulged. The whole Church is sick
of such trifling. She knows well that it has made her most unsavory to
those who might have found their way into the temples of God, or kept
their places there, but for the memory of an immense amount of wearisome
readings from the pulpit,--too often a vocabulary of words seldom or
never found out of sermons,--a manner of speech which, when tried by the
sure test of natural, animated conversation, must be pronounced absurd
and abominable. It is a wonder of wonders, that, in spite of such
drawbacks, an individual here and there has been reclaimed from
worldliness to the love and service of God.

The student-habits of the clergy most naturally lead them to prefer the
formal statement, the studied elaboration of ideas, which their own
training cannot but render facile and dear to them. And there is here
and there a man who, in virtue of extraordinary genius, can infuse new
life into worn-out phrases,--a man or two who can for a moment or for an
hour, by the very weight and excellence of their thoughts, and because
they truly and deeply feel them, arrest the age, and challenge and
secure attention, in spite of all the infelicities of an antiquated
style and an unearthly delivery. But in this age, more than ever before,
we are summoned to surrender our scholastic preferences and esoteric
honors to the exigencies of the million. And the men of this generation
have, without much conference, come with great unanimity to the
determination that they will not long endure, either in or out of the
pulpit, speakers who are dull and unaffecting, whether from want of
words, ideas, or method and wisdom in the arrangement of them, or
lack of sympathies,--and especially that they will not endure dull
declamation from the pulpit.

If any man really wish to know how he is preaching, let him imagine
himself conversing earnestly with an intelligent and highly gifted,
but uneducated man or woman, in his own parlor, or with his younger
children. Would any but an idiot keep on talking, when, with half an
eye, he might discern TEDIOUS, wrought by himself, upon the uncalloused
sensibilities of his hearers?

How long ought a sermon to be? As long as you can read in the eye of
seven-eighths of your audience, _Pray, go on_. If you cannot read that,
you have mistaken your vocation; you were never called to the ministry.
The secret of the persuasive power of our favorite orators is in their
constant recognition of the ebb and flow of the sensibilities they are
acting upon. Their speech is, in effect, an actual conversation,
in which they are speaking for as well as to the audience; and the
interlocutors are made almost as palpably such as at the "Breakfast-
Table" of our dramatic "Autocrat" In contrast with this, the dull
preacher, falling below the dignity and the privilege of his office,
addresses himself, not to living men, but to an imaginary sensibility
to abstract truth. The effect of this is obvious and inevitable; it
converts hearers into doubters as to whether in fact there be any such
thing as a religion worth recommending or possessing, and preachers into
complainers of the people as indifferent and insensible to the truth,--a
libel which ought to render them liable to fine and punishment. God's
truth, _fairly presented_, is never a matter of indifference or of
insensibility to an intelligent, nor even to an unintelligent audience.
However an individual here and there may contrive to withdraw himself
from the sphere of its influence, truth can no more lose her power than
the sun can lose his heat.

The people, under the quickening influences characteristic of our age,
are awaking to the consciousness, that, on the day which should be the
best of all the week, they have been defrauded of their right, in having
solemn dulness palmed upon them, in place of living, earnest, animated
truth. Let not ministers, unwisely overlooking this undeniable fact,
defame the people, by alleging a growing facility in dissolving the
pastoral relation,--a disregard of solemn contracts,--a willingness to
dismiss excellent, godly, and devoted men, without other reason than the
indisposition to retain them. Be it known to all such, that capable men
very department of life were never in such request as at this very hour;
and never, since the world began, was there an audience so large and so
attentive to truth, well wrought and fitted to its purpose, as now.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Ludwig van Beethoven. Leben und Schaffen._ Herausgegeben von Adolph
Bernhard Marx. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1859. pp. 379, 339.

FIRST NOTICE.

