United States or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was a delicate task that fell to the lot of the chamberlain, but he carried it through with the greatest diplomacy, each side making a slight concession: the king on his part promising to abstain from card playing during Spohr's performance on condition that the violinist's two pieces should immediately follow each other on the program, and Spohr withdrawing his embargo from the whole concert on condition that the king would abstain from his favourite amusement during his particular performance.
The offer was too tempting to be refused, and Spohr was easily victorious. His new duties were not onerous, consisting of a concert once a week, and in practicing and rehearsing the orchestra. The annual salary was five hundred thalers. One of the most interesting incidents of Spohr's life now occurred.
The sun had set, the short twilight was drawing to a close, church bells were ringing, down in the city yellow lights were gleaming in windows here and there, above, the great sky rounded upward from a faint glow on the horizon through imperceptible gradations of tint, to pure depths of transparent blue overhead, where stars were beginning to flash and tremble; within, in the gloom, the musician sat playing a sacred melody of Spohr's, and as Madelon listened, some subtle affinity between this hour and the first one she had spent in the church touched her, and her eyes filled with sudden tears of painful ecstasy.
When it was given the next year in London under Spohr's own direction, the president of the Sacred Harmonic Society presented the composer at the close of the performance with a superb silver testimonial in the name of the society. Louis Spohr had now become one of the patriarchs of music, for his life spanned a longer arch in the history of the art than any contemporary except Cherubini.
Louis Spohr's first visit to England was in 1820, whither he went on invitation of the Philharmonic Society.
There are more vigor and originality in one of Schubert's greater symphonies than in all the multitudinous works of the same class ever written by Spohr. In Spohr's compositions for the violin as a solo instrument, however, he stands unrivaled, for here his true genre as a man of creative genius stamps itself unmistakably.
Cecilia Mass, Spohr's Judgment, Stainer's Resurrection, the Twelfth Mass, Mendelssohn's Elijah, these are monumental works and themes. What is a hymn? We think of it as being some simple churchly words, set to a serious tune. A hymn is the rhythmic aspiration of the race.
The new close, however, must unfortunately wait till next season, for a new scene is being painted for it, which cannot be finished; everything else is ready and copied out. For next season we have Spohr's "Faust," with new recitatives, and shall give Schumann's "Manfred" at the beginning of June.
Spohr's lovely anthem voices this cry of the soul: "As pants the hart for cooling streams, When heated in the chase, So longs my soul, O God, for Thee, And Thy refreshing grace. "For Thee, my God, the living God, My thirsty soul doth pine; Oh! when shall I behold Thy face, Thou Majesty divine?" Jesus calls us by the mystery of life.
On the recommendation of Prince Emil of Wittgenstein, the young violinist went in 1861 to Liszt at Weimar, and after playing to him Spohr's "Scena Cantante" and the Hungarian fantasia by Ernst, he was asked to play several pieces at sight.
Word Of The Day