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To judge by the extraordinary influence which music had on him, Luther must doubtless be classed among the lowest of savages, if Dr. Hanslick is right in saying that it is on savages that music exerts its greatest influence. He wrote a special treatise on music, in which he placed it next to theology.
Another gifted pupil of the Viennese master is Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, of Chicago, an artiste of rare temperament, musical feeling and nervous power, of whom Dr. Hanslick said that her virtuosity was stupendous, her delicacy in the finest florid work as marvelous as her fascinating energy in the forte passages.
Hanslick, in speaking of the Italian performances which formerly used to alternate with the German operas in Vienna: "Most of our Italian guests," he says, "distinguish themselves by means of the thorough command they have over their voices, which in themselves are by no means imposing; our German members by powerful voices, which, however, owing to their insufficient training, do not produce half the effect they would if they had been subjected to the same amount of training.
Hanslick, generally considered the leading German critic of the period, in a 534-page collection of criticisms, discussing twenty concert seasons in Vienna, has only about half a dozen and by no means complimentary references to Chopin.
All this was said in such a burst of emotion that I could do nothing but soothe his grief and promise him my unreserved sympathy with his work in future. Just before leaving Vienna I actually heard that Hanslick had launched forth into unmeasured praise of myself and my amiability. Hence my summons!
The judgment of Hanslick, the great Viennese critic, upon this work is interesting in this connection.
Hanslick, the Viennese critic, visited England and heard Sims Reeves singing before crowded houses as he had been doing for forty or fifty years, he remarked, "It is not easy to win the favour of the English public; to lose it is quite impossible." Mme. Grisi made her last appearance in London in 1866 at the theatre she had left twenty years previously, Her Majesty's.
Hanslick to a big dinner-party, thinking I should be particularly interested in meeting him, and was surprised that I had not a word to say to him. The conclusions Laube drew from this led him to prophesy that I should find it hard to get on in Vienna if I really hoped to make it the sphere of my artistic labours.
Hanslick, the eminent Viennese critic, referred to it thirty years ago, as "a morbid unsteadiness of tempo." Mendelssohn, who always liked a "nice, swift tempo," repeatedly expressed his aversion to Chopin's rubato. Nevertheless, traces of it may be found in the rhythms of the classical school.
Music may be, and is, expressive, it is said, so long as each detail allows itself to be entirely derived from and justified by the mere formal element. The "centre of gravity" lies in the formal relations. <1> The Boundaries of Music and Poetry. To this, after all, Hanslick himself might subscribe.
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