For the past half hour, I have been trying to concentrate all my attention upon some fairly cheerful matter, and I have failed. It has been impossible to keep out the sound of this mouth-organ. Its formless, unknown, unending tune, only fit for bewailing a ruined world, has gradually invaded my room, penetrated through the ear into my brain, and coloured or discoloured all the thoughts there. There is in it no trace of that noble sadness which great music, like great poetry, so often brings with it; the mouth-organ knows nothing of ‘divine despair.’ It seems to whimper before ‘the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world.’
‘Oh de-ar!’ I seem to hear it crying, ‘No hope for yo-ou and yo-ours; Me-eser-able world! Oh de-ear!’ It has brought with it a fog of depression; my spirits have been sinking lower and lower; and under the influence of this evil mangler of good, heartening tunes I have begun to think that life is not worth living.
Most music worthy of the name has such beauty that it will either raise us to a kind of ecstasy or give us a feeling of vague sadness, which some delicate persons prefer to wild joy. Sir Thomas Browne, you remember, has something to say on this point, in a passage that can never become hackneyed no matter how many times it is quoted: ‘Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern-music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer.’
But these mouth-organ strains will make a man neither mad nor merry, nor yet strike in him a deep fit of devotion; but if his ear is like mine, they will make him sink into depression and dye his world a ghastly blue.
It is curious that certain other popular musical instruments seem to have the same characteristics as the mouth-organ. The concertina and the accordion, good friends of the sailor, the lonely Colonist, and rough, kindly fellows the world over, seem to me to possess the same power of transforming all the tunes played upon them into one long wail. I have read about their ‘lively strains,’ but I have never heard them. The sound of a concertina a quarter of a mile away is enough to shake my optimism. An average accordion could turn the Sword Theme from ‘Siegfried’ into a plea for suicide. A flageolet or a tin-whistle has not such a shattering effect; nevertheless, both of them can only give a tune a certain subdued air, which is certainly preferable to the depressing alchemy of the other instruments, but which certainly does not make for liveliness.