Carlsruhe is habitually empty: a place in
which a strange carriage amounts to an event:
where the very soldiers strutting down the street
seem to be the identical soldiers we recollect
to have strutted there a quarter of a century
ago. Solemn civil deliberation and bad cookery
are the rule of the inns; in the shops it seems
a point of honour not to get beyond last year's
novelties. But on those bright days of this
autumn, when the united musicians of the
Future came together to shame Germany, Carlsruhe
looked even more penitentially dejected,
and genteelly faded, than usual. There were
few expecting strangers in the street, there was
no bustling of arrival, there were no pretty
women in fresh toilettes, there was no smartening
up, no display, beyond the demonstrative
appearance of a few resident elderly gentlemen
in white cravats (at seven in the morning),
button-hole ribbons, and spectacles, charging
the staircases of the hotels—and a pretty
liberal assortment of youths, got up in a close
imitation of Dr. Liszt's long hair, Dr. Liszt's
shoulders, and Dr. Liszt's walk.

But the Music of the Future, when, at last,
it was reached—what of that? The lowest
expectations could not have been disappointed by
the Music of the Future which was presented.
It consisted chiefly of instrumental works; it
being not the least promising symptom of this
new German school, that the voice is to be
gradually elbowed out of the orchestra. Uhland's
noble ballad of the Singer's Curse, the Lament
of Tasso, what not, were all to be expressed by
the full band, or the nimble fingers of the pianist
—and there was one young pianist there, Fraülein
Topp, whose nimbleness of finger, command of
the instrument, and memory, shown in the
execution of music of a most eruel, harassing, and
dismal ugliness, were marvellous. Throughout
all this portentous music, the ear listened in
vain for a solitary trait of melody natural or
unnatural, for a single new or masterly
orchestral combination—for anything bearing the
remotest resemblance to sound of hope or
promise. Almost the only outbreak of common
sense and intelligible composition which relieved
two long morning, and as many evening
performances, was the final movement of a psalm
by the Arch-Iconoclast, Dr. Liszt—a fugue, as
sober, sensible, tuneable, and well conducted,
as though the most pedantic of the dowagers
whom these great spirits got together to destroy
and to drive into the outer darkness of oblivion
—had penned it!

The execution of this dreadful music was in a
large measure worthy of the compositions. The
Carlsruhe orchestra, which is a very good one,
and well conducted (as a performance of Glück's
Armida had given the writer occasion to know),
had been largely reinforced by strangers, and the
force thus made up did not work harmoniously.
Then the labour to bring together something
shapely out of chaotic rubbish was found so
exhausting, that (no wonder!) the players became
dispirited and mutinous. A duet from a
manuscript opera, some three-quarters of an hour
long, in which Diana has to sing some four
pages of transcendental text, brought matters to
a crisis. After rehearsing this for upwards of
a couple of hours, the band fairly threw down
their instruments. They, being mortals of the
Present, could bear no more Music of the
Future that day, and accordingly the duet was
given up, and the concert postponed.

But one yet more depressing feature of this
German Festival remains to be mentioned—the
vainglory of the audience. The audience
assembled in the beautiful theatre at Carlsruhe (a
place of amusement, the scale, proportions, and
convenience of which claim admiration) was
as vehement in its raptures throughout the
terrible events of every evening, as if a new
Bach, or Handel, or Beethoven, had been
revealed in every composition. The climax
was reached in the applause with which the
enthusiasts overwhelmed Herr Remènyi, who
committed Murder on Herr Joachim's
Hungarian violin concerto. This gentleman's
display was from first to last terribly out of tune,
and in it not one passage was really rendered,
though all were dashed off with the jerks, and
gestures, and bowings of the body, and flinging
back of the hair, which made good people
thirty years ago in the caricatures of Paganini
in our Christmas pantomimes. Yet Paganini or
Ernst, when both were in their prime, or Herr
Joachim the admirable (happily still playing his
best), or Mademoiselle Lind, or Mademoiselle
Patti, or any real and popular marvel in any
branch of art, could not have been greeted with
more numerous and frenetic recals and plaudits
than this performer. Well might an English
guest inquire if he were in the music-land of
Germany, when his senses were outraged by
enthusiasm so preposterous; but if he shaped
his inquiry into speech or comment, he was
answered by the polite piece of information that
an Englishman could know nothing of the
matter, could not fathom the deep feeling and
the inner life of this splendid regeneration of
German music, illustrated in perfect tune and
execution, by so transcendant an artist!

NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS,

In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
"Pickwick," " Copperfield," &c.

Now publishing, PART VI., price 1s., of
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.

IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.
With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE.
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.

The Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors.