UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 MUSIC AND MANNERS 
 
 IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD
 
 MUSIC AND MANNERS 
 
 IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HOW TO LISTEN TO MUSIC," "STUDIES IN THE 
 
 WAGNERIAN DRAMA," "NOTES ON THE CULTIVATION 
 
 OF CHORAL MUSIC," "THE PHILHARMONIC 
 
 SOCIETY OF NEW YORK," ETC 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1898
 
 Copyright, 1898, 
 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 SEnibcrsttg 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 TO 
 
 SIR GEORGE GROVE, C.B. 
 
 377875
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. GRAY'S MUSICAL COLLECTION .... 3 
 
 II. THE POET'S TASTE ....... 15 
 
 III. LAST CENTURY SINGERS ...... 40 
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 I. His NOTE BOOK ........ 57 
 
 II. His ENGLISH LOVE ........ 95 
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 I. SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG. . . 115 
 
 II. THE COMPOSER'S DOMESTIC LIFE . . 128 
 
 III. Music AT THE FESTIVAL ..... 142 
 
 IV. DA PONTE IN NEW YORK ..... 159 
 
 BEETHOVEN AND HIS BIOGRAPHER 
 
 I. ALEXANDER WHEELOCK THAYER ... 191 
 
 II. THE BEETHOVEN MUSEUM AT BONN . 212 
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 INFLUENCE OF GOETHE AND LISZT 243 
 
 INDEX 265
 
 A POET'S MUSIC
 
 I 
 
 GRAY'S MUSICAL COLLECTION 
 
 Bur the two most interesting items of the cata- 
 logue are yet unmentioned. One is the laborious 
 collection of Manuscript Music that Gray compiled 
 in Italy while frivolous Horace Walpole was eating 
 iced fruits in a domino to the sound of a guitar. 
 Zamperelli, Pergolesi, Arrigoni, Galuppi he had 
 ransacked them all, noting the school of the com- 
 poser and the source of the piece selected 
 copying out religiously even the "Regole per 
 PAccompagnamento." 
 
 It is thus that Austin Dobson alludes, in 
 one of his " Eighteenth Century Vignettes," 
 to a portion of the library of the author of the 
 " Elegy written in a Country Churchyard." 
 He is writing with a catalogue of a sale 
 of the poet's library, which took place in 
 1851, as his guide. The second of the "two 
 most interesting items " was an interleaved 
 copy of the " Systema Naturae," by Linnaeus, 
 which Mr. Ruskin exhibited at Cambridge in 
 1885, "covered as to their margins and added 
 3
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 pages with wonderful minute notes in Latin, 
 and illustrated by Gray himself with delicately 
 finished pen-and-ink drawings of birds and 
 insects." This Mr. Dobson had seen when 
 he wrote his vignette entitled " Gray's Li- 
 brary," but on the precious collection of 
 music he never laid his eyes; nor does he 
 know what became of it In 1887 the " New 
 York Tribune " contributed a chapter to its 
 history telling how at a sale of some of the 
 books of Charles W. Frederickson (since 
 dead) in 1886 the auctioneer, Mr. Bangs, had 
 bought the musical manuscripts himself and 
 presented them to Mrs. C. M. Raymond 
 she that music lovers in the United States and 
 Great Britain knew and loved as Annie Louise 
 Gary. From Mrs. Raymond's hands they 
 passed into those of their present owner, and 
 they are this moment smiling down upon the 
 writer from one of his bookshelves. 1 I pur- 
 pose to draw a chapter or two of musical 
 history from the manuscripts presently, and 
 to this end occupy myself first with a descrip- 
 tion of the nine volumes before me. 
 
 The volumes are each twelve inches long 
 
 1 A tenth volume, made up of fragments evidently 
 found in Gray's desk after his death, seems to have been 
 overlooked by Mr. Bangs. It was sold in May, 1897, f r 
 seventy dollars. 
 
 4
 
 and nine inches wide and vary in thickness, 
 containing on an average two hundred sheets 
 of extremely heavy hand-made paper. The 
 edges are untrimmed. The sheets are bound 
 stoutly in hogskin covers, most of which are 
 lettered on the back and front in the hand- 
 writing of the poet. The music has been 
 copied as a rule in a bold style by a profes- 
 sional copyist, but Gray has added some airs, 
 besides many notes, and provided each of the 
 volumes with a table of contents most beauti- 
 fully and daintily written. The music con- 
 sists almost exclusively of operatic airs from 
 the composers who were the chief glory of 
 the Italian schools of the eighteenth century. 
 Of them more anon. The music is in score 
 that is, the full orchestral part is written 
 out as well as the vocal ; but inasmuch as the 
 operatic band of the early part of the eigh- 
 teenth century (the collection was made in 
 1740) seldom consisted of more than the 
 stringed instruments, five or six staves suffice 
 to contain the music. Noteworthy excep- 
 tions to this rule will be mentioned in the de- 
 tailed description of the volumes. Gray's 
 annotations are concerned with the titles of 
 the operas from which the airs were taken, the 
 names of the dramatic personages who sang 
 them, and the names of singers whom he had 
 5
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 heard in the operas or who had identified 
 themselves in some particular manner with 
 the music. This point cannot be determined, 
 though the circumstance that occasionally a 
 date, and sometimes also the name of a city, 
 is added indicates that he intended by the 
 notes to preserve a record of individual enjoy- 
 ments. 
 
 Commenting on the care with which Gray's 
 books have been preserved by their later 
 possessors, Mr. Dobson says: " Many of the 
 Note-Books were cushioned on velvet in spe- 
 cial cases, while the more precious manu- 
 scripts had been skilfully inlaid and bound in 
 olive morocco with leather joints and linings 
 of crimson silk." The musical manuscripts 
 belong to those thus piously preserved. 
 Each volume rests in an elegant wooden 
 case covered with purple morocco and lined 
 with cushions of black silk velvet. These 
 cases are each shaped like a book, tooled and 
 lettered uniformly:
 
 GRAY'S MUSICAL COLLECTION 
 
 Below these panels follow the names of 
 the composers represented in the different 
 volumes. 
 
 The history of the collection since Gray's 
 death in 1771 lies before us in a tolerably clear 
 and complete record. By his will he gave to 
 the Rev. William Mason all his " books, manu- 
 scripts, coins, music, printed or written, and 
 papers of all kinds, to preserve or destroy at his 
 own discretion." This was the Rev. William 
 Mason who published a memoir of the poet 
 in connection with an edition of his works in 
 1775. He was precentor of York Cathedral, 
 and in 1782 published "A Copious Collection 
 of those Portions of the Psalms of David, 
 Bible and Liturgy which have been set to 
 Music and sung as Anthems in the Cathe- 
 dral and Collegiate Churches of England." 
 Mason kept the music till he died and be- 
 queathed it along with the rest of the library 
 " to the poet's friend, Stonehewer," says Mr. 
 Dobson. The name of this gentleman and 
 the names of his immediate successors in the 
 ownership of the manuscripts appear in lead- 
 pencil writing several times in the volumes. 
 One memorandum reads as follows : " Richard 
 Stonehewer (or Stenhewer) Esqr., Curzon-st., 
 London " ; another, " Richard Bright, Esq., 
 Skeffington Hall, 1818 " ; another, " E. Bright, 
 7
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 May 22d, 1819"; still another, " Revd. John 
 Bright." Mr. Bright of Skeffington Hall was 
 a relative of Mr. Stonehewer (if that name be 
 correct), and got the library from him. It 
 remained in the Bright family till 1845, when 
 it was first dispersed by public sale. There 
 were sales of portions of Gray's library in 
 1845, I ^47, 1851 and 1854, the music forming 
 a part of the sale of 1851. Mr. Frederickson 
 bought it in England, but whether at the sale 
 of 1851 or not I cannot say. 
 
 Here follows a detailed description of the 
 nine volumes in question, the volumes being 
 numbered for convenience' sake : 
 
 I. Inscribed by Gray on the cover : " Arie 
 del Sigr. G. Adolfo Hasse detto II Sassone. 
 Firenze, 1740." Contains twenty-five airs 
 from the operas " Alessandro nell' Indie," 
 " La Clemenza di Tito," " Demetrio," " Issi- 
 pile," " Artaserse " and " Siroe." The singers 
 mentioned are Carestini, Faustina, Farinelli 
 (whom, save once, Gray uniformly calls 
 Farinello) and Tesi. 
 
 II. Not inscribed or indexed, but contain- 
 ing autograph notes by Gray. The con- 
 tents are twenty arias, two duets and one trio 
 from "Catone," "Tito," " Issipile," "Arta- 
 serse " and " Siroe " all by Hasse. Two of 
 the airs are in Gray's handwriting. 
 
 8
 
 GRAY'S MUSICAL COLLECTION 
 
 III. Gray's inscription on cover : " Arie del 
 Sigr. Leonardo Vinci, Napoletano. Firenze, 
 1740." Contains twenty-five airs and one duet 
 from the operas " Catone," " Alessandro," 
 " Semiramide," " Demofoonte," " Andro- 
 maca " and " Artaserse." Also a solo can- 
 tata, by Vinci, and the following pieces copied 
 by Gray: a cantata for solo voice by Per- 
 golese ; a " Toccata per il Cembalo del Sas- 
 sone " followed by two minuets ; three arias 
 from Vinci's " Artaserse " and one from 
 Latilla's " Siroe" dated "Roma, 1740"; two 
 arias from unmentioned operas by Hasse and 
 Giaii ; five instrumental pieces a minuet by 
 Giacomelli ("Roma"), another minuet by 
 Hasse (called here, as was the custom in 
 Italy, // Sassone, i. e., " The Saxon ") ; 
 an arietta from an overture by David Perez, 
 followed by a minuet, and an arietta from 
 "Siroe" by Latilla, dated "Roma, 1740." 
 In all there are forty- four pages in Gray's 
 handwriting. The singers mentioned are Far- 
 fallino, Carestini, Farinelli, Faustina, Senesino 
 and Cuzzoni. In three of the arias the strings 
 are supplemented with trumpets, and one has 
 two horns and oboes besides two trumpets. 
 
 IV. A volume uninscribed by Gray, but 
 marked " Vinci " on the back. It is devoted 
 wholly to a cantata, which is one of the most 
 
 9
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 interesting compositions in the collection. 
 Strangely enough, though Gray has made an 
 index of all the musical numbers and added 
 the names of the dramatis persona he has 
 neglected to give the name of the work. 
 This could only be determined by its text, 
 aided by historical research. These disclose 
 that it is the cantata entitled " La Contesa de' 
 Numi," which Vinci composed in 1729, at the 
 command of the Marquis de Polignac, then 
 French Ambassador at Rome, to celebrate 
 the birthday of the Dauphin Louis, son of 
 Louis XV, and father of Louis XVI. The 
 words are by Metastasio. The characters are 
 Jove, Apollo, Mars, Astr&a, Peace and Fortune. 
 The cantata is in two parts, each containing 
 seven vocal numbers, six solos and a conclud- 
 ing Coro grande, which (as was the case in the 
 operas of the period) is an ensemble in which 
 all the solo characters join. The first part 
 is preceded by an overture, which Gray 
 describes as " a ten parti" the ten parts being 
 two violins, two trumpets, two trombe da 
 caccia, two oboes, bassoon and double bass 
 the last two in unison. The piece consists of 
 a stately minuet, followed by a rapid move- 
 ment in common time. The instrumental 
 introduction to the second part Gray calls 
 " Simfonia." It is a minuet followed by a
 
 GRAY'S MUSICAL COLLECTION 
 
 brief intermezzo for strings alone in common 
 time, after which the minuet is repeated. In 
 their tripartite form the pieces suggest the 
 overture form as fixed by Lully. In one of 
 the numbers of the second part, an extremely 
 florid air, the orchestra consists of two trombe 
 da caccia, two flutes (called traversieri) , 
 violins, viola, bassoon and bass, and there is 
 a general direction that the cembalo (harp- 
 sichord) be not used. The reason for this is 
 plain, for the number has an obbligato part for 
 the salterio, that is, the dulcimer, an instru- 
 ment which we meet with now only in the 
 bands of the Hungarian gypsies. 
 
 V. A volume of excerpts from the com- 
 positions of Leonardo Leo. No external 
 inscription, but a full table of contents in 
 Gray's handwriting. Leo being as great a 
 composer of church music as of operas, the 
 book begins with four motets for solo voice 
 and orchestra. Then there are fourteen airs 
 from " Achille," " CiroRiconosciuto," " Olim- 
 piade " and " Artaserse," and two duets from 
 " Olimpiade." The singers mentioned are 
 La Strada, Giziello (whom Gray calls " Egizi- 
 ello "), Tesi and Carestini. An aria sung by 
 La Strada in "Achille" is dated "1739, 
 Turino." 
 
 VI. A volume containing twenty arias and
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 two duets by Michele Fini from " Issipile," 
 "Didone," " Siroe," " Alessandro," "Tito 
 Manlio," " Rodelinda," " Farnace " and 
 " Temistocle." The singers mentioned are 
 Tesi, Turcotti, Lo Scalzi and Cuzzoni. Two 
 airs of Tesi's are marked " Pisa " in Gray's 
 handwriting, and a duet from " Tito Manlio " 
 is inscribed " Cant : dalla Cuzzoni e La 
 Scalzi, Bologna." A duet from " Rodelinda" 
 is dated " Livorno." The book begins with 
 the " Regole per 1'Accompagnamento " men- 
 tioned by Mr. Dobson. The " Regole " are 
 simple rules for playing upon a figured bass, 
 as was the custom in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. Amid the rules, which 
 are all in Gray's handwriting, are four pieces 
 for the harpsichord, evidently used as studies, 
 in the handwriting of a slap-dash copyist. 
 
 VII. The inscription by Gray : " Arie del 
 Sigr. G. B. Pergolese, Napoletano. Firenze, 
 1740." Five opera airs, three opera duets, 
 and the whole of the famous " Stabat Mater " 
 for two voices and strings are the contents 
 of this volume. The operatic music is from 
 " Catone " and " Olimpiade." The singers 
 mentioned are Farinelli, Monticelli and Vis- 
 contina. The last two Gray heard in London 
 in 1742, as is evidenced by the note, " Lon- 
 dra, 1742." 
 
 12
 
 GRAY'S MUSICAL COLLECTION 
 
 VIII. A volume of miscellaneous extracts 
 which Gray inscribes as follows : " Arie di 
 Giov. Orlandini, Fiorentino; Franc2 Araia, 
 Dom : Sarri, G : B : Pergolese, Napoletani ; 
 Ant : Giaii, Turinese ; Giov : Ad f -?' : Hasse, 
 Sassone. Firenze, 1740." The first aria is 
 in the handwriting of Gray, who tells us 
 that Orlandini is " Maestro di Capella al 
 Granduca " (at Florence, obviously). The 
 three airs by this composer are from his opera 
 " Olimpiade," and there is a trio from his 
 " Temistocle." There are three arias by 
 Araia, one air and one duet from Giaii, one 
 air by Sarro from "Achille," as sung by 
 Tesi, nine opera airs by Pergolese and four 
 airs and two duets by Hasse, who fills the 
 place relatively in Gray's collection that he 
 did in the musical life of his period. Several 
 of the airs are dated by the copyist from 
 1730 to 1735; one he credited to Hasse, 
 and Gray so entered it in his table of con- 
 tents. Afterward he seems to have learned 
 that the copyist was in error, for he has put 
 his pen through Hasse's name and written 
 above it the name of Pergolese. The singers 
 named are Senesino, Barbieri, Bagnolesi, Tesi, 
 Farinelli, Faustina and Celestina. 
 
 IX. Gray's inscription on the cover: 
 "Arie di G. Bta. Lampognani, Andrea 
 
 13
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 Bernasconi, Milanese; Rinaldo di Capua, 
 Gaetano Latilla, Michele Fini, Napoletani ; 
 Gaetano Schiassi, Bolognese ; e altri Autori." 
 The " other authors " are disclosed by the 
 table of contents to be Celestino Ligi, Flor- 
 entine ; Carlo Arrigoni, Florentine ; Selitti, 
 Neapolitan ; Dionigi Zamperelli, Neapolitan ; 
 Baldassare Galuppi, Venetian; Riccardo 
 Broschi, Neapolitan, and Mazzoni, Bolognese. 
 There is also an aria by Orlandini, which was 
 overlooked by Gray when he wrote out the 
 table of contents. There are thirty-six num- 
 bers in all. One of the airs by Rinaldo di 
 Capua was copied by Gray ; over another he 
 has written: "Roma, 1739. Cant: dal Man- 
 zuoli." The other singers mentioned are La 
 Turcotti, La Bertolli, La Strada, Farinelli, 
 Amorevoli, Appianino and Babbi.
 
 II 
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 THOMAS GRAY was born in 1716 and died in 
 1771. It is plain enough that he gathered 
 together a large part of his musical collection 
 in 1740, when he was in Italy with his com- 
 panion Walpole, as Mr. Dobson remarks, 
 though there is evidence in the volumes them- 
 selves that all were not compiled at the time. 
 Four of the volumes are dated by Gray 
 1740, and another can safely be said to have 
 been made at the same time, but the inclusion 
 of some compositions by contemporaries of 
 the poet who had not risen to marked dis- 
 tinction in 1740, like Latilla, Perez and Lam- 
 pugnani, is an indication that Gray continued 
 to collect music after he had returned to 
 England from Italy. As we shall see pres- 
 ently, his selection is representative of the 
 classic Italian school in opera-writing, and 
 though it is not necessary to an appreciation 
 of his taste to believe that he had heard all 
 the music which he preserved (in fact, it is 
 '5
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 extremely improbable that he heard some of 
 it), it is nevertheless plain that the collection 
 is an index of his musical predilections and 
 principles. In his biography of the poet the 
 Rev. John Mitford says : 
 
 His taste in music was excellent and formed on 
 the study of the great Italian masters who flour- 
 ished about the time of Pergolesi, as Marcello, 
 Leo and Palestrina ; he himself performed upon 
 the harpsichord. And it is said that he sang 
 to his own accompaniment with great taste and 
 feeling. 
 
 Gray's knowledge of musical history was 
 plainly better than his biographer's. His 
 careful separation into groups of the com- 
 posers whose music he collected, as Neapoli- 
 tans, Florentines, Bolognese and so on, is a 
 proof that he would never have associated 
 Palestrina with men who came upon the 
 scene a whole century after his death. Mason 
 says: 
 
 The chief and almost the only one of these (i. e. 
 Gray's) amusements (if we except the frequent 
 experiments he made on flowers in order to mark 
 the mode and progress of their vegetation) was 
 music. His taste in this art was equal to his skill 
 in any more important science. It was founded 
 on the best models, those great masters of Italy 
 16
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 who flourished about the same time with his favo- 
 rite, Pergolese. Of his, of Leo's, Buononcini's, 
 Vinci's and Hasse's works he made a valuable col- 
 lection while abroad, chiefly of such of their vocal 
 compositions as he had himself heard and admired, 
 observing in his choice of these the same judicious 
 rule which he followed in making his collection of 
 prints, which was not so much to get together com- 
 plete sets of the works of any master as to select 
 those (the best in their kind) which would recall 
 to his memory the capital pictures, statues and 
 buildings which he had seen and studied. By this 
 means, as he acquired in painting great facility 
 and accuracy in the knowledge of hands, so in 
 music he gained supreme skill in the more refined 
 powers of expression, especially when we consider 
 that art is an adjunct to poetry ; for vocal music, 
 and that only (excepting, perhaps, the lessons of the 
 younger Scarlatti), was what he chiefly regarded. 
 His instrument was the harpsichord, on which, 
 though he had little execution, yet when he sung 
 to it he so modulated the small powers of his 
 voice as to be able to convey to the intelligent 
 hearer no common degree of satisfaction. This, 
 however, he could seldom be prevailed upon to 
 do even by his most intimate acquaintances. 
 
 In a footnote the writer adds : 
 
 He was much admired for his singing in his 
 youth ; yet he was so shy in exercising this talent 
 2 17
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 that Mr. Walpole tells me he never could but 
 once prevail on him to give proof of it, and then it 
 was with so much pain to himself that it gave him 
 no manner of pleasure. 
 
 Mr. Mason, who wrote thus, was precentor of 
 York Cathedral and knew a thing or two about 
 music. Plainly enough, Mitford had the page 
 which we have just transcribed before him 
 when he wrote his paragraph, though he says 
 that he got the information from Mr. Price. 
 He attempted a little independent flourish 
 when he introduced the name of Palestrina, 
 who, of course, ought to have had the admira- 
 tion of a man of cultured taste like Gray and 
 probably would have had it had he lived a 
 century and a quarter later than he did, of 
 anticipated the development of an art form 
 not yet called into existence when he died. 
 The flourish resulted like most attempts on 
 the part of the musically illiterate to say 
 something about the art. However, we must 
 be lenient with Mitford. He, too, has his 
 footnote, in which he tells us, as Mr Mason 
 does not, that Gray was not partial to the 
 music of Handel, though Mr. Price had 
 heard him speak with wonder of the chorus 
 in"Jephtha" beginning " No more to Am- 
 mon's God and King." Here, is confirmation 
 18
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 of a suspicion aroused by a piece of negative 
 evidence brought forward by the collection of 
 musical manuscripts. Handel's music is con- 
 spicuous by its absence. 1 
 ^In all the nine volumes which we are 
 studying there is not one note of Handel's 
 writing, while there are hundreds of pages 
 of music composed by his rivals. \ Even 
 Buononcini is mentioned by Mason the 
 same Buononcini of whom, in the words of 
 the epigram generally ascribed to Swift 
 but in fact the production of John Byrom, 
 some said that, compared with Handel, he 
 was but a " ninny." There is no music 
 of his in the volumes whose contents I have 
 marshalled, but there may be in the volume 
 or volumes of the collection, if such there 
 be, which are missing. In any event, it 
 is strange that, while Mason and the cata- 
 loguers of Gray's library mention the names 
 of men who have sunk so deep in the sea of 
 oblivion that we do not know with exactitude 
 when they flourished or what they wrote, 
 they have nothing to say about the giant 
 whose shadow threw all others into eclipse 
 long before the singer of the " Elegy " had 
 
 1 There is the beginning of the air, "Hide me from 
 Day's garish eye" in the volume of fragments which I 
 have mentioned as sold separately in May, 1897. 
 
 '9
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 closed his eyes in death. If Gray collected 
 all his musical manuscripts in Italy, the cir- 
 cumstance affords an explanation which the 
 lovers of Handel can accept as satisfactory. 
 As a composer of operas, Handel's fame may 
 be said to have been confined to London. 
 He began his operatic career in Hamburg, 
 and continued it for a brief space in Italy, 
 but of all the operas which he wrote for 
 London none seems to have been performed 
 on the Continent. In one respect he stood 
 in the estimation of the people who formed 
 the taste of the eighteenth century just where 
 he stands in the estimation of the world to- 
 day. 7 For us the fragments of his operas 
 which remain have only a curious interest; 
 
 / he lives solely in his oratorios and instru- 
 
 \ x mental compositions. 
 
 If we assume that Gray's active interest in 
 music began when he was eighteen years old, 
 it is more than likely that he was an active par- 
 tisan in the contest which brought shipwreck 
 to Handel as an operatic impresario. From 
 1711, when he opened the Queen's Theatre 
 in the Haymarket (known as "the King's" 
 after the accession of George I), to 1734, 
 Handel had no opposition ; but in the latter 
 year, the time which we have set as the be- 
 ginning of Gray's active participation in musi- 
 20
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 cal affairs, the institution known in history as 
 the opera of the " British nobility " was estab- 
 lished at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 Porpora was its director, and his operas were 
 sung; but Porpora's music is also absent 
 from Gray's collection. 1 In the next year 
 the Nobility's opera secured the lease of the 
 King's Theatre, a more serious rebuff than 
 the desertion of Handel's singers to the 
 enemy had been. In two years more both 
 institutions were hopelessly ruined. Handel 
 went back to the King's Theatre, but he was 
 bankrupt in purse, and in 1740, when Gray 
 listened to the operas of his Italian rivals in 
 Florence and Rome, while Horace Walpole 
 " was eating iced fruits in a domino to the 
 sound of a guitar," Handel was producing his 
 last opera, " Deidama." Gray thus appears 
 on the operatic scene as Handel is leaving it, 
 and just in time to see Buononcini (between 
 whom and Handel the author of the epigram 
 already mentioned thought the only differ- 
 ence was that " twixt tweedledum and 
 tweedledee ") run away, having been caught 
 pilfering the composition of one of his com- 
 patriots. When Handel's rivals get posses- 
 sion of the King's Theatre they bring for- 
 ward Hasse and his " Artaserse," from which 
 
 1 Except one air in the book of fragments. 
 21
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 opera there are three arias in Gray's collec- 
 tion. They have also Cuzzoni and Senesino, 
 deserters from Handel's company, and a singer 
 new to London in the person of the incom- 
 parable Farinelli, who receives many men- 
 tions, and Montagnana, who receives none, 
 in Gray's notes. Let us say that the poet 
 hears all that Handel offers during the last 
 three years of the struggle between his insti- 
 tution and that of the Nobilita Britannica, 
 There are revivals of old works and six new 
 operas are produced : " Ariodante," " Al- 
 cino," " Atalanta," " Arminio," " Giustino " 
 and " Berenice." Carestini sings the prin- 
 cipal man's part (in a soprano voice he 
 was a musico) in the first two operas, and 
 Giziello, also a soprano, in the others. Si- 
 gnora Strada, faithful to her master, was the 
 principal woman in all. Memorials to the 
 three exist in the tiny handwriting of Gray 
 on the margins of the poet's books, but they 
 have no reference to Handel's music. Mean- 
 while the composers of the opposition are 
 Buononcini, Ariosti, Porpora, Vinci, Veracini, 
 Domenico Scarlatti and Galuppi perhaps, 
 also, Lampugnani and Arrigoni. Of most 
 of these Gray has preserved some music. 
 It is the golden age of the Italian opera, but 
 it is more truthfully reflected to the judg-
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 ment of to-day in the satirical skits of Addi- 
 son and Steele than in the eloquent eulogies 
 of its votaries. 
 
 Sic transit gloria mundi ! Of the com- 
 posers, specimens of whose skill and style 
 Gray preserved in our nine volumes, scarcely 
 one finds representation on a musical pro- 
 gramme of any kind to-day. Search the 
 music shops and you may find a few pieces 
 by Galuppi, whom, also, you may see ac- 
 claimed in the pages of a modern poet, who 
 walks upon the ice of musical terminology 
 without a slip ; his music you shall not hear 
 though you journey from Dan to Beersheba. 
 They have put a stone in the wall of the 
 house in which he lived in Venice, and some 
 years ago Violet Paget, who knows how to 
 gossip pleasantly about music as well as 
 many other things, attended a festival given 
 in commemoration of the composer. There 
 was much ringing of bells and unfurling of 
 banners and playing of brass bands ; but the 
 music was the music of Verdi, Marchetti and 
 their contemporaries. The unheard melodies 
 (which poetical hyperbole would have us 
 believe are sweeter than those heard) in all 
 the festa were Galuppi's. Yet he is but one 
 hundred and twelve years dead, and as I 
 write there lies before me a stained and yel- 
 2 3
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 low sheet of ruled paper, inscribed in a hand- 
 writing marvellously shaky : " Credo a quarto 
 concerto con stromenti, di Baldassar Galuppi, 
 detto il Buranello, 1780." Poor Galuppi! 
 He was seventy-four years old at the time his 
 trembling fingers penned these notes, and 
 in his day had been the admiration of all 
 Europe. He went to London while Gray 
 was still in Italy it was in 1741, the year of 
 the quarrel between the poet and Horace 
 Wai pole and stayed over three years. In 
 1765 Catherine II called him to St. Peters- 
 burg, gave him a salary of four thousand 
 rubles, free residence and many other emolu- 
 ments, and Dr. Burney, who visited him in 
 Venice in 1770, records that "Signer Bura- 
 nello has preserved all his fire and imagina- 
 tion from the chill blasts of Russia, whence 
 he is lately returned." "This ingenious, 
 entertaining and elegant composer," the 
 learned doctor continues, " abounds in nov- 
 elty, in spirit and in delicacy," and then he 
 tells of the extraordinary instrumental appa- 
 ratus used by Galuppi in an overture. There 
 were two orchestras which echoed each other, 
 two organs and " two pair of French horns." 
 Burney, who had been taken to him by 
 Signer Latilla (also on Gray's list) showed 
 him his plans for the great history for which 
 24
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 he was gathering material, and was pleased to 
 win the veteran's approval, as also with his 
 definition of good music which, he said, 
 consisted of vaghezza, chiarezza, e buona 
 modulazionc. " Beauty, clearness and good 
 modulation. " Alas ! what would he say to 
 a score of Richard Strauss's? 
 
 You shall look in vain in Sir George Grove's 
 musical Pantheon for fully thirteen of the 
 composers whose music Gray thought worth 
 preserving. Orlandini, Giaii, Sarro, Latilla, 
 Fini, Bernasconi, Schiassi, Selitti, Zamperelli, 
 Giacomelli, Broschi, Mazzoni, and Lampugna- 
 ni, if mentioned in the great " Dictionary of 
 Music and Musicians " at all, are only men- 
 tioned incidentally. No information is vouch- 
 safed concerning them, and very little is 
 yielded up to patient research of other 
 sources. Giuseppe Maria Orlandini was a 
 native of Bologna from about 1690, and 
 Maestro di Capella to the Grand-duke of 
 Tuscany. No particulars are to be learned of 
 the life of G. A. Giaii, and it is suspected 
 that he is identical with a Signer Gini, who 
 had the same Christian name and was a 
 chapelmaster in Turin in 1728. Gray's copyist 
 mentions Giaii as being" in Turino," and thus 
 gives support to this hypothesis. Domenico 
 Sarro was born in the kingdom of Naples in 
 25
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 1678, and was court chapelmaster about 1706. 
 For the rest, even the names of his operas, all 
 convenient history is silent Gaetano Latilla 
 was choirmaster of the Conservatorio della 
 Pieta in Venice in 1756, and Galuppi's suc- 
 cessor as second chapelmaster at the Church 
 of St. Mark. He is praised for the correct- 
 ness of his style and his ability as a contra- 
 puntist. Dr. Burney received courtesies at his 
 hands in 1770, and tells us that he was a 
 plain, sensible man about sixty years of age, 
 who had both read and thought much con- 
 cerning the music of the ancients. In a 
 footnote he adds that he was uncle to Signer 
 Piccini, and author of most of the comic 
 operas " performed in London with such suc- 
 cess in the time of Pertici." According to 
 Laborde, Michel Fini was a Neapolitan who 
 wrote a grand -opera in 1731-' '32 entitled 
 " Gli Sponsali d'Enea," and two intermezzi. 
 Gray preserved an aria from a cantata and 
 numbers from eight operas. Andrea Ber- 
 nasconi is mentioned by Grove only as the 
 father of that Antonia Bernasconi for whom 
 Gluck wrote " Alceste," and who sang in the 
 " Mitridate " composed by the boy Mozart in 
 I 77-'7 I in Milan. He was the son of a 
 French officer, and took up the study of 
 music when he saw his father approaching 
 26
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 bankruptcy. His first opera made a hit in 
 Venice in 1741, and in 1755 he became Court 
 chapelmaster in Munich. The singer Ber- 
 nasconi was his stepdaughter. Gaetano 
 Maria Schiassi was a violinist who composed 
 operas about the period i732-'35, and also 
 wrote concertos for his instrument. Ligi de- 
 feats all our efforts to drag him from obscurity. 
 All that we know we learn from Gray's notes 
 to the effect that he was a Florentine, his 
 Christian name Celestino, and he wrote an 
 opera " Catone." Carlo Arrigoni was also a 
 Florentine, and is supposed to be the " King 
 of Arragon," mentioned among the opponents 
 of Handel in " Harmony in an Uproar." 1 
 Grove cannot prove his residence in London, 
 but Fetis says that he produced an opera 
 there in 1734. Geminiano Giacomelli was 
 Grand-ducal chapelmaster in Parma, and pro- 
 duced his last opera, " Arsace," in 1736, at 
 Turin. Riccardo Broschi was the brother of 
 Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli, and composed 
 many airs for him. Lampugnani was Ga- 
 luppi's successor at the opera in London in 
 1743, and was still active as first harpsi- 
 chordist, compiler of pasticcios, and singing 
 teacher at Milan when Burney visited that 
 
 ^'Harmony in an Uproar; A Letter to F-d k 
 H d 1, Esq." London, 1733. 
 
 2?
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 city in 1/70. He is said to have won distinc- 
 tion by his treatment of recitative in his 
 operas. 
 
 Impenetrable silence rests upon the rest of 
 Gray's minor list; but something like a lustre 
 shines out from the pages of history which 
 record the achievements of Johann Adolf 
 Hasse, styled "the Saxon," a German, yet 
 the foremost Italian composer of his day, and 
 the husband of the equally famous Faustina 
 Bordoni, who figures in the list of Gray's 
 singers. To her and her colleagues of both 
 sexes in Gray's list I shall presently pay 
 some attention. Just now one of the causes 
 of Hasse's supremacy may be noted. " When 
 the voice was more respected than the servile 
 herd of imitative instruments," says Dr. 
 Burney with a scorn which is fine even if it 
 makes us smile, " and at a time when a dif- 
 ferent degree and better judged kind of study 
 was perhaps more worthy of attention than at 
 present, the airs of Signer Hasse, particularly 
 those of the pathetic kind, were such as 
 charmed every hearer and fixed the reputa- 
 tion of the first singers in Europe " (such as 
 Farinelli, Faustina, Mingotti, etc.). Concern- 
 ing Leonardo Leo and Pergolese enough can 
 be learned in the ordinary handbooks, but 
 something must be said touching Rinaldo di 
 28
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 Capua and Leonardo Vinci. David Perez 
 was a contemporary of Gray, and the music 
 of his which he preserved Gray copied with 
 his own hand. He was a Spaniard, a chapel- 
 master at Lisbon, and brought out an opera, 
 " Ezio," in London in 1755. He is said to 
 have looked like Handel and, like him, went 
 blind in his old age. 
 
 It does not seem altogether right that a 
 man bearing the name of Rinaldo di Capua 
 should be an eighteenth century musician. 
 The flavor of romance goes out from the 
 name. It makes one think of knights in shin- 
 ing steel, of doughty paladins, of joustings 
 and tourneys and of dolorous strokes ; also 
 of melodious minstrels, decorous damsels, of 
 hawking and harping and nuptials with great 
 nobley. We hear Rinaldo and think of him 
 who was the Achilles of the Christian army 
 that delivered Jerusalem; we hear Capua 
 and dream of the luxuries which erst threw 
 down the stern manhood of Hannibal. Yet, 
 after all, Rinaldo di Capua was merely a 
 composer, albeit romantically born and a 
 sturdy knight in Apollo's Court. The hand- 
 books know little about him ; Sir George 
 Grove's great dictionary nothing at all. Yet 
 his music rang pleasantly in the public ear 
 one hundred and fifty years ago. I open 
 29
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 one of the thickest of Gray's manuscript 
 volumes, more than half expecting to see an 
 air from an opera entitled " Gerusalemme 
 Liberata," "Orlando Furioso," " Armida," 
 or even a "Rinaldo" such as Handel com- 
 posed; alas, the airs which Gray has pre- 
 served are taken from a " Demetrio " and 
 a " Vologeso." 
 
 It is Dr. Burney who tells us most about 
 Rinaldo di Capua. He visited the composer 
 in Rome when he was making his famous 
 tour of the European continent in search of 
 materials for his great history of music. 
 Rinaldo, he tells us in his " Present State of 
 Music in France and Italy" (a journal of 
 that tour), was the natural son of a person 
 of very high rank in the Neapolitan country. 
 At first he studied music only as an accom- 
 plishment, but his father having left him but 
 a small fortune, and it being soon dissipated, 
 he turned to the art as a means of livelihood, 
 composing his first opera at Vienna when he 
 was seventeen years old. Burney forgets to 
 tell us that he was born at Capua, which fact 
 explains his name; being a natural son, he 
 was not permitted to take the name of his 
 father, and had to take that of the city in 
 which he was born, the city whose luxurious- 
 ness was the undoing of Hannibal. All of 
 30
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 Rinaldo's operas are as dead as he. Mendel's 
 German musical lexicon says that only six of 
 them are known, the score of one of the six, 
 entitled " La Zingara," having been found in 
 Burney's library. Neither of the two works 
 from which Gray quoted is mentioned by 
 Mendel. In Burney's day Rinaldo was ac- 
 credited with the invention of accompanied 
 recitatives, but this distinction the great 
 historian denied to him after he found 
 specimens of that device in the music of 
 Alessandro Scarlatti. Rinaldo did not him- 
 self pretend to the invention. " All that he 
 claims," says Burney, " is the being among 
 the first who introduced long retornellos, or 
 symphonies, into the recitatives of strong 
 passion and distress which express or imitate 
 what it would be ridiculous for the voice to 
 attempt. There are many fine scenes of this 
 kind in his works, and Hasse, Galuppi, 
 Jomelli, Piccini and Sacchini have been very 
 happy in such interesting and often sublime 
 compositions." 
 
 Burney, it may be guessed from -this last 
 remark, was thoroughly imbued with the 
 musical spirit of his time. He had lived 
 through the period described as that of Gray's 
 early activity, had himself composed dra- 
 matic music a few years after Gray came back 
 3 1
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 from Italy, and had heard and praised the 
 new operatic gospel proclaimed by Gluck.. 
 But for him there was no absurdity or ar- 
 chaism in the style of composition pursued 
 by his favorite writers. Throughout the 
 eighteenth century the chief dramatic poets 
 of Italy were Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio. 
 The latter in particular was so much admired 
 for the limpidity and beauty of his poetry 
 that his opera books were composed over 
 and over again by the musicians of his time. 
 His " Artaserse " was set no less than forty 
 times, and his "Adriano in Siria" twenty-six. 
 Even Mozart resorted to him for his " Cle- 
 
 ^ 
 
 menza di Tito." Of the composers repre- 
 sented in Gray's collection, we find that Hasse 
 and Sarro set his " Didone abbandonata," Leo 
 his " Siface," Vinci and Hasse his " Siroe," 
 Vinci his " Catone in Utica," Vinci and 
 Hasse his "Semiramide" (Gluck and Meyer- 
 beer also set this book, but Rossini's libretto 
 is the work of Rossi), Vinci and Hasse his 
 " Alessandro nell' Indie," Vinci, Hasse and 
 Galuppi his "Artaserse" and Hasse alone 
 his " Adriano in Siria," "Ezio," " Olimpiade," 
 " Demofoonte," " La Clemenza di Tito," 
 " Achille in Sciro," " Giro riconosciuto," "An- 
 tigone," " Ipermestra," "Attilio," "II Re pas- 
 tore," "L'Eroe," " Nitetti," " Alcide," "II 
 32
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 Trionfo di Clelia," " Egeria," " Romolo ed 
 Ersilio," " Partenope " and " II Ruggiero." 
 Indeed, Hasse told Dr. Burney that he had 
 set all of Metastasio's librettos to music 
 except " Temistocle," some of them three 
 or four times over. 
 
 Very brave are these names, many of which 
 had done service for Metastasio's predeces- 
 sors, and right gorgeous was the stage furni- 
 ture provided for the operas which bore them. 
 But who shall tell the absurdities which char- 
 acterized the plays themselves and their 
 musical settings? What delicious sport they 
 provided for Addison and Steele ! Read the 
 story of the lion which Nicolini slew night 
 after night in " Hydaspes," and the complaint 
 of Toby Rent free, who wanted a reason why 
 he should be treated differently than other sub- 
 scribers to the opera. Having observed that 
 when gentlemen who were particularly pleased 
 with a song cried out Encore or Altra 
 I'olta the performer was always so obliging 
 as to sing it over, he cried out Altra volta ! 
 in a very audible voice and with a tolerably 
 good accent, after the combat between Signer 
 Nicolini and the lion ; yet so little regard was 
 had for him that the lion was carried off and 
 went to bed without being killed any more that 
 night. An' you would laugh and realize how 
 3 33
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 even in opera there is nothing new under the 
 sun, see, with Addison, Signer Nicolini ex- 
 posed to a tempest in robes of ermine and 
 sailing in an open boat upon a sea of paste- 
 board ; be entertained with him with painted 
 dragons spitting wildfire (O Wagner!), en- 
 chanted chariots drawn by Flanders mares, 
 real cascades in artificial landscapes, and 
 real birds flitting about in painted groves to 
 give verisimilitude to Almirena's call upon 
 birds and breezes to tell her of her absent 
 Rinaldo : 
 
 Augelletti che cantate, 
 Zeffiretti che spirate, 
 Aure dolce intorno a me, 
 II mio ben dite dov" 2, etc. 
 
 As the writer once took occasion to say else- 
 where, 1 when Senesino, Farinelli, Sassarelli, 
 Ferri and their tribe dominated the stage (and 
 they are the singers who ravished the ears of 
 our gentle poet, who sang a bit himself), 
 it strutted with sexless Agamemnons and 
 Caesars. Telemachus, Darius, Nero, Cato, 
 Alexander, Scipio and Hannibal ran around 
 on the boards as languishing lovers, clad in 
 humiliating disguises, singing woful arias to 
 their mistress's eyebrows arias full of trills 
 
 1 " How to Listen to Music," p. 240. 
 34
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 and scales and florid ornaments, but void of 
 feeling as a problem in Euclid. If sentiment 
 was aimed at at all by the composer, it was 
 only a general mood. An air was all gentle- 
 ness or all fury, and whether gentle or furious, 
 the same flourishes were indulged in when in 
 the course of the air the beloved vowel "A" 
 fell into the proper place in the constructive 
 scheme. Sangue or palpitar, stragi or amar, 
 it was all one to the composer and the singer. 
 It was while speaking of the translations of 
 the operas as affected by this style of com- 
 position that Addison said : 
 
 It often happened, likewise, that the finest notes 
 in the air fell upon the most insignificant words in 
 the sentence. I have known the word " and " pur- 
 sued through the whole gamut, have been enter- 
 tained with many a melodious " the," a/id have 
 heard the most beautiful graces, quavers and di- 
 visions bestowed upon " then," " for " and 
 " from " to the eternal honor of our English 
 particles. 
 
 As to the artificiality of the form of the 
 opera, let the reader . peruse the following 
 paragraph from Hogarth's " Memoirs of the 
 Opera," remembering that the different kinds 
 of airs referred to were the Aria Cantabile, 
 Aria di Portamento, Aria di mezzo Carattere, 
 35
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 Aria Parlante (also called Aria di not a epa- 
 rola, Aria Agitata, Aria di Strepito, and Aria 
 Infuriata), and Aria di Bravura (ord'agilita): 
 
 In the structure of an opera the number of 
 characters was generally limited to six, three of 
 each sex ; and, if it was not a positive rule, it was 
 at least a practice hardly ever departed from, to 
 make them all lovers ; a practice, the too slavish 
 adherence to which introduced feebleness and ab- 
 surdity into some of the finest works of Metastasio. 
 The principal male and female singers were, each 
 of them, to have airs of all the different kinds. The 
 piece was to be divided into three acts, and not to 
 exceed a certain number of verses. It was required 
 that each scene should terminate with an air ; 
 that the same character should not have two airs in 
 succession ; that an air should not be followed by 
 another ,of the same class; and that the principal 
 airs of the piece should conclude the first and second 
 acts. In the second and third acts there should be 
 a scena consisting of an accompanied recitative, an 
 air of execution, and a grand duet sung by the 
 hero and heroine. There were occasional choruses ; 
 but trios and other concerted pieces were unknown 
 except in the opera buffa, where they were begin- 
 ning to be introduced. 
 
 There 's your recipe for the concoction of 
 an eighteenth century Italian opera. Small 
 36
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 wonder that industrious composers could 
 turn them out by the dozen smaller won- 
 der that it finally dawned on some of the 
 composers themselves that they were getting 
 to be very monotonous in their music. And 
 here we must shout a bravo for our Capuan 
 Rinaldo, who told Dr. Burney, to the evident 
 pain of that distinguished traveller, that there 
 was nothing left for the composers of his time 
 to do but to write themselves and others over 
 again, and that the only chance which they 
 had left for obtaining the reputation of novelty 
 and invention arose either from ignorance or 
 want of memory in the public, as everything, 
 both in melody and modulation, worth doing 
 had often already been done. He did not 
 except himself from his censure, but con- 
 fessed that though he had written full as 
 much as his neighbors, " yet out of all his 
 works, perhaps not above one new melody 
 can be found, which has been wire-drawn 
 in different keys and different measures a 
 thousand times." Bravo Rinaldo ! Altra 
 volta ! 
 
 Over two hundred and twenty-five years 
 lie between the times of Leonardo da Vinci, 
 the painter, and Leonardo Vinci, the com- 
 poser ; yet they have been confounded even 
 by writers on music. The painter, like Sir 
 37 
 
 ^77875
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 Andrew Aguecheek, could play on the " viol 
 de gamboys," but he was not an opera com- 
 poser; probably because the opera was not 
 invented until seventy-five years after his 
 death, whereas his namesake, the musician, 
 was one of the chief glories of the operatic 
 stage in the first half of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. He had been dead about ten years 
 when Gray visited Italy, but the excellent re- 
 pute in which his music was held is attested 
 by the preservation of the cantata which he 
 composed in 1729 for the birthday of the 
 French dauphin. He was a royal chapel- 
 master, and member of a monkish order, and 
 yet a gay man of the world. This was his 
 undoing. He died of poison, administered 
 to him in chocolate, it is said, by a certain 
 noble lady, concerning whose relations with 
 himself he spoke boastfully in public once 
 too often. I have already mentioned the 
 originality shown in the instrumental part of 
 the birthday cantata " La Contesa di Numi." 
 Burney says his operas form an era in dra- 
 matic music, by the direct simplicity and emo- 
 tion which he threw into the natural, clear 
 and dramatic strains of his airs and by the 
 expressive character of the accompaniments, 
 especially those of the obbligato recitatives. 
 "Virgil himself," said Count Algarotti, speak- 
 38
 
 THE POET'S TASTE 
 
 ing of Vinci's " Didone Abbandonata," " would 
 have been pleased to hear a composition so 
 animated and so terrible, in which the heart 
 and soul were at once assailed by all the 
 powers of music." 
 
 39
 
 Ill 
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 ARRANGED in alphabetical order, the list 
 of singers whose names are recorded in 
 the nine manuscript volumes of music col- 
 lected by Gray is as follows: Appianino, 
 Amorevoli, Babbi, Bagnolesi, Barbieri, Ber- 
 tolli, Carestini, Celestina, Cuzzoni, Far- 
 fallino, Farinelli, Faustina, Gizziello, Loren- 
 zino, Manzuoli, Monticelli, Scalzi, Senesino, 
 Strada, Tesi, Turcotti and Viscontina. Many 
 of these singers are as completely lost to the 
 world as the composers who wrote for them, 
 but in the list there are half a dozen names 
 which stand in letters of gold in the history 
 of bel canto. Farinelli, we have been led to 
 believe, was the greatest singer that ever 
 lived, and one of the things which Gray's 
 music can teach us is that, taking the art for 
 what it was one hundred and fifty years ago, 
 the greatest operatic artists of to-day are the 
 merest tyros compared with him. It would 
 be idle to attempt comparisons on any other 
 basis than mere technical skill, however. In 
 the arrangement of the names in the list no 
 40
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 regard was had to the consideration of sex, 
 and it might furnish amusement for an idle 
 moment if the reader were to attempt to sep- 
 arate the men from the women. It would be 
 a fair wager to lay big odds against one stu- 
 dent of musical history in a hundred succeed- 
 ing in making the division correctly. The 
 men and women, as a matter of fact, are 
 about evenly divided, but if sex of voice were 
 to be the determining factor, instead of 
 physical sex, a very different result would be 
 reached. Though half of the singers were 
 men and half women, nine-tenths of the voices 
 were sopranos and contraltos. The normal 
 voices of men were not in favor in the days 
 of the gentle Gray. There were tenor and 
 bass parts in the operas of Hasse and con- 
 temporary composers, but they belonged to 
 subordinate characters in the play, and the 
 singers to whom they fell were not considered 
 of particular consequence. It was the day 
 of artificiality in music as well as manners. 
 Handel, whose taste was cast in a manlier 
 mould than that of his rivals, showed notable 
 respect for the bass voice in parts written for 
 singers named Roschi, Reimschneider, Rein- 
 hold and Waltz, whose names are identified 
 with bass songs published at the time. In 
 all probability all four were Germans. The 
 41
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 last three certainly were, and the name of the 
 first sounds like a transmogrification from 
 the German. Reimschneider came from Ham- 
 burg, and was thus announced by Handel Jn 
 the advertisement of his company in 1829: 
 " A bass voice from Hamburgh ; there being 
 none worth engaging in Italy." Yet basses 
 were more practicable than tenors, who had 
 no occupation at a time when operatic lovers 
 were all sopranos or contraltos. The musico 
 yielded his place to the tenor before the 
 eighteenth century expired, though he still 
 had representatives on the stage in the earli- 
 est decades of the nineteenth ; and now, a 
 hundred years later, there are indications 
 that the monopoly of the tenor is at an end, 
 and that the next generation will accept a 
 bass or barytone lover as we accept the tenor 
 to-day and Gray accepted the musico. 
 
 It is the male soprano or contralto who 
 fills the greater part of the book of song in 
 the golden age of the Italian opera. Por- 
 pora, Bernacchi and Pistocchi were the law- 
 givers in the vocal art, and the pupils who 
 brought them fame were musicos. There 
 were famous women, too, and though they 
 managed to excite social wars, like that which 
 divided London into two camps in the oper- 
 atic consulate of Handel, they were never 
 42
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 quite the popular idols that JFarinelli, Sene- 
 sino and their tribe became. Of Gray's women 
 singers four deserve to be called great 
 Faustina, Cuzzoni, Tesi and Strada. The 
 rivalry between the first two led to one of 
 the most famous warfares on record. Cuz- 
 zoni was the first on the field in London, 
 whither she came in 1723, engaged by Han- 
 del. She had a wonderfully sweet voice, and 
 though not pretty of features or figure she 
 enchanted the subscribers to the opera. 
 Already at her second performance the 
 directors, who had engaged to pay her two 
 thousand guineas for the season (the story was 
 told that she refused the equivalent of forty- 
 eight thousand guineas for a season in Italy), 
 raised the price of tickets to four guineas. 
 But the salary question was made to be her 
 undoing. A few years later, at the very hey- 
 day of her popularity and height of her 
 rivalry with Faustina, some of her supporters 
 in the nobility persuaded her to make a vow 
 that she would not take a penny less salary 
 than Faustina received. She had worn out 
 her popularity with the directors by this time, 
 and they took advantage 'of her vow to rid 
 themselves of her. When it came to a re- 
 newal of contracts they offered Faustina one 
 guinea more than Cuzzoni, and the latter left 
 43
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 London. Had Cuzzoni's amiability been as 
 great as her musical gifts she would probably 
 have held out against the rivalry of Faustina 
 better than she did. At first she had the 
 town completely with her. For a whole year 
 immediately before the arrival of Faustina in 
 1726 her costume in "Rodelinda" set the 
 fashion for the ladies of London, who wore 
 brown silk gowns, embroidered with silver. 
 But she was capricious and ill-tempered. It 
 was the devil in Cuzzoni that Handel threat- 
 ened to cast out in the name of Beelzebub, 
 the prince of devils, when he dragged her to 
 an open window and threatened to hurl her 
 out on the stone pavement below unless she 
 sang one of his airs as he had written it. She 
 came back to London in 1749, but never re- 
 gained her old popularity, and her last days 
 were pitiful in the extreme. She disappeared 
 from public view, and is said to have sup- 
 ported herself in her old age in Bologna 
 by working at the trade of button-making. 
 Faustina had a nature which was as lovely 
 as Cuzzonfs voice, and a voice which in a 
 sense offered a parallel to Cuzzoni's nature. 
 She was a noble Venetian, beautiful of features 
 and form, with a mezzo-soprano voice reach- 
 ing from B-flat below (one air in the Gray 
 books goes down to A natural) to G in alt, 
 44
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 but which was rather hard and brilliant. She 
 had a "fluent tongue," 'tis said, but was wise 
 enough to use its fluency in singing rather 
 than in gossip or controversy with opera 
 directors. In her warfare with Cuzzoni she 
 had the men on her side and Cuzzoni the 
 women. The most notable illustration of this 
 division of sentiment was to be seen in the 
 household of Sir Robert Walpole, when the 
 noble lord fought under the banner of Faus- 
 tina and his lady wore the colors of Cuzzoni. 
 But the lady was the better diplomat of the 
 two, and used to have both singers as her 
 guests at the same time without disturbance 
 of the peace, though eventually they did fall 
 to it tooth and nail in the face of the public. 
 The Countess of Pembroke led the Cuzzoni 
 faction, which seems to have been the first to 
 resort to such disgraceful methods as hissing 
 on the entrance of the rival singer. Where- 
 fore we have preserved for us an epigram to 
 this effect : 
 
 Old poets sing that beasts did dance 
 
 Whenever Orpheus play'd ; 
 So, to Faustina's charming voice, 
 
 Wise Pembroke's asses bray'd. 
 
 Faustina married the composer Hasse, who 
 was ten years her junior; but he was the 
 45
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 most popular composer of his time and di- 
 rector of the opera in Dresden one of the 
 leading establishments of Europe. She got 
 a fifteen years' engagement at the Saxon 
 capital, and then retired. Dr. Burney visited 
 her when she was seventy-two years old and 
 asked her to sing. Ah y non posso / she 
 replied; ho perduto tutte le mie facolta. 
 (" Alas, I cannot. I have lost all my 
 faculties.") 
 
 The contralto voice was held in higher 
 honor in the eighteenth century than now, 
 probably because it was as often found in the 
 throats of unsexed men as the soprano. The 
 greatest of the contralto singers, moreover, 
 was more of a man than Farinelli, notwith- 
 standing that he came near being Prime Min- 
 ister of Spain. Vittoria Tesi-Tramontini had 
 a contralto voice so strong, so deep and so 
 masculine in quality that in 1719, when she 
 was engaged at Dresden, she used to sing 
 bass airs all' ottava. Yet she was so much 
 of a woman that it is suspected that she is 
 the young artist who fell so violently in love 
 with Handel in 1707 that she followed him 
 from theatre to theatre in Italy in order to 
 sing in his operas. At eighty-odd years of 
 age the Tesi was still alive and a resident of 
 Vienna where Dr. Burney visited her. " The 
 46
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 great singer Signora Tesi, who was a cele- 
 brated performer, upwards of fifty years ago, 
 lives here," writes the Doctor in his " Present 
 State": 
 
 She is now more than eighty but has long quitted 
 the stage. She has been very sprightly in her day, 
 and yet is at present in high favour with the 
 Empress-queen. Her story is somewhat singular. 
 She was connected with a certain count, a man of 
 great quality and distinction, whose fondness in- 
 creased by possession to such a degree as to deter- 
 mine him to marry her : a much more uncommon 
 resolution in a person of high birth on the conti- 
 nent than in England. She tried to dissuade 
 him ; enumerated all the bad consequences of 
 such an alliance ; but he would listen to no 
 reasoning, nor take any denial. Finding all re- 
 monstrances vain, she left him one morning, went 
 into a neighbouring street and addressing herself 
 to a poor labouring man, a journeyman baker, 
 said she would give him fifty ducats if he would 
 marry her, not with a view of their cohabiting to- 
 gether but to serve a present purpose. The poor 
 man readily consented to become her nominal 
 husband ; accordingly they were married ; and 
 when the count renewed his solicitations she told 
 him it was now utterly impossible to grant his 
 request, for she was already the wife of another; 
 a sacrifice she had made to his fame and family. 
 47
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 Of the men singers in Gray's list the names 
 that live freshest in musical history are Fa- 
 rinelli, Senesino and Caffarelli. A few of the 
 others are known to special students, but the 
 
 Andante. 
 
 
 tr. tr. tr. tr. tr. tr. tr. tr. tr. 
 
 ^ 
 
 tr. 
 
 etc. 
 
 
 L'aure che as-col - ta. 
 
 A CADENZA BY HASSE, SUNG BY TEST. 
 48
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 memory of the rest has disappeared with the 
 tribe to which they belonged. Of Appianino 
 nothing has been found, in spite of diligent 
 research. There are faint traces of Babbis 
 in the record of singers, one of whom was a 
 tenor in the second half of the eighteenth 
 century, but he cannot be the singer named 
 by Gray, for the copyist wrote the name on 
 the sheet in 1740 or earlier. Giovanni Man- 
 zuoli did not sing in London until 1764, only 
 seven years before Gray died, but the poet 
 heard him in Rome in 1739. He was a 
 soprano, born in 1725, of whom Farinelli 
 thought well enough to engage him for 
 Madrid in ,175 3. When the boy Mozart was 
 in Italy in 1770 and 1771 a warm friendship 
 sprung up between Manzuoli and the young 
 genius and his father. He sang in a sere- 
 nata composed by Mozart (then fifteen years 
 old) in honor of the nuptials of Archduke 
 Ferdinand, at Milan in 1771, and in one of 
 his letters sent to the family at Salzburg 
 Papa Mozart tells how a few weeks later he 
 was engaged at the opera for five hundred 
 ducats. No mention of an honorarium for 
 the serenata having been made in the decree 
 of appointment, Manzuoli demanded five 
 hundred ducats more. The court sent him 
 seven hundred ducats and a gold box, but 
 4 49
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 the singer indignantly returned both and left 
 the city. Angelo Amorevoli was in London 
 during the season of 1741, but most of his 
 career was spent as a member of the opera at 
 Dresden, where he died in 1798. Lorenzino 
 has eluded all research; so has Farfallino ; 
 but as the custom, which still prevails, of 
 Italianizing the names of singers was very 
 common in the eighteenth century, the for- 
 mer may have been a German singer named 
 Lorenz. Carlo Scalzi came to London, where 
 he had sung previously, to join Handel's 
 forces in 1733. He returned with Durastanti, 
 who had been forced off the field by Cuzzoni 
 in 1724. Gioacchino Conti, called Gizziello, 
 was a sopranist, and in the front ranks of his 
 kind. He was born in 1714, and sang in 
 London for Handel in 1736. Burney says 
 he was so modest that when he first heard 
 Farinelli at a rehearsal he burst into tears 
 and fainted away with despondency. One of 
 the prettiest stories of the enthusiasm which 
 his singing created couples his name with 
 CafFarelli's. This great singer, being engaged 
 at Naples, travelled all night to hear the 
 young man at Rome who was threatening to 
 become a dangerous rival. He went into the 
 pit of the theatre, muffled in a cloak, so that 
 his presence might not be known, but after
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 Gizziello's first air he arose and shouted: 
 Bravo! bravissimo Gizziello ! E Caffarelli 
 die ti lo dice! ("'Tis Caffarelli who says 
 so.") Carestini was a member of Handel's 
 company for seven years, from 1733, when 
 he took the place of Senesino, who had gone 
 to the company of the nobility. At the be- 
 ginning of his career his voice was a strong 
 and clear soprano, but it afterward changed 
 into the fullest, finest and deepest counter 
 tenor that had ever been heard in London. 
 He sang in Berlin from 1750 to 1755, and died 
 soon after he retired to Italy, having maintained 
 a reputation of the highest order on the stage 
 for more than thirty years. Angelo Maria 
 Monticelli was in London from 1741 to 1746. 
 Gray notes an air from Pergolese's " Ales- 
 sandro" as sung by him in London in 1742. 
 
 The books are full of stories about the 
 great triumvirate, Farinelli, Senesino and Caf- 
 farelli. The last sang in London in 1738, 
 after the departure of Farinelli, and, though 
 there were judges who thought him the equal 
 of that wonderful man, he was not successful 
 with the English. Caffarelli grew wealthy 
 enough to buy an Italian dukedom for his 
 nephew, and reared for himself a magnificent 
 palace, on the doors of which he put the 
 modest inscription : 
 
 5 1
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 AMPHION THEBAS, EGO DOMUM. 
 
 All readers of musical history know that 
 at the height of his popularity Farinelli was 
 called to Madrid by the Queen of Spain to 
 
 
 Fugge il mi-o sa 
 
 tr - 
 
 s 
 
 tr. 
 
 - - 
 
 tr. tr. 
 
 tr. tr. 
 
 ngue al cuor. 
 
 A CADENZA BY HASSE, SUNG BY 
 
 FARINELLI. 
 
 52
 
 LAST CENTURY SINGERS 
 
 cure Philip V of the dulness which had 
 settled over his spirits. It is the story of 
 King Saul and David over again. Philip 
 loved music, and Farinelli won so great an 
 influence over him the first time that he sang 
 that he persuaded the king to be shaved, 
 look after his raiment and attend to affairs of 
 state. A salary of three thousand pounds 
 sterling was settled upon him, and he became 
 so powerful at court that he was looked upon 
 as Philip's prime minister. Every night for 
 ten years Farinelli sang for the king in his 
 chamber, and sang the same four songs. 
 One of these songs is in the Gray col- 
 lection. It is an aria cantabile from Hasse's 
 " Artaserse " : 
 
 Per quest 'o dolce amplesso, 
 Per qnesto estremo addio 
 Serbamt, o padre mio, 
 L? idolo amato, 
 
 the melody of which begins as follows: 
 
 Adagio. 
 
 V %- -+ & 
 
 etc. 
 
 S3
 
 A POET'S MUSIC 
 
 One of the incidents of Senesino's London 
 career is told in Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
 tagu's sparkling letters. The musico was 
 indiscreet enough to fall in love with the 
 singer Anastasia Robinson, who became Lady 
 Peterborough, and make protestation of his 
 passion. She reported the fact to Lord 
 Peterborough, who caned Senesino behind the 
 scenes till he fell on his knees and begged 
 for mercy. " Poor Senesino," says Lady 
 Mary, " like a vanquished knight, was forced 
 to confess upon his knees that Anastasia was 
 a nonpareil of virtue and beauty. Lord 
 Stanhope (afterward Lord Chesterfield), as 
 dwarf to the said giant, joked on his side 
 and was challenged for his pains.'* 
 
 54
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 IT is known to all readers of the biographies 
 of Haydn that he twice visited London. On 
 his first visit he spent all of the year 1791 
 and a portion of 1792 in the English capital. 
 His second visit was made in 1794 and 1795. 
 The incidents of these visits have been related 
 in detail by C. F. Pohl in his book " Mozart 
 and Haydn in London," published in 1867, 
 an invaluable help for all who wish to study 
 the music and musicians of London at the 
 close of the last century. In the preparation 
 of this book Pohl made use of a diary kept 
 by Haydn on his first visit, the original of 
 which came into the possession of Joseph 
 Weigl, a well-known musician, who was not 
 only the friend but also the godson of Haydn. 
 A similar record of the second visit was kept 
 by Haydn, but this was lost, and Weigl's 
 treasure was only saved from destruction by 
 the carefulness of a kitchenmaid who made a 
 final inquiry as to whether the two little books 
 were of further use as she was about to con- 
 57
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 sign them to the fire. The precious auto- 
 graph afterward came into the possession of 
 Pohl, and is doubtless safely housed in some 
 German library, though of that I cannot 
 speak definitely. 
 
 A copy which the late Alexander W. 
 Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, had made 
 in 1862 is now in my possession. The notes 
 are contained in two small books interleaved 
 with blotting paper and the copyist seems fo 
 have reproduced the style and form of the 
 original autograph in every particular. Many 
 of the entries are not dated and chronological 
 order is not preserved, so that it would, per- 
 haps, be more correct to call the books 
 memorandum books instead of a diary, 
 Haydn's purpose seemingly having been to 
 use them in later years to refresh his memory. 
 Some entries are merely vague, mnemonic 
 hints and one which descants in epigrammatic 
 manner on the comparative morals of the 
 women of France, Holland and England, is 
 unfit for publication. I transcribe, translate 
 and publish the entries not as thinking that 
 they will add to the world's knowledge of 
 last century music, but because the utterances 
 will help to an appreciation of the personal 
 character of the composer of " The Creation."
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 Needle, scissors- and a little knife for Mrs. v. 
 Kees. 
 
 For Biswanger, spectacles for from 50 to 60 
 years. 
 
 For Hamburger, scissors to cut finger nails and 
 a larger pair. 
 
 A woman's watch chain. 
 
 For Mrs. Genzinger, various things. 
 
 Plainly a memorandum of purchases to be 
 made for home friends. 
 
 Head of Juno, white Cornelian 6 guinees. 
 that other white red Cornelian 3^ guinees. 
 6 Schiots (?) 8 " 
 
 12 deto 12 " 
 
 Watch from gold 30 " 
 
 the Chen i " 
 
 This memorandum being in English I re- 
 produce it verb, et lit. 
 
 On November 5 th I was a guest at the dinner 
 of the Lord Mayor. At the first table sat the new 
 Lord Mayor with his wife, then the Lord Canceler 
 (Chancellor) the two Scherifs (sheriffs) Due de 
 Lids (Duke of Leeds) Minister Pitt and the other 
 judges of the first class. At No. 2 I ate with Mr. 
 Silvester, the greatest lawyer and first Alderman of 
 London. There were sixteen tables in this room 
 (which is called Geld [Guild] Hall) besides others 
 59
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 in adjoining rooms; in all nearly 1200 persons 
 dined, all with great pomp. The viands were 
 neat and well-cooked ; wine of many kinds and in 
 superfluity. The company sat down at 6 o'clock 
 and arose at 8. The Lord Mayor was escorted 
 according to rank and with many ceremonies be- 
 fore and after dinner ; his sword and a sort of gold 
 crown were carried . before him and there was 
 music of trumpets and a brass band. After dinner 
 the distinguished company of table No. i retired 
 to a separate room to drink coffee and tea ; we 
 other guests were taken into another room. At 
 9 o'clock No. i goes into a smaller hall where- 
 upon the ball begins ; in this hall there is, a parfe, 
 an elevated place for the high nobless where the 
 Lord Mayor is seated upon a sort of throne with 
 his wife. The dancing then begins according to 
 rank, but only a couple at a time as at court on 
 the King's birthday, January 6 th (June 4). In this 
 small hall there are raised benches where for the 
 greater part the fair sex reigns. Nothing but 
 minuets are danced in this room ; but I could n't 
 stay longer than a quarter of an hour ; first, be- 
 cause of the heat caused by so many people being 
 crowded into so small a room, second, because of 
 the wretched dance music, two violins and one 
 violoncello composing the whole orchestra. The 
 minuets were more Polish than German or Italian. 
 Thence I went into another room which looked 
 more like a subterranean cave. There the dance 
 60
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 was English ; the music was a little better because 
 there was a drum which drowned the blunders of 
 the fiddlers. I went on to the great hall where we 
 had dined ; the music was more sufferable. The 
 dance was English but only on the elevated plat- 
 form where the Lord Mayor and the first four 
 members had dined. The other tables were all 
 newly surrounded by men who, as usual, drank 
 right lustily all night long. The most singular 
 thing of all, however, was the fact that a part of 
 the company danced on without hearing a note of 
 the music, for first at one table, then at another, 
 some were howling songs and some drinking toasts 
 amidst the maddest shrieks of " Hurra ! Hurra ! " 
 and the swinging of glasses. The hall and all the 
 other rooms are illuminated with lamps which give 
 out an unpleasant odor, particularly in the small 
 dance hall. It is remarkable that the Lord Mayor 
 needs no knife at table, as a carver, who stands in 
 front of him in the middle of the table, cuts up 
 everything for him. 
 
 Behind the Lord Mayor there is another man 
 who shouts out all the toasts with might and main ; 
 after each shout follow trumpets and drums. No 
 toast was more applauded than that to the health 
 of Mr. Pitt. Otherwise, however, there is no 
 order. This dinner cost one thousand six hundred 
 pounds ; one half is paid by the Lord Mayor, the 
 other half by the two sheriffs. A Lord Mayor is 
 newly elected every year ; he wears over his cos- 
 61
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 tume a wide black satin mantle, in shape like a 
 domino, richly ornamented in bands of gold lace 
 especially about the arms. Around his neck is a 
 massive gold chain like that of our order of the 
 Toison ; his wife also wears one and she is My- 
 lady, and remains such ever after. The entire 
 ceremony is noteworthy, particularly the procession 
 on the Terns (Thames) from the Guildhall to 
 West-Mynster. 
 
 Mistress Schroeter, No. 6 James-st. Bucking- 
 hamgate. 
 
 Thereby hangs a tale which I reserve for a 
 separate chapter. 
 
 The national debt of England is estimated to be 
 over two hundred millions. Once it was calculated 
 that if it were desired to pay the debt in silver, the 
 wagons that would bring it, close together, would 
 reach from London to York (two hundred miles), 
 each wagon carrying 6,000. 
 
 Mr. Hunter is the greatest and most celebrated 
 Chyrurgus in London. Leicester Square. 
 
 Dr. Hunter became Haydn's friend, and 
 tried hard to persuade the composer to per- 
 mit him to remove a polypus from his nose ; 
 but in vain. 
 
 62
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 N. B. Mr. Silvester, Chamberlain of the 
 Duchess of York. 
 
 Que r a mi tie so it aussi solide. N. B. Lady 
 Blake from Langham. 
 
 On June 3 d 1792 I dined with M. and Madame 
 Mara, Mr. Kely (Michael Kelly), & Madame 
 Storace at the house of her brother Storace. 
 Sapienti pauca. 
 
 On May 30*, 1792, the great Widows' con- 
 cert, which last year was given for the last time in 
 Westminster Abbey with 885 persons, took place 
 in St. Margaret's Church because of the too great 
 expense. There were 800 persons at the rehearsal 
 and 2000 at the concert. 
 
 The King gives 100 guineas each time. 
 
 Pohl gives us the details of this concert as 
 he does of nearly all the concerts or other 
 public functions which Hadyn attended. He 
 puts the date a day later than Haydn, how- 
 ever, and calls the concert, more correctly, 
 the annual benefit of the Royal Society of 
 Musicians. At the command of the King the 
 orchestra and chorus of the Concerts of An- 
 cient Music participated without remunera- 
 tion. Dr. Arnold conducted, Cramer was 
 leader, Dr. Dupuis played the organ, and the 
 principal singers were Madame Mara, Mr. 
 63
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 Kelly and Bartleman. As was the custom 
 "The Messiah" was performed and at the 
 command of the King, given by a gesture, 
 " For unto us a child is born," " Hallelujah," 
 i and " Worthy is the Lamb " were repeated. 
 
 The trial of Hastings (Warren Hastings) last 
 week, May 25, 1792, was the ninety-second meet- 
 ing in Westminster Hall. Hasting (sic) has in- 
 dividually three advocates. Each of these gets 
 ten guineas on the day of meeting. The case 
 had its beginning four years ago. It is said that 
 Hastings is worth a million pounds sterling. 
 
 On June 15 I went from Windsor to Slough to 
 Dr. Herschel, where I saw the great telescope. It 
 is 40 feet long and 5 feet in diameter. The 
 machinery is vast, but so ingenious that a single 
 man can put it in motion with ease. There are 
 also two smaller telescopes, of which one is 22 
 feet long and magnifies six thousand times. The 
 King had two made for himself, of which each 
 measures 12 Schuh. He gave him one thou- 
 sand guineas for them. In his younger days Dr. 
 Herschel was in the Prussian service as an oboe 
 player. In the seven-years' war he deserted with 
 his brother and came to England. For many 
 years he supported himself with music, became 
 organist at Bath, turned, however, to astronomy. 
 After providing himself with the necessary instru- 
 64
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 ments he left Bath, rented a room not fer from 
 Windsor, and studied day and night. His land- 
 lady was a widow. She fell in love with him, 
 married him, and gave him a dowry of 100,000^. 
 Besides this he has 500^ for life, and his wife, 
 who is forty- five years old, presented him with a 
 son this year, 1792. Ten years ago he had his 
 sister come ; she is of the greatest service to him 
 in his observations. Frequently he sits from five 
 to six hours under the open sky in the severest 
 cold. 
 
 To-day, January 14, 1792, the life of Madam 
 Bilingthon (Billington) was published in print. It 
 is a shameless exposure. The publisher is said to 
 have gotten possession of her letters and to have 
 offered to give them back to her for 10 guineas; 
 otherwise he would print them. She, however, 
 did not want to spend the 10 guineas, and de- 
 manded the letters through the courts. Her ap- 
 plication was rejected, and she took an appeal, 
 but in vain. Her opponent, nevertheless, offered 
 her 500^. The book appeared to-day, but 
 there was not another copy to be had till 3 o'clock. 
 It is said that her character is very faulty, but, 
 nevertheless, she is a great genius, and all the 
 women hate her because she is so beautiful. 
 N. B. She if said to have written all these 
 shameful letters, which contain accounts of her 
 amours, to her mother. She is said to be an 
 5 65
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 illegitimate child, and it is now believed that her 
 reputed father is concerned in the affair. Such 
 stories are common in London; the husband 
 provides opportunities for his wife in order to 
 profit by it and relieve his victim of ^1,000 or 
 more. 
 
 The scandalous book referred to was the 
 " Memoirs of Mrs. Billington. Printed for 
 James Ridgway, London, York street, St. 
 James's Sq., 1792." It would be quite as idle 
 to justify this book as to defend the notorious 
 character of Mrs. Billington. It is a sufficient 
 commentary on the times that such a book 
 could appear and such a career as that of 
 Mrs. Billington be led without invoking effec- 
 tive popular condemnation; but it must be 
 remembered that Mrs. Billington was far and 
 away the greatest singer of native birth (her 
 parents were German) who had been heard and 
 that she was as much admired for her artistic 
 skill as for her physical beauty. Michael 
 Kelly wrote of her in his Memoirs: "I 
 thought her an angel in beauty and the Saint 
 Cecilia of song." Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 painted a portrait of her in the character of 
 Saint Cecilia, a fact which gave Signer Car- 
 pani one of the prettiest anecdotes in his " Le 
 Haydine," a book that the scoundrel Beyle, 
 66
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 known in catalogues as Bombet, shamelessly 
 plagiarized in his " Lettres ecrites de Vienne 
 sur le celebre J. Haydn." Here it is : 
 
 He often saw, in London, the celebrated Mrs. 
 Billington, whom he enthusiastically admired. He 
 found her one day sitting to Reynolds, the only 
 English painter who has succeeded in portraits. 
 He had just taken that of Mrs. Billington in the 
 character of St. Cecilia listening to the celestial 
 music, as she is usually drawn. Mrs. Billington 
 showed the picture to Haydn. " It is like," said 
 he, "but there is a strange mistake." "What is 
 that ? " asked Reynolds, hastily. " You have painted 
 her listening to the angels ; you ought to have repre- 
 sented the angels listening to her." Mrs. Billing- 
 ton sprung up, and threw her arms around his neck. 
 It was for her that he composed his "Ariadne 
 abbandonata," which rivals that of Benda. 
 
 A neat story. Pity that Pohl tries to spoil 
 it by pointing out that Sir Joshua painted 
 Mrs. Billington's portrait in 1790, a year 
 before Haydn came to London. The paint- 
 ing was bought at auction by an American 
 in 1845 for five hundred and five guineas. 
 
 On the 14 th of June I went to Windsor and 
 thence 8 miles to Ascot Heath to see the races. 
 The races are run on a large field, especially pre- 
 67
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 pared for them, in which there is a circular (track) 
 2 English miles long and 6 fathoms (Klafter) wide 
 all very smooth and even. The whole field has a 
 gentle ascent. At the summit the circle becomes 
 a straight line of 2 thousand paces, and on this 
 line there are booths, amphitheatres, of various 
 sizes capable of holding 2 to 3 hundred persons. 
 The others are smaller. In the middle is one for 
 the Prince Wallis (sic) and other dignitaries. 
 The places in the booths cost from i to 42 shill- 
 ings per person. Opposite the booth of the 
 Prince Wallis there is a high stage, with a bell over 
 it, and on the stage stand a number of appointed 
 and elected sworn persons who give the first signal 
 with the bell for the performers to range up in 
 front of the stage. When all is ready the bell is 
 rung a second time and at the first stroke they 
 ride off and whoever returns first to the stage after 
 traversing the circle of two miles receives the 
 prize. In the first Heath (heat) there were three 
 riders who were compelled to go around the circle 
 twice without stopping. They did it in 5 minutes. 
 No stranger will believe it unless he is convinced. 
 The second time there were seven and when they 
 reached the middle of the circle the seven were in 
 line, but when they approached some fell back, 
 but never more than about 10 paces and when 
 one thinks that one rider, who is about to reach 
 the goal, will be the first in which moment large 
 wagers are laid on him, another rushes past him 
 68
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 with inconceivable Force and reaches the winning 
 place. The rider is very lightly clad in silk, each 
 of a different color, so as to make it easier to 
 recognize them, without boots a little cascet (sic) 
 on his head, all lean as a greyhound and their 
 horses. Each is weighed and a certain weight is 
 allowed him adjusted a proportione, and if the 
 rider is too light he must put on heavier clothes, 
 or lead is hung on him. The horses are of the 
 finest breeds, light, with very thin feet, the hair of 
 the neck tied into braids, the hoofs very neat. As 
 soon as they hear the sound of the bell they dash 
 off with the greatest Force. Every leap of the 
 horses is 22 feet long. These horses are very dear. 
 Prince Wallis a few years ago paid 8 thousand 
 pounds for one and sold it again for 6 thousand 
 pounds. But the first time he won with it 50,000 
 pounds. Amongst others a single large booth has 
 been erected where the Englishmen make their 
 bets. The King has his own booth at one side. 
 I saw 8 Heats the first day, and in spite of a heavy 
 rain 2000 vehicles, all full of people and 3 times 
 as many people were present on foot. Besides 
 this there are all kinds of puppet-plays Ciarlatanz 
 (sic) and conjurors and buffoons, during the 
 races and in a multitude of tents food, all kinds 
 of wine and beer. Also a large number of lo- 
 players (in English it is written Eo) which game 
 is prohibited in London. The races take place 
 five days in succession. I was present on the 
 69
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 second day. The sport began at 2 o'clock and 
 lasted till 5, the third day till half- past six though 
 there were but 3 Heaths (sic) for the reason that 
 twice three ran and each winning once a fourth 
 trial had to be made to decide. 
 
 If anybody steals 2 he is hanged ; but if I trust 
 anybody with ^2000 and he carries it off with 
 him to the devil, he is acquitted. 
 
 Murder and forgery can not be pardoned. Last 
 year a Pope (clergyman) was hanged for the 
 latter notwithstanding the King himself did all 
 he could for him. 
 
 The city of London consumes annually 800,000 
 cartloads of coal. Each cart holds thirteen bags, 
 each bag two Mctzen. Most of the coal comes 
 from Newcastle. Often 200 vessels laden with 
 coal arrive at the same time. A cartload costs 
 2 V^,~ I Q J 795 (?) tne price of a cartload 
 was i. 
 
 Thirty-eight thousand houses have been built 
 within the last thirty years. 
 
 If a woman murders her husband she is burned 
 alive ; a husband, on the contrary, is hanged. 
 
 The punishment of a murderer is aggravated 
 by ordering his " anatomization " in the death 
 sentence. 
 
 On January 14, 1792, the Pantheon Theatre 
 burned down two hours after midnight. 
 70
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 On May 21 Giardini's concert took place in 
 Renalag (Ranelagh Gardens). He played like 
 a pig. 
 
 Giardini was a popular violinist. Haydn, 
 always amiable, tried to meet him in a friendly 
 spirit, but Giardini said : " I don't want to 
 see the German dog." Evidently Haydn 
 got even with him in this note. 
 
 On June i2 th I attended Mara's benefice in the 
 great Haymarket Theatre. " Dido " with music 
 by Sarti was played. N. B. Only a terzetto, a 
 few recitatives and a little aria were composed by 
 Sarti. The other pieces were by 6 other and dif- 
 ferent masters. The I"" 1 Dona sang an old aria 
 by Sacchini : Son Regina etc. 
 
 An Archbishop of London, having asked Parlia- 
 ment to silence a preacher of the Moravian religion 
 who preached in public, the Vice-President an- 
 swered that could easily be done ; only make him 
 a Bishop, and he would keep silent all his life. 
 
 In Oxford-Street I saw a copper-plate of St. 
 Peter clad as a priest with outstretched arms. On 
 the right hand shines the glory of heaven ; on the 
 left you see the devil whispering in his ear, and on 
 his head he wore a wind-mill. 
 
 On the I st of June, 1792 was Mara's benefice.
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 Two of my symphonies were played and I accom- 
 panied on the pianoforte alone a very difficult 
 English aria by Purcell. The Compagnie was very 
 small. 
 
 In the month of June, 1792, a chicken 7 shil- 
 lings, an Indian 9 shillings, a dozen larks i Cor on. 
 N. B. If plucked a duck 5 shillings. 
 
 On the 3 d of June, being the eve of the King's 
 birthday, all the bells in London are rung from 
 8 o'clock in the morning till 9, and so also in 
 honor of the Queen. 
 
 February 8 th 1792 the first Ancient Concert 
 took place. 
 
 On the 13* of February the Professional Con- 
 certs began. 
 
 The 1 7 th Salomon's Concert. 
 
 ANECTOD. (sic) At a grand concert as the 
 director was about to begin the first number the 
 kettledrummer called loudly to him, asking him to 
 wait a moment, because his two drums were not 
 in tune. The leader could not and would not 
 wait any longer, and told the drummer to transpose 
 for the present. 
 
 While Mr. Fox was seeking votes to elect him 
 to Parliament a citizen told him that instead of 
 72
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 a vote he would give him a rope. Fox replied 
 that he would not rob him of an heirloom. 
 
 Duchess of Devonchire (Devonshire), his pro- 
 tector. Anecdote about the foot under her petti- 
 coat. 
 
 N. B. from Wurmland : 
 
 Quoties cum stercore certo vico vel vincor semper 
 ego maculor. 
 
 Ex nihilo nihil fit, 
 
 Domine, praxis est multiplex, qui n' intelligit est 
 simplex. 
 
 Stella a stella differt claritate, non eadem lux 
 omnibus. 
 
 Lord, all is not light that lightens ! 
 
 Interesse toto mundo 
 Sin fronte colitur 
 
 Sine satis, sine fundo 
 Interque quaeritur. 
 
 Mel in core, verba lactis 
 
 Fel in corde,fraus infactis. 
 Superernumerarius the fifth wheel of a wagon. 
 Mens, ratio, et consilium in senibus est. 
 Si nisi non esset, perfectus quilibet esset raro 
 sunt visi qui caruere nisi. 
 
 * 
 
 Eight days before Pentecost I heard 4,000 
 charity children sing the following song in St. 
 Paul's Church. One performer beat time to it. 
 73
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 No music has ever moved me so much in my life 
 as this devotional and innocent piece : 
 
 p Adagio. 
 
 
 \ Jf V 8 yti- 
 
 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 hA - a -e-^ 
 
 s\ 
 
 
 
 
 ~^^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 N. B. All the children are newly clad, and 
 walk in in procession. The organist played the 
 melody neatly and simply, and then all began to 
 sing at once. 
 
 Haydn's experience at this meeting of the 
 charity children has been the subject of much 
 comment in England. His sensations at 
 hearing the music of the children and other 
 choristers were duplicated half a century later 
 in Berlioz, who wrote a description of the 
 meeting of 1 85 1 for the " Journal des Debats," 
 and told how he put on a surplice, took 
 a place among the bass singers, and was so 
 moved by the stupendous sonority of the 
 choir that, " like Agamemnon with his toga," 
 74
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 he hid his face behind his music-book. Du- 
 prez, the tenor, who was also present, grew 
 terribly excited. Berlioz says : " I never saw 
 Duprez in such a state. He stammered, 
 wept and raved." J. B. Cramer was also 
 present, and, rushing up to Berlioz as he was 
 leaving the cathedral, shouted : Cosa stu- 
 pcnda! Stupenda ! La gloria dell' Inghil- 
 terra. (" Stupendous ! Stupendous ! The 
 glory of England ! ") At the meeting which 
 Haydn attended the children also sang the 
 " Old Hundredth " Psalm. The hymn of 
 which he notes the melody is Jones's Chant. 
 John Jones was organist of St. Paul's at the 
 time. The chant has since been supplanted. 
 It is singular that Haydn wrote down the 
 melody in the key of E, though it was sung 
 in D. 
 
 In 
 London. 
 
 the year 1791 22 thousand persons died in\ 
 
 M-* ' 
 
 Lokhart (Lockhart) blind organist. 
 
 Io vi mando questo foglio 
 Dalle lagrime rigato, 
 Sotto scritto dal cordoglio 
 Dai peusieri sigillato 
 Testimento del mio amore 
 (Io) vi mando questo core. 
 75
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 February 13 th 1792, the first Professional Con- 
 cert took place. 
 
 On the 17 th Salomon's Concert. 
 
 On the evening of March 2O th , 1792, there was 
 a thunderstorm. An unusual thing in London. 
 
 An apprentice generally works all the year round 
 from 6 o'clock in the morning till 6 in the even- 
 ing, and in this time has not more than an hour 
 and a half at his own disposition. He gets a 
 guinea a week, but must find himself. Many are 
 paid by the piece, but every quarter of an hour of 
 absence is docked. Blacksmiths' apprentices are 
 obliged to work an hour a day longer. 
 
 To-day, June 4, 1792, I was in Vauxhall where 
 the birthday of the King was celebrated. Over 
 30,000 lamps were burning, but very few people 
 were present, owing to the cold. The place and 
 its diversions have no equal in the world. There 
 are 155 dining booths scattered about, all very 
 neat, and each comfortably seating six persons. 
 There are very large alleys of trees, the branches 
 meeting overhead in a splendid roof of foliage. 
 Coffee and milk cost nothing. You pay half a 
 crown for admission. The music is fairly good. 
 A stone statue of Handel is to be seen. On the 
 2 d inst. there was a masked ball ; the manage- 
 ment made 3,000 guineas in a single night. 
 76
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 Singers in London. 
 
 Compositores. 
 
 Mara 
 
 Bacchierotti 
 
 Baumgarten 
 
 Storace 
 
 Kelly 
 
 dementi 
 
 Billingthon 
 
 Davide 
 
 Dussok. Dussek 
 
 Cassentini 
 
 Albertarelli 
 
 Girowetz 
 
 Lops N. B. 
 
 Dorelli 
 
 Choris 
 
 Negri 
 
 Lazarini, (in the Pan- 
 
 Burny Dr. 
 
 Celestini 
 
 theon) 
 
 Hiilmandel 
 
 Choris 
 
 Mazzanti 
 
 Graff 
 
 Benda 
 
 Morelli 
 
 Dittenhoffer 
 
 Mrs. Barthelemon and 
 
 Calcagni 
 
 Storace 
 
 the daughter 
 
 Croutsch 
 
 Arnold 
 
 Schinotti 
 
 Harrison 
 
 Barthelemon 
 
 Maffei [bella, ma poco 
 
 Simoni 
 
 Schield * 
 
 musica] 
 
 Miss Pool 
 
 Carter * 
 
 Capelletti 
 
 Miss Barck 
 
 Cramer 
 
 Davis (detta Ingle- 
 
 Mrs. Bland 
 
 Tomich 
 
 sina, la quale Re- 
 
 
 Frike, No. 
 
 citava a Napoli 
 
 
 Blandford-Street 
 
 quando I'aveva 13 
 
 
 Manchester 
 
 anni ella t adesso 
 
 
 Square 
 
 vecchietta ma ha 
 
 
 
 una buona scola). 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 Mad. Seconda passabile 
 Badini, poet. 
 
 e la Trobe dedicated his piano- 
 forte sonatas to me. 
 Mazini at the pianoforte in the 
 g Panetheon. 
 Friderici 
 Burney Titschfield Street 
 
 Pianists. 
 
 Violinists. Violoncellists. 
 
 dementi 
 
 Salomon Grosdill 
 
 Duschek 
 
 Cramer Menel 
 
 Girowetz 
 Diettenhofer 
 Burney 
 Mrs. Burney 
 
 Clement, petit Mara 
 Barthelemon Sperati 
 Schield Scramb 
 Hindmarsh, Ingl. 
 
 
 77 
 
 Doctors. 
 
 Burney 
 
 Hess, in Oxford. 
 Arnold 
 
 Dupuis, a great 
 organist.
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 Pianists. Violinists. 
 
 Hiillmandl 
 
 Graff, also Scheener (Germ.) 
 
 flautist 
 Miss Barthele- Raimondi (Ital.) 
 
 mon 
 
 Cramer Serra of Mar- 
 
 Miss Jansa. quis Durazzo 
 
 Humel, of Borghi 
 
 Vienna Giornowichi 
 
 Lenz, still very Felix, Janievicz 
 
 young. Jarowez 
 
 Giardini 
 
 Two pages of one of the note books are 
 filled with this list of singers, instrumentalists 
 and composers in London. The added com- 
 ments are as follows : " Maflfei : Pretty, but 
 a poor musician." " Davis, called the English 
 woman, sang at Naples when she was thirteen 
 years old. She is now old but she has a good 
 school." " Madame Seconda, tolerable." 
 Other remarks have been given in trans- 
 lation. 
 
 The " little " Clement was a boy violinist 
 who grew into the famous artist for whom 
 Beethoven wrote his violin concerto, who 
 played it at sight at the rehearsal and at the 
 revision of " Fidelio " at Prince Lichnowsky's 
 house played the whole first violin part from 
 memory. 
 
 Krumpholz, harpist. Mr. Blumb, imitated a 
 78
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 parrot and accompanied himself admirably on the 
 pianoforte. 
 
 Mrs. de la Valle, a pupil of Krumpholz, plays 
 not quite so well as Madame Krumpholz. Plays 
 the pianoforte. Her sister-in-law plays the violin 
 very nicely. 
 
 Mr. Antis, Bishop and a little compositor 
 Nicolai, Royal Chamberlain and compositor. 
 Hartman, flute player, had to leave England 
 
 because of poverty, lost his wife by death, finally 
 
 turned out a rascal. 
 
 On the 3i st of December I was with Pleyl in 
 the Pantheon. They played " La Pastorella 
 Nobile " by Guglielmi. Madame Casentini played 
 the first role and Lazarini, primo huomo (sic). 
 The lean Calvesi fultima parte. The opera did 
 not please ; neither did the ballet despite the great 
 Hillisbury. 
 
 Ambaschiador (Ambassador) the Count de 
 Stadion. 
 
 Prince de Castelcicala, of Naples, the Marquis 
 del Campo, of Spain. 
 
 My friend, you think I love you ; in truth, you 
 are not mistaken. 
 
 In solitude, too, there are divinely lovely duties, 
 and to perform them in quiet is more than wealth. 
 79
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 Begehre nicht ein Gliick zu gross 
 Und nicht ein Weib zu schonj 
 
 Der Himmel mochte dir dies Loos 
 Im Zorne zugestehn. 
 
 (Do not desire too great happiness or a too 
 lovely wife. Heaven might, in anger, grant your 
 wish !) 
 
 Wer mit Vernuft betrachf den Wechsel aller Sachen, 
 Denkan kein Gliick nicht Fr oh, kein Ungliick traurigmachen. 
 
 (Who wisely observes the whirligig of things 
 cannot be made happy by good fortune or un- 
 happy by bad.) 
 
 Infra in gaudium habeo, et non habeor. Re- 
 surgam. In Coeloquies. 
 
 Chi ben commincia ha la meta delf opera, ne si 
 commincia ben se in dal cielo. 
 
 (An Italian form of " Well begun is half done.") 
 
 Gott im Herz, ein gut Weibchen im Arm, 
 Jenes macht selig, dieses ganz warm. 
 
 (God in one's heart, a good little wife in one's 
 arm the first brings salvation, the second 
 warmth.) 
 
 With the warmth of genuine friendship I com- 
 mend myself to you. This as a souvenir of 
 
 XV 
 
 5 
 
 <} 
 
 
 r * 
 
 
 ~ 
 
 ft . 
 
 i irn 
 
 
 4 i 
 
 
 * 
 
 c 
 
 J 'v 
 
 1 
 
 L\l/ 
 
 
 _ri 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 Ken - ne Gott, 
 80 
 
 i 
 
 die welt 
 
 und
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 IP 
 
 =l=p ' 
 
 
 + 
 
 ESJE: 
 
 dich, lieb - ster Freund, und denk - an 
 
 /5 7 ^ i 
 
 
 * ] 
 
 
 
 F_ 
 
 EQ * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 mich, und denk - an mich, Ken - ne 
 
 f- -f- - D. C. 
 
 
 
 Gott, die welt und dich, lieb - ster Freund. 
 
 The music is a canon in the octave, the 
 second voice entering on the third beat of 
 the third measure. 
 
 In 31 years 38,000 houses have been built in\ 
 London. 
 
 Painters. Messrs. Ott and Guttenbrun. 
 
 On November 5 the boys celebrated the day on 
 which the Guys set fire to the town. 
 
 Haydn has seen a celebration of Guy 
 Favvkes' Day and is shaky in his history. 
 
 Kozwarra. 
 
 Beginning of May, 1792, Lord Barryrnore gave \ 
 a ball that cost 5,000 guineas. He paid 1,000 
 6 81
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 guineas for 1,000 peaches; 2,000 baskets of 
 gooseberries cost 5 shillings apiece. 
 
 Prince of Wales's punch. One bottle cham- 
 pagne, one bottle Burgundy, one bottle rum, ten 
 lemons, two oranges, pound and a half of sugar. 
 
 On the 23 d of June, 1792, the Duchess of York 
 gave a dinner under a tent in her garden for 180 
 persons. I saw it. 
 
 La risposta del S. Marchesi sopra una lettera 
 del S. Gallini. NelF anno 1791 ho ricevuto la 
 sua gentilissima lettera. buona Notte. 
 
 Marchesi. 
 
 When a Quaker goes to Court he pays the door- 
 keeper to take his hat off for him ; for a Quaker 
 never doffs his hat to anybody. When the King's 
 tax is to be paid an official enters his house and 
 in his presence robs him of as much property as 
 represents the tax in value. As the disguised 
 thief is about to go out of the door with the goods 
 the Quaker calls him back and asks : " How 
 much money do you want for the stolen goods ? " 
 The official demands the amount of the tax, and 
 in this way the Quaker pays the King's tax. 
 
 Anno 1791 the last great concert, with 885 
 persons, was held in Westminster. Anno 1792 it 
 was transferred to St. Margaret's Chapel, with 200 
 performers. This evoked criticism. 
 82
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 Haydn refers here to the Handel Com- \ 
 memoration. The first of these gigantic 
 affairs, as they were then considered, took/ 
 place in Westminster Abbey in 1784. Haydn 
 attended that of 1791, and was tremendously 
 impressed by the grandeur of the perfor- 
 mance. He had a good place near the King's 
 box, and when the " Hallelujah Chorus" was 
 sung he wept like a child and exclaimed, " He 
 is the master of us all ! " 
 
 On the 4 th of August I went into the country 
 twelve miles from London to visit the banker, 
 Mr. Brassey, and remained five weeks. I was 
 very well entertained. N. B. Mr. Brassey once 
 cursed because he enjoyed too much happiness in 
 this world. 
 
 In order to preserve milk for a long time take 
 a bottle full of milk and place it in a vessel of 
 earthenware or copper containing sufficient water 
 to cover the bottle up to a little above the middle ; 
 then place it over a fire and let it boil half an 
 hour. Take the bottle out and seal it so that no 
 air may enter it. In this manner milk can be kept 
 for many months. N. B. The bottle must be 
 securely corked before it is put in the water. 
 This was told me by a sea captain. 
 
 On March 26, at a concert by Mr. Barthelemon, 
 an English Pop was present who fell into the 
 83
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 profoundest melancholy on hearing the Andante : 
 
 ^N 
 
 etc. 
 
 because he had dreamed the night before that 
 this Andante was a premonition of his death. He 
 left the company at once and took to his bed. 
 To-day, on April 25, I learned from Mr. Bar- 
 thelemon that this evangelical priest had died. 
 
 The Andante is from the Symphony in D 
 major, which is numbered 23 in the list of 
 Breitkopf and Hartel. Pop is an Austrian 
 colloquialism for priest. Pop, Pabst, Pfaffe. 
 The concert was not Barthelemon's, but Miss 
 Corn's, says Pohl. 
 
 On the 24 th of 9 ber (November) I was invited 
 by the Prince of Wales to visit his brother, the 
 Duke of York, at Eatland (Oatlands). I remained 
 two days and enjoyed many marks of graciousness 
 and honor from the Prince of Wales as well as the 
 Duchess, who is a daughter of the King of Prussia. 
 The little castle, eighteen miles from London, lies 
 upon an upland and commands a glorious view. 
 Besides many beauties there is a remarkable grotto 
 which cost ^2 5, ooo sterling. It took eleven years 
 to build it. It is not very large and contains many 
 diversions, and has flowing water from different 
 84
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 directions, a beautiful English garden, many en- 
 trances and exits, besides a neat bath. The Duke 
 bought the property for ,47,000 sterling. On 
 the third day the Duke had me taken twelve miles 
 toward town with his own horses. The Prince 
 of Wales asked for my portrait. For two days we 
 made music for four hours each evening, i. e., 
 from 10 o'clock till two hours after midnight. 
 Then we had supper, and at 3 o'clock we went to 
 bed. 
 
 On the 30* I was three days in the country a 
 hundred miles from London, with Sir Patric Blak 
 (Patrick Blake). In going I passed the town of 
 Cambridge, inspected all the universities, which 
 are built conveniently in a row but separately. 
 Each university has back of it a very roomy and 
 beautiful garden, besides stone bridges, in order to 
 afford passage over the stream which winds past. 
 The King's Chapel is famous for its carvings. It 
 is all of stone, but so delicate that nothing more 
 beautiful could have been made of wood. It has 
 endured already four hundred years, and every- 
 body judges its age at about ten years, because of 
 the firmness and peculiar whiteness of the stone. 
 The students bear themselves like those at Oxford, 
 but it is said they have better instructors. There 
 are in all eight hundred students. 
 
 When two persons of opposite sexes love each 
 other and receive permission to many from the
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 secular courts, the Pop is obliged to marry 
 them as soon as they appear in church, even 
 though they have loved against the wishes of their 
 parents. If he does not the bridegroom and bride 
 have the right as soon as he is out of the church 
 to tear his robes off his body, and then the Pop 
 is degraded and forever disqualified. 
 
 The obligation for 1000 florins deposited with 
 Prince Esterhazi bears date July 10, 1791. 
 
 Covent garden is the National Theatre. On the 
 io th of December I attended the opera called 
 " The Woodman." It was on the day that the life 
 story of Madam Bilington, good and bad, had 
 been announced. Such impertinent enterprises 
 are generally undertaken for selfish interests. She 
 sang timidly this evening but very well. The first 
 tenor has a good voice and a fairly good style, but 
 he uses the falsetto to excess. He sang a trill on 
 high C and ran up to G. The second tenor tried 
 to imitate him but could not make the change 
 from the natural voice to the falsetto ; besides he 
 is very unmusical. He creates a new tempo, now 
 ^ then 2 /4 and cuts his phrases wherever he 
 pleases. But the orchestra is used to him. The 
 leader is Mr. Baumgartner, a German, who, how- 
 ever, has almost forgotten his mother-tongue. 
 The theatre is very dark and dirty, about as large 
 as the Vienna Court Theatre. The common herd 
 in the galleries, as is the case in all theatres, is 
 86
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 very impertinent. It gives the pitch in a boister- 
 ous manner and the performers are obliged to 
 repeat according to its noisy wishes. The parterre 
 and all the boxes frequently have to applaud a 
 great deal to secure a repetition, but they suc- 
 ceeded this evening with the duet in the third act 
 which is very beautiful. The controversy lasted 
 nearly a quarter of an hour before parterre and 
 boxes triumphed and the duo was repeated. The 
 two performers stood in a fright on the stage, now 
 retiring then again coming to the front. The 
 orchestra is sleepy. 
 
 Mozard (sic) died the 5 th day of December, 
 1791. 
 
 Mozart had been among the last to say 
 farewell to Haydn when he left Vienna in 
 company with Salomon, who had engaged 
 him for the London season, on December 15, 
 1790. Salomon had planned a visit also for 
 Mozart, who had not been to London since 
 he had astounded the English aristocracy 
 with his prodigious talents in 1764-6$. But 
 when the two friends shook hands at parting 
 Mozart said : " This is probably our last fare- 
 well in this life." And his premonition was 
 fulfilled. Haydn, who was born twenty-four 
 years earlier than Mozart, died eighteen years 
 later. 
 
 87
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 Pleyl came to London on the 23 d of December. 
 On the 24 th I dined with him. 
 
 Ignaz Pleyel, a pupil of Haydn, had been 
 brought to London by the managers of the 
 so-called Professional Concerts, which were 
 given in opposition to those of Salomon for 
 which Haydn had come. The rivalry between 
 the concert organizations was very bitter and 
 a newspaper article which told that negotia- 
 tions had been begun with Pleyel, said that 
 Haydn was too old, weak and exhausted to 
 produce new music; wherefore he only re- 
 peated himself in his compositions. The 
 friendship of master and pupil was undisturbed 
 by the unseemly wrangle. 
 
 Haymarket Theatre. It will hold 4,000 per- 
 sons; the pit, or parterre, alone holds 1,200, and 
 ten persons can sit comfortably in each box. The 
 " Amphy Theater " is round, four stories high and 
 to light it a beautiful large chandelier, with seventy 
 lights hangs suspended from the ceiling in the 
 middle. It illuminates the entire house. But 
 there are a parte small lusters in the first and 
 second stories, which are fastened to the boxes. 
 
 I had to pay one and a half guineas for the 
 bell peals at Oxforth when I received the doctor's 
 degree, and half a guinea for the robe. The 
 journey cost six guineas. 
 88
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 It was on July 8, 1791, that Haydn re- 
 ceived the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris 
 causa, from Oxford University. His thesis 
 was the so-called Oxford symphony, and after 
 the ceremony he sent a canon cancrizans a 
 tre, set to the words, " Thy Voice, O Har- / 
 mony, is divine," to the University. 
 
 The city of London has 4,000 carts for cleaning ] 
 the streets, of which 2,000 work every day. 
 
 On the i7 th of March 1792, I was bled in 
 London. 
 
 In the month of August I journeyed at noon 
 in an East India merchantman with six cannon. 
 I was gloriously entertained. In this month, too, 
 I went with Mr. Fraser on the Thames from 
 Westminster Bridge to Richmond, where we had 
 dinner on an island. We were twenty-four per- 
 sons and a band of music. In England a large 
 war vessel is reckoned according to the number of 
 its cannons. Each cannon is estimated at 1,000 
 pounds. 
 
 Mme. Mara was hissed (ausgeklatscht) at Oxford \ 
 because she did not rise from her seat when the I 
 Hallelujah chorus was sung. 
 
 On the 14 th of December I dined for the first 
 time at the house of Mr. Shaw. He received me 
 below stairs at the door, and conducted me thence
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 to his wife, who was surrounded by her two 
 daughters and other ladies. While I was bowing 
 all around I suddenly perceived that the lady of 
 the house, besides her daughters and the other 
 ladies, wore on their headdresses a pearl-colored 
 band, of three-fingers' breadth, embroidered in 
 gold with the name of Haydn, and Mr. Shaw wore 
 the name on the two ends of his collar in the 
 finest steel beads. The coat was of the finest 
 cloth, smooth, and bore beautiful steel buttons. 
 The mistress is the most beautiful woman I ever 
 saw. N. B. Her husband wanted me to give 
 him a souvenir, and I gave him a tobacco-box 
 which I had just bought for a guinea. He gave 
 me his in exchange. A few days afterward I 
 visited him and found that he had had a case of 
 silver put over the box I had given him, on the 
 cover of which was engraved Apollo's harp, and 
 round it the words Ex dono celeberrimi Josephi 
 Haydn. N. B. The mistress gave me a stick- 
 pin as a souvenir. 
 
 At the first concert the Adagio of the symphony 
 in D was repeated. 
 
 At the second concert the chorus and the above 
 symphony were repeated; also the first Allegro 
 and the Adagio. 
 
 In the third concert the new symphony in B-flat 
 was played and the first and last Allegros were 
 " encort." 
 
 90
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 Haydn's first three concerts were given on 
 March nth, i8th and 25th, 1791. The new 
 symphonies which Haydn brought forward 
 in agreement with his contract with Salomon, 
 were Nos. 2 and 4 of the so-called Salomon 
 set. Haydn conducted seated at the harpsi- 
 chord, as was the custom at the time. Salo- 
 mon led the orchestra which numbered about 
 forty men, twelve to sixteen being violinists. 
 
