A Famous American on Music

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 472, 17 May 1890, Page 5

A Famous American on Music

Oliver Wendell Holmes has the following to say in refeience to music;—‘l don’t like your chopped music anyway. That woman—she had more sense in her lit'tle finger than forty medical societies —Flor 1 ence Nightingale, says, that the music you pour out is good for sick folk, and thp music you pound out isn’t. Nob that exactly, but something like it. I have been to hear some music pounding. It was a young woman, with as many white muslin flounces round her as the planet, Saturu has rings, that did it. She gave the music stool a twirl or two, and fluffed down on it like a whirl of soapsuds in a hand basin. Then she rushed off her cuff's as if she \yas going to fight for the champion’s be t, Then she worked Her wrists and hands to iimber ’em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the keyboard, from the growling end to the li’ble squeaky one. Then those hands made a jump to the keys, as if they were a -Duple of tigers coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl, as if its bail had bsen trod on. Dead stop, 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 a scramble, and string of jumps, back and forward, one hand over the other like a stampede of rats and mice more than anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, bub these 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 wood-thrush ! ’