Recollections of an old musician

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

124

124-125

text excerpt

Mr. John S. Dwight, the then accomplished editor and critic of the Commonwealth, gives the following account of the affair:

“THE MENDELSSOHN COMMEMORATION

“ The musical event of the season, at least so far as sentiment, artistic unity, and completeness, selectness, and novelty may be regarded, came off, in a way that more than realized expectation, at the Melodeon on Monday night. It was a pure festival of art a beautiful, sincere German enthusiasm inspired it and adorned it. The Quintette Club, prompted by the sentiment of the occasion, had sent free tickets to the three hundred or more subscribers to their chamber concerts. But almost thrice that number, at an early hour, were seated in the hall, which had been tastefully and significantly decorated. In large letters of evergreen the name * Mendelssohn ’ was displayed upon the front of the gallery, over the entrance, and on either side ‘ Born Feb. 3, 1809,’ and * Died in 1847/ In the centre of the circle, focus of all eyes and of all thoughts,—that is, in the front of the stage, before the organ,—that spot so often occupied by vain and showy solo players who seemed to place themselves before all music,—now rose the calm, pure, classic head of the true genius of the hour, a beautiful bust of Mendelssohn, crowned with laurel. We confess our thoughts were riveted to that intellectual, that unspeakably beautiful and expressive face, in whose fine and noble features one felt the union of a masculine dignity and firmness with almost a woman’s feeling. And then the large, clear, exquisitely moulded dome of thought, the perfect forehead! To tell the feelings that rushed through the mind and filled it all that evening, would require more than our power of expression. It should be a poem.

“ But the effect was first complete when the five young artists, with their instruments, had seated themselves around their patron saint, to interpret to us one of his quintettes. Then as the music, his own music, woke, the calm face elevated in the middle of the group seemed almost to open its eyes and move its lips; and who did not feel the music and the marble to be mutual interpreters, and that the great composer was thus doubly present to us ! The sentiment of the thing was so complete that the mind involuntarily hugged the spell; and any voice of conversation, even when a strain was finished, seemed an interruption.”

Mr. John S. Dwight, the then accomplished editor and critic of the Commonwealth, gives the following account of the affair:

“THE MENDELSSOHN COMMEMORATION

“ The musical event of the season, at least so far as sentiment, artistic unity, and completeness, selectness, and novelty may be regarded, came off, in a way that more than realized expectation, at the Melodeon on Monday night. It was a pure festival of art a beautiful, sincere German enthusiasm inspired it and adorned it. The Quintette Club, prompted by the sentiment of the occasion, had sent free tickets to the three hundred or more subscribers to their chamber concerts. But almost thrice that number, at an early hour, were seated in the hall, which had been tastefully and significantly decorated. In large letters of evergreen the name * Mendelssohn ’ was displayed upon the front of the gallery, over the entrance, and on either side ‘ Born Feb. 3, 1809,’ and * Died in 1847/ In the centre of the circle, focus of all eyes and of all thoughts,—that is, in the front of the stage, before the organ,—that spot so often occupied by vain and showy solo players who seemed to place themselves before all music,—now rose the calm, pure, classic head of the true genius of the hour, a beautiful bust of Mendelssohn, crowned with laurel. We confess our thoughts were riveted to that intellectual, that unspeakably beautiful and expressive face, in whose fine and noble features one felt the union of a masculine dignity and firmness with almost a woman’s feeling. And then the large, clear, exquisitely moulded dome of thought, the perfect forehead! To tell the feelings that rushed through the mind and filled it all that evening, would require more than our power of expression. It should be a poem.

“ But the effect was first complete when the five young artists, with their instruments, had seated themselves around their patron saint, to interpret to us one of his quintettes. Then as the music, his own music, woke, the calm face elevated in the middle of the group seemed almost to open its eyes and move its lips; and who did not feel the music and the marble to be mutual interpreters, and that the great composer was thus doubly present to us ! The sentiment of the thing was so complete that the mind involuntarily hugged the spell; and any voice of conversation, even when a strain was finished, seemed an interruption.”

excerpt from 'Recollections of an old musician' pp. 124 (418 words)

excerpt from 'Recollections of an old musician' pp. 124-125 (418 words)

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1450267451569