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What could have been better for the purpose than to have made them parade before us in historic mardi-gras? wearing their hearts on their sleeves, or in their letters, their music, their lives, as they trooped forth endlessly from the tomes of Burney, Hawkins, Fétis, Grove, Riemann, and from their biographies and memoirs innumerable?
It seemed to check and paralyze for the moment his generous nature. Fétis saw him at Coblenz soon after the Bonn festival, at which he had expended such vast sums. He was sitting alone, dejected and out of health. He said he was sick of everything, tired of life, and nearly ruined. But that mood never lasted long with Liszt; he soon arose and shook himself like a lion.
Fetis, I believe, called him "the English Palestrina"; but I do not recall whether he meant that Byrde was as great as Palestrina or merely great amongst the English whether a "lord amongst wits," or simply "a wit amongst lords."
Ful fetis was hir cloke, as I was war. Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene; And ther-on heng a broche of gold ful shene, On which ther was first write a crowned A, And after, Amor vincit omnia! Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Fétis, the musical historian, records its reception as follows: "All expressed an unreserved admiration for this composition of a new order, whereby Cherubini has placed himself above all musicians who have as yet written in the concerted style of church music.
After remaining three years, he began his career as a solo player, and, after meeting with the greatest success at Berlin and Vienna, directed his course to Paris, where he made his debut at the "Concerts Spirituels." Fetis tells us that the arrival of Viotti in Paris produced a sensation difficult to describe.
Fétis tells us: "To his new functions he brought the most scrupulous exactitude of duty, that spirit of order which he possessed during the whole of his life, and an entire devotion to the prosperity of the establishment. Severe and exacting toward the professors and servants as he was with himself, he brought with him little love in his connections with the artists placed under his authority."
It is striking that a classic figure in French music should have stood, in the early eighteenth century, a champion of this idea, to be sure only in the domain of theory. Here he was opposed by Fétis, Fux and other theoretic authority; judgment was definitively rendered against him by contemporary opinion and prevailing tradition.
The account commonly given is that he separated from his wife and died in a convent. Mr. Mickley, with his accustomed perseverance, started out to see if this matter might not be cleared up. At Innspruck he inquired in vain for information. As Fétis and Forster both fixed his birthplace at Absom, a small village some twelve miles from Innspruck, Mickley repaired thither.
It is solemn and noble in conception, and would be a great work but for a roughness which is more careless than archaic. PAOLO ANIMUCCIA, a brother of Giovanni, was also celebrated as a composer; he is said by Fetis to have been maestro di capella at S. Giovanni in Laterano from the middle of January 1550 until 1552, and to have died in 1563.
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