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Page 7
* * * * *
Of a more subtle genius and more daring spirit than Zophiel or Jemschid,
Angelo boldly launched into the bewildering chaos of the realm of
sound. As yet the laws of the Acoustic Prism were unknown; the
seven-ranged ladder was all unformed, and without its aid it seemed
impossible to scale the ever-renewing heights, to sound the ever-growing
depths of this enchanted kingdom. But Angelo was a bold adventurer.
Haunted by the heaven sounds, vague memories of his antenatal existence,
although he had entirely lost the _meaning_ of their flow, as one may
recall snatches of the melody of a song when he cannot remember one of
its words--he commenced his subtle task. He resolved the Acoustic Prism;
he built the seven-runged ladder; he charmed the wandering Tones, and
bound them in the holy laws of Rhythm. Divining the hidden secrets of
their affiliations, relations, loves, and hates, he wrought them into
gorgeous webs of harmonics, to clothe the tender but fiery soul of
ever-living melodies. Soothing their jarring dissonances into sweet
accord, he filled their pining wails with that 'divine sorrow,' that
mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the inner voice of every
created heart. If he could not find the _heaven sense_ of the tones, he
found their _earthly meaning_, and caused them to repeat or suggest
every joy and sorrow of which our nature is capable. He forced the
heaven tongue to become _human_, while it retained its _divine_. Without
a model or external archetype, he formed his realm and divined its
changing limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble, holy enough
to exclude all that is low or profane. He forever exorcised the spirits
of Evil--the strong Demons of materialism--from his rhythmed world.
Flinging his spells on the unseen air, he forced it to breathe his
passion, his sighs; he saddened it with his tears, kindled it with his
rapture, until fired and charged with the electric breath of the soul,
it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying at will the wild and
restless heart. He created _Music, the only universal language_, holding
the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope. Angelo, strange
architect in that dim domain of chaos, thy creation, fleeting,
invisible, and unembodied, is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play
of clouds, yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their misty
towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested pinnacles! Trackless as
the wind, yet as powerful, thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever
beats the human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life. Music nerves
the soul with strength or dissolves it in love; she idealizes Pain into
soul-touching Beauty; assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes,
and moving at ease through every phase of our complicated existence.
White and glittering are her robes, yet she is no aristocrat. She
disdains not to soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the
cradle of the child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken girl murmurs
broken-hearted lullabies around the young 'inheritor of pain.' She is
with the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka; she inflames
the savage in the barbaric clang of the fierce war-dance; or marks the
measured tramp of the drilled soldiery of civilization. She is in the
court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of the cultured beauty;
she chants in the dreary cell of the hermit; she lightens the dusty
wallet of the wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the Poet; she
breathes through the direst tragedies of noblest souls. On--on she
floats through the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere welcome,
refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal Font to the
Grave!
All the inner processes of life are guarded by the hand of nature. In
vain would the curiosity of the scalpel knife invade the sanctuary of
the beating heart to lay open the burning mystery of Being. The outraged
Life retreats before it to its last citadel, and the indignant heart,
upon its entrance, refuses to throb more. The citadel is taken; but the
secret of _Life_ is not to be discovered in the kingdom of _Death_. It
is because Music is essentially a _living_ art that we find it
impossible to read the mystery of its being. If Painting touch us, we
can always trace the emotion to its exciting cause; if we weep over the
pages of the Poet, it is because we find our own blighted hopes imaged
there. But why does Music sway us? Where did we learn that language
without words? in what consists its mystic affinities with our spirits?
Why does the harp of David soothe the insanity of Saul? Is not its
festal voice too triumphant to be the accompaniment of our own sad,
fallen being; its breath of sorrow too divine to be the echo of our
petty cares? All other arts arise from the facts of our earthly
existence, but Music has no external archetype, and refuses to submit
her ethereal soul to our curious analysis. _'I am so, because so I am,'_
is the only answer she gives to the queries of materialism. Like the
primitive rock, the skeleton of earth's burning heart, she looms up
through the base of our existence. Addressing herself to some mystic
faculty born before thought or language, she lulls the suffering baby
into its first sleep, using perhaps the primeval and universal language
of the race. For the love which receives the New Born, cadences the
monotonous chant; and human sympathies are felt by the innocent and
confiding infant before his eyes are opened fully upon the light, before
his tongue can syllable a word, his ear detect their divisions, or his
mind divine their significations. But Music looms not only through the
base of our being; like the encompassing sky, her arch spans our
horizon. Lo! is it not the language through which the Angels convey the
secrets of their profound adoration to the Heart of God!
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