Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism by Johann Gottfried Herder

Author:Johann Gottfried Herder [Herder, Johann Gottfried]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Political
ISBN: 9780520234949
Google: bq6jDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-01-30T23:00:00+00:00

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Considerably more important were the questions raised about the authenticity of Macpherson’s Ossian. One must wonder, all the impudence with which the English attack Ossian notwithstanding, just why there has yet to be a satisfactory resolution to these questions. Macpherson himself would be in the best position to settle this concern once and for all, if he would only identify specifically and credibly just “where he found each and every poem, song, and piece of evidence. In what form did he gather them? And to what extent did he contribute additional evidence?” The original version of these songs in fragments, accompanied by poetic feet and the song forms, whose charming simplicity and variation have been extolled by many who honor Ossian, would be, even without critical commentary, irrefutable proof of truthfulness for today and tomorrow, against which no one from Britain, no Samuel Johnson, would be able to raise his voice in criticism. To my knowledge Macpherson has not answered his critics in these ways, and the fact that he has not done so has only exacerbated the doubt. Are you so impoverished, you Scots, that you cannot come up with the melodies and lyrics that you could apply to the songs of your own Homer, whom the Greeks praise so highly, in the ways they continue to sing his epics, and in this way you would rescue him from the abyss of being forgotten, to which Ossian is now so close? You would thereby ensure his immortality, indeed, the most noble, classical immortality there is. Or are you awaiting something more beautiful than Ossian? Or do you believe that these songs will be transmitted orally forever? Or have you convinced yourselves that simply by claiming that the beauty of the poems in their original language is inexpressible and that the melodic charm characterizing the songs needs no effort on your part, you will state your case most convincingly? Insistence and blind acceptance awaken the same faint praise. Only by exerting real effort will you make your case.g

[Until now, I have not had the fortune to find any authentic melodies for Ossian. I am also unaware of any authentic edition of Ossian in the Erse (Gaelic) language; the specimen in the seventh volume of Temora is indecisive. Where did Macpherson get it? Does everything appear just as he found it? Did it come from oral tradition or from manuscripts? Do the manuscripts agree with one another? Do the lyrical forms coordinate with the live performance of the songs? From what period does the diction of the songs and in the manuscripts come? Investigation and clarification of these questions would do more than all the praise currently heaped on Ossian. The Gaelic Antiquitiesh were indeed edited with the Erse title Sean Dana.i That these poems, quite unlike Macpherson’s Ossian, appeared without any criticism, at least that I can find, does not really help us understand the veracity of Ossian in this instance. In 1784 the Irish scholar Arthur Young collected a

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