Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha

by Robert Browning
   
I
  
Hist, but a word, fair and soft!  
   Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!  
Answer the question I’ve put you so oft:  
   What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?  
See, we’re alone in the loft, —  
   
II
  
I, the poor organist here,  
   Hugues, the composer of note,  
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:  
   Let’s have a colloquy, something to quote,  
Make the world prick up its ear! 10
   
III
  
See, the church empties apace:  
   Fast they extinguish the lights.  
Hallo there, sacristan! Five minutes' grace!  
   Here’s a crank pedal wants setting to rights,  
Baulks one of holding the base.  
   
IV
  
See, our huge house of the sounds,  
   Hushing its hundreds at once,  
Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds!  
   O you may challenge them, not a response  
Get the church-saints on their rounds! 20
   
V
  
(Saints go their rounds, who shall doubt?  
   — March, with the moon to admire,  
Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about,  
   Supervise all betwixt pavement and spire,  
Put rats and mice to the rout —  
   
V
  
Aloys and Jurien and Just —  
   Order things back to their place,  
Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust,  
   Rub the church-plate, darn the sacrament-lace,  
Clear the desk-velvet of dust.) 30
   
VII
  
Here’s your book, younger folks shelve!  
   Played I not off-hand and runningly,  
Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve?  
   Here’s what should strike, could one handle it cunningly:  
Help the axe, give it a helve!  
   
VIII
  
Page after page as I played,  
   Every bar’s rest, where one wipes  
Sweat from one’s brow, I looked up and surveyed,  
   O’er my three claviers, yon forest of pipes  
Whence you still peeped in the shade. 40
   
IX
  
Sure you were wishful to speak?  
   You, with brow ruled like a score,  
Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek,  
   Like two great breves, as they wrote them of yore,  
Each side that bar, your straight beak!  
   
X
  
Sure you said — “Good, the mere notes!  
   Still, couldst thou take my intent,  
Know what procured me our Company’s votes —  
   A master were lauded and sciolists shent,  
Parted the sheep from the goats!”  
  50
XI
  
Well then, speak up, never flinch!  
   Quick, ere my candle’s a snuff  
— Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch —  
   I believe in you, but that’s not enough:  
Give my conviction a clinch!  
   
XII
  
First you deliver your phrase  
   — Nothing propound, that I see,  
Fit in itself for much blame or much praise —  
   Answered no less, where no answer needs be:  
Off start the Two on their ways. 60
   
XIII
  
Straight must a Third interpose  
   Volunteer needlessly help;  
In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,  
   So the cry’s open, the kennel’s a-yelp,  
Argument’s hot to the close.  
   
XIV
  
One dissertates, he is candid;  
   Two must discept, — has distinguished;  
Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did;  
   Four protests; Five makes a dart at the thing wished:  
Back to One, goes the case bandied. 70
   
XV
  
One says his say with a difference  
   More of expounding, explaining!  
All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance;  
   Now there’s a truce, all’s subdued, self-restraining:  
Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.  
   
XVI
  
One is incisive, corrosive:  
   Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;  
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;  
   Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant,  
Five . . . O Danaides, O Sieve! 80
   
XVII
  
Now, they ply axes and crowbars;  
   Now, they prick pins at a tissue  
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s  
   Worked on the bone of a lie.  To what issue?  
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?  
   
XVIII
  
Est fuga, volvitur rota.  
   On we drift: where looms the dim port?  
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;  
   Something is gained, if one caught but the import —  
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha! 90
   
XIX
  
What with affirming, denying,  
   Holding, risposting, subjoining,  
All’s like . . . it’s like . . . for an instance I’m trying . . .  
   There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining  
Under those spider-webs lying!  
   
XX
  
So your fugue broadens and thickens,  
   Greatens and deepens and lengthens,  
Till we exclaim — “But where’s music, the dickens?  
   Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens  
— Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?” 100
   
XXI
  
I for man’s effort am zealous:  
   Prove me such censure unfounded!  
Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous —  
   Hopes ’twas for something, his organ-pipes sounded,  
Tiring three boys at the bellows?  
   
XXII
  
Is it your moral of Life?  
   Such a web, simple and subtle,  
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,  
   Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,  
Death ending all with a knife? 110
   
XXIII
  
Over our heads truth and nature —  
   Still our life’s zigzags and dodges,  
Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature —  
   God’s gold just shining its last where that lodges,  
Palled beneath man’s usurpature.  
   
