Music and Friends: Or, Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante

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

676-681

text excerpt

I met the Chevalier Neuckomm at Mr. Moor's house in Birmingham, during the festival in 1834. I found him a plain intelligent man, speaking very good English. I could suppose in person he somewhat resembles his great master, Haydn. He laid before me the oratorio of David, just composed by him, which I heard the following day. The choruses are magnificent, but so loaded with the brazen sounds, that they require at least fifty additional stringed instruments to a part, to counterbalance and assuage their terrible roar. There was also an enormous bass instrument, the Ophicleide, procured from Germany. It appeared like a column of brass towering in the band, and required a pair of Stentorian lungs to play upon it. Its lower tones were distinctly heard growling below all the other instruments. The author had, no doubt, preconceived the clamorous effect of a Jewish orchestra, to which the sackbut, shawn, and timbrel imparted a barbaric character. However learned and scientific this work may be, I was more gratified with what little I heard of his 'Mount Sinai.' " The manner in which the Commandments are delivered at intervals from the holy mountain, in the tones of the ancient ecclesiastical canto fermo, accompanied by the sounds of the brazen instruments, is full of awful grandeur." This is a specimen of fine shifting scenes in harmony. I know nothing like it except the trombones, in the ghost scene in 'Don Giovanni.' 

excerpt from 'Music and Friends: Or, Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante' pp. 676-681 (240 words)

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1434800203115