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قراءة كتاب Music and Some Highly Musical People
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
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That give delight, and hurt not."
All these, the beauties of animate and inanimate Nature, pleasantly affect the senses. But the chief influence there—the crowning glory of the groves—is the songs, the charming music of the birds, as they warble from tree to tree, untrammelled by the forms of art, their sweetest melodies. How often do their lightsome, inspiriting carollings ring out upon the morning air, persuasively calling us from our couches to listen in delight to Nature's minstrelsy! "After man," says a writer, "the birds occupy the highest rank in Nature's concerts. They make the woods, the gardens, and the fields resound with their merry warbles. Their warbled 'shake' has never been equalled by human gifts of voice, nor by art."
Indeed, it has been found that many of the songs of birds are sung in certain of the keys; while a learned musical writer has produced a book in which are printed many samples of the music often sung by birds. In very recent times it is stated, too, that birds have been taught to sing some of the popular tunes of the day; this being accomplished by placing a bird in a room for a while, allowing it to hear no other bird, and only the tune to be learned. Professor Brown of Aiken, S.C., has mocking-birds which he has taught to sing such songs as "The Star-spangled Banner" and "Yankee Doodle." These birds were to be taken to the Centennial Exhibition, to there exhibit their marvellous skill.
A writer in "The Monthly Reader" thus speaks of that pretty singer the bullfinch:—
"I heard a lady cry out to a little bird in a cage, 'Come, Bully, Bully, sweet little Bully Bullfinch, please give us just one more tune.'
"And then, to my surprise, the little bird whistled the tune of 'Yankee Doodle' as well as I could have done it myself.
"The lady then told me about the bird. It was a bullfinch. She had bought it in the little town of Fulda, in Germany, where there are schools for teaching these birds to sing.
"When a bullfinch has learned to sing two or three tunes, he is worth from forty to sixty dollars; for he will bring that price in London or Boston or New York.
"To teach them, the birds are put in classes of about six each, and kept for a time in a dark room. Here, when their food is given them, they are made to hear music. And so, when they have had their food, or when they want more food, they will sing, and try to sing a tune like that they have just heard; for perhaps they think it has something to do with what they eat."
But as, in presenting these examples of the musical teachableness of the "feathered songsters," I am entering the domain of music as an art, I will not further digress. Certain it is, too, that these delightful musicians of Nature do not require the aid of the skill of man; nor is it desirable, for the sake of musical effect at least, that their own wild, free, and glad-hearted warblings should be changed. They are better as they are, affording as they do a pleasing contrast, and adding freshness and variety to the many other forms of music. Some one, dwelling upon the charming beauty of bird-music, has expressed in words of very excusable rapture the following unique wish:—
| "Oh! had I but the power To set the proper words To all your glorious melodies, My sweet-voiced birds, When words and dainty music Would each to each belong, Together we might give the world A perfect song." |
But I need not refer at greater length to these sweet harmonists of Nature, since scarce an ear is so dull, and few hearts are so cold, as not to be charmed and cheered by their unceasing, joyous melodies.
It might well be thought that flowers, those "fairy ministers of grace," with their delicately tinted, variegated, perfect hues, that emit, in their sweet, delicious perfumes, what may be called the "breath of heaven," possess in these delightful qualities full enough to instruct and charm mankind. But there is a flower, it seems, that, inviting the aid of the evening zephyr, adds sweet music to its other fascinating beauties. Let the poet Twombly sing of the music-giving—
BLUE HAREBELL.
| Have ye ever heard in the twilight dim A low, soft strain That ye fancied a distant vesper-hymn, Borne o'er the plain By the zephyrs that rise on perfumed wing, When the sun's last glances are glimmering? Have ye heard that music, with cadence sweet And merry peal, Ring out like the echoes of fairy feet O'er flowers that steal? The source of that whispering strain I'll tell; For I have listened oft To the music faint of the blue harebell In the gloaming soft: 'Tis the gay fairy-folk the peal who ring, At even-time, for their banqueting. And gayly the trembling bells peal out With gentle tongue; While elves and fairies career about 'Mid dance and song. |
It would be tedious to enumerate and dwell upon all the very numerous music-making agencies of the natural world; and I shall therefore allude only to a few of those not already mentioned.
Many have heard the sounds of waterfalls, and know that from them issues a kind of majestic music, which, to be appreciated, must be heard. Musicians of finely-cultivated ears have studied the tones of waterfalls; and two of them, Messrs. A. and E. Heim, say that a mass of falling water gives