Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
Mozart was yet to come; for, except perhaps at the opera in London, even at this time, his music was most imperfectly diffused through England. But, above all, a thing which to my dying day I could never forget, at the house of this guardian I heard sung a long canon of Cherubini's. Forty years later I heard it again, and better sung; but at that time I needed nothing better.
Rossini, who was his antipodes in genius and method, felt his loss bitterly, and after his death sent Cherubini's portrait to his widow with these touching words: "Here, my dear madam, is the portrait of a great man, who is as young in your heart as he is in my mind."
Again the English composer Macfarren observes: "Cherubini's position is unique in the history of his art; actively before the world as a composer for threescore years and ten, his career spans over more vicissitudes in the progress of music than that of any other man.
His 'Lodoiska, which was produced in Paris in 1791, established his reputation; and 'Les Deux Journées' , known in England as 'The Water-Carrier, placed him, in the estimation of Beethoven, at the head of all living composers of opera. Posterity has scarcely endorsed Beethoven's dictum, but it is impossible to ignore the beauty of Cherubini's work.
Cherubini's severe works made them models and foundation stones for his successors in French music; but Méhul familiarized his audiences with strains dignified yet popular, full of massive effects and brilliant combinations. The people felt the tramp of the Napoleonic armies in the vigor and movement of his measures.
The Zauberflöte will ever remain his greatest work, for in this he showed himself the true German composer." Of Cherubini's Requiem he said, "as regards his conception of it, my ideas are in perfect accord with his and sometime I mean to compose a Requiem in that style." He seldom spoke of Haydn, and had nothing of that master's compositions in his library.
Only a portion of the mass was completed in time for the festival, but, on Cherubini's return to Paris in 1809, it was publicly given by an admirable orchestra, and hailed with a great enthusiasm, that soon swept through Europe. It was perceived that Cherubini had struck out for himself a new path in church music.
The elder Mendelssohn was by no means carried away by the applause which the boy's playing and compositions had gained, and in 1825 he took his son to Paris to obtain Cherubini's opinion as to his musical abilities, with a view to the choice of a profession; for he had by no means made up his mind that Felix should spend his whole life as a musician.
Notwithstanding the immense concourse of people assembled at the obsequies, estimated at twenty thousand, there was but one relative to occupy the position of mourner, and that was Johann. On April 3, Mozart's Requiem was sung at the church of the Augustines, and shortly thereafter, Cherubini's Requiem was sung for him at the Karlskirche.
They walked toward the park, where the band thundered Cherubini's "Overture to the Water-Carrier" across the place. "It seems to me this is an altogether unnecessary noise," he said smilingly. She laughed; she laughed often and heartily over his remarks.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking