Galuppi was a prolific, versatile composer, "good alike at grave and gay," and especially good at toccatas or "touch pieces," which touch their theme lightly as the poem does, and in which "the interpolation of solemn chords and emotional phrases, inconsistent with their traditional character, may naturally, by force of contrast, lead to some suggestion or recognition of the jarring inequalities of life." His operas, "though rich in melody, always written with taste, and never overloaded, none of them survived the revolution of Rossini, fatal to so many of Galuppi's contemporaries." Avison was organist, critic, and composer, with little enough warmth from the divine fire in his soul. These three represent three distinct types of artists, different not only from each other, but from each of the painters, Lippo, Angelico, and Andrea. Galuppi represents the popular type, catering to a dancing public, yet with power and gravity enough to "make them leave off talking." Abt Vogler represents the inspired type, losing the sense of the external world in expressing himself through sound or colour, feeling “the finger of God, the flash of the will that can" in his work. Avison represents the learned type, cogitating and examining with a freedom quite uninterrupted by the creative impulse. Through them all Browning teaches what is evid 1 See Mrs. Alexander Ireland's paper on "A Toccata of Galuppi's" in London Browning Society Papers, Part XI. ently a profound conviction with him,-that music expresses feeling somewhat more truly than it can be expressed in any other way: God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear, The rest may reason and welcome! 't is we musicians know, says Abt Vogler, and Charles Avison states critically: There is no truer truth obtainable By man than comes from music; while life itself, “the very moral of life," is the fugue in complex and "mountainous" form. Besides this general philosophy which might, indeed, have been educed by any imaginative mind, agile in metaphor, these poems contain a wealth of technical expressions such as not even Milton, with whom music was a passion second only to poetry, ventured ever to use. And into the dry dust of such phraseology Browning has breathed enough life to make it suggestive, if not completely revealing, to the Philistines as well as to the musician. Of course, none but a musician could get from Master Hugues, or from Galuppi's Toccata, the satisfaction that comes from meeting the familiar symbol of a labour delighted in, which is, after all, the source of much of our pleasure in technical expression. But only a very unimaginative mind could fail to follow with some degree of apprehension such a verse as this from Abt Vogler: Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found. The C major of this life; so now I will try to sleep, or this from the Toccata: Well, and it was graceful of them-they'd break talk off and afford -She to bite her mask's black velvet-he to finger on his sword While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord. What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions, "must we die ?" Those commiserating sevenths-"Life might last! we can but try!" "Were you happy?" "Yes,"-" And are you still as happy?" 'Yes, and you?” 66 -"Then more kisses!"-Did I stop them when a million seemed so few ? Hark the dominant's persistence till it must be answered too. So an octave strikes the answer. It is interesting for those disposed to dress themselves in a little brief authority to learn from the notes made by diligent commentators, how truly a musical composition such as Browning has imagined for Galuppi (or possibly played from his music),1 would give the mournful effect of the poetry, suggesting the same melancholy contrast between the 1 An American writer visiting the Casa Guidi in 1847 spoke of Mrs. Browning sitting under the trees or in the dusky convent chapel "while Robert Browning at the organ chased a fugue, or dreamed out upon the twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi." butterfly gaiety of that delirious, beautiful Venice, and the ashen close of the irresponsible epoch in her history, when the dancing and the kisses turned to poverty and shame. Even without a line of explanation, however, the poem conveys its suggestion, which cannot truly be said of the description of the fugue in Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha. The latter appeals to the professional mind, and it is interesting to find Browning and Wagner at one about the fugue, Wagner using it but once, and then to describe a street row." Professor Pierce says in discussing the poem : 66 Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha is a powerful and subtle discussion of the question whether an art-form may not become so highly developed and complicated that it ceases to be a medium for the expression of mood or emotion-art's true province. The old organist remaining alone in his loft after the service is over apostrophises the author of the fugue he has just played as a postlude. He has been trained in the strictest classical school, has studied and mastered religiously the severest polyphonic compositions. But now, as the last pedal-tone dies away, a long-fomenting doubt wells up in his soul and flows over Hist! but a word fair and soft, Forth and be judged, Master Hugues ! Answer the question I've put you so oft. What do you mean by your mountainous fugues? "Then follows an original and witty description of a fugue which even in prose would do honour to a professional contrapuntist. heresy breaks forth : Finally the Friend, your fugue taxes the finger; Hugues! I advise meâ pœnâ (Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon) Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five clear the arena, If, as generally accepted, the highest Art be Art's most perfect concealment, then the poet's objections to the fugue are essentially valid. For in all music-literature-with the possible exception of some of Bach's masterpieces-the fugue-form is itself the ultimate aim of the composition rather than being a medium for the expression of anything; its greatest claim to distinction lies in the development of contrapuntal niceties which are totally lost on even a musically trained auditor except he be himself acquainted with the piece rendered, and even in that case he is unable to appreciate those subtleties as keenly and fully from an audible performance as from a reading of the notes in his study-chair. For these reasons it certainly seems that, unless we modify or extend the now universally accepted de |