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Updated: May 27, 2025
As I had not, he would think it over and very often he would confess that I was right. "Your childhood," Gounod once told me, "wasn't musical." He was wrong, for he did not know the many tokens of my childhood. Many of my attempts are unfinished to say nothing of those I destroyed but among them are songs, choruses, cantatas, and overtures, none of which will ever see the light.
Schumann had no dramatic instinct, and no comprehension for opera; in Genoveva as, in fact, in his so-called dramatic cantatas he failed utterly: he went straight through the words, setting them to music pur et simple, taking no thought for dramatic propriety. The score of Tannhäuser simply puzzled him; he saw in it only the music pur et simple, considered as which it was, of course, very bad.
During this time I eagerly ran over my Treatise on Harmony, but it was so long, so diffuse, and so badly disposed, that I found it would require a considerable time to unravel it: accordingly I suspended my inclination, and recreated my sight with music. The cantatas of Bernier were what I principally exercised myself with.
Large vocal societies are giving an increasing number of native part songs and cantatas; prizes are being awarded in various places, and composers find some financial encouragement for appearing in concerts of their own work. Manuscript societies are organized in many of the larger cities, and these clubs offer hearing to novelty.
He scared me quite enough sitting by my side and saying: 'Shall we take this again now? with a sort of grim politeness, as if he were making an effort to restrain his temper. I know I'm not what he calls musical, but I can't help it. I'd rather hear comic opera any day than his wretched cantatas, and when I'm not practising I shall play what I like. There!"
Accompanied by her husband on his fine Cremona fiddle, which he played, as we have noted before, as one plays a bass viol, she would sing all the liveliest and tenderest airs from the operas and cantatas of her native country.
Eight or ten interrupted lessons, far from putting me in a condition to improve myself, did not teach me half the notes; notwithstanding, I had such a passion for the art, that I determined to exercise myself alone. The book I took was not of the most easy kind; it was the cantatas of Clerambault.
But although Church cantatas and organ music may have sufficed for the majority of the innumerable worthy German musicians of those days, the form of music which excited the curiosity and interest of the livelier spirits was certainly opera.
With grand integrity, and desire for the welfare of the congregations of the churches alluded to, he obtained from their respective ministers the texts of their discourses for the ensuing Sundays, and produced, apparently without effort, hundreds of cantatas to convey to the hearers the inner meaning of the words which fell from the preacher's lips.
His studies in piano and harmony were pursued under Rafael Navarro. Counterpoint, fugue, and composition he studied under Dudley Buck. In 1878 Brewer became the second tenor and accompanist of the Apollo Club, of which Mr. Buck is the director. He has conducted numerous vocal societies and an amateur orchestra. Of his cantatas, "Hesperus" is a work of the greatest promise and large performance.
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