 Lord Clermont (Claremont) once gave a large 
 supper, and when the health of the King was 
 drunk he ordered the brass band to play the 
 familiar song " God save the King " in the street 
 in the midst of a terrible snowstorm. This hap- 
 pened on February 19, 1792, so madly do they 
 carry on in England. 
 
 The chapel at Windsor is a very old but splendid 
 building. The high altar cost 50,000 florins. It 
 is the ascension of Christ in stained glass. This 
 year, 1792, a Christ appearing to the Shepherds 
 was made for the side altar at the right, and this 
 small one is valued higher than the large one. 
 The view from the terrace is divine. 
 
 Hardy, Otto, Guttenbrun, Hoppner, Dassie. 
 The first four gentlemen painted my portrait. 
 Dassie in wax. 
 
 The Theatre of Varieties Amusantes in Saville 
 Row. On the 13 th of November I was invited 
 9 1
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 there. It is a marionet play. The figures were 
 well directed, the singers bad, but the orchestra 
 pretty good. 
 
 Before her departure for Italy Mara sang four 
 times at the Haymarket Theatre in Dr. Arne's 
 opera " Artaserses." She won great applause, 
 and was paid 100^ for each performance. 
 
 The larger traveller's lead pencil 
 cost 1^2 guineas. 
 
 shilling. penz. 
 
 The small 5 6 
 
 The pen 6 6 
 
 shilling penc. 
 
 Stel buttons 2 2 o 
 a steel girdle 140 
 
 a steel chain i n 6 
 
 2 secisars (scissors) 
 
 3 sh. each 6 
 
 3 at 6 sh. each 18 o 
 i at 76 
 i at i .9 o 
 i Penn Knifes i o 
 
 This memorandum, obviously a list of trin- 
 kets designed as gifts for his friends at home, 
 is in English, barring the first two items. 
 
 On November 9 th , 1791 sent to Mr. v. Kees, 
 two symphonies per postum for which I paid 
 92
 
 HIS NOTE BOOK 
 
 i guinea n^ shillings, and 3 shillings for 2 
 letters and, for copying, i guinea. 
 
 Noyan, a drink composed of nutmeg, rum and 
 sugar. It comes from Martinique, West Indies, 
 which belongs to France. 
 
 Oranges come from Portugal in the middle of 
 November, but they are pale and not so good as 
 they are later. 
 
 On the 5 th of December there was a fog so 
 thick that one might have spread it on bread. In 
 order to write I had to light a candle as early as 
 1 1 o'clock. 
 
 English Fanaticism. Miss Dora Jordan, a 
 mistress of the Duke of Clarens (Clarence) and 
 the best actress in Drury Lane, one evening when 
 she was expected to play wrote to the impresario 
 an hour before the beginning of the comedy that 
 she had suddenly become ill and therefore could 
 not act. When the curtain was raised in order to 
 inform the public oLthe fact and to state a willing- 
 ness to give another spectacle the whole house 
 began to howl, demanding an immediate perform- 
 ance of the comedy which had been announced, 
 with another actress to read the role of the Jordan. 
 This was objected to, but the public became 
 stubborn and had to be satisfied in its way. Miss 
 Jordan gained the contempt of the public because 
 she openly drove in Hey (Hyde) Park with the 
 93
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 Duke but without shoes. But she begged for 
 pardon in all the newspapers, and was wholly 
 forgiven. 
 
 A gang of rowdies bawled this song, yelling so 
 that one could hear them 1000 paces away from 
 the street in every nook and cranny. 
 
 Mr. Bressy, No. 71 Lombard Street. 
 
 94
 
 II 
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 THE existence of a batch of love letters written 
 to Haydn during his visits to London has been 
 known to students ever since Dies's little bi- 
 ography of the composer appeared in Vienna 
 in 1810. C. F. Pohl devotes several pages of 
 his fascinating book, " Haydn in London " to 
 them, and reprints a few passages from them ; 
 but the letters themselves do not appear to 
 have been printed either in their original 
 English or a German translation until I gave 
 them to the world through the columns of 
 " The New York Tribune." I was enabled 
 to do so through coming into possession of 
 the note books described in the last chapter. 
 Haydn had copied them out in full, a pro- 
 ceeding which tells its own story touching 
 his feelings toward the missives and their fair 
 author for she was fair. Fourteen years 
 after they had been received they were still 
 treasured by the composer among his souve- 
 nirs of the English visit. To Dies, who asked 
 him about them, Haydn answered, with a 
 95
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 twinkle in his gray eyes : " They are letters 
 from an English widow in London who loved 
 me. Though sixty years old, she was still 
 lovely and amiable, and I should in all likeli- 
 hood have married her if I had been single." 
 Alas for the lovely and amiable correspon- 
 dent, there was a Mistress Haydn at home in 
 Vienna, who still grappled the dear old man 
 (he was fifty-nine) to her person, if not to her 
 soul, with hoops of the law ! Mistress Haydn 
 was neither lovely nor amiable. Had she 
 been either, or both, it is not likely that 
 Papa's heart would so easily have become 
 errant, though he was, as he himself confessed, 
 fond of looking at pretty women. Frau Dok- 
 torin, moreover, was a Xantippe. That she 
 proved even while Mistress Schroeter was 
 laying siege to Dr. Haydn's heart. Shortly 
 before Haydn started for home, in 1792, he 
 received a letter from his wife asking for two 
 thousand florins out of his earnings to pay 
 for a house which she wished to purchase in 
 the suburb of Vienna now called Gumpendorf. 
 It is the house known as No. 19 Haydn- 
 gasse, to which a marble memorial tablet was 
 affixed in 1840. In the letter asking for the 
 purchase money the amiable lady described 
 the house as just the thing for her to "live in 
 as a widow." Papa Haydn did not send the 
 96
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 money, but on his return he looked at the 
 house, and, rinding it pleasantly situated and 
 to his taste, bought it. Xantippe died seven 
 years later, " and now," said Haydn, telling 
 the story in 1806, "I'm living in it as a 
 widower." 
 
 And who was she whom Marjorie Fleming, 
 Sir Walter's " wifie," would have called 
 Haydn's "loveress?" The note books yield 
 up part of the secret: 
 
 Mistress Schroeter, No. 6 James-st., Bucking- 
 ham's Gate. 
 
 Th'e musical encyclopaedists have done the 
 rest. True, she shines in the books only by 
 reflected light, but you may read of her in 
 Sir George Grove's " Dictionary of Music 
 and Musicians," Fetis's " Biographic Univer- 
 selle des Musiciens," "Rees's Encyclopedia" 
 and in lesser handbooks, so you look under 
 the name Jah^ji_JSamelH3chi r oeter7 This 
 Schroeter was an excellent musician, who 
 came to London in 1772 and ten years later 
 succeeded " the English Bach " as music- / 
 master to the Queen. He was one of the first / 
 musicians to disclose the possibilities of the j 
 pianoforte as distinguished from the harpsi- ; 
 chord, and his talents were highly appreci- 
 ated in professional as well as Court circles. 
 7 97
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 He came of a talented family. His father 
 was oboist of the royal orchestra at Warsaw, 
 his brother Johann Heinrich was a violinist, 
 and his sister Corona Elizabeth Wilhelmine 
 was the singer, actress, composer and painter, 
 whose portrait still hangs in the Grand Ducal 
 library at Weimar, where it was placed by 
 Goethe, as may be read in a later chapter of 
 this volume. 
 
 As for the lady in the case, let two excerpts 
 from the books suffice. Dr. Burney, writing 
 of Johann Samuel Schroeter in "Rees's En- 
 cyclopedia," said: 
 
 He married a young lady of considerable for- 
 tune, who was his scholar, and was in easy circum- 
 stances ; but there was a languor discoverable in 
 his looks while disease was preying upon him 
 several years before his decease. 
 
 Fe"tis says in his " Biographic Universelle 
 des Musiciens " : 
 
 Un manage clandestin avec une de ses eleves, 
 (font la Jamille appertenait a la haute societe, lui 
 suscita beaucoup de chagrin. La menace d'etre 
 traduit devant la cour de la chancellerie Fobliga 
 de consentir a Tannulation de son hymen, moyen- 
 nant une pension viagere de 500 livres sterling. 
 L eclat yu' avait en cette affaire lui fit c here her une 
 retraite a la campagne. 
 
 98
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 He died in 1 788 three years before Haydn 
 came to London. The widow must have 
 made Haydn's acquaintance soon after his 
 arrival in town, and become his pupil, for on 
 June 29, 1791, she writes to him as follows: 
 
 Mrs. Schroeter presents her compliments to Mr. 
 Haydn and informs him she is just returned to 
 town and will be very happy to see him whenever 
 it is convenient to him to give her a lesson. 
 
 James-st, Buckingham gate, Wednesday, June 
 the 29 th , 1791. 
 
 Unless Haydn was fibbing it a bit for the 
 sake of appearances, it is probable that Dies 
 misunderstood his remark about the age of 
 the lady when she wrote the letters. She 
 may have been sixty years old when Haydn 
 told the story in 1806, but it is wholly im- 
 probable that she was that age in 1792. Dr. 
 Burney, who knew her in all likelihood, speaks 
 of her as "a young lady" when she was mar- 
 ried to Schroeter, who was only thirty-eight 
 years old when he died. If she was sixty 
 years old when Haydn met her, she must 
 have been eighteen years her husband's 
 senior, and could not well be described as a 
 " young " lady. 
 
 In 1794, when Haydn returned to London 
 for a second visit, he did not move into his 
 99
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 old lodgings, but found others at No. I Bury- 
 st, St. James's. 
 
 This much more pleasantly situated dwelling, 
 says Pohl, he probably owed to the considerate 
 care of Mrs. Schroeter, who, by the same token, 
 thus brought him nearer to herself. A short and 
 pleasant walk of scarcely ten minutes through St. 
 James's Palace and the Mall (a broad alley along- 
 side of St. James's Park) led him to Buckingham 
 Palace, and near at hand was the house of Mrs. 
 Schroeter. When he went away from London for- 
 ever he left behind him the scores of his six last 
 symphonies " in the hands of a lady," probably 
 Mrs. Schroeter. 
 
 Finally, let it be added that Haydn honored 
 the lady by inscribing three trios to her, Nos. 
 i, 2 and 6 in the Breitkopf and Hartel list. 
 
 The letters were copied into one of the 
 two note books by Haydn without regard 
 to chronological sequence; the following 
 arrangement is my own, three undated letters 
 being put at the end, though they obviously 
 ought to be early in the list. The abbrevia- 
 tions are easily understood, and, indeed, find 
 their explanation sooner or later in the letters 
 themselves. " M. D." is my dear ; " M. Dst.," 
 my dearest; " M. L.," my love; " H." and 
 "Hn.," Haydn. 
 
 100
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 Wednesday, Febr. 8 th , 1792. 
 
 M. D. Inclos'd I have sent you the words of the 
 song you desire. I wish much to know how you 
 do today. I am very sorry to lose the pleasure 
 of seeing you this morning, but I hope you will 
 have time to come tomorrow. I beg my D you 
 will take great care of your health and do not 
 fatigue yourself with too much application to 
 business. My thoughts and best wishes are always 
 with you, and I ever am with the utmost sincerity 
 M. D. your &c 
 
 March the 7 th 92. 
 
 My D. I was extremely sorry to part with you 
 so suddenly last night, our conversation was par- 
 ticularly interesting and I had a thousand affec- 
 tionate things to Say to you. my heart was and is 
 full of tenderness for you but no language can 
 express ha!f\.\\& Love and Affection I feel for you. 
 you are dearer to me every Day of my life. I am 
 very Sorry I was so dull and Stupid yesterday, 
 indeed my Dearest it was nothing but my being 
 indisposed with a cold occasion'd my Stupidity. 
 I thank you a thousand times for your Concern for 
 me. I am truly Sensible of your goodness and I 
 assure you my D. if anything had happened to 
 trouble me, I wou'd have open'd my heart and 
 told you with the greatest confidence, oh, how 
 earnestly I wish to See you. I hope you will 
 101
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 come to me tomorrow. I shall be happy to See 
 you both in the Morning and the Evening. God 
 Bless you my love, my thoughts and best wishes 
 ever accompany you and I always am with the 
 most Sincere and invariable Regard my D 
 
 Your truly affectionate 
 
 my Dearest I cannot be 
 happy till I see you if 
 you Know do tell me 
 when you will come. 
 
 My D. I am extremely sorry I can not have 
 the pleasure of seeing you to morrow as I am go- 
 ing to Blackheath. if you are not engaged this 
 Evening I should be very happy if you will do me 
 the favor to come to me and I hope to have the 
 happiness to See you on Saturday to dinner, my 
 thoughts and tenderest affections are always with 
 you and I ever am most truly my D your Faith- 
 ful &c. 
 
 April 4 th 92. 
 
 My D : With this you will receive the Soap. 
 I beg you a thousand Pardons for not sending it 
 sooner. I know you will have the goodness to 
 excuse me. I hope to hear you are quite well and 
 have Slept well I shall be happy to See you my 
 D : as soon as possible. I shall be much obliged 
 to you if you will do me the favor to send me 
 Twelve Tikets for your Concert, may all success 
 1 02
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 attend you my ever D H that Night and always is 
 the sincere and hearty wish of your 
 
 Invariable and Truly affectionate 
 James St. April 8 th 1792 
 
 James St. Thursday, April 12 th 
 M. D. 
 
 I am so truly anxious about you. I must write 
 to beg to know how you do ? I was very sorry I 
 had not the pleasure of Seeing you this Evening, 
 my thoughts have been constantly with you and 
 indeed my D. L. no words can express half the 
 tenderness and affection I feel for you. I thought 
 you seemed out of Spirits this morning. I wish I 
 could always remove every trouble from your 
 mind, be assured my D : I partake with the 
 most perfect sympathy in all your sensations and 
 my regard for you is Stronger every day. my best 
 wishes always attend you and I am ever my D. H. 
 most sincerely your Faithful etc. 
 
 M. D. I was extremely Sorry to hear this 
 morning that you were indisposed. I am told you 
 were five hours at your Studys yesterday, indeed 
 my D. L. I am afraid it will hurt you. why shou'd 
 you who have already produced So many wonder- 
 ful and Charming compositions Still fatigue your- 
 self with Such close application. I almost tremble 
 for your health let me prevail on you my much- 
 loved H. not to keep to your Studys so long at 
 103
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 one time, my D love if you cou'd know how very 
 precious your welfare is to me I flatter myself you 
 wou'd endeaver to preserve it for my sake as well 
 QS, your own. pray inform me how you do and how 
 you have Slept. I hope to see you to Morrow at 
 the concert and on Saturday I shall be happy to 
 See you here to dinner, in the mean time my D : 
 my Sincerest good wishes constantly attend you and 
 I ever am with the tenderest regard your most &c 
 
 J. S. April the i9 th 92 
 
 April 24 th 1792. 
 
 My D. I cannot leave London without Send- 
 ing you a line to assure you my thoughts, my best 
 wishes and tenderest affections will inseparably 
 attend you till we meet again, the Bearer will 
 also deliver you the March. I am very Sorry I 
 could not write it Sooner, nor better, but I hope 
 my D. you will excuse it, and if it is not passable I 
 will send you the Dear original directly. If my 
 H. would employ me oftener to write Music I hope 
 I should improve and I Know I should delight in 
 the occupation, now my D. L. let me intreat 
 you to take the greatest care of your health. I 
 hope to see you Friday at the concert and on 
 Saturday to dinner, till when and ever I most sin- 
 cerely am and Shall be yours etc. 
 
 M. D. I am very anxious to Know how you 
 do, and hope to hear you have been in good health 
 ever Since I Saw you. as the time for your charm- 
 ing Concert advances I feel my Self more and 
 104
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 more interested for your Success, and heartily 
 wish everything may turn out to your Satisfaction, 
 do me the favor to send me six Tickets more, on 
 Saturday my D. L. I hope to see you to dinner, 
 in the mean time my thoughts my best wishes and 
 tenderest affections constantly attend you and I 
 ever am my D. H. most sincerely and aff. 
 J. S. May y e 2 d 1792 
 
 James St. Tuesday May the 8 th 
 My Dst I am extremely Sorry I have not the 
 pleasure Seeing you to Day, but hope to see you 
 to Morrow at one o'Clock and if you can take 
 your Dinner with me to Morrow I shall be very 
 glad. I hope to See you also on thursday to 
 dinner, but I Suppose you will be obliged to go to 
 the concert that Evening and you Know the other 
 concert is on Friday and you go to the country 
 on Saturday, this my Dst Love makes me more 
 Solicitous for you to Stay with me to Morrow, if 
 you are not engaged, as I wish to have as much of 
 your company as possible. God Bless you my D. 
 H. I always am with the tenderest Regard your 
 
 sincere and affectionate 
 
 May 17*. 
 
 M. D. Permit me to return you a thousand 
 thanks for this Evening's entertainment. Where 
 your sweet compositions and your excellent per- 
 formance combine, it cannot fail of being the most 
 charming concert but independent of that the
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 pleasure of Seeing you must ever give me infinite 
 Satisfaction. Pray inform me how you do ? and if 
 you have Slept well? I hope to See you to mor- 
 row my D. and on Saturday to dinner, till when 
 and always I remain most sincerely my D. L. most 
 Faithfully etc. 
 
 M. D. If you will do me the favor to take your 
 dinner with me tomorrow I shall be very happy to 
 see you and I particularly wish for the pleasure of 
 your company my Dst Love before our other 
 friends come. I hope to hear you are in good 
 Health. My best wishes and tenderest Regards 
 are your constant attendants and I ever am with 
 the firmest Attachment my Dst H most sincerely 
 and Affectionately yours R. S. 
 
 James S. Tuesday Ev. May 22 d . 
 
 My Dst. I beg to know how you do? I hope 
 to hear your head-ach is entirely gone and that 
 you have Slept well. I shall be very very happy 
 to See you on Sunday any time convenient to you 
 after one o'Clock. I hope to see you my D. L e on 
 tuesday as usual to Dinner, and I Shall be much 
 obliged to you if you will inform me what Day will 
 be agreeable to you to meet Mr. Mtris. and Miss 
 Stone at my house to Dinner. I should be glad if 
 it was either Thursday or Friday, whichever Day 
 you please to fix. I will send to Mr. Stone to let 
 them know. I long to see you my Dst H. let me 
 have that pleasure as soon as you can till when 
 106
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 and Ever I remain with the firmest attachment 
 My Dst L. 
 
 Most faithfully and affectionately yours 
 
 Friday June y e i st 1792 
 
 M. D. I can not close my eyes to sleep till I 
 have return'd you ten thousand thanks for the 
 inexpressible delight I have received from your 
 ever Enchanting compositions and your incompar- 
 ably Charming performance of them, be assured 
 my D. H. that among all your numerous admirers 
 no one has listened with more profound attention 
 and no one can have Such high veneration for 
 your most brilliant Talents as I have, indeed my 
 D. L. no tongue can express the gratitude I feel 
 for the infinite pleasure your Musick has given me. 
 accept then my repeeted thanks for it and let me 
 also assure you with heart felt affection that I Shall 
 ever consider the happiness of your acquaintance 
 as one of the Chief Blessings of my life, and it is 
 the Sincer wish of my heart to preserve to cultivate 
 and to merit it more and more. I hope to hear 
 you are quite well. Shall be happy to see you to 
 dinner and if you can come at three o'Clock it 
 would give me a great pleasure as I shou'd be 
 particularly glad to see you my D. befor the rest 
 of our friends come. God Bless you my h : I 
 ever am with the firmest and most perfect attach- 
 ment your &c. 
 
 Wednesday night, June the 6 th 1792. 
 107
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 My Dst Inclosed I send you the verses you was 
 so Kind as to lend me and am very much obliged 
 to you for permitting me to take a copy of them, 
 pray inform me how you do, and let me know my 
 Dst L when you will dine with me; I shall be 
 happy to See you to dinner either tomorrow or 
 tuesday whichever is most Convenient to you. I 
 am truly anxious and impatient to See you and I 
 wish to have as much of your company as possible ; 
 indeed my Dst H. I feel for you the fondest and 
 tenderest affection the human Heart is capable of 
 and I ever am with \hzfirmest attachment my Dst 
 Love 
 
 most Sincerely, Faithfully 
 and most affectionately yours 
 
 Sunday Evening, June 10, 1792 
 
 My Dearest. 
 
 I hope to hear you are in good Health and 
 have had an agreeable Journey, that you have been 
 much amused with the Race and that everything 
 has turned out to your satisfaction. Pray my Dst 
 love inform me how you do? Every circumstance 
 concerning you my beloved H d is interesting to 
 me. I shall be very happy to see you to dinner 
 tomorrow and I ever am with the sincerest and 
 tenderest Regard my Dst Hn most Faithfully and 
 affectionately yours 
 
 R. S. 
 
 James S. Thursday Even. June y e 14 th 1792 
 1 08
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 My D. I hope to hear you are in good health 
 and that you Slept well last night. I shall be very 
 happy to see you on Monday morning permit 
 me to remind you about Mr. Erasers and you will 
 be so good as to let me know on Monday how it 
 is Settled. God Bless you my D Love, my 
 thoughts and best wishes are your constant atten- 
 dants, and I ever am with the tenderest Regard 
 my D. H. most etc. 
 
 June y e 26* 92 
 
 M. D. 
 
 I was extremely sorry I had not the pleasure of 
 seeing you to-day, indeed my Dst Love it was a 
 very great disappointment to me as every moment 
 of your company is more and more precious to me 
 now your departure is so near. I hope to hear 
 you are quite well and I shall be very happy to see 
 you my Dst Hn. any time to-morrow after one 
 o'clock, if you can come ; but if not I shall hope 
 for the pleasure of Seeing you on Monday. You 
 will receive this letter to-morrow morning. I 
 would not send it to-day for fear you should not 
 be at home and I wish to have your answer. God 
 Bless you my Dst Love, once more I repeat let 
 me See you as Soon as possible. I ever am with 
 the most inviolable attachment my Dst and most 
 
 beloved H. 
 
 most faithfully and most 
 affectionately yours 
 
 R. S. 
 109
 
 HAYDN IN LONDON 
 
 June the 26 th , 1792. 
 
 My Dearest. 
 
 I am quite impatient to know how you do this 
 Morning and if you Slept well last Night. I am 
 much obliged to you for all your Kindness yester- 
 day, and heartily thank you for it. I earnestly 
 long to see you my Dst L : and I hope to have 
 that pleasure this morning. My Thoughts and 
 best Regards are incessantly with you, and I ever 
 
 am my D. H. 
 
 most faithfully and most af- 
 fectionately your 
 
 M. D. 
 
 I was extremely sorry I had not the pleasure of 
 your company this morning as I most anxiously 
 wish'd to See you my thoughts are continually 
 with you my beloved H : and my affection for you 
 increases daily, no words can express half the 
 tender Regard I feel for you. I hope my Dst L : 
 I shall have the happiness of Seeing you to-mor- 
 row to dinner in the meantime my best wishes 
 always attend you, and I ever am with the firmest 
 attachment my D. H. most etc. 
 
 M. D. 
 
 I am heartily sorry I was so unfortunate not to 
 See you when you call'd on me this morning. 
 Can you my D. be so good as to dine with me 
 to-day? I beg you will if it is possible. You 
 cannot imagine how miserable I am that I did not 
 no
 
 HIS ENGLISH LOVE 
 
 See you. do come to- Day I intreat you. I always 
 am M. D. with the tenderest Regard etc. 
 Monday, 2 o'clock. 
 
 I am just returned from the concert where I 
 was very much Charmed with your delightful and 
 enchanting Compositions and your Spirited and 
 interesting performance of them, accept ten thou- 
 sand thanks for the great pleasure I always receive 
 from your incomparable Music. My D : I intreat 
 you to inform me how you do and if you get any 
 Sleep to Night. I am extremely anxious about 
 your health. I hope to hear a good account of it. 
 god Bless you my H : come to me to-morrow. I 
 shall be happy to See you both morning and 
 Evening. I always am with the tenderest Regard 
 my D : your Faithful and Affectionate 
 
 Friday Night, 12 o'clock. 
 
 in
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY
 
 I 
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC 
 SALZBURG 
 
 To the ordinary summer tourist Salzburg is 
 the gateway to the Salzkammergut. "To the 
 music lover it is the birthplace of Mozart. 
 From the fifteenth to the eighteenth of July, 
 1891, inclusive, it was lifted into extraordi- 
 nary prominence by the latter circumstance. 
 Save those lent her by her greatest son the 
 city has few opportunities to cull out a 
 holiday, so it was but natural that the cen- 
 tenary of his death should be remembered 
 as the centenary of his birth had been. But 
 Mozart died in December, a most inhospi- 
 table season in the latitude of Salzburg, and 
 one when the strangers within the city's 
 gates might easily be counted on the fingers 
 of a single landlord. I fancy that when the 
 project of celebrating the hundredth anni- 
 versary of the great composer's death was 
 first mooted in 1891, there was scarcely a 
 citizen in the town outside of the teachers 
 and pupils of the Mozarteum, who would
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 not have gladly sacrificed " Requiem " and 
 " Zauberflote " to have had Mozart die in 
 July or August instead of December; but 
 since that was something beyond their con- 
 trol, and no one was willing to lose the 
 advantages of a midsummer celebration, re- 
 sort was had to a sentimental fiction and the 
 festival was moved forward six months. 
 
