United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Of his playing, Leopold Mozart, himself an eminent violinist, writes: "The beauty, purity and equality of his tone, and the tastefulness of his cantabile playing, cannot be surpassed; but he does not execute great difficulties."
If I recollect rightly, there are also some cadenzas which I once jotted down, and at all events an aria cantabile with coloraturas? I wish to have these first, for they will serve as exercises for Madlle. Weber. I have just taught her an andantino cantabile of Bach's.
Men, like women, have a stock in hand of recitatives, of cantabile, of nocturnes, airs and refrains shall we say of recipes, although we speak of love which each one believes to be exclusively his own. Men who have reached Lousteau's age try to distribute the "movements" of this repertoire through the whole opera of a passion.
Each in turn rears a climax for the other's entrance; the first, lamenting, leads to the soothing hope of the second that, in the very passion of its refrain, loses assurance and ends in a tragic burst. Suddenly a very new kind of solace appears Dolce grazioso, in a phrase of the clarinet that leads to a duet of wood and cantabile strings, impersonal almost in the sweetness of its flowing song.
Formerly, duets in the graceful style between men were seldom heard; but the voices of ELLEVIOU and MARTIN being perfectly adapted to each other, almost all the composers have written for them duets in which the cantabile prevails, and concerted cadences are very conspicuous. This, I understand, is unprecedented in Paris.
Scrope hazarded the idea that a chanting people was a religious people. He said, moreover, that there was a fine religiosity about Moussorgski, but that the most beautiful single piece of music in the world was Beethoven's sonata, Opus 111, he was thinking, he said, more particularly of the Adagio at the end, molto semplice e cantabile. It had a real quality of divinity.
I also mean, for my sins, to let them give me something to hack away at, and show that I can do something too prima fista; for I am a regular greenhorn, and all I can do is to strum a little on the piano! I must now conclude, being more disposed to-day to write music than letters. Don't forget the cadenzas and the cantabile.
There is little danger that Caruso ever will break his collar bone in producing high C, and his delivery of the romance, "Una furtiva lagrima," in L'Elisir d'Amore, is a most exquisite example of breath-control and of voice-management in cantabile; while Plançon's singing from a chest absolutely immobile, even in long and difficult phrases, is so effortless that his performances are a delight to every lover of the art of song, his voice flowing out in a broad, smooth stream of music.
Arne's "Artaxerxes," which the critics of the day praised as possessing "the beautiful melody of Hasse, the mellifluous richness of Pergolese, the easy flow of Piccini, and the finished cantabile of Sacchini, with his own true and native simplicity."
I have lately made her practise the passages in the Grand Aria, because, if she goes to Italy, it is necessary that she should sing bravuras. The cantabile she certainly will never forget, being her natural bent. So now you know everything. I do still recommend her to you with my whole heart, and I beg you will not forget about the arias, cadenzas, &c. I can scarcely write from actual hunger.
Word Of The Day