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Untitled Article
In opposition to an opinion held by many , and repeated by more , we maintain that the best music produces the greatest popular effect . Of this position the Norwich Festival ., in accordance with what we have often witnessed elsewhere , furnished a striking continuity and variety of evidence . The great sensations were all produced by the finest passages . The Chorus and Fugue from 1
Mozart , ' O heavenly Lord ;" Spohr ' s ' Destroyed is Babylon , ' with the Quartet which follows , ' Blest are the departed ; ' the well-known beauties of the Creation , never so efficient as in their connexion with the entire composition ; the opening of the Deluge ; ( E . Taylor ' s Solo and the Chorus ' God is righteous ; ' )
the succession of choruses ending with * Sing Jehovah our Redeemer ; ' the air * On the dwellings of thy Children ; ' and the entire selection from Israel in Egypt : these might have been picked out by a deaf person watching the countenances of the auditory , during the morning performances . They had a visible electric action on the assembly .
The musician who by his art produces any effect upon a multitude , may safely calculate that he shall produce a similar effect upon almost any multitude . If the Norwich auditory had been differently constituted ; if the price of admission , instead of being a guinea and half a guinea , had been a crown and half a crown , the same thing would have happened as did happen in the proportionate effect of different parts of the performance . The
capability of being ' moved by concord of sweet sounds' is no appendage of station or fortune ; nor of what is called education , nor even of intellectuality . It is a physical and connate or innate privilege of certain constitutions , which are generated indifferently in all ranks of society . The proportion of such constitutions to the entire population may probably be varied by many influences , some within and others above the reach of human control ; but
whether they be few or many , they are the centre and the source of what may be called the public enjoyment of musical performances , la the bestowment of this gift , nature is strictly impartial . The Lord-Lieutenant of the county may have it ; and so may the journeyman weaver of the city . It is a spirit that breatheth where it listeth ; and they who possess it are the true patrons of musical festivals .
The musical temperament is often hereditary ; and it is hereditary under circumstances which show that it must be the result of original constitution and not of early training . It is often manifested in childhood under non-exciting and even unpropitious circumstances . Neglect may impair , or exercise may strengthen
and refine it . No education can produce more than its semblance , or a very low degree of the sensuous enjoyment of sound which it imparts . There are two secondary species of musical enjoyment , which may be added to this primary one , or which may be produced
Untitled Article
754 Reflections on the Norwich Musical Festival .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 754, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/22/
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