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Robert Browning's Taste in Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Malcolm Richardson
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Extract

One of the constant factors in Robert Browning's life was his love of music, a love which he repaid by devoting two of the finest examples of his poetic art to musical subjects. “Abt Vogler” and “A Toccata of Galuppi's” are among the most frequently studied and anthologized poems, the latter being a particular favorite with general reader and critic alike. Yet had Browning never written these two poems, his attachment to music would have been just as apparent through the numerous references to music, concerts, and musical personalities in his other poems and his letters. In fact, Browning's knowledge of music and his status as an amateur musician are commonplaces of the Browning legend, a part of the received Gospel. But while we know a great deal about Browning's youthful training in music, his technical knowledge of musical forms, and his philosophy of music, we know very little about the important matter of where his taste in music lay. If one reads Browning's poems and letters with the express purpose of discovering his musical likes and dislikes, the results are surprising and—in terms of his “musical” poems—rather revealing, for they indicate that Browning, living in the great age of musical Romanticism, was something of a musical reactionary who looked with disdain on the great composers of his era and on their musical styles, preferring instead the forms and performing techniques of the preceding century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 6 , Spring 1978 , pp. 105 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

NOTES

106 Avison: DeVane, William C. Jr., Browning's Parleyings: The Autobiography of a Mind (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 252–83.Google Scholarletters: Greene, Herbert E., “Browning's Knowledge of Music,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 62 (1947), 1095–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mendl, R. W. S., “Robert Browning, the Poet-Musician,” Music and Letters, 22 (1962–1963), 142–50.Google Scholar Also, Johnson, Wendell Stacy, “Browning's Music,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 22 (1963–1964), 203–07CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a minor article.

106 “Galuppi's”: Johnson, Charles W., “Lost ‘Chord,’ Wrong ‘Chord,’ and Other Musical Anomalies in ‘A Toccata of Galuppi's,’” Studies in Browning and His Circle, 4 (Spring, 1976), 30–40.Google Scholarpiano: Griffin, W. Hall and Minchin, Harry Christopher, The Life of Robert Browning, 3rd ed. (1938; rpt. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar For his love of music, see also Irvine, William and Honan, Park, The Book, the Ring, and the Poet: A Biography of Robert Browning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), pp. 7–11.Google Scholarletters: New Letters of Robert Browning, ed. DeVane, William C. and Knickerbocker, Kenneth L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1950), p. 352n.Google Scholar

107 “all”: DeVane, , p. 254.Google Scholar “music”: Quoted by Griffin, and Minchin, , p. 16Google Scholar, from an interview in the Manchester Examiner and Times, 18 12 1889.Google Scholar “knowledge”: Greene, , p. 1096.Google Scholar “Saxe-Gotha”: Ibid., p. 1097. composers: Griffin, and Minchin, , p. 137.Google Scholar “Fire-Side”: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845–1846, ed. Kinter, Elvan (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1969), I, 156.Google Scholar

108 “senza”: Ibid., I, 190n. course”: MrsOrr, Sutherland, Life and Letters of Robert Browning (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), p. 290.Google Scholar1860s: New Letters, p. 239, n. 2.Google ScholarFeast”: Ibid., pp. 304–05.

109 examples: Letters, I, 523.Google Scholarartists”: Ibid.

110 open”: Dearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to Isabella Blagden, ed. McAleer, Edward C. (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1951), p. 191.Google Scholar

111 more”: Letters, I, 523.Google Scholarparlors: Quoted by Greene, , p. 1099.Google Scholarpremieres: These annals are included as an appendix to Rosenthal, Harold, Two Centuries of Opera at Covent Garden (London: Putnam, 1958).Google Scholar

112 1818–93): “An Englishman in Italy,” l. 265Google Scholar, and “Flute Music,” l. 106, respectively.Google Scholardemonstrate: Mackerness, E. D., A Social History of English Music (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), pp. 180–83.Google Scholar

113 Relfe: DeVane, , pp. 255–57.Google Scholarearlier: Griffin, and Minchin, , p. 161.Google Scholar1880”: Orr, , p. 317.Google Scholar