George Gissing on music: Italian impressions

Musical Times, Summer 2001 by Atlas, Allan W

For the rest of his time in Naples, Gissing's references have an air of the haphazard about them. He mentions that he likes a song by Paolo Tosti called 'Maha' (Witchcraft), and that it is extremely popular,28 and that he had bought a collection of Neapolitan songs entitled Leco del Vesuvio, which he intended to give to his sister Ellen.29 On 15 January, he reports that he ate in a restaurant called Mazzo di Fiori, where there is 'always music [...] Two men, one with guitar, other mandoline; one sings. At night a little girl singings (Diary, p.203); and on 7 February, he noted the presence at Casa di Luca of three German singers who were then on tour in Italy: `one of them a great fellow of six feet at least, oldish, and with bass voice; he is called Fricke, and I hear he was once a famous singer on the German stage' (Diary, p.207). Finally, in addition to his disappointment in connection with the ban on street organs, he also regretted that he could not attend the opera; as he put it in a letter to Algernon on 22 January: 'I should like to hear an opera at San Carlo, one of the finest theatres in Europe; but the prices are very high, & I am afraid of catching a cold. The performances begin at 8.30, & often end at 1 a.m' (Letters, vol.4, p. 190). Lack of money and preoccupation with his health: they would plague Gissing throughout his adult life.30

On Thursday morning, 20 February, Gissing boarded a ship called the Orient and set sail for England. It would be seven-and-a-half years before he returned to Italy.

The third trip: 23 September 1897-13 April 1898

Gissing had two main objectives during his third and final Italian sojourn: he wished to write his critical study of Dickens and tour Calabria in order to view the ruins of Magna Graecia. The first of these he accomplished in Siena, where he settled in for about six weeks and completed Charles Dickens: a critical study, which he published in 1898 upon his return to England; as for the tour of Calabria: this eventually resulted in By the Ionian Sea: notes of a ramble in Southern Italy, a combination 'public diary' and travel guide, which he published in 1901.

In Siena, Gissing really did little more than work on the Dickens study,31 and no sooner had he finished it, than he headed south, arriving at Naples on 10 November. He was immediately struck by the absence of street organs, and an entry in the diary on 14 November notes that 'Naples seems less lively, even less noisy The ceaseless street-- organs used to be (to me) enjoyable, with their soft notes; now an organ is rarely heard. Before long, I suppose, music will cease in the trattorie' (Diary, p.454).

Gissing echoed his disappointment in By the Ionian Sea:

When I first knew Naples one was never, literally never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these organs, which in general had a peculiarly dulcet note, played the brightest of melodies; trivial, vulgar if you will, but none the less melodious, and dear to Naples. Now the sound of street music is rare, and I understand that some police provision long since interfered with the soft-- tongued instruments. I miss them; for, in the matter of music, it is with me as with Sir Thomas Browne. For Italy the change is significant enough; in a few more years spontaneous melody will be as rare at Naples or Venice as on the banks of the Thames.32 'Happily,' he continues, 'the musicians errant still strum their mandoline as you dine.'