Beethoven died March 26, 1827, and thirty years passed away without any
satisfactory biography of him. The notices and anecdotes of Seyfried,
(1832,) Wegeler, and Ries, (1838,) the somewhat more extended sketch by
Schindler, (1840, second edition 1845,) and what in various forms, often
of very doubtful veracity, appeared from time to time in periodical
publications, musical and other, remained the only sources of
information respecting the great master, and the history of his works,
available to the public, even the German public. Wegeler's "Notizen"
are indispensable for the early history of the composer; Schindler's
"Biographie," for that of his later years. Careful scrutiny has failed
to detect any important error in the statements of the former, or
in those of the latter, where he professedly speaks from personal
knowledge. Schindler is one of the best-abused men in Germany,--perhaps
has given sufficient occasion for it,--but we must bear this testimony
to the value of his work, unsatisfactory as it is. Seyfried and Ries
give little more than personal reminiscences of a period ending some
twenty-five or thirty years before they wrote. The one is always
careless; the other died too suddenly to give his hastily written
anecdotes revision. Both must be corrected (as they may easily be, but
have not yet been) by contemporaneous authorities. Their errors are
constantly repeated in the biographical articles upon Beethoven which we
find in the Encyclopaedias, with one exception, the article in the "New
American," published by the Appletons.

A life of Beethoven, founded upon a careful digest of these writers,
combined with the materials scattered through other publications,--even
though no original researches were made,--was still a desideratum,
when the very remarkable work upon Mozart, by the Russian, Alexander
Oulibichef, appeared, and aroused a singular excitement in the German
musical circles through the real or supposed injustice towards Beethoven
into which the hero-worship of the author had led him. We had hopes that
now some one of the great master's countrymen would give us something
worthy of him; but the excitement expended itself in pamphlets and
articles in periodicals, in which as little was done for Beethoven's
history as was effected against the views of Oulibichef.

Another Russian, however, Wilhelm von Lenz, came to the rescue in two
works,--"Beethoven et ses trois Styles," (2 vols. 8vo, St. Petersburg,
1862,) and "Beethoven, eine Kunststudie" (2 vols. l2mo, Cassel, 1855). A
very feeble champion, this Herr von Lenz. The first of his two works--in
French, rather of the Strat-ford-at-Bow order,--consists principally of
an "Analyse des Sonates de Piano" of Beethoven, in which these works are
indeed much talked about, but not analyzed. The author, an amateur, has
plenty of zeal, but, unluckily, neither the musical knowledge nor the
critical skill for his self-imposed task. We mention this took
only because the second volume closes with a "Catalogue critique,
chronologique et anecdotique," in which the author has, with great
industry and care, and for the first time, brought together the
principal historical notices of Beethoven's works, scattered through the
pages of the books above noticed and the fifty quarto volumes of the
"Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung."

The first volume of "Beethoven, eine Kunststudie" is a "Leben
des Meisters," a mere sketch, made up from the same works as the
"Catalogue," with a very few additions from other sources. As a
biographer, Lenz fails as signally as in his capacity of critic. Much
original matter, from one living so far away, was not to be expected;
but he has made no commendable use of the printed authorities which
he had at hand. His style is bombastic and feeble; there is neither a
logical nor a chronological progress to his narrative; moreover, he is
not always trustworthy, even in matters personal to himself;--at
all events, a very interesting account of a meeting between him
and Mendelssohn, at the house of Moscheles in London,--apropos of
nothing,--has called--out a letter from the latter in a Leipzig musical
journal, in which the whole story is declared to be without foundation.
In our references to Lenz, we shall consider his "Catalogue" and his
"Leben des Meisters" as complements to each other, and forming a single
work.

