CHOPPED MUSIC.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 85, 9 April 1879, Page 4

CHOPPED MUSIC.

Oliver Wendell Holmes has the following to Fay in reference to rausic: — " I don't liko your chopped music in any way. That woman— she baa more sense in her little finger than forty medical societies — Florence Nightingale, says that the music you pour out is good for sick folk, and the music you pound out isn't. Not that exactly, but something like it. I have been to jiear some mnsic pounding. It was a young woman with as much white muslin flounced round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it. She pave the music-stool a twirl or two, and fluffed down on it like a whirl of soapsuds in a hand-basin- Then she pushed off her cuffs as ii she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked he wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppoFe, and spread out |her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the keyboard, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers made a jump at the keys, as if they were a couple of tigers coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl, as if its tail had been trod on. Dead etop — so still you could hear your hair growing ; then another jump and another howl, as if the piano had two tails, and you had trod on both of 'em at once, and then a grand clatter and scramble, and strings of jumps back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats acd mice more than anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but those noises they hammer out of their wood and ivory anvils — don't talk to me, I know the difference between a bull-frog and a woodthrush !"