United States or Mongolia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
James looking again, and coming to the same conclusion, the violin is again taken to the operating table and the knife taken in hand. I recollect many years back, when in company with a violinist of some note, we were talking over various details in connection with the reparation and regulation of violins of a high class, particularly those of the great masters.
Perhaps there is no need, for there is ample reason to believe that Antonius Stradiuarius lived a quiet, uncheckered, monotonous existence, absorbed in his labor of making violins, and caring for nothing in the outside world which did not touch his all-beloved art. Without haste and without rest, he labored for the perfection of the violin. To him the world was a mere workshop.
In the intricate path of deep musing we feel the mantle of a Schumann who had himself a kind of heritage from Bach. And thus we come to see the national spirit best and most articulate through the medium of ancient art. The main Allegro melody not so much grows out of the Largo prelude, as it is of the same fibre and identity. The violins sing here against a stately march of harmonies.
The stringed instruments, also, are not sufficiently numerous, and should, like the chorus, be increased by a good third. For a large place like this eight to ten double basses, and fifteen to twenty first violins, etc., would certainly not be too many at important performances.
While an artist like Herr Schuppanzigh was at the head of the first violins, and by his fiery and expressive mode of conducting kindled the zeal of the whole orchestra, Herr Kapellmeister Salieri did not scruple to give the time to the drums and cannonades; Herr Spohr and Herr Mayseder, each worthy from his talents to fill the highest post, played in the second and third rank.
But they were ended at last, and the marriage evening came, still and mellow, with the voices of both shore and sea tuned to soft night melodies. Below in the hall, hidden within a bower of palms, an orchestra of Boston Symphony players drew whispering harmonies from the strings of violins, harp and cello, and, at the signal, swept into the dreamy, enchanted notes of Mendelssohn's marriage song.
Then he glanced at the first, open page of his score. It was simply a horrible, gray blur, from which not a note, not a mark, would detach itself. And he wondered, frantically, how in the world his symphony began: loudly or softly? with violins or with trumpets? The seconds that followed were the longest of his life.
A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by some witchcraft of hearing, they listened to music made for lovers dancing, and lovers listening, a hundred years ago.
When, by careful calculation, he found that the remainder would make a whole violin, he laid it reverently away for another twenty years, so that he should be sure it had completed its century of patient waiting for service, and falling on his knees by his bedside said, "I thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for this precious gift, and I promise from this moment to gather the most beautiful wood I can find, and lay it by where it can be used some time to make perfect violins, so that if any creature as poor and as helpless as I am needs the wherewithal to do good work, I shall have helped him as Thou hast helped me."
In the evening the Crucifixion is represented in wax in the churches, and the visiting goes on as the night before; and the next morning is the Sábado de Gloria, the Saturday which ends Lent. We go to the Jesuits' church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken their places.
Word Of The Day