Anna Seward - the 1780's

from Letter from Anna Seward to Sophia Weston, 17 April 1787, page 287:

Familiarity with excellence has a prevailing tendency to chill and blunt the sensibility of its graces, and to render the judgment coy and fastidious. Upon two people, whose taste for music was by nature perhaps equally keen, if one of them has been in the constant custom of hearing the best music, and the other has had but seldom opportunity of listening even to the most moderate, probably the simplest air, of perhaps but indifferent merit, would have more effect upon the passions of the novice, than the sublimest air of Pergolezzi’s or Handel’s, upon the …   more >>

cite as

Anna Seward, Letter from Anna Seward to Sophia Weston, 17 April 1787. In A. Constable (ed.), Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807, volume 3 (Edinburgh, 1811), p. 287. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1377094402 accessed: 29 March, 2024

Listeners

Anna Seward
Poet, Writer
1742-1809

Listening to

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singing in English and singing in Italian
written by Pergolesi, George Frideric Handel

Experience Information

Date/Time the 1780's
Medium live

Originally submitted by hgb3 on Fri, 06 Dec 2013 14:57:42 +0000
Approved on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 15:16:13 +0100