 The fact that the week chosen was that 
 immediately preceding the opening of the 
 Wagner festival at Bayreuth was calculated 
 to give an artistic significance to the cele- 
 bration which I wish I could persuade myself 
 had entered the thoughts of the Committee 
 of Arrangements. It disposed the thought- 
 ful to reflect on the changes which have 
 come over dramatic music within the time 
 bounded by the archonships of Mozart and 
 Wagner. Progress or retrogression which 
 is it ? He would be a brave man, or a care- 
 less one, who would dare to assert the latter, 
 yet I am bound to say that even the most 
 ardent admirers of Wagner who came to 
 Salzburg on their way to Bayreuth must 
 have felt a strange swelling of the heart dur- 
 ing the Mozart festival which may have been 
 matched in degree but scarcely in kind when 
 a week later the harmonies began to ascend 
 like clouds of incense from the mystical 
 116
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG 
 
 abyss in the temple of the oracle of Bay- 
 reuth. Unhappily, however, for the good 
 opinion which we all like to hold with refer- 
 ence to those who contribute to the happi- 
 ness of mankind by arranging great festivals, 
 I fear that the Committee of the Mozart cen- 
 tenary if they thought of the Bayreuth festi- 
 val at all, thought of it only as an affair 
 which might help them in the financial part 
 of their enterprise ; visitors to Bayreuth 
 a term that now includes practically the 
 whole peripatetic company in Europe 
 might easily be persuaded to make Salzburg 
 a temporary way-station. Thus the master 
 of the present would seem to pay tribute to 
 the master of the past, and the mingling of 
 the disciples of both would encourage the 
 inn-keepers of Salzburg in the good opinion 
 of Mozart which it is their duty to maintain. 
 In the middle of the eighteenth century 
 Salzburg was the seat of a principality 
 whose sovereign wielded a two-fold and 
 doubly despotic power by reason of his head- 
 ship in both church and state. I needed 
 only to glance out of my hotel window across 
 the rushing Salzach to see monuments of 
 that power. The old fortress Hohensalzburg 
 frowns down on the town from its dominat- 
 ing height; the cathedral lifts its towers 
 117
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 with Roman haughtiness amidst the houses 
 huddled together below. All week long the 
 walls of the houses showed a festive counte- 
 nance and glowed with a gay irruption of 
 patriotic bunting, while castle and church 
 preserved an aspect of stern severity. It was 
 as though the spirit of that brutal Prince- 
 Archbishop, who a little more than a hun- 
 dred years before had thrown away the most 
 priceless jewel in his diadem, was still 
 abroad. There seemed to be a peculiar pro- 
 priety in the grim indifference of the for- 
 tress to the festival and the perfunctory part 
 played by the cathedral. The hand which 
 wielded temporal power in Salzburg a cen- 
 tury before was never extended in helpful 
 kindness to her child of genius, and when it 
 was extended in episcopal benediction in the 
 cathedral none knew better than Mozart that 
 it symbolized a mockery and a lie. The 
 archbishop who on the first day of the festi- 
 val performed just enough of a liturgical 
 function to permit it to be opened with a 
 performance of Mozart's "Requiem "was a 
 prelate merely long ago the last shred of 
 temporal power was stripped from one of his 
 predecessors but he was yet Archbishop 
 of Salzburg, and to a devotee of Mozart that 
 title has a sound of evil omen. So, at the 
 118
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG 
 
 outset, it was gratifying to note that the fes- 
 tive spirit of the great assemblage changed 
 the religious function into a secular cele- 
 bration, and the soul of Mozart was not 
 vexed but left in the care of its lovers. To 
 them a truer sanctuary than the cathedral 
 was the humble house in the Getreide Gasse 
 where Mozart was born. 
 
 The celebration was not only secular it 
 was democratic as well. A Grand Duke of 
 Austria, the youngest brother of the Emperor, 
 was in attendance in an official capacity, but 
 there was not one of the artists who took part 
 in the musical features of the commemora- 
 tion who was not a greater object of in- 
 terest to the people than he. In simple 
 truth I fear that he was sadly bored by the 
 exercises, but it must be said to his credit 
 that he performed his function (which was 
 to lend his presence to the occasion and be 
 seen by those who wished to see him) with 
 entire gravity. His sharp features (an Aus- 
 trian Grand Duke is so thin that he rarely 
 feels the wind) never reflected the slightest 
 interest in the proceedings, but neither did 
 they betray the fact that he was offering 
 himself as a living sacrifice to duty. A 
 pretty American girl filled his lorgnette for 
 full five minutes at the theatre when, on the 
 119
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 last night of the festival, "The Marriage of 
 Figaro " was played, and he exhibited a 
 comical desire to use his opera-glasses at 
 extremely short range on a few other per- 
 sons, but beyond this he had nothing to do 
 with the celebration nor it with him. It 
 was a people's tribute to the memory of one 
 who came from the people. 
 
 I am still lost in amazement at the fact 
 that the festival was actually carried out on 
 the lines laid down by the Committee of 
 Arrangements, and came to a satisfactory 
 conclusion instead of falling hopelessly to 
 pieces. Only the easy-going disposition of 
 the Austrian people and the lack of interest 
 on the part of foreigners made this possible. 
 The festival, fortunately, had not been widely 
 announced. Had even a small fraction of 
 the tourists who a week later flocked to Bay- 
 reuth, come it would have been impossible 
 to accommodate them at the musical features 
 of the celebration. A splendid programme 
 of these features had been arranged : A per- 
 formance of the " Requiem ; " two concerts 
 by the Philharmonic Society of Vienna un- 
 der Wilhelm Jahn, at the time Director of 
 the Imperial Court Opera; finally a repre- 
 sentation of "The Marriage of Figaro." At 
 all of these entertainments the purchaser of 
 120
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG 
 
 a general ticket costing fourteen Gulden 
 (less than six dollars) was entitled to a re- 
 served seat. The cathedral in which the 
 " Requiem " was sung is said to have seat- 
 ing and standing room for ten thousand per- 
 sons; the theatre, in which the opera was 
 given, seats three hundred and fifty, and 
 under such pressure as it was subjected 
 to afforded standing-room for one hundred 
 more. Any committee, except one composed 
 of citizens of Salzburg, might easily have 
 quailed before the problem raised by such a 
 discrepancy. The world had been invited 
 (not very loudly or urgently, but still in- 
 vited) to participate in the celebration. No 
 trouble about the " Requiem," but how about 
 the opera and the concerts which took place 
 in the Aula Academica, a hall with a seat- 
 ing capacity of twelve hundred or so ? Evi- 
 dently the committee knew the character of 
 their townspeople and the majority of the 
 visitors who were likely to come. The mass 
 would be satisfied with the popular and spec- 
 tacular elements in the celebration. When 
 it was possible to hear the " Requiem " and 
 see a torchlight procession for nothing and 
 enjoy a fete in the garden of the Mirabell- 
 schloss, where beer would be plentiful at 
 regular rates and the music and illumina- 
 
 121
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 tions free, the committee knew that they 
 would not be greatly distressed by demands 
 for tickets for the other features of- the festi- 
 val. Of course many came who could not 
 be accommodated at the concerts, and there 
 were many, many more who could not hope 
 to get inside the tiny box of a theatre; but 
 these were simply told that the seats were 
 pre-empted. " Sorry ; but we have only 
 three hundred and fifty seats in the theatre. 
 Should a ticket be returned it will be at 
 your disposal, otherwise ich habe die Ehre " 
 and the applicant was disposed of. Yet 
 no one complained. It was the most aston- 
 ishing exhibition of good nature that ever 
 fell under my notice. 
 
 "You will be astonished at other phases 
 of that good nature before you get out of 
 Austria," said a Scotch friend at the hotel. 
 " You ask how this people can endure to 
 reflect upon the fact that they appear to 
 every foreign visitor in the attitude of a 
 beggar asking alms. Why, bless your inno- 
 cent soul, they don't reflect upon it! It 
 wouldn't do. They must perforce be gleich- 
 giltig to keep up with the procession. They 
 are thoughtless and merry of terrible neces- 
 sity. If an Austrian officer of sensibilities 
 were to stop to reflect upon the condition of 
 
 122
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG 
 
 his country he would have to blow out his 
 brains. So we all, who live in Vienna, grow 
 frivolous and careless, and when we order a 
 bite to eat we tip the head-waiter who collects 
 the bill, tip the waiter who serves the viands, 
 tip the waiter who brings the beer and tip 
 the waiter who sells the cigars ; and after we 
 have been here long enough to have become 
 sufficiently imbued with the national feeling 
 we tip the street-car conductor for allowing 
 us the privilege of paying him the legal fare 
 we give him two Kreutzer for collecting 
 eight." 
 
 It was nip and tuck for some hours, 
 whether or not, I who had come all the way 
 from New York to attend the festival should 
 hear the concerts and opera at all. If a 
 thrifty soul had not changed his mind and 
 returned his ticket to be resold I should have 
 been turned away by the committee with : 
 "I am sorry, but ich habe die Ehre" and 
 then have been expected to be merry over it, 
 or been invited to hear the " Requiem " 
 standing up for nothing and mingle with 
 the crowd at the garden fete at an expense 
 of twenty cents, see lights and drink beer 
 for the greater glory of Mozart. Even after 
 I had secured my tickets and certificates I 
 was denied the pleasure of exhibiting them 
 123
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 to the door-keepers. A badge which I wore 
 on the lapel of my coat was as potent as the 
 storied " open, sesame " in the robbers' cave. 
 I had bought it for eighty Kreutzer at a 
 book-shop ; afterwards I was told that it was 
 one of a kind only sold to festival subscribers. 
 Every feature of the business management 
 of the affair was incomprehensible. Except 
 with the hotel people I never saw money 
 play so insignificant a role. The artists all 
 gave their services gratuitously. Ninety- 
 two members of the Vienna Philharmonic 
 Society endured a railway trip of fourteen 
 hours, played at two public rehearsals and 
 two concerts, and asked nothing, not even 
 seats at the theatre, for their labor. Then, 
 as if that were not enough, a score of them 
 walked through a drenching rain in the 
 torchlight procession. Madame Essipoff and 
 the singers at the concerts and opera were 
 equally generous. Frau Wilt broke a three 
 years' silence to accept the invitation of the 
 committee and sing an air in which she 
 once was famous. For the sake of my ears 
 I wish that she had been stouter in her 
 determination to remain in retirement, but I 
 feel bound to record so striking an instance 
 of the ideality which marked the artistic side 
 of the festival. It was all lovely, and from 
 124
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG 
 
 a social and artistic point of view the affair 
 seemed to be pervaded by that spirit of amia- 
 bility which was the ingredient most gener- 
 ously present in Mozart's character. 
 
 It was a commemorative celebration of\ 
 Mozart's death, but only a few could have ) 
 suspected it. Only the " Requiem," a beau- 
 tiful musical reminiscence with which Direc- 
 tor Hummel introduced the Viennese actor 
 who read the epilogue of the festival (which 
 was at the same time a prologue to "The 
 Marriage of Figaro") and some words in 
 the official addresses drew attention to that 
 fact. I have said that the festive spirit of 
 the populace prevented the " Requiem " from 
 appearing as a solemn religious function as 
 had been designed. I fear that Director 
 Hummel's device also missed its aim with 
 the audience in the theatre, because of its 
 subtlety. Yet it was a most gracious device. 
 Just before the curtain rose to enable the 
 actor to speak the lines written by Freiherr 
 von Berger, of Vienna, the orchestra, at a 
 sign from Director Hummel, played a few 
 measures of \hQ_Lacrymosa from the master's 
 mass for the dead. They were the last 
 strains which Mozart's mortal ears had 
 caught up. The story of his death is a 
 familiar one. He died while those about 
 125
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 his bed were singing parts of his uncom- 
 pleted " Requiem. " He had sung along but 
 his voice failed him in the Lacrymosa, and 
 his last gesture was a hint to his pupil Siiss- 
 mayr, touching an effect which he wished to 
 have introduced in the instrumental part of 
 his swan-song. It was necessary to know 
 this incident to appreciate the pathetic 
 beauty of the few measures abruptly broken 
 off on the entrance of the speaker with 
 which the solemn features of the commemo- 
 ration came to an end. /They borrowed a 
 significance from the concluding lines of the 
 epilogue, but also lent a meaning and ten- 
 derness to them which I shall not undertake 
 to describe. Translated with regard to the 
 sentiment rather than the music of the poet's 
 verses those lines read as follows: 
 
 But what a death ! The singer of life's fulness, 
 Rapt in an ecstasy, list'ning in awe to tones 
 Which, messengers from another world, proclaim'd 
 The silent mystery of death, 
 Invoked Apollo, bearer of the lyre and bow, 
 To send him tones for his last masterpiece 
 Such as no mortal ears had ever heard. 
 Lost in deep listening, the god reached out 
 An errant hand ; took up the bow 
 Where he had meant the tuneful lyre, 
 And sent an arrow to the heart, 
 The swelling, list'ning heart, of the rapt singer. 
 126
 
 SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SALZBURG 
 
 Not infinite melody, but infinite stillness then 
 Fell tenderly upon th' expectant brow. 
 And when they pressed his eyelids down, 
 There hung upon his lashes still a tear, 
 The last, the hottest he had ever wept, 
 In contemplation of his work, 
 The sweetest, strangest miracle 
 That he himself had wrought. 
 Is such a dying death ? Shall he be hid 
 Within a darksome grave, who thus ascends, 
 A god, to enter heaven's open gates ? 
 
 No. Mozart lives ! Soon will he come before you ! 
 Then cleanse your hearts ; shut every sense 
 Close 'gainst the din of commonplace pursuits, 
 And fit yourselves to hear the Master's tones, 
 Which, like a benediction, soon shall fall 
 Upon all here ! And when your hearts are full, 
 Then spread abroad 'mongst all of German birth, 
 The master's fame ! He who could thus create ! 
 The people's fame from whose strong loins he sprung, 
 The city's fame that boasts of such a son ! 
 
 127
 
 II 
 
 THE COMPOSER'S DOMESTIC 
 LIFE 
 
 AMONGST the thousands that came together 
 to do honor to the composer's memory there 
 was neither man, woman nor child who could 
 boast that Mozart's blood, though never so 
 diluted, flowed in his or her veins. Not a 
 single descendant of Mozart is alive to-day. 
 In 1842 when the statue, modelled by 
 Schwanthaler, was unveiled in the Mozart- 
 platz, two of the composer's sons, all of his 
 children that had outlived infancy, were still 
 living. One of them, the younger, who re- 
 ceived his father's name, Wolfgang Ama- 
 deus, and adopted his father's profession, 
 attended the unveiling ceremonies, and was 
 appointed Honorary Chapelmaster to the 
 Dom Musikverein and the Mozart eum. Two 
 years later he died at Karlsbad at the age of 
 fifty-three. He was less than six months 
 old when his illustrious father died, and 
 though it is said that some of the latter 's 
 physical, mental and moral traits were pre- 
 128
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 served in him, he inherited nothing of his 
 genius. He was a respectable musician, 
 that is all. His elder brother, Carl, born 
 in Vienna in 1783, lived until 1858, for years 
 filling the function of a modest Austrian 
 official, a book-keeper of some kind, I think, 
 and died in Milan. Neither of the two 
 married, and with Carl the name of Mozart 
 died. Within the nine years of Mozart's 
 married life (1782-1791) six children, four 
 sons and two daughters, were born to him. 
 Carl, who lived longest and latest, was the 
 first born; the musical son, Wolfgang, was 
 the last. In the museum housed in the 
 building No. 9 Getreidegasse, third floor, 
 where the composer was born, there is a 
 counterfeit presentment of the two, which 
 was painted by a Danish artist, and was once 
 the property of Mozart's widow, who be- 
 queathed it to her sister, describing it in 
 her will as a "painting of fraternal affec- 
 tion." Mozart left Salzburg just before the 
 birth of his first son, and never saw the city 
 after 1783. 
 
 The Augsburg family of Mozart (or "Mot- 
 zert," as it seems from recent discoveries 
 they were called in the seventeenth century) 
 died out long before the Sajzburg family. 
 Of the latter the only descendants are in 
 9 129
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 the female line. Wolfgang's sister, Marie 
 Anna, or Marianne, (the " Nannerl " of 
 his childhood's letters,) married in 1784 
 while her father was yet alive. She had a 
 son who became a Mauthhauscontroleur (tax 
 official), and died in Bregenz leaving a 
 daughter, the only grand niece of the com- 
 poser. This daughter became the wife of a 
 military official in Innsbruck, who afterward 
 changed his habitation to Graz, where she 
 gave birth to a son who, when last I heard 
 of him, was a lieutenant in a Hanoverian 
 regiment. His name is Gustav Forster, and 
 he is presumably the last of the female line 
 of Mozarts. His whereabouts was not known 
 to the committee, and he was not invited to 
 the festival. An aged widow, the Baroness 
 von Sonnenburg, who bears some relation, 
 probably by marriage, with the family into 
 which Marie Anna married, was living in 
 1891 in a retreat for women kept by some 
 nuns near Salzburg. She was invited to 
 attend the festival but returned the tickets 
 on the ground of her great age and infirmity. 
 Mozart's widow married the Danish Coun- 
 cillor Nissen, author of a biography of the 
 composer, in 1809, and lived till 1820 in 
 Copenhagen. In that year she returned to 
 Salzburg, and died in March, 1842, just as 
 130
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 the model of Schvvanthaler's statue reached 
 the city. 
 
 The musical Bachs lived through so many 
 generations that their family name became 
 a generic one for the town-musicians in 
 Thuringia. The musical Beethovens num- 
 bered several generations before their cul- 
 mination in the master to whom Mozart 
 surrendered his sceptre. The strong root, 
 the perfect flower and fruit, the withered 
 tree of the musical Mozarts were all com- 
 passed by a century and a quarter. The 
 year 1719 saw the birth of Leopold, the 
 year 1844 the death of his grandson, Wolf- 
 gang Amadeus. 
 
 There was no grave to deck with flowers. \ 
 Mozart's body was lowered into a pauper's ) 
 grave, and not a single loving eye took note 
 of the spot. The widow was ill and did not 
 attend the burial. A few friends who went 
 as far as the church when the last words 
 were said were deterred from going farther 
 by a storm of rain and snow. For months 
 the widow seemed indifferent as to the 
 disposition of the mortal remains of her 
 husband, whose genius she never half appre- 
 ciated, and when tardy inquiries were made . 
 it was impossible to learn where the grave I 
 had been dug. The case seems incompre-
 
 hensible, but by a strange coincidence it 
 was repeated forty-eight years later in New- 
 York, when Da Ponte, the librettist of " Don 
 Giovanni," " Le Nozze di Figaro " and " Cosi 
 fan tutte," was buried. In some respects 
 the mystery of the poet's burial was even 
 stranger than that of the composer. Mozart \ 
 died neglected by his friends and was buried I 
 as a pauper; Da Ponte was surrounded by 
 rich and influential friends to the last, and 
 some of the most eminent men in New- York 
 City followed his body in procession to the 
 grave. The Italian societies of the city 
 started a movement to erect a monument to 
 his memory, yet when, in 1887, I made a 
 most diligent and painstaking search I could 
 not find a trace of his burial place, and it 
 was only with difficulty that the fact could 
 be established that the interment had taken , 
 place in the old Eleventh-Street Cemetery, j 
 More than this, even the official record of 
 his death is wrong in the city's books. 
 
 There is a tradition, which seems well sup- 
 ported, that Mozart's widow and her second 
 husband, with whom she lived in such com- 
 fort and contentment as she never knew dur- 
 ing her first marriage, were interred in the 
 grave first occupied by the composer's father. 
 It is in the Sebastian Kirchhof in Salzburg. 
 132
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 Madame Nissen, she who had been Con- 
 stanze Mozart, n<!e Weber (she was own cou- 
 sin to the composer of " Der Freischiitz "), 
 outlived her second husband sixteen years 
 and though she had not taken the trouble to 
 note the location of Mozart's grave she pro- 
 vided Nissen with a tombstone and an epi- 
 taph which celebrated all his virtues and 
 worldly achievements and wound up with a 
 pitiful example of mortuary verse. Thirty 
 years ago the old grave-digger who had 
 buried the pair used to tell visitors that the 
 grave in which Nissen was first laid and 
 then his widow had been that of the com- 
 poser's father. Of that fact Constanze left 
 no sign. Plainly the tender care which she 
 received from the petty Danish Councillor 
 weaned her from whatever love she had left 
 for the Mozarts. 
 
 More than all else that is known of the\ 
 composer, the circumstances of his burial \ 
 testify to the struggle against poverty which i 
 the most generously gifted musician that 
 ever lived had to fight. Most mournfully do^sj 
 they also tell of the hollowness of the affec- 
 tion of those who called themselves his 
 friends (I fear also of the indifference of his / 
 wife), of the depravity of the social instincts, 
 as well as the artistic appreciation of the
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 Viennese public of a century ago: Why the 
 simple beauty of Mozart's music should have 
 strained the capacity of the Viennese a little 
 more than a hundred years ago, it is difficult 
 to understand, but nothing is truer than that 
 in his lifetime the unique position that he 
 now occupies in our appreciation was never 
 given to Mozart. His popularity never 
 reached that of Salieri, for instance, whose 
 operas triumphed over Mozart's as easily as 
 a quarter of a century later Rossini ' s measures 
 prevented appreciation of Beethoven's. This 
 was true not only in Vienna, but throughout 
 Germany. It was with no little astonish- 
 ment that I took note, while investigating 
 the records of the Grand Ducal Theatre at 
 Weimar during Goethe's artistic adminis- 
 tration, of the fact that Mozart's operas were 
 outnumbered in performance many times by 
 the works of pigmies whose names are now 
 forgotten, to say nothing of composers like 
 Weigl, Salieri and Dittersdorf. In spite of 
 its production of geniuses, it was a frivolous 
 period in art. In opera the era of extrava- 
 gant spectacle was just past, and the dra- 
 matic spirit begotten by Gluck and Mozart 
 was yet in its swaddling clothes. The vocal 
 \yirtuoso was still dominant. 
 
 The relics of the Mozart family preserved 
 '34
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 in Salzburg do not help a visitor to realize 
 the fact that Mozart lived in poverty. One 
 reason of this is that outside of the manu- 
 scripts (autograph letters and compositions) 
 the majority of them either date back to his 
 childhood or came from well-to-do sources. 
 It might serve a purpose if the official in- 
 ventory of his possessions taken after his 
 death were obtained from the archives at 
 Vienna and displayed in the room where he 
 was born. Even Otto Jahn neglected to 
 reprint this pitifully eloquent document in 
 his exhaustive biography. Its items deserve 
 to be made public; they are as follows: 
 Cash, sixty florins; arrears of salary (eight 
 hundred florins a year), one hundred and 
 thirty-three florins, twenty kreutzers; cred- 
 its (appraised as worthless), eight hundred 
 florins; three silver tablespoons valued at 
 seven florins; clothing and linen, forty-nine 
 florins; table linen, seventeen florins; fur- 
 niture in the first room, twenty-one florins; 
 in the second, eighty-two florins, thirty kreut- 
 zers; in the third, sixty-four florins; the prin- 
 cipal item being a billiard table valued at 
 sixty florins; in the fourth, one hundred and 
 eighty-nine florins, the principal item here 
 being a pianoforte, "with pedal," valued 
 at eighty florins; library, seventy florins. 
 135
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 Estimating the florin at its present value in j 
 American money the property which Mozart 
 left at his death was worth less than three / 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 The two rooms in which Leopold Mozart 
 lived in the Getreidegasse, in one of which 
 the composer was born in 1756, are modest 
 enough in good sooth, but they do not differ 
 from those in which the majority of Salz- 
 burg's citizens live to-day. The house it- 
 self is of the architectural style and degree 
 of comfort, or want of comfort, found in hun- 
 dreds of its fellows. It partakes of the 
 essential characteristics of Salzburg, which 
 are closeness and gloominess. The low 
 stairway by which one ascends to the third 
 floor is of stone and vaulted. As life was 
 in Salzburg one hundred years ago, as life 
 is in Salzburg to-day, a poet might occupy 
 the rooms. So might a shoemaker. I dare 
 say the juxtaposition of poet and shoemaker 
 might be found in the town now. The fam- 
 ily portraits in oil on the walls, though of 
 no value as works of art, give the impres- 
 sion that the Mozarts were in comfortable 
 circumstances. 
 
 To those unfamiliar with the keyed instru- 
 ments of his day, the composer's clavichord 
 and pianoforte, which are on exhibition, 
 136
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 teach a useful object lesson. Very wisely, 
 they are kept strung up and tuned, and there 
 is no prohibition against touching them. 
 Many times in the course of festival week 
 strains from Mozart's compositions came 
 tinkling from the corner opposite to that in 
 which little Woferl's cradle stood. The 
 smaller instrument is generally called a 
 spinet in the books, but this is an error; it 
 is a clavichord, the strings being struck by 
 a bit of brass on the end of each key, not 
 plucked by a quill as in the case of the 
 spinet. The thriftiness of the times is sug- 
 gested by the sight of a package of "The 
 Genuine Court Plaister, London," which a 
 memorandum, supposed to be in the hand- 
 writing of Nissen, says was brought by 
 Mozart from London. On his visit to the 
 English metropolis he was seven years old. 
 Evidently Woferl was not permitted to play 
 with a penknife ; otherwise a single package 
 of court plaster would not have lasted him 
 throughout his boyhood and a score of years 
 beyond. 
 
 The other spots in Salzburg with which 
 the name of Mozart is associated invite re- 
 flections concerning the social and artistic 
 life of the period in which he lived chiefly. 
 Personal memories, poetical though not alto-
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 gather savory, in spite of the efforts of his 
 biographer to purge his private character, 
 cling around the little house on a slope of 
 the Capuzinerberg which was brought from 
 Vienna and in which in the summer of 1791 
 Mozart completed his " Zauberflote. " The 
 tales of the life which Mozart led with roys- 
 tering companions of both sexes in this tiny 
 box of a house (it consists of but one room 
 and is not more than twenty feet long and 
 fifteen wide) are discredited now, but it is 
 not impossible that they account, to some 
 extent, for the unfeeling conduct of Con- 
 stanze, the widow, touching his grave. To 
 attribute his death to dissipations indulged 
 in during the last summer of his life is prob- 
 ably as foolish a performance as the latter 
 day effort to present him as a model of con- 
 jugal fidelity and affection. The "Zauber- 
 flotehauschen, " as it is called, is now a 
 museum of portraits and commemorative 
 wreaths. The cathedral in which some of 
 the precocious boy's religious music was 
 first heard, is a magnificent edifice which, 
 when contrasted in company with the Archi- 
 episcopal palaces and gardens, with the ab- 
 surdly small and wretched theatre, speaks 
 volumes concerning the attitude of the 
 Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg toward art. 
 138
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 Opposite the theatre, in what is now called 
 the Markartplatz, is another house, which 
 was occupied by the family of Leopold as a 
 dwelling, from which Wolfgang departed 
 when he left the service of the Prince-Arch- 
 bishop and betook himself to Vienna. Like 
 the birth-house it is disfigured by a sign 
 reaching entirely across the front announc- 
 ing the fact that it is " Mozart's Wohnhaus." 
 A tasteful tablet, it seems, would not have 
 proclaimed the pride which Salzburg feels 
 at having given birth to such a son with 
 sufficient emphasis. It took gilded letters 
 a foot and a half high to do that. 
 