Lenz's "Beethoven et ses trois Styles" was avowedly directed against
Oulibichef, and called out a reply from that gentleman, with the title,
"Beethoven, ses Critiques et ses Glossateurs," (8vo. Paris and Leipzig,
1857,) in which poor Lenz is annihilated, but which makes no pretensions
to biographical value. It contains, indeed, a sketch of the master's
life; it is but a sketch, so highly colored, such a mere painting of
Beethoven as lie existed in the author's fancy,--not in real life,--as
to convey a most false idea of him and of his fortunes. The introduction
is an admirable sketch of the progress of music during the first
twenty-five years of the present century,--a supplement to his famous
view of modern music in his work upon Mozart. His analyses of such of
Beethoven's works as met his approbation are masterly and unrivalled,
save by certain articles from the pens of Hoffmann and our own writer
Dwight. With the later works of the composer Oulibichef had no sympathy.
Haydn and Mozart had given him his standards of perfection. _We_ can
forgive Beethoven, when at times he rises above all forms and rules in
seeking new means of expression; Oulibichef could not.

But it is not endless discussions of Beethoven's works which the
public--at all events, our public--demands. We wish his biography,--the
history of his life. What has been given us does but whet the appetite.
We wish to have the many original sources, still sealed to us, explored,
and the results of this labor honestly given us. None of the writers
above-mentioned have been in a position to do this, and their
publications are but materials for the use of the true biographer, when
he shall appear.

It was therefore with a pleasure as great as it was unexpected, that we
saw, some months since, the announcement of the volumes named at the
head of this article. They now lie before us. We have given thorn a very
careful examination, and shall now endeavor to do them full justice,
granting them much more space than has yet been accorded to them in
any German publication which has come under our notice, because out
of Germany the reputation of the author is far greater than at
home,--whether upon the old principle, that the "prophet is not without
honor," etc., we hope hereafter to make clear.

Some particulars respecting Dr. Marx may find place here, as proving
that from no man, perhaps, have we the right to expect so much, in
a biography of Beethoven, as from him. We draw them mostly from
Schilling's "Encyclopaedie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaft,"
Vol. IV., Stuttgart, 1841,--a work which deserves to be better known in
our country. It is worthy of note, that in this work, of which Mozart
fills eight pages, Handel, Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven seven to seven and
a half each, Gluck six and a quarter, Meyerbeer four, and Weber four and
a half, Marx, eighteen years since, occupied five.

Adolph Bernhard Marx was born at Halle, Nov. 17, 1799, and, like so many
of the distinguished musicians of recent times, is of Jewish descent. He
studied at the University of his native city, choosing the law for his
profession, but making music the occupation of his leisure hours,--the
well-known contrapuntist, Tuerk, being his instructor in musical theory
and composition. "He [Tuerk] soon saw whom he had before him, and told
Marx at once that he was born to be a musician."[1]

Soon after finishing his legal studies, Marx removed to Berlin, as the
place where he could best enjoy the means of artistic culture. "For one
quite without fortune, merely to live in a strange city demands great
strength of character; but to go farther and fit one's self for a career
and for a position in the future, which even under the best auspices
is of very difficult attainment, and, beside all this, to have others
dependent upon him for the necessaries of life,--what a burden to bear!
..... By a very intellectual system of instruction in singing and in
composition, and, at a later period, (1824-81,) by editing the 'Berliner
Allgemeine Musikzeitung,' and several theoretical and practical musical
works, he earned the means of subsistence. Never was a periodical more
conscientiously edited. It was for Marx like an official station, and
his seven years upon that paper were in fact a preparation for the
position of Public Teacher, to which in 1830 he was appointed, in the
University at Berlin, after having declined a judicial position offered
to him, with a fair salary, in one of the provinces. Honorably has he
since that period filled his station, however great the pains which
have been taken in various quarters that it should not be said of him,
'Virtus post nummos!'"[2]

"The diploma of Doctor of Music Marx received from the University at
Marburg; and thereupon (?) obtained the greatest applause for a course
of lectures, in part strictly scientific for the musician, and in part
upon the history of music, its philosophy, etc.; also, as Music-Director
of the University, he has brought (1841,) the academic choir into such
a flourishing state, both as to numbers and skill, as to be adequate to
the most difficult music."[3]

Again we read,--"We remember, that, some time since, Fetis, at Paris,
pointed out Marx as the one who had introduced the philosophy of Kant
into music." Were this so, so much the more credit to Marx, who, at that
time, we are informed, had never studied the works of the philosopher
of Koenigsberg, and his basing music upon the Kantian philosophy is
therefore but a proof of the profundity of his genius.

