HOW TO BE A 19TH-CENTURY FAN guest blog by blondviolinist
What would you do, if you were an American music fan in the mid 19th-century, and your favorite Norwegian violinist was coming to town on a concert tour? Why, write a poem and send it in to the newspaper, of course!
I’ve been doing a lot of music history research lately, looking through 19th-century newspapers for articles about famous violinists. Some of the research is dry and boring, but some of it has been delightful. My favorite find so far has been a handful of poems published in US newspapers dedicated to the Norwegian violinist, Ole Bornemann Bull. The poems are anything but masterpieces, and weren’t originally intended as comedy. 170 years later, however, the poems are wonderful entertainment. (Ok, I might have a skewed point of view, but you can judge for yourself.)
Bull was a wildly popular virtuoso violinist who performed actively throughout Europe and North America from the mid 1830s until his death in 1880.* He was not necessarily the most polished violinist of the day (that award would probably be given to a Parisian-trained violinist), but his showmanship and musicality made him a perennial favorite on the concert stage. He used many of the flashy, impressive violin tricks that Nicolo Paganini had made famous, and the press often called Bull “the Norwegian Paganini.”
Bull had many ties to the United States. In 1852, he bought a large tract of land in Pennsylvania, in order to found a colony for Norwegian farmers immigrating to the United States. The colony, “Oleana,” unfortunately collapsed a couple years later, and many of the settlers moved west to Minnesota and Wisconsin. A portion of Oleana still remains, though, and if you ever go to Pennsylvania, you can visit Ole Bull State Park.** In 1870, Bull married a young woman, Sarah Thorpe from Madison, Wisconsin, and for the last ten years of his life, he occasionally spent time in his home in Madison. (He didn’t live there all the time. He had mother-in-law problems.)
Enough of Ole Bull’s life story.*** Back to the poetry. * I present for your reading pleasure Poem #1 (from The Boston Daily Atlas, 1844):
Hail, great Niag’ra! Mighty torrent, hail!
To sing thy praise, my feeble efforts fail;
Thy noble theme I leave to Ole Bull,
Whose soul of thy magnificence is full.
Ye sacred Nine! his magic bow inspire,
To touch “the strings” with true Promethean fire;
O’er depths profound his vivid skill will soar,
While list’ning ears will tremble at the roar.
As th’ eternal current onward flows,
He’ll breathe the soothing strains of deep repose.
Hail, great Niag’ra! Art extends her wings,
And mounts above thy inexhaustless springs;
May all thy efforts with success be crown’d
While universal PLAUDITS wake around.
From the author of “ROCKAWAY”
Isn’t that fabulous? Don’t you wish you had written it? Obviously, one of the most important things for an aspiring poet to remember when writing a poem about her favorite violinist is to use italics and CAPITAL LETTERS. Including references to mythology (especially the Greek Muses) raises the tenor of the poem significantly and increases its chances of publication. (This particular poem was reprinted in at least two other newspapers that I found. And no, I have no idea what the poem “Rockaway” is, or who the author of that esteemed work of literary art might be.)
As a violinist, I find it disturbing to picture Bull touching his strings with Promethean fire. Was the bow on fire? Would it set his violin on fire? Would the insurance company pay out if his violin was burned in a mythological pyrotechnic disaster? Bull often played on a Stradivarius, too, so the consequences could have been dreadful!
The last four lines of the poem are especially delicious. Is the poet speaking of Niagara Falls, or Ole Bull? Has Ole Bull turned into Niagara Falls? Did he transform himself in order to put out the violin-fire from earlier? Do we now have to worry about a fire-damaged and water-logged instrument? (Ok, ok, so maybe the poet is simply claiming that music pours from Ole Bull as water pours over Niagara. It’s a hokey sentiment, but it was the nineteenth century after all.)
Of course, if you can write poetry to Bull in Norwegian, so much the better! Here is Poem #2 (New York Herald, 1844):
TO OLE BULL
Norge, din Helt over Bölgerne red,
Höit paa hans Havhest, guldlokket og sklön;
Snart over Have tog Landerne skred;
Glad dog og sclerrigt hiem gik lgien.
Norge, dit Sværd blev en Lire:
Himmelen gav hendes Toner,
Hiertet og Slelen at styre,
Fuld som af Kummerens Moner.†
Norway, thy hero over billows rode,
high on his sea-horse, gold-locked and fair.
Swiftly over sea and land he strode,
yet glad and victorious returned home again.
Norway, thy sword has become a lyre—
Heaven gave its tones,
to lead heart and soul,
filled as with grief’s longings
(I’ve cheated. I’ve only given you a couple stanzas from the middle of the poem. You can thank me later.)
