Music and Manners in France and Germany: a Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society, Band 1

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Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844
 

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Seite 253 - I was sitting on the second morning revolving our incessant habits in my mind, and rejoicing in the rationality of a few hours' pause, when Dr. Mendelssohn kindly paid me a visit. There were some MSS. of Sebastian Bach to be inspected ; there was to be organ-playing in the Cathedral: in short, it was to be one of those mornings of musical lounging and luxury, which, as regards real enjoyment of, and insight into, the art, are sometimes worth a score of formal performances. Once again the friendly...
Seite 277 - Shakespeare's exquisite fairyscenes neither feebly nor unworthily. Demanding as it does execution without grimace ; fancy, cheerful and excursive, but never morbid ; and feeling, under the control of a serene, not sluggish spirit, — Mendelssohn's is eminently manly music, and loses effect beyond that of almost any other of his contemporaries, when attempted by female hands.
Seite 130 - Hid, but quenched it not ; again Through clouds its shafts of glory rain From utmost Germany to Spain. As an eagle fed with morning Scorns the embattled tempest's warning, When she seeks her aerie hanging In the mountain-cedar's hair, And her brood expect the clanging Of her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine...
Seite 238 - Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands uuto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.
Seite 275 - ... harp ; none of the brilliant extravagances of Liszt, by which he illuminates every composition he undertakes with a living but lightening fire, and imparts to it a soul of passion, or a dazzling vivacity, the interpretation never contradicting the author's intention, but more poignant, more intense, more glowing, than ever the author dreamed of. And yet no one that ever heard Mendelssohn's pianoforte playing...
Seite 275 - Moscheles, on the score of which it has been elsewhere said, that " there is wit in his playing;" none of the delicate and plaintive and spiritual seductions of Chopin, who swept the keys with so insinuating and gossamer a touch, that the crudest and most chromatic harmonies of his music floated away under his hand, indistinct, yet not unpleasing, like the wild and softened discords of the...
Seite 275 - Mendelssohn's pianoforte-playing could find it dry— could fail to be excited and fascinated by it, despite its want of all the caprices and colourings of his contemporaries. Solidity, in which the organ touch is given to the piano without the organ ponderosity — spirit (witness his execution to the finale of the D minor...
Seite 270 - ... was placed on his head. The last entertainment of the Brunswick Festival was Dr. Mendelssohn's morning concert, given in the saloon where the public dinner had been held. The programme was excellent alike for its selection and its brevity. 'First Part. Overture. Air, " II mio tesoro
Seite 253 - ... Brunswick chorus, can altogether satisfactorily compensate. The solo exhibitions were, as usual, the least admirable part of the performance ; yet I was told by Mendelssohn that the great songs of the " St. Paul " had not hitherto been better executed in Germany. I was sitting, on the second morning, rejoicing in the rationality of a few hours' pause, when Dr. Mendelssohn kindly paid me a visit. There were some manuscripts of Sebastian Bach to be inspected. There was to be organ-playing in the...
Seite 232 - English ball-room, might be seen sitting side by side with the gipsy-coloured, hard-handed peasant women of the district, in their black caps gracefully displaying the head, and picturesquely decorated with pendent streamers of ribbon. Here, again, was a comely youth, tight-laced in his neat uniform, and every hair of his moustache trimmed and trained to an agony of perfection, squeezed up against a dirty, savage, half-naked student...

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