Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
It may be conceded that the form of his operas, with the alternation of airs, concerted pieces and recitativo secco, may conceivably strike the ears of the uneducated as old-fashioned, but the feelings of musicians may best be summed up in the word of Gounod: 'O Mozart, divin Mozart! Qu'il faut peu te comprendre pour ne pas t'adorer! Toi, la vérité constante! Toi, la beauté parfaite!
The toilets are by Worth; the beauties are coiffed by the deft fingers of Parisian tiring-women; the men wear the penitential garb of Poole; the music is by Gounod and Verdi; Strauss inspires the rushing waltzes, and the married people walk through the quadrilles to the measures of Blue Beard and Fair Helen, so suggestive of conjugal rights and duties.
Gounod has written of it: 'The score of "Don Giovanni" has influenced my life like a revelation. It stands in my thoughts as an incarnation of dramatic and musical impeccability, and lesser men will be content to echo his words. The plot is less dramatically coherent than that of 'Le Nozze di Figaro, but it ranges over a far wider gamut of human feeling.
Perhaps in his own country Thomas enjoys a repute still higher than that of Gounod, for his genius is more peculiarly French, while the composer of "Faust" shows the radical influence of the German school, not only in the cast of his thoughts and temperament, but in his technical musical methods.
We shall therefore be happy to receive and file at the office of this Journal, the testimonials in the foregoing terms of Dr. Sterndale Bennett, Mr. Balfe, Mr. Macfarren, Mr. Benedict, Mr. Vincent Wallace, Signor Costa, M. Auber, M. Gounod, Signor Rossini, and Signor Verdi. We shall also feel obliged to Mr.
Rossini talked a long time with Gounod, and Auber told me that Rossini said, patting Gounod on the back, "Vous etes le chevalier Bayard de la musique." Gounod answered, "Sans peur, non!" Rossini said, "Dans tous les cas, sans reproche et sans egal." Gounod is, I think, the gentlest, the most modest, and the kindest-hearted man in the world. His music is like him, gentle and graceful.
Charles Gounod, born in Paris June 17, 1818, betrayed so much passion for music during tender years, that his father gave him every opportunity to gratify and improve this marked bias. He studied under Reicha and Le Sueur, and finally under Halévy, completing under the latter the preparation which fitted him for entrance into the Conservatory.
That she has been literally worshipped from infancy upward is only a natural consequence of her unsurpassable gifts, and nowhere has this feeling manifested itself to such an extent as in Paris, and by none more so than by the four famous composers, Auber, Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Gounod.
Experience shows conclusively that the most powerful stimulant of the composer's brain is the possession of a really poetic and dramatic text. To take only one instance it surely cannot be a mere coincidence that the best works of four great composers Spohr, Berlioz, Gounod, and Schumann, are based on the story of "Faust."
Dwight gives M. Gounod ample credit for the good judgment, common sense, science, taste, poetic feeling, rich and highly dramatic orchestration, ingenious musical characterization of individuals and situations, and the many passages of beautiful music found in this elaborate work, but denies to him the highest inspiration, the spontaneity of genius, and the attainment of any very lofty ideal in the production of continuous, elevated, and soul-entrancing melodies.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking