Edward Bellasis - Cardinal Newman as a Musician

And again, "With a half-malicious intent of frightening them (his electors at Oriel), it was told them that Mr. Newman had for years belonged to a club of instrumental music, and had himself taken part in its public performances, a diversion, innocent in itself, but scarcely in keeping, or in sympathy with an intellectual Common-Room, or promising a satisfactory career to a nascent Fellow of Oriel." 13 13 Ibid. i. p. 104: Provost Hawkins, at this time a Fellow, and ultimately succeeding Copleston, had no love for music, and rather despised such a thing as being "a sign of an effeminate (or frivolous) mind." He used one or other of these terms, or both . So thought the quidnuncs ; nevertheless, Mr. Newman "went on fiddling." His pupil, F. Rogers (the late Lord Blachford), joined him herein, and writes, January, 1834: "Your sermons … and Beethoven are most satisfactory. I wish I could hope to join you in the last in any moderate time. However, I do expect you will take me to Rose Hill to hear some of it again, if it were only to remind me of those evenings I used to spend with you when at Iffley. I am afraid you will have enough of my bass to satisfy you without Beethoven in the course of next term." N.B. – "He was to be in Froude's room over my head, – J.H.N." 14 14 Mozley, Corr. ii. p. 22. Mr. Bowden also played the violoncello, and Newman was further supported by one who was a musician, and a deal more besides. "Mr. Blanco White," he writes, November, 1826, "plays the violin, and has an exquisite ear." 15 15 Ibid. i. p. 146. "I have only one sister alive now," he said sadly in September, 1875, "and she is old, but plays Beethoven very well. 16 16 She writes in July, 1843: "Now I do so wish, John, you would pay us a visit. I will practise hard to get up some Beethoven." (Mozley, Corr. ii. 415.) She has an old-fashioned, energetic style of playing; but one person, I remember, played Beethoven as no one else, Blanco White. I don't know how he learned the violin, but he would seem to have inherited a tradition as to the method of playing him." "Both were violinists," writes Mr. T. Mozley of Blanco White and Mr. Newman, "but with different instruments. Blanco White's was very small… Poor gentleman! Night after night anyone walking in the silence of Merton Lane might hear his continual attempts to surmount some little difficulty, returning to it again and again like Philomel to her vain regrets. 17 17 With this difference, however, Philomel had not to learn her regrets: she knew them already. With Reinagle … Newman and Blanco White had frequent (trios) at the latter's lodgings, where I was all the audience… Most interesting was it to contrast Blanco White's excited and indeed agitated countenance with Newman's sphinx-like immobility, as the latter drew long rich notes with a steady hand." 18 18 Reminiscences , i. pp. 247, 248, Second Edition, 1882. Of statements in this work the Cardinal humorously observed: "When a thing won't stand on three legs, Tom supplies a fourth." The Father played the viola a good deal, which is larger than the violin; hence Mr. Mozley's "different instruments," &c. Dr. Newman was still "bowing" forty years later, by which time the alleged "sphinx-like immobility" had made way for an ever-varying expression upon his face as strains alternated between grave and gay. Producing his violin from an old green baize bag, 19 19 One of the boys was once lent this aged green baize bag, and losing it, never heard the end of it. Whenever there was question of lending him anything else, the Father would say very quietly: "I think I lent you a green baize bag." Nor would he allow that it was lost: "You mean mislaid." bending forward, and holding his violin against his chest, instead of under the chin in the modern fashion, most particular about his instrument being in perfect tune, in execution awkward yet vigorous, painstaking rather than brilliant, he would often attend at the Oratory School Sunday practices between two and four of an afternoon, Father Ryder and Father Norris sometimes coming to play also. For many years Dr. Newman had given up the violin, 20 20 A friend remembers Father Whitty, S.J., bringing to Maryvale Mr. McCarthy and Mr. M'Quoin, young converts and subsequently priests (the former is still living in Jersey). Both played the violin, so an instrumental quartet was essayed (a rare event in the community), the executants being the two named, and Fathers Newman and Bowles (violoncello). but finding some of the school taking to the strings, he took it up again by way of encouraging them to persevere in what he deemed to be so good a thing for his boys. And he quietly inculcated a lesson in self-effacement too, for albeit he had begun the violin very long before our time, he invariably took second fiddle. He had no high opinion of his own performances. Answering the Liverpool anti-Popery spouter's summons to battle, he relied rather on his friends' estimate of his powers than upon his own. "Canon M'Neill's well-known talents as a finished orator would make such a public controversy an unfair trial of strength between them, because he himself was no orator. He had in fact no practice in public speaking. His friends, however, told him that he was no mean performer on the violin, and if he agreed to meet Canon M'Neill, he would only make one condition, that the Canon should open the meeting, and say all he had to say, after which he (Mr. Newman) would conclude with a tune on the violin. The public would then be able to judge which was the better man." 21 21 Father Lockhart, in the Paternoster Review for September, 1890. With mere fiddling, a fluency void of expression he had little patience, and when, at a term "break-up," a youth's bow cleverly capered about on a violoncello, he uttered no compliment when the boy had concluded his flourishes. It was a mere display for executive skill, without feeling.

Readers will remember here the passage in Loss and Gain : "Bateman: 'If you attempt more, it's like taxing a musical instrument beyond its powers.' Reding: 'You but try, Bateman, to make a bass play quadrilles, and you will see what is meant by taxing an instrument.' Bateman: 'Well, I have heard Lindley play all sorts of quick tunes on his bass, and most wonderful it is.' Reding: 'Wonderful is the right word, it is very wonderful. You say, "How can he manage it? It's very wonderful for a bass;" but it is not pleasant in itself. In like manner, I have always felt a disgust when Mr. So-and-so comes forward to make his sweet flute bleat and bray like a haut-bois; it's forcing the poor thing to do what it was never made for.'" 22 22 Loss and Gain , p. 284, Sixth Edition, 1874.

In the same mood, when a quartet of Schubert was played to him in March, 1878, the sole remark he let fall was, "Very harmonious and clever, but it does not touch the heart."

In March, 1883, he observed that he missed the minor key in Palestrina, and on our adding that, perhaps, Mendelssohn had too much of it, he went on, "It cuts me to the heart that minor," and so he liked the mixed mode to the Psalm In exitu Israel , and was much affected by the slow movements in Beethoven's Ninth Quartet and C minor Symphony, and the Allegretto of the Symphony in A.

There was just that human element about it, so "deeply pathetic," which in the same way made him prefer Euripides to Sophocles, for all the latter's "sweet composure, melodious fulness, majesty and grace." 24 24 Essays , i. 7, Fifth Edit. And here we may add, that as late as January, 1890, apropos of a Greek play for his school, he was as keen and eager as ever about the merits of Euripides, expressed himself as being at a loss to understand the critics invariably preferring Sophocles to the other two, and evidently placed Euripides and Æschylus first and second respectively. A frequently true and natural feeling, whether displayed by the author of the Bacchæ , or by the composer of Fidelio , evidently almost atoned, in his estimation, for every deficiency.

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