Pen, Pallet, and Piano

by Anonymous, Continental Monthly, January, 1863.

At the height of the American Civil War, the Continental Monthly took a look at three distinctly American artists: the writer Edgar Allan Poe, composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and landscape painter Frederick Edwin Church, finding that they not only shared common characteristics but together proved that "imperishable Art still maintains her placid sway in this distracted land."

With the roar of cannon and tramp of armed men resounding through the land, and the fair young face of the Republic disfigured to our eyes by the deep furrows of war, it is pleasant to know that in certain nooks and corners, gentler sounds of harmony still linger, and that ateliers exist where men's fancies grow on canvas from day to day into soothing visions of loveliness.

The scarlet-and-gold and general paraphernalia of war are too tempting to pallet and brush, not to be seized on with avidity and reproduced with marvellous truth; but it is more agreeable to pass over accurate representations of the Irish zouave, with Celtic features, not purely classical in outline, glowing defiantly under the red cap of the Arab, and Teutonic cavalrymen, clinging clumsily to their steeds, and turn for solace to the grand, solemn Shores of Niagara, to wander amid the tangled luxuriance of the heart of the Andes, or to bask in the sweet silence of Twilight in the Wilderness. There are Icebergs too, floating in the Arctic Sea, frozen white and mute with horror at the dread secrets of ages; but, responsive to the versatile talent of the hand that creates them, they glow with prismatic light of many colors. Mr. Church irradiates the frozen regions with the coruscations of his own genius, bringing to these lonely, despairing masses of ice the revivifying hope and promise of warmer climates.

In pondering over the sad mystery of these Icebergs, we float down again to Tropical Seas and Islands; and as we linger under the shade of palm and banana tree, the rude chant of the negro strikes the car in the grotesque and characteristic framework of the ‘Bananier,' the plaintive melody of ‘La Savane' sighs past on the evening breeze, Spanish eyes flash out temptingly from the enticing cadence of the ‘0jos Criollos,' and Spanish guitars tinkle in the soft moonlight of the ‘Minuit à Seville,' and Tropical life awakes to melody under the touch of the Creole poet of the piano, Mr. Gottschalk.

There are many beings, otherwise estimable, to whom the Tropical sense is wanting; who are ever suspicious of malaria lurking under the rich, glossy leaves of the orange groves; who look with disgust and loathing at the exaggerated proportions and venomous nature of all creeping things; who find the succulence of the fruit unpleasant to the taste, and the flowers, though fair to the eye, deadly as the upas tree to all other sense;--for whom it is no compensation to feel, with the first breath of morning air, the dull, leaden weight of life lifted, or no happiness to watch the sea heaving and palpitating with delight under the rays of the noonday sun, and to know that the stars at night droop down lovingly and confidingly to the embrace of warm Tropical earth. With an insensibility to these influences, there can be but little sympathy or appreciation of the works of Mr. Gottschalk; for all that is born of the Tropics partakes of its beauties and its defects, its passionate languor, its useless profusion and its poetic tenderness. And where else in the United States, can we look for a spontaneous gush of melody? Plymouth Rock and its surroundings have not hitherto seemed favorable to the growth and manifestation of musical genius; for the old Puritan element, in its savage intent to annihilate the aesthetic part of man's nature, under the deadening dominion of its own Blue Laws, and to crush out whatever of noble inspiration had been vouchsafed to man by his Creator, rarely sought relief in outbursts of song.

Psalmody appears to have been the chief source of musical indulgence, and for many a long, weary year, hymns of praise, nasal in tone and dismal in tendency, have ascended from our prim forefathers to the throne of grace on high.

Such depressing musical antecedents have not prepared New England for greater efforts of melody than are to be found in the simple ballads supposed to originate with the plantation negro, who, in addition to his other burdens, is thus chosen to assume the onerous one of Northern song, as being the only creature frivolous enough to indulge in vain carolling. If we can scarcely affirm that the Americans are yet a musical people, that they would be is an undeniable fact, and one constantly evinced in their lavish support of artists, from the highest to the lowest grade. Among the musical aspirants to popular favor, none has of late enjoyed so large a share of notice and admiration as Mr. Gottschalk; and to return from our recent digression, we will proceed to the consideration of his compositions. Fragmentary and suggestive as are his ideas, there is infinite method and system in their treatment. Avoiding thus far what is termed ‘sustained effort,' and which frequently implies the same demands on the patience of the listener as on the creative power of the composer, Mr. Gottschalk's compositions contain just so much of the true poetic vein as can be successfully digested and enjoyed in a piano piece of moderate length. With the power to conceive, and the will and discipline of mind to execute, there is no reason why, with perhaps a diminished tendency to fritter away positive excellence at the shrine of effect, enduring proofs of the genius of our American pianist should not be given to the world.

