Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character

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

286-287

text excerpt

I also miss the legitimate artistic successors of the two reduced Signori who were formerly wont to execute pleasing feats in concert upon a wiry piano on wheels, harnessed to a duet-proof white horse with un-commonly hirsute fetlocks, and upon a weak violin, which its owner or lessee used to extract from a gloomy-looking black leather case with a tender care that would not have been exaggerated in connection with the handling of a priceless Guamerius or Amati. Those dejected but able executants used to play, moreover, duos of a class that has long been forgotten in this country — thinly spun-out arrangements of obscure Italian operas by Mercadante and Paesiello, which had never taken root in popular favour on this side of the Channel. Why, I would ask, has so much of this eccentric but eminently entertaining alfresco music disappeared from our streets, leaving open-air London so much duller and less eventful than it was between the date of Her Majesty's accession to the Throne and the outbreak of the Crimean war? 

excerpt from 'Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character' pp. 286-287 (173 words)

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1451933905488