Category: Biographies
In the minds of those who have specially at heart the welfare and progress of musical art in this country nothing at the present time looms larger than the church music of Bach. To acquiesce in the prevalent indifference of the public to that music we feel to be impossible. If...
In the minds of those who have specially at heart the welfare and progress of musical art in this country nothing at the present time looms larger than the church music of Bach....
2. CHAPTER II.The opening of the first movement forms the subject of a celebrated passage in Wagner's pamphlet on conducting, where he complains of the manner in which the pauses on E flat an...
3. CHAPTER III.The "Symphonie Fantastique" offers a more complete picture of the composer's musical personality than any other single work. As a specimen of youthful precocity it also stands a...
4. CHAPTER IV.The melancholy fact has to be recorded that the "Faust" Symphony fell flat on its first performance in Manchester. There seems to be something in our national temperament which...
5. CHAPTER V.Musical biography teaches that a hard struggle, not only for recognition but for existence, is the normal experience of a great composer. A few great players and singers make fo...
6. CHAPTER VI.The experiment of devoting an entire miscellaneous concert to the works of one composer is nearly always hazardous. We doubt whether any other composer besides Wagner has ever w...
7. CHAPTER VII.Mr. Edward Elgar seems to owe his fame almost entirely to those autumn festivals which are so important a feature of musical life in this country. An organist, with a turn for s...
8. CHAPTER VIII.Richard Strauss is now beyond question the most prominent figure among the younger composers of Germany. He was born at Munich in 1864. At an early age he mastered the various a...
9. CHAPTER IX.Music for pianoforte, combined with two or more bow instruments, is usually constituted on anything but democratic principles, the percussion instrument standing to the others i...
10. CHAPTER X.The reception of Mr. Alfred Reisenauer by the large audience in the Gentleman's Hall yesterday afternoon was marked by considerable reserve. Not once during the recital was ther...
11. CHAPTER XI.Two complete Concerti, each in the orthodox three movements, exhibited the distinguished Belgian master's style, first in strictly classical then in more florid and more highly...
12. CHAPTER XII.As applied to Parry, Stanford, or Mackenzie, we are instructed, the reproach of being "academic" has absolutely no aptness whatever. These worthy dons are creative artists of th...
13. CHAPTER XIII.The genius of musical interpretation is a phenomenon of modern times. Beethoven marks the end of that great symphonic period which begins with Haydn, and though seventy years be...
14. CHAPTER XIV.The intellectual world of the later nineteenth century has no more remarkable and original, and also no more tragic, figure to show than the author of these essays. He was desce...