XXIV
  
So we o’ershroud stars and roses,  
   Cherub and trophy and garland;  
Nothings grow something which quietly closes  
   Heaven’s earnest eye: not a glimpse of the far land  
Gets through our comments and glozes. 120
   
XXV
  
Ah but traditions, inventions,  
   (Say we and make up a visage)  
So many men with such various intentions,  
   Down the past ages, must know more than this age!  
Leave we the web its dimensions!  
   
XXVI
  
Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf,  
   Proved a mere mountain in labour?  
Better submit; try again; what’s the clef?  
   ’Faith, ’tis no trifle for pipe and for tabor — 130
Four flats, the minor in F.  
   
XXVII
  
Friend, your fugue taxes the finger  
   Learning it once, who would lose it?  
Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,  
   Truth’s golden o’er us although we refuse it —  
Nature, thro’ cobwebs we string her.  
   
XXVIII
  
Hugues! I advise Meâ Poenâ  
   (Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)  
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!  
   Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,  
Blare out the mode Palestrina. 140
   
XXIX
  
While in the roof, if I’m right there,  
   . . . Lo you, the wick in the socket!  
Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!  
   Down it dips, gone like a rocket.  
What, you want, do you, to come unawares,  
Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,  
And find a poor devil has ended his cares  
At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?  
   Do I carry the moon in my pocket?  
   
 
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha — The composer addressed in this poem is fictional. However, Saxe-Gotha was the region of Germany where Johann Sebastian Bach had lived. Browning explained that Master Hugues was not supposed to be Bach but one of the composers who imitated Bach but was “dry-as-dust.” Specifically, Browning ridiculed how these men would elaborate a single short musical phrase endlessly.
 
fugues — musical pieces in which a short melody or theme is elaborated contrapuntally; J. S. Bach was renowned for them, for example the famous “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” 
 
sacristan — custodian of the church
 
grace — in other words, the speaker is asking for five more minutes; he then follows by making the excuse that he needs to repair a pedal on the organ
 
holding the base — sustaining the bass notes properly 
 
house of the sounds — the organ
 
Aloys and Jurien and Just — the “church-saints” mentioned previously
 
claviers — the three separate sets of keys on this particular organ
 
helve — handle; the speaker is suggesting he could play the piece better if he had some idea of Hugues’s purpose
 
breves — A type of musical note; originally breves were the shortest notes (breve is the root of brief), but over time the word came to mean the longest notes, as it does here.
 
bar — the straight verticle line between measures
 
sciolists shent — intellectual frauds disgraced
 
phrase — the initial theme on which the fugue is based. As the speaker continues, he numbers the fugue’s sucessive phrases (One, Two, Three, and so on) that Hugues introduces, each one making the piece more complex.
 
discept — discuss and debate
 
crepitant — making a crackling sound
 
strepitant — noisy, clamorous
 
casuist — a man skilled in a form of rhetoric known as casuistry, which is argument that emphasizes the importance of individual cases and circumstances over principles or rules. When used critically (as the speaker of the poem appears to be using it here), the term suggests that a casuist makes arguments that are self-serving or in some way immoral.
 
Escobar — Antonio Escobar y Mendoza (1589-1669) was a Jesuit writer whose works largely argued for casuistry. Although somewhat influential during his life, he was controversial and within ten years of his death the vast majority of his works had been banned by the Pope. By Browning’s time, he was seen as someone whose arguments could be used to justify almost any kind of self-indulgence — although ironically Escobar himself had been well-known for living a simple and strictly moral life.
 
O Danaides, O Sieve! — In a Greek myth, Danaüs was the King of Argos who forced his daughters (the Danaides) to marry. Angry at being forced, they murdered their husbands. In Hades, they were condemned to fill perforated jars with water for eternity.
 
Est fuga, volvitur rota —“There is a flight, the wheel turns,” a quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
 
spider-webs — traditionally a symbol of complex, wearisome debate or argument
 
tickens — ticking, the material used for bedding
 
glozes — glosses, short notes or marginalia interpreting a text
 
Proved a mere mountain in labour — Cf. Horace (from Ars Poetica): “The mountains are in labor — they will give birth to a ridiculous mouse.”
 
the minor in F — a particularly difficult key on the organ
 
Meâ Poenâ — my punishment, in other words at risk of being punished
 
Gorgon — In Greek mythology, a female monster with snakes for hair whose gaze turned men to stone; Medusa was one.
 
mode Palestrina — in the style of 16th century Italian composes Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who was famous for a particularly rigorous form of religious music 
 
moon in my pocket — See the line “If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light” from Act III of the comparatively seldom staged Shakespeare play Cymbeline.