 Travellers know the marvellous natural 
 beauty of Salzburg's position in the valley 
 of the Salzach how snugly a portion of it 
 nestles under the cliffs of the Monchsberg 
 on the left bank of the river, hugging the 
 sheer rock so closely that it actually over- 
 hangs the houses in one of the streets and 
 how, where the valley widens toward Ho- 
 hensalzburg, crowned by the castle-fortress, 
 it opens out in the squares, each with its 
 quaint fountain or statue, that afford ap- 
 proaches to the few large structures in the 
 city. Except on the opposite bank of the 
 river, where the graceful slopes of the Capu- 
 zinerberg give easy foothold to lovely villas
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 that smile from out the deep foliage of gar- 
 dens and forests, and the wider plain left by 
 the retreat of the mountains from the river 
 is filled by buildings of a modern type, the 
 idea of spaciousness is utterly foreign to the 
 town. The streets are narrow and wind 
 about in the most bewildering manner, fol- 
 lowing in a general but devious way the 
 course of the river. Cross streets are few; 
 in fact, glancing along the house-fronts one 
 might easily fancy that the need of going 
 across-town had never occurred to the build- 
 ers. Instead of cross streets there are hun- 
 dreds of arched courts which afford passage 
 from one winding street to another. The 
 general effect, enhanced by the narrowness 
 of the streets, is one of prison-like gloomi- 
 ness, and only the bright sunlight of festival 
 week and the banners which hung from the 
 majority of the houses gave the city a cheery 
 appearance. No vista being more than one 
 or two hundred feet long, a few bits of bunt- 
 ing had great decorative potency. The 
 Mozartplatz was quite gayly caparisoned, 
 flowering plants being banked around the 
 base of the Mozart statue, and rows of fes- 
 tooned standards bounding the entire square. 
 The torchlight procession of the first night 
 and garden fete of the second were marred 
 140
 
 HIS DOMESTIC LIFE 
 
 by rain, but the enthusiasm of the partici- 
 pants in the former was proof against the 
 wet. The line of march was not curtailed 
 a foot, the procession numbered thousands, 
 including some of the artists of the festival. 
 As each division reached the Mozart monu- 
 ment a large wreath of laurel was deposited 
 beside the pedestal. Finally the united 
 singers of the town, who had already halted 
 and sung in front of the birth-house, raised 
 the strains of Mozart's "Bundeslied," after 
 which the torches (which were immense 
 candles instead of oil lamps) were extin- 
 guished. The most costly feature of the 
 celebration was the garden fete in the Mira- 
 bel Igarten. On the attendance here the 
 financial outcome of the festival depended. 
 Rain came rather early in the evening, but 
 the old palace grounds were already crowded 
 at fifty kreutzers a head, and the committee 
 were saved. There was a deficit, but it was 
 trifling. 
 
 141
 
 Ill 
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 As may have already been surmised, there 
 was a great contrast between the musical 
 features of the centennial celebration of 
 Mozart's death and the festival's external 
 conditions and circumstances. This con- 
 trast, however, was a generous contributor 
 to the amiability which characterized the 
 occasion. In it was reflected some of the 
 geniality and the simplicity of the great 
 composer's nature. Though ten thousand 
 persons listened, lovingly and reverentially, 
 to the " Requiem " in the cathedral, only 
 about four hundred and fifty were privileged 
 to attend the festival representation of " The 
 Marriage of Figaro," which brought the 
 celebration to a close. The four hundred 
 and fifty enjoyed a rare sensation, to which 
 sentiment contributed quite as much as the 
 performance; the excluded thousands ac- 
 cepted the situation with charming good 
 humor. Between the mass, which opened 
 142
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 the festival, and the opera, which brought 
 it to a close, were two concerts by the Phil- 
 harmonic Society of Vienna, under the di- 
 rection of Wilhelm Jahn, director of the 
 Imperial Court Opera. These concerts took 
 place in the Aula Academica, a plain, old- 
 fashioned hall, in which candles are still 
 depended on for light when the room is 
 used at night. Here again the seating ac- 
 commodations, though three times as great 
 as those of the theatre, were inadequate. 
 Yet the good humor of the visitors suffered 
 no impairment. 
 
 The environment was provincial, the con- 
 certs metropolitan. Much of the music 
 dated from the last year of Mozart's life. 
 The " Requiem " was the last composition 
 in his thoughts; he did not live to finish it. 
 The symphonies played were those in G 
 minor and C major ("Jupiter"), both writ- 
 ten in the summer of 1788. The "Bundes- 
 lied," sung before the monument on the 
 conclusion of the torchlight procession, dates 
 from his death-year. The opera " Le Nozze 
 di Figaro " was produced five years before 
 his death. Its choice for representation was 
 doubtless clue to the fact that the stage of 
 the theatre is too small to permit the mount- 
 ing of " Die Zauberflote, " obviously the right 
 M3
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 choice for the festival as a product of the 
 composer's last year. " Don Giovanni " was 
 first announced by the committee, but the 
 opera based on Beaumarchais's comedy was 
 substituted for it, probably because the cen- 
 tenary of Mozart's masterpiece had been 
 celebrated in 1887. The circumstance that 
 the occasion was also a centennial anniver- 
 sary of the composition of " Die Zauberflote " 
 was also remembered in the compilation of 
 the programme of the first concert in the 
 Aula Academica on July 16, at n A. M., 
 one-third of which was devoted to excerpts 
 from the work, which, according to the dic- 
 tum of Beethoven, is to be set down as the 
 first essentially German opera. 
 
 The forces employed in the performance 
 of the " Requiem " were a chorus selected 
 from the cathedral choir, the women's choir 
 of the Mozarteum, and the men's singing 
 societies of Salzburg ; the orchestras of the 
 Dom Musikverein and the Mozarteum ; Mes- 
 dames E. Brandt-Forster, and Louise Kau- 
 lich and Messieurs Gustave Walter and 
 Franz von Reichenberg, of the Court Opera 
 at Vienna. J. F. Hummel, director of 
 the Mozarteum, conducted the performance. 
 The choir numbered two hundred voices and 
 was an admirable body whose singing re- 
 144
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 fleeted greater credit on the city than the 
 orchestral accompaniment, which, though 
 satisfactory, was not remarkable. The in- 
 adequacy of the instrumental part of the 
 performance was explained by Director Hum- 
 mel on the ground of a restriction in number 
 compelled by the dimensions of the choir- 
 loft. He had to choose between a large 
 choir with small orchestra and a large or- 
 chestra with small choir. Arguing correctly 
 enough that the " Requiem " was essentially 
 a choral composition, he chose the former. 
 Instrumental music is cultivated with great 
 assiduity and earnestness in the conserva- 
 tory connected with the Mozarteum, Direc- 
 tor Hummel compelling every free student 
 of the pianoforte or violin to take up a wind 
 instrument in addition, and I could easily 
 believe him when he said that it was not a 
 want of orchestral players but a want of room 
 in the gallery which invited to the only crit- 
 icism that was passed upon the artistic side 
 of the performance. 
 
 For the first concert in the Aula this was 
 the programme : 
 
 Excerpts from " Die Zauberflote." 
 
 (a) Overture. 
 
 (b) Duet, " Bei Mannern welche Liebe fuhlen." 
 
 (Mme. E. Brandt- Forster and Josef Bitter.) 
 10 145
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 (c) Air : " In diesen heil'gen Hallen." (Franz 
 
 von Reichenberg.) 
 
 (d) Air : " Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schon." 
 
 (Gustav Walter.) 
 
 (e) Famine? s grand air. (Mme. Brandt- Forster.) 
 
 (f) Air and chorus :" O Isis und Osiris." (Franz 
 
 von Reichenberg and Salzburger Lieder- 
 
 tafel.) 
 
 Concerto for Pianoforte in D minor. (Madame 
 Essipoff-Leschetizky.) 
 Symphony in G minor. 
 
 The programme of the second concert at 
 the same hour on the third day of the festi- 
 val, July 17, was this: 
 
 String quartet, D minor. (The Hellmesberger 
 Quartet, of Vienna.) 
 
 Air from " Cosi fan tutte." (Gustav Walter.) 
 
 Adagio from the quintet in G minor. (String 
 orchestra.) 
 
 Air from " Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail." 
 (Mme. Marie Wilt.) 
 
 Songs : "Das Veilchen," "Vergiss Mein Nicht" 
 and " Wiegenlied." (Fraulein Frederike Mayer.) 
 
 "Jupiter" Symphony. 
 
 It has been said that Mozart's music can 
 
 only be heard in its perfection in Vienna. I 
 
 do not know how this may be ; I have heard 
 
 many poor Mozart singers who hailed from 
 
 146
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 the Austro-Hungarian Court Opera, but I 
 am willing to believe that those who live in 
 the social and artistic atmosphere of Vienna 
 for a time may acquire a sympathetic appre- 
 ciation for the spirit of Mozart which the 
 people of a colder and more phlegmatic north 
 will never imbibe. The dividing line be- 
 tween musical creation and recreation is 
 exceedingly fine that fact it is which 
 makes it possible for an executive musician 
 to become entitled to the name of artist 
 and unless an interpreter can feel with some 
 of its original potency the influence that im- 
 pelled the composer, his interpretation will 
 speak a different dialect, if not a different 
 tongue, from that native to the composition. 
 I would rather find an explanation of the 
 beauty of the Philharmonic Society's per- 
 formance of the two symphonies in this re- 
 lationship between the composer and his 
 interpreters, difficult as it may be to ana- 
 lyze, than to rest on that weak reed com- 
 monly spoken of as tradition. Musical 
 tradition is a very uncertain quantity. The 
 Bayreuth festivals have failed to preserve 
 Wagner's manner, though established and 
 maintained for that very purpose. Yet the 
 Bayreuth festivals are only twenty-two years 
 old, and Wagner has been dead less than two 
 *47
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 decades. Nevertheless, the strongest wish 
 that I felt while listening to the two sym- 
 phonies on this occasion was to believe that 
 it was thus that they sounded in the inspired 
 fancy of their creator. Of the weak senti- 
 mentality with which so many conductors 
 infuse Mozart's music there was not a trace 
 in Herr Jahn's interpretation. All was 
 splendidly sane and joyously vigorous. The 
 muscularity of the band's string-tone and 
 its ebullient vivacity in the minuet of the 
 G-minor Symphony made the music as son- 
 orous as that of an ultra modern composer 
 utilizing the large and varied apparatus of 
 to-day. 
 
 The spirit thus manifested is beyond 
 question inherent in Mozart's great works. 
 It is the element that has preserved them 
 while those of his contemporaries have 
 perished. So far as it is permitted us to 
 speak of immortality in connection with a 
 musical composition (of all art works the 
 most perishable by reason of its nature), it 
 is this spirit which made Mozart's chief 
 works immortal. They can ever be read so 
 as to interpret the feelings of the readers. 
 The thought is not confined by its formal 
 investiture. Yet while Herr Jahn read the 
 symphonies in this vital manner, he did not 
 148
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 in any way distort them. Their utterance 
 remained simple and ingenuous. It was 
 particularly gratifying to find him untouched 
 by the desire to win interest for the music 
 by the pedantic devices with which some 
 conductors are now seeking to make plain 
 the purposes of composers, as they say. He 
 did not distort the minuet of the "Jupiter" 
 symphony by playing it so slowly as to rob 
 the melody of its native character. This is 
 a part of the mischief that has resulted 
 from Wagner's criticism of the tempo in 
 which Mendelssohn and other conductors 
 were in the habit of playing the correspond- 
 ing movement in Beethoven's eighth sym- 
 phony. That criticism has given birth to 
 the notion that a symphonic minuet must be 
 played in the tempo of the old dance for 
 which Mozart set a standard in the minuet 
 to which his nobility step it so decorously 
 in the first finale of " Don Giovanni, " a no- 
 tion which never occurred to either Haydn, 
 Mozart or Beethoven, as should be obvious 
 enough from the character inherent in the 
 themes of their symphonic minuets. In a 
 less degree, but still very noticeably, the 
 same fresh and vigorous style of reading 
 marked Madame Essipoff's playing in the 
 concerto especially at the rehearsal which 
 149
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 had been thrown open to the public at the 
 price of a gulden, in order to accommodate 
 the many who could not obtain tickets to the 
 concert. 
 
 The festival performance of Mozart's comic 
 opera, which concluded the centennial cele- 
 bration, took place in the Royal Imperial 
 Theatre. Between the magnificence of this 
 title and the dimensions and appearance of 
 the playhouse there is a discrepancy which 
 was well calculated to heighten the careless 
 gayety of the festive solemnity. The the- 
 atre dates back to the period of Mozart's 
 slavery under the Prince- Archbishop Hiero- 
 nymus Colloredo. Previous to 1775 it was 
 a Ballhaus, In that year it was transformed 
 into a theatre. After my experience I am 
 inclined to believe that in that year, too, it 
 was hermetically sealed, in order to preserve 
 the atmosphere sanctified by the exhalations 
 from the archiepiscopal body of the pious 
 Hieronymus. Mozart was then nineteen 
 years old, and for two years longer he re- 
 mained in the service of the Prince-Arch- 
 bishop as concert-meister of the Hofcapelle 
 without salary. His youthful operas had 
 been written for other cities, not for Salz- 
 burg, whose ruler was indisposed to give 
 commissions, which might have cost a little
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 money, to the genius that was giving the 
 city renown ; but as the Mozart family, who 
 lived directly opposite the theatre, across 
 what is now called the Markartplatz, were 
 industrious theatre-goers, it is unquestioned 
 that Wolfgang was a frequent visitor at the 
 theatre, and doubtless a frequent performer at 
 entertainments there. It is probable, there- 
 fore, that when I stood within those heitgen 
 Hallen and inhaled the carefully conserved 
 atmosphere of a century ago, I breathed the 
 air which Mozart had breathed. Strangely 
 enough, I did not like it. The idiosyncratic 
 desire of a nineteenth century American for 
 fresh air was stronger than my reverence for 
 this Mozartian relic, but it availed naught 
 against the strong repugnance which Ger- 
 mans and Austrians feel within doors for 
 the elixir which they cannot do without 
 when they are eating or drinking. Out of 
 doors the air was as balmy as a sleeping 
 baby's breath. Had it been stirred into a 
 tornado and sent down the backbone of every 
 German in the place, with his chronic sus- 
 ceptibility to taking a cold increased a thou- 
 sandfold by the internal warmth of festal 
 enthusiasm, it could not have produced a 
 single sneeze. Yet a piteously gentle plea 
 that the door, behind the heavy curtains (so
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 hung as to intercept the cupful of air which 
 might surreptitiously steal into the audience- 
 room with a late-comer), might be left ajar 
 a few inches for a moment between the acts, 
 called out a look of horror on a score of 
 faces and an awestricken protestation that a 
 draught would result which plainly all be- 
 lieved would be deadlier than miners' damp. 
 So the half dozen Americans in the audience 
 sweltered and stewed patiently for four hours 
 in the nauseous atmosphere of the playhouse 
 and tried to forget the approaching headache 
 in the enjoyment of Mozart's music. 
 
 This Royal Imperial Theatre has the 
 dimensions of such a suite of rooms as a 
 thrifty newspaper reporter can hire in New 
 York. By placing benches in the parquet 
 instead of chairs to save the space wasted in 
 ordinary playhouses by the chair-arms, it is 
 made to accommodate three hundred and fifty 
 human beings of average breadth and thick- 
 ness. Several more could find room were it 
 not that at the end opposite the stage there 
 is a Royal Imperial box, which, I fancy, was 
 once the Prince-Archiepiscopal box. Upon 
 its tawdry upholstery and hangings, I doubt 
 not, the eyes of Mozart, only twenty-one 
 years old when he emancipated himself from 
 the slavery in which his spiritual and tem-
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 poral lord held him, often fell. On this 
 occasion these relics of a former tuppenny 
 magnificence surrounded an Austrian Arch- 
 duke, who looked through his opera glasses 
 at a few young women whom he might al- 
 most have touched without leaving his seat 
 and then lost interest in the entertainment. 
 By opening the gallery and issuing eighty 
 tickets for standing places, the committee 
 raised the capacity of the house for this fes- 
 tival representation to about five hundred. 
 What the percentage of deaths from asphyxi- 
 ation may have been in the gallery I do not 
 know. Not hearing of any deaths I took it 
 for granted that there were no Americans 
 there. The proscenium opening may have 
 been twenty feet broad (I am disposed to be 
 liberal in such estimates) and the same num- 
 ber of feet deep. If it was necessary to use 
 the theatre these dimensions will suggest 
 an explanation of the conduct of the Festi- 
 val Committee in celebrating the hundredth 
 anniversary of the composition of "The 
 Magic Flute " (for the centenary of that 
 opera and the " Requiem " as well as Mozart's 
 death was commemorated in the festival) 
 in relegating the music of Mozart's mysti- 
 cal phantasmagoria and singular fairytale 
 to the concert-room. Yet it was in this 
 '53
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 same theatre that the centennial representa- 
 tion of "Don Giovanni" took place in 1887 
 when artists like Bianchi, Marie Lehmann 
 (sister of the greater Lilli), Reichmann, 
 Staudigl and Marie Wilt sang and Hans 
 Richter wielded the baton. With the actors' 
 "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," by the stage 
 the finale of the first act of Mozart's master- 
 piece must have looked comical enough. In 
 "LeNozze," Frau Ende-Andriessen, of the 
 Municipal Opera at Cologne, sang the part 
 of the Countess. In respect of both latitude 
 and longitude she meets the most extrava- 
 gant demands of Wagner's Norse heroines, 
 and when she "took" the stage she literally 
 left very little of it for the other personages. 
 Her presence in the final garden scene sim, 
 plified the work of concealment which makes 
 up so much of the " business " of the act. 
 
 The characters in the opera were in the 
 hands of the following artists: Count Alma- 
 viva, Josef Ritter, of Hamburg and Vienna; 
 The Countess, Frau Ende-Andriessen, of Co- 
 logne; Susanne, Fraulein Bianca Bianchi, 
 of Buda-Pesth; Cherubino, Frau Brandt- 
 Forster, of the Court Opera at Vienna; 
 Figaro, Herr Franz Krolop, of the Court 
 Opera at Berlin; Marcellina, Frau Louise 
 Kaulich, of the Court Opera at Vienna;
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 Dr. Bartolo, Herr Rudolf Freny, of the 
 Municipal Opera at Hamburg; Don Basilio, 
 Herr Victor Schmidt, of the Court Opera at 
 Vienna; Guzman, Herr Anton Schnitten- 
 helm, of the Court Opera at Vienna; Bar- 
 bara, Fraulein Anna Hauser, of the Court 
 Opera at Vienna; Antonio, Herr Benedikt 
 Felix, Court Opera at Vienna. The con- 
 ductor was Director J. F. Hummel, of the 
 Mozarteum, and the orchestra, of necessity 
 small, but still efficient, was a local body. 
 Whether or not German singers can do 
 justice to Mozart has always been a question 
 in my mind. I am not insensible to the 
 fact that in all of the genial master's works 
 there is a something in which the sincerity 
 of German feeling is manifest, and that it 
 is largely this feeling which supplies the 
 element that has preserved his operas while 
 those of his rivals have been forgotten. In 
 "The Marriage of Figaro" there is little 
 playroom for honest sentiment, and Mozart's 
 music is as lighthearted and careless as the 
 play. It is musical champagne from begin- 
 ning to end, varied by a single draught of 
 still wine at the beginning of the second act 
 (Porge amor} and that an Italian sweet 
 wine rather than a fragrant Hock. In " Don 
 Giovanni," the tragic spirit with which 
 
 tss
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 Mozart infused the play in spite of Da 
 Ponte's purpose that the buffo element should 
 always be in the foreground, gives German 
 interpreters an opportunity to exploit the 
 side of their artistic nature which is essen- 
 tially native to them and in which they ex- 
 cel. They have felt with Mozart, while 
 Italian singers have felt with his librettist. 
 The fate of Don Juan has in it a tragic 
 awfulness which casts its shadow before for 
 those of German feeling; for the Italian 
 stage artist it is only a conclusion to the 
 play which enables Leporello, in hiding un- 
 der the table, to amuse the spectators by an 
 exhibition of clownish fear. Musical com- 
 edy of the Italian type, whose loftiest exam- 
 ples are the Figaro operas of Mozart and 
 Rossini, demands some things which seem 
 almost impossible to German singers. Even 
 when they use the Italian language they 
 generally fall short of perfection, because of 
 a want of that nimbleness of tongue which is 
 easy to the Latin. When an opera composed 
 to Italian words is sung in German the re- 
 tention of all of its comic spirit is simply 
 impossible. The volatile utterance which 
 is so essential an element in music of this 
 character and of which there are many ex- 
 amples in "Figaro's Marriage," is utterly 
 156
 
 MUSIC AT THE FESTIVAL 
 
 foreign to the German tongue. A German 
 Dr. Bartolo is inconceivable. Even if the 
 translator should show due regard for the 
 bits of characterization in which the buffo 
 music of Mozart and Rossini abounds, and 
 should have the most perfect command of 
 his language, he would inevitably make ship- 
 wreck in scores of places on the consonantal 
 rocks which are strewed all over the German 
 lingual ocean. 
 
 The finale of the second act of " The Mar- 
 riage of Figaro " is a model of ensemble 
 writing which has never had a fellow. In it 
 the music and action run riot and a race 
 from beginning to end, each accentuating 
 the points made by the other, neither ever 
 hindering, but both working together toward 
 a dramatic climax which is irresistible in its 
 effect. At this festival performance, the 
 finale was sung with vastly more vivacity 
 than I expected to find, the singers bringing 
 into the performance some of the gayety and 
 lightness of temperament belonging to the 
 Austrian capital, but there could be no 
 escape from the fetters of language. The 
 air was thick with sluggish consonants and 
 lingering sibilants. This lingual clog re- 
 tarded the merry flood of music throughout 
 and compelled the judicious to take refuge
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 in a standard of judgment recognizing the 
 insurmountable difficulties of the German 
 book. From this new view-point there was 
 much to admire in the performance, though 
 the voices of the singers were deadened, 
 deprived of all resonance, by the stagnant 
 atmosphere of the theatre. The honors 
 were easily borne off by Frau Brandt-Fors- 
 ter, in the role of the Page, but as to what 
 proportion of her success was due to her 
 lovely face and arch acting and what to 
 her voice and singing I shall not express 
 an opinion. Brandt-Forster was popular in 
 Vienna. Artistically, I was told, she had not 
 met the expectations of Director Jahn, who 
 on the expiration of her first engagement 
 manifested a desire to let her seek employ- 
 ment elsewhere. But the University stu- 
 dents were enamoured of her pretty face, and 
 a round-robin, signed by about three hun- 
 dred of them, brought Herr Jahn to terms. 
 Which incident might furnish a text for a 
 sermon on the influences which sway the 
 high priests in our art-temples, in Europe 
 as elsewhere, if I were disposed to preach. 
 But I am not.
 
 IV 
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 IT was a sincere cause of regret in the fall 
 of 1887, when the principal cities of Europe 
 celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the 
 first performance of " Don Giovanni," that 
 the season of opera at the Metropolitan 
 Opera House was not yet begun. Other- 
 wise New York would also have joined in the 
 celebration, in which it had a unique interest, 
 from the fact that it was the home for more 
 than a quarter of a century of the poet who 
 wrote the book of Mozart's masterpiece. At 
 the commemoration by the Grand Opera of 
 Paris the original manuscript score of the 
 opera, which is owned by Madame Viardot- 
 Garcia (daughter of the first representative 
 of Don Giovanni in the United States), was 
 exhibited to the public in the foyer of the 
 Opera House. In Dresden the Tonkiinstler- 
 Verein, hearing that Luigi Bassi, who 
 " created " the role of the dissolute Don at 
 the first representation, lay buried in a 
 Dresden cemetery, caused the singer's long 
 159
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 neglected grave to be restored and a marble 
 cross, bearing a suitable inscription, to be 
 placed over it. 
 
 Thus was a simple singer honored, while 
 the resting places of the colossal genius who 
 created the music, and the gifted and ingen- 
 ious poet who provided him with the poetry 
 to which he might wed that music, must 
 remain without a distinguishing mark. 
 Mozart's dust lies in a pauper's grave in 
 Vienna; but where, no one knows. The 
 grave was never marked ; the plot in which 
 it was made was one that was dug up every 
 ten years and filled anew. A storm drove 
 back the friends who started out to attend 
 the burial, and no one saw the body lowered 
 except the sexton and his assistants. A 
 noble friend, who had undertaken the care of 
 the funeral because of the illness of Mozart's 
 widow, and who had expended eleven florins 
 and thirty-six kreutzers on it (say about five 
 dollars), did not inquire where the body had 
 been put, and when the widow visited the 
 churchyard, after her recovery, the grave- 
 diggers had been changed and no one knew 
 where the remains of the great musician lay. 
 
