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The works are full of the gnawing of bassoons and the bleakness of the English horn, full of shattering trombones and screaming violins, full of the sinister rolling of drums, the menacing reverberation of cymbals, the icy glittering of harps.
It won fame and cash for its composer in the old days when people went to the opera for lack of the music-hall, not yet invented; when Costa still lorded it not over living musical London merely, but over all the deceased masters, and without compunction added trombones to Mozart's scores, and defiled every masterwork he touched with his unspeakable Costamongery; when Wagner was either unheard of or regarded as a dangerous lunatic and immoral person; and it shows every sign of having been written to please the opera-goers of those days.
In the brilliant medley there is ever a new figure we had not perceived. So when the tune has been told, trumpets and horns begin with what seems almost the main air, and the former voices sound like mere heralds. Finally the deep trombones and tuba enter with a sonorous call. Yet the first rapid trip of all has the main legend.
She danced all night to the wild tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six masks, debardeuses* and sailors, Leon's comrades, who were talking about having supper. * People dressed as longshoremen. The neighbouring cafes were full.
It's just the same with music, if a man only makes it swift and strong, so that it leaps and flies and never tires, that is all I care about; and if he just keeps his trombones till the very last, he can carry me off my feet though he makes the worst noise that ever was!
As the vast assembly pressed into the Church, the trombones sounded forth, and the choir sang the words of the Psalmist, so rich in historic associations: "Here the sparrow hath found a home, and the swallow a nest for her young, even thine altars, oh, Lord of Hosts!" It was a day of high jubilation and a day of penitent mourning; a day of festive robes and a day of sack-cloth and ashes.
Therefore trombones are tooted on Sundays in Utah as well as on other days; and there are some splendid musicians there. The Orchestra in Brigham Young's theatre is quite equal to any in Broadway. Mr. Stenhouse relieves me of any anxiety I had felt in regard to having my swan-like throat cut by the Danites, but thinks my wholesale denunciation of a people I had never seen was rather hasty.
This was followed by a choir of sixteen male singers, and four trombones, which alternated in singing and playing. The music consisted of two equali composed by Beethoven many years before, arranged for this occasion by Seyfried, to the words of the Miserere and Amplius.
With regard to its very remarkable instrumentation, I cannot do better than quote the remarks of that admirable musician, Heinrich Porges: "The augmented chord at the words auf oedem Meere, the humorous middle part of the horns, the unison of the trombones which, with the sharp entry of the violas, effect the modulation from B flat to D major, impart the most living colour to each moment."
And some of the salt and flavor of Berlioz's greater, more characteristic works, the tiny musical particles, for instance, that compose the "Queen Mab" scherzo in "Roméo," or the bizarre combination of flutes and trombones in the "Requiem," macabre as the Orcagna frescoes in Pisa, are due his fantastical imaginings. But, gradually, the deeper Berlioz came to predominate.
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