Musicians of to-day

It is perhaps fitting that the series of volumes comprising _The Musician's Bookshelf_ should be inaugurated by the present collection of essays. To the majority of English read...

Who does not know his passion for Henrietta Smithson? It was a sad story. He fell in love with an English actress who played Juliet (Was it she or Juliet whom he loved?). He cau...

Nevertheless, he loved her, and loved her desperately. How pathetic it is. One has little inclination to smile when one sees the depths of that desolate heart. Do you think he d...

And I shall not dwell on Berlioz's love of Nature, which, as M. Prudhomme shows us, is the soul of a composition like the _Damnation_ and, one might say, of all great compositio...

[Footnote 86: "This composition contains a dose of sublimity much too strong for the ordinary public; and Berlioz, with the splendid insolence of genius, advises the conductor,...

What a place in my life those Sunday concerts held! All the week I lived for those two hours; and when they were over I thought about them until the following Sunday. The fascin...

"All this forms a sort of psalmody, possessing neither tune nor time. But if by any chance a lively air is played, there is a general stamping; the audience is set in motion, an...

To bring this about we should need a combination of conditions that are very rare in France; though such conditions went to the making of Camille Saint-Saëns. He had not only re...

We must consider a little this singular book, where a living science and a Gothic spirit are closely intermingled (I use the word "Gothic" in its best sense; I know it is the hi...

One may see by this short account what a heterogeneous work it is. Two or three quite different worlds are brought into it: the realism of the bourgeois characters of Vita's mot...

Many German musicians think that Strauss has reached the highest point of his work in _Tod und Verklärung_. But I am far from agreeing with them, and believe myself that his art...

There is no doubt that Beethoven's ideas have often inspired, stimulated, and guided Strauss's own ideas. One feels an indescribable reflection of the first _Heroic_ and of the...

Since 1875 he had been writing music: _Lieder_, sonatas, symphonies, quartets, etc., and already his _Lieder_ held the most important place. He also composed in 1883 a symphonic...

What strikes one also in the _Lieder_ is the importance of the pianoforte accompaniment and its independence of the voice. Sometimes the voice and the pianoforte express the con...

Such jousts are very stirring, and may be of great service to all combatants. But, unhappily, France was very indifferent in the matter. It was the duty of our musicians and cri...

Though I wished very much to admire the work of a composer whom I held in such esteem, I felt it did not come out very well from the test. To begin with, this symphony is excess...

In France we have never had--apart from a few attempts in _opéra-comique_--a recitative that exactly expressed our natural speech. Lully and Rameau took for their model the high...

Then, in 1890, there were signs of a movement that was in revolt against its despotism. The great wind from the East began to drop, and veered to the North. Scandinavian and Rus...

The first Committee was made up as follows: President, Bussine; Vice-President, Saint-Saëns; Secretary, Alexis de Castillon; Under-Secretary, Jules Garcin; Treasurer, Lenepveu....

[Footnote 221: It published, in eleven volumes, the ancient works that it performed. Before this experiment there had been the _Concerts historiques de Fétis_, preceded by lectu...

[Footnote 236: The quality of the audience atoned, it is true, for its small numbers. Berlioz used to come to these concerts with his friends, Damcke and Stephen Heller; and it...

In a general way one may say that M. Maurice Buchor's campaign has especially succeeded in departments like that of Aisne and Drôme, where the ground has been prepared by the Ac...