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201.: FLOWER'S MIGNON'S SONG AND WHEN THOU WERT HERE EXAMINER, 21 APR., 1833, P. 245 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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201.: FLOWER’S MIGNON’S SONG AND WHEN THOU WERT HERE EXAMINER, 21 APR., 1833, P. 245 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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201.

FLOWER’S MIGNON’S SONG AND WHEN THOU WERT HERE

EXAMINER, 21 APR., 1833, P. 245

For Mill’s previous notices of Flower, see Nos. 112, 155, and 197. This review is in the “Music” section, where it is headed “1. Mignon’s Song; or, A foreign sky above. By the Author of the Musical Illustrations of the Waverley novels, &c. 2. When thou wert here. Ballad, composed by the same author. Both published by J. Alfred Novello. [London, 1833.]” The words to the second song are by Sarah Flower, Eliza Flower’s sister. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A short notice of two of Miss Flower’s songs, in the Examiner of 21st April 1833” (MacMinn, p. 26). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of two of Miss Flower’s songs” and enclosed in square brackets, with one correction: at 563.18, “related” is altered to “selected”.

two beautiful songs, worthy of the genius and taste of the composer. Like all her other works they strike less at first hearing than they delight on a more familiar knowledge.

The second will perhaps add most to the composer’s musical reputation, being in a style more unlike her other compositions, and perhaps better calculated for general popularity. But the Song of Mignon is by far the most touching. This is not the well-known Kennst du das Land, which Beethoven, not very successfully, set to music, but an expansion and paraphrase of a shorter and still more affecting passage from the same work of Goethe.¹ It begins thus:

A foreign sky above
A foreign earth below me,
To the south I look all day—
For the friends who love and know me
Are far, far away!
[P. 2.]

Words more adapted to musical expression never fell to the lot or were selected by the judgment of a composer. Miss Flower has entered fully into their spirit. The exquisitely pathetic close of the passage “the friends who love and know me are far, far away,” is in the best style of Spohr,² one of whose loveliest passages it resembles, but without anything approaching to plagiarism.

[1 ]Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) published his setting of Goethe’s “Kennst du das Land” (Mignon’s song) in 1810, as part of Opus 75, six songs for soprano and pianoforte. Goethe’s “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” (from which the translated passage comes) and “Kennst du das Land” are in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-96), Vols. XVIII-XX in Werke, 55 vols. in 36 (Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1828-33), Vol. XIX, p. 67 (Bk. IV, Chap. xi), and Vol. XVIII, p. 233 (Bk. III, Chap. i), respectively.

[2 ]Louis Spohr (1784-1859), violinist and composer.