My favorite part of this poem isn’t the fact that it’s written in Norwegian, and then translated into English for the benefit of any New Yorkers who don’t happen to speak Norwegian. My favorite part is how the poet glosses over the pillaging and raids that were part of Viking exploration. (Comparing Ole Bull to the Norsemen of old becomes more amusing if you know that two of the most popular violin compositions that Bull performed in the United States were “A Mother’s Prayer” and “The Eighteenth Psalm.” Does that remind you of Vikings? Me either.)
Here is a different poetic perspective on Ole Bull’s Viking heritage. (Warning: lousy poetry ahead. Oh, you guessed that already? Don’t worry, I’m not giving you the whole long torturous ode.) Poem #3 (New York Herald, 1844):
TO OLE BULL
Io Pæan! Io sing.
Honor to the Fiddle-King!
King, by “right divine,” and holy.
All the world has crowned the, Ole! [sic]
Had the Northern hordes of old,
Forth from Scandinavia cold,
Rushing like starved wolves for prey—
Had they, Ole, heard thee play,
They had ever kept at home,
They had never plundered Rome.
Hadst thou lived in those old days
When music met such fitting praise,
The trees that moved at Orpheus’ tones,
The trees, and beasts, and senseless stones,
Ne’er would they have sought thee so—
Running would have been too slow;
They’d have taken the railroad car,
And come to thee from near and far.
See, if someone had just invented a time machine and transported Ole Bull back in time, he could have played “The Mother’s Prayer” and convinced all the Vikings to stay home and farm. (Did the Vikings really sack Rome? I thought that was the Goths and Visigoths. Oh well, poetic license and all that.)
Notice this poet also includes Greek mythology. Vikings and Orpheus together: a sure guarantee of publication. (I also love the mental picture of trees and Maenads and wolves and deer all trying to crowd into a train car so they could get to the next Ole Bull concert in time.)
If by this time you are beginning to pity Ole Bull for all the bad poetry written in his honor, you don’t need to pity him too much. He did have at least one halfway decent poet on his side:
Before the blazing fire of wood
Erect the rapt musician stood;
And ever and anon he bent
His head upon his instrument,
And seemed to listen, till he caught
Confessions of its secret thought,–
The joy, the triumph, the lament,
The exultation and the pain;
Then, by the magic of his art,
He soothed the throbbings of its heart,
And lulled it into peace again.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn, “The Wayside Inn.”)
Some of you who are better acquainted with Longfellow than I am may already be familiar with this poem. I must confess I was ignorant of it until just a few weeks ago. It’s written in the style of Canterbury Tales, with different characters each telling a story. Ole Bull is not mentioned by name in the poem, but Longfellow admitted in other writing that Bull was indeed the inspiration for the musician.
And then the blue-eyed Norseman told
A Saga of the days of old.
“There is,” said he, “a wondrous book
Of Legends in the old Norse tongue,
Of the dead kings of Norroway,–
Legends that once were told or sung
In many a smoky fireside nook
Of Iceland, in the ancient day,
By wandering Saga-man or Scald;
Heimskringla is the volume called;
And he who looks may find therein
The story that I now begin.”
And in each pause the story made
Upon his violin he played,
As an appropriate interlude,
Fragments of old Norwegian tunes
That bound in one the separate runes,
And held the mind in perfect mood,
Entwining and encircling all
The strange and antiquated rhymes
with melodies of olden times;
As over some half-ruined wall,
Disjointed and about to fall,
Fresh woodbines climb and interlace,
And keep the loosened stones in place.
(Tales of a Wayside Inn, “Interlude.”)
I hope you’ve found these snippets of 19th-century fandom as entertaining as I have. (And next time you feel tempted to some display of extreme fan behavior, just remember that 170 years from now, somebody could be laughing at you, too! :) )
* * *
* The Norwegian embassy in the United States has a great little article about Ole Bull up on their webpage: http://www.norway.org/ARCHIVE/News/archive/2002/200204bull/
** http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/olebull.aspx
*** I wanted to include some pictures of Ole Bull in this post, but because of copyright issues, I can only point you to Wikipedia, for their Ole Bull pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ole_Bull While researching, I came across a fabulous newspaper drawing of Ole Bull arriving in an American city at night, with a torch-bearing crowd welcoming him. It was, according to the accompanying article, an enthusiastic and warm welcome. Looking at the engraving, though, I thought it looked more like the crowd was about ready to tie up Ole Bull and put him on the next train out of town!^
^If only I had been looking at an original of the newspaper, I could have taken a photograph and included it with this post. Alas, I found the article on an electronic archive, so the image was copyrighted (even if the original newspaper was not.)
† My deepest apologies for any misspelled words. The copy I’m working from is a bit blurred with age, and I’ve never had to spell Norwegian before.
* ARRRRRRRGH. WordPress won’t keep the stanza breaks. I went through this the other night with the Sassoon poem and can’t face wrestling with FIVE blocks of multi-stanza poetry. Deepest apologies. –ed.
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