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Of all modern composers Wagner was the most volksthuemlich; the roots of his art are in the Volks-Sage, the Volkslied, and the dance, and the masses have always been true to him.
They have already laid the principal foundations of a body of elementary works for teaching them in perfection. Les Principes elementaires de Musique, and a Traite d'Harmonie, which is said to have gained the universal approbation of the composers of the three schools, assembled to discuss its merits, are already published.
We find in these days in many nations, including our own dear country, composers are striving after this highest and noblest ideal; let us pray they may receive that strength necessary for so great a responsibility.
Are they not the struggles, the trials, the victories of noble souls? With such sacred characters, with such lofty thoughts, the composers of the oratorio, dealing, not with the semblance of truth that the opera contains, but with the truth itself, are bound to express their feelings and emotions in the grandest and most perfect thoughts.
An eminent Italian teacher in New York, who has made a specialty of teaching trills and runs and roulades and other vocal circus tricks, lately declared that he was tired of this style of singing, and began to prefer a more simple and dramatic style. The same is true of the modern Italian composers.
Diderot had not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous, the least ready, of composers.
Though not credited with any composition in larger form than songs or piano pieces, Josephine Lang won a high artistic rank among the women composers of Germany. Born at Munich in 1815, she began her piano studies when five years old, and made progress enough to allow a public appearance in her eleventh year.
"Now the difficulty with students is that they do not take time to polish the jewels which the composers have selected with such keen æsthetic discernment. They think it enough if they merely succeed in playing the note. How horrible! A machine can play the notes, but there is only one machine with a soul and that is the artist.
The Singspiel, established by Hiller and perfected by Mozart, had languished during the early years of the century, or rather had fallen into the hands of composers who were entirely unable to do justice to its possibilities.
Not satisfied with discarding the meagre accompaniments of the Italian composers, he even goes far beyond the tramontane masters in the multitude and use of instruments, and frequently smothers his concerted pieces and choruses by the overwhelming weight of his orchestra." But what would the "Harmonicon" have said, had it had Wagner's instrumentation before it?
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