From the same article we extract the following list of his
productions:--1. A work on Singing, in three parts; the second and third
of which "contain throughout admirable and novel remarks." 2. "Maigruss"
(Maygreeting). "This pamphlet, humorous and delicate, yet powerfully
written," calls attention to certain novel views of its author in regard
to music. 3. Articles in the "Caecilia," a musical periodical. 4. Essay
on Handel's works. 5. A work on Composition. 6. Several biographies and
other articles in Schilling's Encyclopaedia,--"indeed, all the articles
signed A. B. M." 7. Editions of several of Bach's and Handel's works.
To these we may now add his extensive treatise upon Musical Science, in
four volumes, his "Music in the Nineteenth Century," and the work which
is now before us.

Of musical compositions we find the

[Footnote 1: Article in Schilling]

[Footnote 2: Article in Schilling]

[Footnote 3: Ibid.] following noticed:--1. Music to Goethe's "Jery und
Baetely,"--which, in theatrical parlance, was shockingly _damned_;--but
then "its author had made many enemies as editor of the 'Musikalische
Zeitung,'" and the singers and actors embraced this opportunity of
revenge. 2. Music to the melodrama, "Die Rache wartet," (Vengeance
waits,) by Willibald Alexis, the scenes of which are laid in Poland at
the time of Napoleon's fatal Russian expedition. "This background was
the theme of the music, which consisted of little more than the overture
and _entr'actes_, but was held by musicians of note to be both grand and
profound. The character of the campaign of 1812, especially, was given
in the overture with terrible truth of expression. Still, however, the
work _did not succeed_." 3. "Undine's Greeting," text by Fouque, with
a festive symphony, composed on occasion of the marriage of the present
Prince Regent of Prussia. This was also damned,--but then, it was badly
executed! 4. Symphony,--"The Fall of Warsaw,"--still manuscript. "The
music paints most touchingly the rash, superficial, chivalrous character
of the Poles, their love of freedom amid the thunder of cannon, their
terrible fall in the bloody defeat, their solitary condition on strange
soil, the awful judgment that fell upon that people." We are sorry to
add, that the Berlin orchestras will not play this work,--preferring
Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven. 5. A Choral and Organ Book,--"one of Marx's
most interesting works." 6. "Nahib,"--a series of songs, the music of
which "is gentle, tender, and full of Oriental feeling." 7. "John the
Baptist," an oratorio,--twice performed by the University choir in one
of the churches of Berlin. "A great charm is found in the peculiar
sharpness of characterization which distinguishes this music. The solos
and choruses, being held throughout in spirited declamation,--the
music not being aggregated in conventional tone-masses, but developed
vigorously after the sense of the text,--are distinguished from those
in the works of recent composers." Unfortunately for Marx, the public
preferred the solos and choruses of such recent composers as Meyerbeer,
Mendelssohn, and Schumann to his. A few songs and hymns completed the
list of his works at that time.

"At present," (1841,) says our authority, "Marx is laboring upon an
oratorio, 'Moses,' for which he long since made studies, and which in
its profound conception of character will have but few equals."

The "Moses" was long since finished, and was performed in several
places; but the public has not proved alive to its merits, and it fares
no better than did Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its nonage.

We have perhaps quoted somewhat too largely from the article in
Schilling; but have thought so much necessary to give the reader the
basis of the great reputation which Marx has, particularly in England
and the United States;--for, singular as the fact may appear, we are
unable to recall the name of any young composer who has appeared and
gained any considerable degree of success, since Marx began to teach,
whom he can claim as his pupil. Most of the younger generation are from
the schools of Hauptmann, Haupt, Dehn, the Schneiders, and the Vienna
and Prague professors. Marx's reputation, then, is that of an author,--a
writer upon music.

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