As a mere player, the popularity of Mr. Gottschalk with the uninitiated masses is due, in a great measure, to his tact in discerning the American craving for novelty and sensation, and to his native originality and brilliancy, which allow him to respond so fully to these exigencies of public taste, as to possess on all occasions the keynote to applause. The faculty of never degenerating into dulness, the rock on which most pianists are wrecked in early youth, is another just cause for insuring to our compatriot the preeminence which he enjoys. Viewed from a criticalpoint, the mechanical endowments and acquirements of Gottschalk are such as to enable him to subject his playing to the test of keenest analysis without detriment to his reputation. For clearness and limpidity of touch and unerring precision, for impetuosity of style, combined with dreamy delicacy, he has few rivals. The evenness and brilliancy of his trill are unequalled, the mechanical process required to produce it being lost to sight in the wonderful birdlike nature of the effect. In the playing of classical music, Mr. Gottschalk has to contend against his own individuality. This individuality, naturally intense and of a kind calculated to meet with public favor, has been cultivated and indulged in to such an extent as to prove an occasional obstacle to the exclusive absorption and utter identification with the ideas of another composer that classical music demands. In the mere matter of execution there. is no difficulty which the fingers of this skilful pianist cannot overcome, and his intellectual grasp of a subject enables him to discern and interpret the beauties of all musical themes; but where an earnest, passionate interest in the music of the old masters is not felt by the performer, it is rarely communicated to his hearers.

The world of letters, however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of the revered Samuel Johnson, LL.D. With due allowance for difference of latitude, and wide difference of aim and pursuit, the contemplation of the Master of Creole Melody recalls to us a genius which found utterance in song none the less melodious that it was written, not sung. The ‘ashen sky' and ‘crisped, sere leaves of the lonesome October,' so thrillingly pictured by Edgar Poe in his `Ulalume,' find echo in the foreboding sadness of the opening bars to Gottschalk's ‘Last Hope;' and as both poems grow in vague, dreamy sound, they culminate in a cry of smothered despair at the tomb where all hopes lie buried with the lost Ulalume. The same weird conception and eccentricity of design, with knowledge of rhythmical effect and extreme carefulness of finish, are prominent traits of both artists; and the American disregard of tradition, as evinced in all enterprises, whether literary, artistic, or commercial, and which readily infects the simple sojourner among us as well as the happy being born to republican privileges, marks alike the nationality of poet and pianist.

Edgar Poe's literary reputation undoubtedly gains additional lustre as the lapse of years permits the veil of obscurity to fall over the personal vices and irregularities which so tarnished the living fame of this great artist. Genius draws around itself a magical circle, attracting and keeping by the force of its own magnetism those whom it values, but at the same time exercising an equally repellent effect on the envious and ignorant wandering beyond the pale of its charmed precincts. Hence the difficulty of judging it by contemporaneous standards. The Hyperion head of Poe was lost to the view of many by a too persistent search for the satyr's cloven foot. In considering the poet's eccentricities, in common with other extraordinary and anomalous beings, it must be deeply deplored that one so endowed with wealth of intellect beyond his fellow men, should be still so poor in moral store that the dullest of them could dare look with disdain on this heir to gifts regal and sacred.

He could forget his deep, earnest love of order in things intellectual, in every excess of disorder in things material, and his passionate love of the beautiful could be profaned by frequent grovelling amid the hideous deformities of vice. Poe, in his reverence for Art (his only reverence), seemed generally to set greater store on the elaborate and artistic perfection of his works, than in the spontaneity of genius therein displayed. So it would seem, at least, in his voluntarily exposing the skeleton design of his greatest poem, ‘The Raven,' and the various processes by which this grand shadow attained its final harmonious and terrible proportions. This may be a noble sacrifice to the principles of Art, intended as a warning to rash novices against the sin of slovenliness in composition; but the poem must be' of solid fibre to resist this disenchanting test. The unveiling of hidden mysteries, the disclosure of trap doors, ropes, and pulleys, may assist in the general dissemination of knowledge; but in behalf of those who prefer to be ignorant that they may be happy, we protest against the innovation. In this dangerous experiment of Poe's, however, we are forced to do what he would have us do--admire the ingenuity of the poet, together with his knowledge of effect, rhythmical and dramatic, his flexibility and strength of versification, and marvellous faculty of word painting. This propensity to make all things subservient to the advancement of Art is not always productive of present good to one's fellow beings, whatever may be the results to posterity, as the luckless women who cross the path of such men cannot unfrequently testify--oftentimes assiduously wooed, won, and lightly discarded, to furnish an artistic study of the female capacity for suffering, as well as to supply renewed inspiration for further poetic bemoanings. In the prose narrations of Edgar Poe, the same skilful handling of mystery, and the turning to account of any incident susceptible of dramatic effect, are always apparent as in his poems. But the want of extended sympathy with mankind, the artist egotism, which looks inwardly for all material, and in truth scorns the approval of the masses, must naturally fail to secure the interest of a large class of readers. His compositions, on the contrary, which give full scope to his keen, subtle powers of analysis, and vigorous handling of the subject in question, are more widely understood and appreciated. Since the days when Poe dealt with contemporaneous literature, and literary men, in not the most temperate mood of criticism, poetic fire in America, with few exceptions, seems to have sunk into a dead, smouldering condition, and to have yielded to its sister art of painting the task of grappling with the New World monster of utilitarianism and practical reform. The demands for indigenous painters in America being constantly greater, the result is necessarily a vast increase and improvement in this branch of Art.

