Letter from Anna Seward to Miss Helen Williams, 25 August 1785

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

76

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I write to you, dear Helen, amidst the bustle of those feminine preparations, which necessarily precede the design of attending an harmonic festival at Manchester, where the abbey drums are to thunder, Mara exhibit vocal miracles, and, what is much more to the genuine lovers of musical pathos and energy, our friend Saville is to open the Messiah, and take all the principal tenor and contra-tenor songs. He unites poetic taste, and the vivid emotions of a feeling heart, and of an high and kindling spirit, to a rich, extensive, and powerful voice, and the most perfect knowledge of his science. It is the former which direct, with unerring power, the energy and pathos of his expression. Others sing with as much, perhaps more musical fancy, and artful elegance; but he alone, of all his brethren of the lyre, sings with impulses congenial to those with which Milton wrote and Handel composed, though he never aims to dazzle or astonish his audience.

excerpt from 'Letter from Anna Seward to Miss Helen Williams, 25 August 1785' pp. 76 (162 words)

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