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Updated: May 6, 2025
The references to Sterne in Goethe’s works, in his letters and conversations, are fairly numerous in the aggregate, but not especially striking relatively. In the conversations with Eckermann there are several other allusions besides those already mentioned. Goethe calls Eckermann a second Shandy for suffering illness without calling a physician, even as Walter Shandy failed to attend to the squeaking door-hinge. Eckermann himself draws on Sterne for illustrations in Yorick’s description of Paris, and on January 24, 1830, at a time when we know that Goethe was re-reading Sterne, Eckermann refers to Yorick’s (?) doctrine of the reasonable use of grief. That Goethe near the end of his life turned again to Sterne’s masterpiece is proved by a letter to Zelter, October 5, 1830; he adds here too that his admiration has increased with the years, speaking particularly of Sterne’s gay arraignment of pedantry and philistinism. But a few days before this, October 1, 1830, in a conversation reported by Riemer, he expresses the same opinion and adds that Sterne was the first to raise himself and us from pedantry and philistinism. By these remarks Goethe commits himself in at least one respect to a favorable view of Sterne’s influence on German letters. A
Many friends, musicians and others, used to be present, Zelter regularly among their number, and the pieces were always freely commented on, Felix receiving then, as indeed he did all his life, the criticisms expressed, with the utmost good-natured readiness. In 1824 Moscheles, at that time a celebrated pianist, and residing in London, visited Berlin, and was asked to give Felix music-lessons.
"I cannot conceive," Zelter once wrote to Goethe, "how any right deed can be performed without sacrifice; all worthless actions must lead to the very opposite of what is desirable." A second point of view which must not be neglected is precisely that which Zelter rightly emphasizes.
The correspondence of Goethe with his friends, especially his voluminous letters to his friend Zelter, will always be resorted to by readers who wish for intimate knowledge of the innermost processes of the great poet's mind. Zelter was himself an extraordinary man. By trade he was a stonemason, but he became a skilled musical amateur, and a most versatile and entertaining critic.
When they arrived, Goethe was walking in his garden. He greeted both with kindness and affection, and it was arranged that Felix should play for him next day. Zelter had told Goethe much about his pupil's unusual talents, but the poet wished to prove these accounts by his own tests. Selecting piece after piece of manuscript music from his collection, he asked the boy to play them at sight.
Disregarding the orchestral similitude of sound in his name, which, by the way, nobody pronounces as Aronach instructed, they chose to infer that Charles Auchester himself was the Herr Joachim, that Starwood Burney stood for Sterndale Bennett, that Diamid Albany meant Disraeli, that Zelter figured as Aronach, and that Jenny Lind, of whom Mendelssohn himself said there would not in a whole century be born another being so gifted, and whom the Italians, those lovers of fair pseudonymes, called "La Benedetta," is no other than Clara Benette.
As to the latter his hopes were realized, but he did not meet many musicians, and could only gaze at them from a distance. It may have been a certain shyness and reticence that stood in the way, for he wrote home about a concert in the Singakademie: "Spontini, Zelter and Felix Mendelssohn were all there, but I spoke to none of these gentlemen, as I did not think it becoming to introduce myself."
The boy laughingly exclaimed, "Who could ever read such writing as that?" Zelter rose and came to the piano to look at this curiosity. "Why, it is Beethoven's writing; one can see that a mile off! He always wrote as if he used a broomstick for a pen, then wiped his sleeve over the wet ink!"
Old Zelter was generally present, and though averse to praising pupils, would often say a few words of encouragement at the close. Felix was at this time but little more than twelve years old.
The old composer Hasse, like Rossini, being himself the most popular composer of the day, married one of the most popular singers of her time, and scored a double triumph with her. This was the famous Faustina. Mendelssohn's friend, Carl Zelter, was a busy lover, as his autobiography makes plain.
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