New England, on whose barren musical soil we have already descanted, and who has not hitherto disputed to the Old World her privilege of pouring out on our untutored continent the accumulated wealth of years of musical study and training, has at last gone far to redeem her reputation of artistic nullity, by producing the greatest landscape painter of which the country can boast. With us, the superiority of atmospheric effects over most countries, and the great variety and originality of American scenery, have united in bringing the landscape painter into existence, and the public have assured this existence by fostering applause and pecuniary compensation. Nature, thus prodigal of gifts to America, has, in a crowning act of munificence, conferred also a painter, capable of interpreting her own most recondite mysteries, and of faithfully transcribing the beauties revealed to all eyes in their simple majesty.

Immensity of theme possesses no terrors for Mr. Church's essentially American genius; his facile brush recoils not before the gigantic natural elements of his own laud, but deals as readily and composedly with the unapproachable sublimity of Niagara and the terrible beauty of icebergs as with the peace of simple woodland scenes and theglowing sentiment of the tropics. To tread the beaten path of landscape painting, and offer to the public a tame transcript of the glories he has beheld, is repugnant to the creative power of this true artist; but whea form, color, and the legitimate means at his command fail to embody all he would express, his suggestive faculty is generally of force sufficient to reach all beholders, even those of feeblest imagination.

In standing before the Falls of Niagara, one can, in fancy, feel the cool moisture of spray, rising, incense-like, through a rainbow of promise, from the inspired canvas, together with the earth's tremor at the roar of mad waters rushing headlong to a desperate death. This inestimable quality of suggestiveness is preserved in Mr. Church's pictures when deprived of the aid of color and reduced to mere black and white in engraving, a fact bearing equally conclusive testimony to their inherent correctness of lines and elegance of composition.

Mr. Church's prominent characteristics of hardy vigor and adventurous treatment of a subject, seem to have monopolized his artistic nature, to the frequent exclusion of tenderness, either in idea or in the handling of color. The painting, in our eyes, least open to this objection, is Twilight in the Wilderness--a dreamy picture of inexpressible sadness, of a tearful silence that is felt and of a loneliness too sacred to be profaned by human intrusion. The gorgeous panorama of the Heart of the Andes, its snowy mountain peaks, and plains glowing with tropical verdure, is too bewildering in its complicated grandeur to excite dreams of beauty so tender and sadness so touching.

In contemplating this last-named picture, the demands on the attention are so numerous and weighty,--in the first place, to comprehend the situation, and exchange at a moment's notice the stagnation of the temperate zone for the emotional excitement of the tropics; then to separate and classify the many points of beauty, to rise to the summits of distant mountains, sublime in their snowy crests, and sink again to earth at the foot of the rustic cross, by whose aid we may one day rise to sink no more,--to follow the painter successfully through this maze of thoughts, without the guiding light of his own matchless color, would seem a difficult and displeasing task. But the task has been accomplished with complete success, in an English line engraving of the Heart of the Andes, recently arrived in this country; which indication of popularity abroad conduces materially to the ever-growing fame of the artist. The same test, we believe, is in store for the Icebergs--with what result, time will show. Meanwhile, the picture itself will, on foreign soil, plead the cause of American civilization, and tend to assure those who look with dismay at the tumultuous upheavings of freedom's home, that imperishable Art still maintains her placid sway in this distracted land, and that her votaries falter not in their allegiance.

Volcanoes pour out fiery lava under the red glare of the setting sun, obedient to Church's magic touch--delicate fancies are weaved into poetic life by the fingers of Gottschalk--but the voice of Poe, alas! is mute forever. The ‘Lost Lenore,' found too late, may have inspired a song far beyond the dull range of human comprehension, but poor mortals left below, can only echo, with the grim and ghastly raven: Nevermore! Nevermore!