 That was in December, 1791, in Vienna. 
 Almost half a century later Lorenzo Da 
 Ponte, the Italian poet who had been 
 160
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 Mozart's friend and collaborator with him on \ 
 three operas, " Le Nozze di Figaro," " Don 
 Giovanni," and " Cosi fan Tutte," died in 
 New York. He had lived in the New World 
 a full generation, more than one-third of a 
 marvellously checkered life, the term of 
 which embraced the birth and death of 
 Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Byron, Scott, 
 and Napoleon Bonaparte, and the entire 
 creative career of Haydn ; he had been 
 iniprovvisatore , professor of rhetoric, and 
 politician in his native land ; poet to the 
 Imperial Theatre and Latin secretary to the 
 Emperor in Austria ; * Italian teacher, operatic 
 poet, litterateur, and bookseller in England; 
 tradesman, teacher, opera manager, and 
 bookseller in America. He had enjoyed the 
 friendship of some of the great ones of the 
 Old World, and some of the noble ones 
 of the New, and in New York he came 
 nearer to finding a home than anywhere in 
 Europe. He died within the recollection of 
 
 1 Da Ponte sometimes spoke of himself as " Poet to the 
 Emperor Joseph II." His biographers have almost unani- 
 mously accepted the statement that he was what these 
 words indicate, a poet laureate, or " Poeta Cesario," of 
 Austria. Such is not the case. In a foot-note in the ap- 
 pendix to the third volume, last edition of his " Memorie," 
 he corrects the error, saying that he never was Caesarian 
 poet, but that his title was " Poet to the Imperial theatres." 
 ii 161
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 many persons yet alive, and men whose 
 names shine brightly in local annals followed 
 him to his grave ; yet the exact location of 
 that grave is unknown. In August, 1887, I 
 made a laborious search for it. All available 
 records pointed to the old Roman Catholic 
 cemetery in Eleventh-street, between Avenue 
 A and First-avenue, as the graveyard that 
 had received the body of the distinguished 
 nonagenarian just forty-nine years before. 
 The place is overgrown with rank grass and 
 weeds. There are no paths. Those who 
 wish to read the inscriptions on the head- 
 stones must stumble along as best they can; 
 now over irregular hillocks, now into deep 
 depressions half-filled with old boots, rusty 
 tin cans, and other refuse. Many of the in- 
 scriptions have been obliterated by the action 
 of the elements ; some of the stones lie prone 
 upon the ground (the bones which once they 
 guarded having been removed, as the bright- 
 eyed, fresh-faced, silver-haired old wife of the 
 decrepit keeper explains), and in one place a 
 large Ailantus tree in growing has taken up a 
 stone half-way into itself. For hours I 
 crossed and recrossed the decaying cemetery, 
 scrutinizing carefully every inscription; but 
 in vain. No head-stone was found bearing 
 the name of Da Ponte, and there are no 
 162
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 records to identify the spot where, on August 
 20, 1838, his grave was dug. 
 
 The life of Lorenzo Da Ponte has not often 
 been told ; it has never been all told, and the 
 narratives which have found their way into 
 print are full of inaccuracies. In Oulibi- 
 scheff s book on Mozart his death is said to 
 have occurred in December, 1838, instead 
 of August, and when the municipality of his 
 native town, about a generation ago, wanted 
 to erect a monument to him, it was found 
 necessary to apply to New York to learn the 
 date of his death. If at that time an answer 
 was returned by the municipality of New 
 York, and the official records were consulted 
 for the information, the chances are that an 
 incorrect date was sent to Ceneda, for the 
 records of the Health Department assert that 
 Lorenzo Daponte (thus the name is written) 1 
 died on .August 21, 1838, which was four 
 days after the true date and one day after his 
 burial. The books are equally contradictory 
 as to the date of his arrival in America, and 
 many other incidents in his career. Many of 
 
 1 It is curious that in Longworth's New York Directory 
 Da Ponte's name was written with two capital letters until 
 1821, and that thenceforward it remained " Daponte " until 
 his death. Tuckerman also calls him " Daponte." The 
 French translator of the " Memorie," with obvious stu- 
 pidity, calls him " d'Aponte." 
 163
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 these contradictions are doubtless due to the 
 want of definiteness which characterizes the 
 Italian autobiography which Da Ponte pub- 
 lished in New York seventy-five years ago. In 
 this work, which has been translated into Ger- 
 man and French, but not into English, Da 
 Ponte is garrulous enough about many insig- 
 nificant things, but silent about many others of 
 vastly more importance, and his biographers in 
 the hand-books on music and literature have 
 pretty generally evinced an unwillingness to 
 be guided in all things by Da Ponte's own 
 utterances. My inquiry, which occupied 
 several weeks, discovered many interesting 
 things touching the American career of Da 
 Ponte, some having almost a serio-comic 
 aspect. 
 
 Lorenzo Da Ponte was an assumed name. 
 The real name of him who made it celebrated 
 is unknown. He was the son of a Hebrew 
 leather dealer in Ceneda, a small town of the 
 Venetian republic. Until his fourteenth year 
 he was brought up a Jew, but having at- 
 tracted the attention of the Roman Catholic 
 bishop of Ceneda, Lorenzo Da Ponte, by his 
 precocious talents, the latter gave him an 
 education and his name. 1 After five years of 
 
 1 Whether Da Ponte ever took orders or was only a 
 self-styled Abbe is not clear. In a scurrilous Italian 
 164
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 study he went to Venice, whence amorous 
 escapades compelled him to flee to Treviso. 
 There he became professor of rhetoric, and 
 candidate for office, lampooned his opponent 
 in a sonnet, and was ordered to leave the 
 republic of Venice. He went to Dresden, 
 then to Vienna, where Salieri aided him and 
 he received from Joseph II the position of 
 Poet to the Imperial Theatre and Latin 
 Secretary. There, too, he fell in with 
 Mozart, who asked him to throw Beau- 
 marchais's comedy, " Le Mariage de Figaro," 
 into an opera. The collaboration was the 
 first happy one that Mozart had had, and the 
 opera was a tremendous success, especially in 
 Prague. Mozart promised to write another 
 opera for the people who understood him so 
 well, and this time Da Ponte suggested 
 " Don Giovanni." To Da Ponte, therefore, 
 belongs the credit of having suggested the 
 
 pamphlet directed against him, printed in Lisbon, there is 
 a sonnet inscribed " to the ineffable merit of the Jew, 
 Lorenzo Daponte, poet of the Italian theatre in London, 
 who, after having been -converted to Christianity in the city 
 of Venice, embraced the churchly state so successfully that 
 he reached the dignity of a priest ; but come to England, 
 would wear no other robe than that of an impostor, and 
 kicked aside the ' Dominus vobiscum,' in order to increase 
 the number of rascals." A reply to this pamphlet, which, 
 it may be safely assumed, came from Da Ponte, attributes 
 the authorship to one Carlo Francesco.
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 story and written the book of this master- 
 piece, whose chances of immortality are 
 surely as great as those of any other musical 
 composition. Da Ponte won the ill will of 
 Leopold, and when Joseph II died he had to 
 leave Vienna. Meanwhile he had married 
 an English woman at Trieste, whither he 
 went to seek a reconciliation with Leopold. 
 Armed with a letter to Marie Antoinette, who 
 had admired some of his works, he started 
 for Paris, but when he got to Spires " it was 
 in the hands of the French and Antoinette 
 was a prisoner in the temple." He changed 
 his plans and went to London, where a year 
 later he became poet to the Italian Opera 
 and aided Taylor in the management. He 
 also started a bookstore and went into the 
 printing business. The latter venture and 
 his indorsement of Taylor's bills involved 
 him financially, and fleeing from the officers 
 of the law he came to America. 
 
 It is at this point that my investigations 
 began, and their first result was to establish 
 the date of Da Ponte's arrival in America. 
 Grove's " Dictionary of Music and Musi- 
 cians " says that he sailed from England 
 March 5, 1803; H. T. Tuckerman wrote in 
 an article in " Putnam's Magazine " that he 
 arrived at Philadelphia on June 4, 1802; F. 
 166
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 L. Ritter lands him in May, 1803. All agree 
 that his financial troubles drove him from 
 England. Now for the new evidence. In 
 the library of the New York Historical 
 Society there is a copy of a pamphlet which 
 hitherto has remained unmentioned by all 
 who have written on Da Ponte so far as can 
 be learned. It was his first public utterance 
 in America, and was evidently designed as 
 the first of a series of publications to be cir- 
 culated among his Italian scholars in this 
 city. It is in Italian, with an English trans- 
 lation, and the copy in question was uncut 
 until it fell into the writer's hands. Here is 
 the title in English : 
 
 Compendium of the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, 
 written by Himself, to which is added the first 
 Literary Conversazione held at His House in New 
 York on the loth day of March, 1807, consisting 
 of several Italian compositions in verse and prose, 
 translated into English by his scholars. New 
 York, printed by I. Riley & Co., 1807. 
 
 Da Ponte's motive for printing this pam- 
 phlet is told in the brief prefatory address 
 "To the Reader," as follows: 
 
 It is now a long while since I promised to my 
 friends the story of my life. I will shortly fulfil 
 167
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 my promise. Certain reasons have, however, in- 
 duced me to publish, for the present, these few 
 hints. If they ever reach England I hope those 
 persons may read them who are unjustly taking 
 advantage of my absence to deprive me even of 
 that little which has escaped the hands of fraud ; 
 and which I entrusted before my departure to ap- 
 parent honesty. I wish to conceal their names 
 under the veil of charity, if I can no longer under 
 that of friendship ; and, if they be willing, it is not 
 too late. 
 
 In this " Compendium " Da Ponte hurries 
 over the greater portion of his life-history. 
 His departure from Venice, he chronicles 
 thus: "I was obliged to leave Venice, the 
 place of my nativity, for having associated 
 myself with an illustrious person whose 
 efforts were directed to her preservation." 
 To his London history is added the informa- 
 tion that before he became poet to the royal 
 theatre he spent a year " totally destitute of 
 employment " and then went to Holland for 
 the purpose of establishing there an Italian 
 theatre. He was encouraged in the project, 
 and had almost succeeded, " when the defeat 
 of the English under Dunkirk changed the 
 face of affairs." He remained in his position 
 of theatrical poet eight years, " with much 
 profit and not without honor," he says, and 
 168
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 then continues : " It was snatched from me 
 by means of some female artifices at a 
 moment when I had the least apparent 
 reason to apprehend such a loss." What is 
 referred to in these words is not clear. Da 
 Ponte had the reputation of a gallant, and 
 even in his old age could not resist the 
 temptation to discourse on the favor in 
 which he had stood with the fair sex and the 
 fidelity with which he had lived up to every 
 promise to love a woman made between the 
 period when he first experienced the passion, 
 at eighteen years, to the time of his marriage, 
 when he was forty. Later in his pamphlet 
 he refers to the money which his wife had 
 earned by " her own honorable industry," 
 and appends this foot-note : " Do you 
 understand the meaning of that word, once 
 beautiful Rossellana of England? " That he 
 had many enemies in the theatrical circles of 
 London is well known, and with some he 
 carried on a bitter personal controversy. Of 
 this fact an amusing bit of evidence is con- 
 tained in a volume of miscellaneous pamphlets 
 in the Historical Society's library. Among 
 the pamphlets is an Italian one, printed with- 
 out date and anonymously in Lisbon. It 
 is an indecent attack on " the celebrated 
 Lorenzo Daponte, who after having been Jew, 
 169
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 Christian, priest, and poet in Italy and Ger- 
 many found himself to be a layman, husband, 
 and ass in London." In this pamphlet is a 
 sonnet addressed to Da Ponte, in which by a 
 pun his name is associated with the Ponte 
 Oscura, a disreputable quarter of Naples. 
 Next to this delectable pamphlet is bound a 
 reply, also unsigned, which bandies epithets 
 with the alleged author of the former with a 
 freedom and vigor which would be consid- 
 ered startling even by the controversialists of 
 the far West. This is the way in which the 
 climax is reached : Poeta di Priapo, di 
 Cotitto, di Petunda, di Stercucdo e di tutti le 
 fogne, ed i Lupinari di Londra. Again in the 
 " Compendium," while emphasizing the state- 
 ment that he brought nothing with him from 
 England to America except" some books and 
 a box of violin strings," he adds : " whatever 
 may be said by the illiterate singer of Hay- 
 market or the Delilah of the Neapolitan 
 Eunuch." The indignant protestation, it must 
 be confessed, sounds a little amusing in view 
 of the fact that a few pages later he says: 
 " A glass of wine given with affected com- 
 passion by a needy sharper on board the 
 fatal Nantucket vessel cost me $300 more." 
 Evidently he carried at least $300 away with 
 him when, " pursued by twelve bailiffs," he 
 170
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 fled from London to Gravesend, and there 
 embarked on the Nantucket vessel, which 
 sailed for Philadelphia on March 26, 1805, 
 and reached New York on June 4. 
 
 His wife, he says, had been in America on 
 a visit to her father not a year, but so long 
 that " about the middle of February " he had 
 sent her a peremptory injunction to return. 1 
 She was about to obey him when he arrived. 
 His wife had brought over $5,000 (remember 
 Rossellana) and soon got $1,000 more from 
 her sister in London. With this money Da 
 Ponte embarked in business. Evidently he 
 was not cut out for a tradesman. In three 
 months, through his " wonted lenity of 
 temper," he had lost $300; then the fear of 
 yellow fever drove him to Elizabethtown, 
 N. J., where he bought a house and lot and 
 continued his traffic in liquors, tobacco, 
 
 1 In spite of Da Ponte's theatrical protestation that his 
 lips had never spoken an untruth (he was a poet and much 
 given to hyperbole), investigation of his career discloses 
 many things which can not now be reconciled with his 
 statements. If he had been in correspondence with his 
 wife sometime before he commanded her to return to 
 London from New York in February, 1805, as he says, she 
 certainly must have been here in 1804; yet the notices of 
 Lorenzo L. Da Ponte (son of the poet and professor of 
 Italian in the University of the City of New York for 
 several years prior to his death in 1840), official and other- 
 wise, agree in saying that he was born in London in 1805. 
 171
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 drugs, etc. He failed, he says, because his 
 customers did n't pay. Here is his woeful 
 complaint: " I was sometimes obliged, rather 
 than lose all, to take, for notes due long 
 before, lame horses, broken carts, disjointed 
 chairs, old shoes, rancid butter, watery cider, 
 rotten eggs, apples, brooms, turnips, pota- 
 toes ; " and these things he had to sell at a 
 sacrifice in order to meet the demands of 
 " creditors without mercy." Plainly Da 
 Ponte was not a financier. In his books 
 those who owed him money are all uncon- 
 scionable scoundrels and cheats, and those 
 to whom he owes money are all merciless, 
 grasping skinflints who sold him bad goods. 
 His New Jersey venture lasted a year ; then 
 he sold out, and the sheriff, prompted by a 
 peculiarly wicked creditor, named Dunham, 
 seized upon his household effects. He re- 
 turned to New York, began to teach Italian, 
 and entertained his first class with a sketch 
 of his life, from which the above drafts have 
 been made, and which included a financial 
 showing of the Jersey business. The citizens 
 of Elizabethtown owed him about $800; he 
 owed $400 in New Jersey; he had $1,600, 
 which he divided among his New York 
 creditors, but it was " not enough to meet all 
 demands," nor were all these demands paid 
 172
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 after he had handed over to his creditors 
 $3,450. Da Ponte was surely ingenuous 
 when it came to finances. 
 
 Da Ponte now entered on a period of suc- 
 cessful teaching in New York. His name 
 appears for the first time in Longworth's 
 directory for iSo/. 1 The period lasted till 
 1811, and was distinguished each year by a 
 change of residence ; among other places, he 
 lived at No. 29 Partition-street, in the Bowery, 
 and at No. 247 Duane-street. Having 
 amassed a fortune of $4,000 he again em- 
 barked in business. This time he became a 
 distiller in Sunbury, Penn. He stayed from 
 June 10, 1811, till August 14, 1818, and of 
 course was more dreadfully ruined than ever 
 
 1 If it is true that three movings are as bad as a fire, 
 Da Ponte's local peregrinations might be cited as either 
 cause or proof of his poverty. Investigation of the direc- 
 tories of New York discovers the following list of his 
 dwelling places: 1807, No. 29 Partition-street; 1808, the 
 Bowery; 1810, No. 247 Duane-street; 1819, No. 54 
 Chapel-street; 1820, No. 17 Jay-street; 1821, No. 343 
 Greenwich-street; 1824, No. 51 Hudson-street; 1825, No. 
 92 Hudson-street; 1826, No. 206 Duane-street; 1827 and 
 1828, No. 390 Greenwich-street; 1829 to 1835, No. 342 
 Broadway, with the bookstore at No. 336 (then, as now, 
 the numbers were in the vicinity of Catherine-lane) ; 1836 
 and 1837, No. 35 Dey-street; 1838, No. 91 Spring-street, 
 where he died. The directories of 1811 and 1823 are 
 missing in the Trow collection, and that of 1809 is 
 defective. 
 
 173
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 before. Again he was the only sheep in a 
 flock of wolves. On his return he again 
 gathered his pupils around him. He won 
 the friendship of no less powerful an advocate 
 than Clement Clarke Moore, whom scholars 
 honor as the pioneer Hebrew lexicographer 
 of the United States, and whom children love 
 as the author of" 'Twas the Night before 
 Christmas." His summers he spent near 
 noble patrons, the Livingstons, on the Hud- 
 son; his winters in town. He wrote his 
 memoirs in three small volumes, and pub- 
 lished them in 1823. He lectured on Italy, 
 and even measured his pen with that of 
 Prescott, who had ventured to criticise Italian 
 narrative poetry in " The North American 
 Review." Exactly when does not appear, 
 but it seems that he also taught "Aunt 
 Sally," who kept a boarding-house in Broome- 
 street, the art of Italian cookery, and culti- 
 vated in his pupils simultaneously the taste 
 for Petrarch and macaroni. His friend, 
 Clement C. Moore, was a trustee of Columbia 
 College, and probably through his advocacy 
 Lorenzo Da Ponte became professor of 
 Italian literature in Columbia College, then 
 situated at the foot of Park Place, near 
 Broadway. The story of this professorship 
 can be told in a few extracts from the minutes 
 174
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 of the Trustees of Columbia College and a 
 postscript. 
 
 From the minutes of Columbia College: 
 
 May 2, 1825. A letter from Mr. Da Ponte was 
 received, asking permission to instruct the alumni 
 of the College in the Italian language and to make 
 use of some part of the building for that purpose. 
 The above letter was referred to the Standing 
 Committee. 
 
 June 6, 1825. (At this meeting the report of 
 the Standing Committee was laid on the table for 
 further consideration.) 
 
 September 5, 1825. Resolved, That a Profes- 
 sorship of Italian Literature be established in this 
 College, but that the Professor be not considered 
 one of the Board of the College, nor subject to the 
 provisions of the second chapter of the statutes. 
 
 Resolved, That the attendance of the students 
 upon the said Professor be voluntary, and that the 
 hours of attendance be appointed by the Professor, 
 under the direction of the President. 
 
 Resolved, That Signore Da Ponte be and is 
 hereby appointed to the said professorship, and 
 that he be allowed to receive from the students 
 who shall attend his lectures a reasonable compen- 
 sation ; but that no salary be allowed him from the 
 College. 
 
 December 5, 1825. (Da Ponte offers to sell 
 two hundred and sixty-three volumes of Italian 
 175
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 works to the college for $364.05. Referred to a 
 committee, C. C. Moore, chairman.) 
 
 January 2, 1826. (Favorable report; the books 
 are bought for the library.) 
 
 January 5, 1829. Ordered that $50 be paid to 
 Signore Da Ponte in addition to what he has 
 already been paid for making the catalogue of the 
 College. 
 
 November 3, 1829. (Da Ponte offers more 
 books.) 
 
 November 12, 1829. (Thirty-three volumes 
 bought of Da Ponte for $140.) 
 
 November 30, 1829. A proposition was re- 
 ceived through the President from Signore Da 
 Ponte, offering to add a number of Italian books 
 to the College Library upon condition of his hav- 
 ing a certain number of pupils provided him 
 to instruct in the Italian language. Where- 
 upon 
 
 Resolved, That it is inexpedient to accept of the 
 proposition of Signore Da Ponte. 
 
 These are the only instances in which Da 
 Ponte's name appears in the minutes of 
 Columbia College. From the volume added 
 to his memoirs in 1830 the meaning of the 
 last entry may be learned. He was a pro- 
 fessor without pupils or salary. His propo- 
 sition was to give two lessons for forty weeks 
 to one hundred students, each to pay $15 for 
 176
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 the eighty lessons, and then to present one 
 thousand volumes to the College. 
 
 o 
 
 The years from 1807 to 1811 and from 
 1818 to 1826 were evidently the only happy 
 ones in Da Ponte's American life. Some of 
 his pupils went to live with him at his sum- 
 mer home to continue their studies. Among 
 them was Henry James Anderson, who be- 
 came professor of mathematics and astronomy 
 in Columbia College in 1825, and who mar- 
 ried Da Ponte's daughter. Dr. Anderson 
 remained professor until 1843, became a con- 
 vert to Romanism, and died in 1875 a ^ 
 Lahore, India, whither he had gone on a 
 scientific commission. His wife died in 1843 
 in Paris while returning with her husband 
 from Rome. She is buried in Pere la Chaise. 
 Dr. Anderson was but once married and left 
 only two children, Edward Henry and Elbert 
 Ellery; the latter is a prominent lawyer of 
 New York City, and an active Democratic 
 politician. 
 
 The last ten years of Da Ponte's life were 
 both brightened and clouded by efforts to 
 introduce Italian opera in America. When 
 Garcia came in November, 1825, with an 
 Italian troupe including his daughter, after- 
 ward Malibran, Da Ponte was among his 
 earliest visitors. The story of their meeting 
 12 i
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 is a familiar one. Da Ponte introduced him- 
 self to the singer as the author of " Don 
 Giovanni " (" my ' Don Giovanni,' " he was 
 fond of saying), and Garcia, clasping him in 
 his arms, danced about the room like a child, 
 singing Fin ch' han dal vino. Naturally 
 " Don Giovanni " was given in the first sea- 
 son, though Da Ponte and his " friends and 
 pupils " had to pay an extra singer in order 
 to have a Don Ottavio. Later Da Ponte 
 associated himself with Rivafinoli in operatic 
 management, and even succeeded in persuad- 
 ing some wealthy citizens to build an opera 
 house at Church and Leonard-streets. The 
 operatic ventures were disastrous. He wrote 
 and published two pamphlets about the Mon- 
 tressor season in 1832, and in 1835 appended 
 to a complaint of his recent sufferings a let- 
 ter in which he denounced Rivafinoli, accused 
 the public of ingratitude toward himself, and 
 urged that the theatre be leased to one 
 Rocco. Da Ponte went with all his troubles 
 straight to the public through the medium of 
 the printing press, and it makes a somewhat 
 diverting effect in spite of his obvious seri- 
 ousness to read on one page of his pamphlet 
 an almost hysterical prayer to the stock- 
 holders of the opera house to listen to his 
 advice and take the word " of an old man 
 178
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 whose lips have never uttered an untruth," 
 and on the next a warning to his debtors, 
 threatening to sell their notes at public auc- 
 tion and tell the " circumstances under which 
 they were offered and received " unless they 
 are paid before a given day. When he 
 records his failure to change the system of 
 instruction at Columbia he does so cheerfully 
 enough. He tells in the last pages of his 
 " Memorie " that he had now opened a book- 
 store in front of which he could see all day 
 long the most beautiful women in the world 
 step out of their carriages. They were bent 
 on the purchase of candies and cakes in the 
 adjoining shop. Then he tells how the 
 temptation had seized him to put up a sign 
 in his window : " Candies and Italian cakes 
 sold here." If by such a trick somebody 
 shall be tempted into his store, " then," he 
 says, " will I bring forth Petrarch, or some 
 other of our poets, and I will vouch that they 
 are the sweetest of all candies for those who 
 have teeth to masticate them." But he did 
 not always take so cheerful a view of life. It 
 is plain from all his writings that he consid- 
 ered himself not appreciated at his true worth. 
 He thought himself a genius, and since the 
 people would not discover that fact of their 
 own volition he kept asseverating it in his 
 179
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 writings. Toward the end of his life the fact 
 
 O 
 
 that he was in danger of dying neglected 
 seems to have weighed greatly on his mind. 
 In a letter printed in his memoirs a friend, 
 evidently C. C. Moore, takes him to task for 
 it. Says the letter writer : 
 
 It seems to me that you are a little too anxious 
 in regard to the memory that you wish to leave 
 behind you. For all that you have already done 
 for the love of the Italian language and literature 
 the name of Da Ponte, elarum et venerabile 
 nomen, will be kept in great veneration so long as 
 there remains in this country a taste for elegant 
 letters, and the youth of both sexes will look back 
 in the decline of life to the hours passed in pleas- 
 ant and instructive conversation with their illus- 
 trious and elegant teacher as to the most brilliant 
 moments of their existence. This is enough. Do 
 not seek, like Bonaparte, to conquer for yourself 
 all the glory of the world. 
 
 A few more extracts from the publications 
 of his latter days evince the same spirit. In 
 a letter set as a preface to a pamphlet which 
 he calls " Frottola per far ridere," in 1835, 
 he says: 
 
 Eighteen months are passed since I had a single 
 pupil. I, the creator of the Italian language in 
 America, the teacher of more than two thousand 
 180
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 persons whose progress astounded Italy ! I, the 
 poet of Joseph II., the author of thirty-six dramas ; 
 the inspiration of Salieri, of Weighl, of Martini, of 
 Winter and MOZART ! After twenty-seven years of 
 hard labor I have no longer a pupil ! Nearly 
 ninety years old, I have no more bread in 
 America ! 
 
 In a similar tone he writes to a friend in 
 Italy : " If fate had led me to France instead 
 of America I would not now fear that my 
 remains might become food for the dogs ; I 
 would have earned enough money to secure 
 rest for my old body in the grave and pre- 
 serve my fame against total oblivion." In 
 1835, too, he published a " Storia Ameri- 
 cana, ossia il Lamento." It is a poet's lament, 
 a portion of which he himself translated, 
 beginning: 
 
 Yet to the hand which has those treasures given, 
 Ye have refused the cymbals and the lyre ; 
 And from his brow the laurel crown have riven, 
 Whose name has set the proudest stage on fire. 
 Have suffered one by cursed envy driven, 
 (One who, when thousands he had all bereaved 
 And none were left, his very self deceived,) 
 To bar to him the temple he had striven 
 With pain and toil to rear. Permitted rage 
 To seize the little mercy that was meant 
 And given by another, to assuage 
 The sorrows of a life so nearly spent, 
 181
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 That good men trembled, as with taunting scorn, 
 (And hate, of malice and of envy born,) 
 By ruthless hands that old man's hair was torn. 
 Nor will I now what I have borne declare, 
 My bitter wrongs, the horrors of my fate, 
 Through life those wrongs and horrors will I bear. 
 My death, what now I speak not, shall relate. 
 They shall declare who love the sacred NINE, 
 To whom I consecrate my heart and song, 
 They shall declare that sorrows have been mine, 
 And pain and silent suffering and wrong 
 For this heaven's light is still to me divine, 
 Nor will I at the ills I bear repine. 
 Oh ! why does reverence the right deny 
 To speak the names that struggle in my breast? 
 Those cherished names whose mem'ry can not die 
 Until this beating bosom is at rest. 
 Those names alone have had the power to dry 
 The struggling tear, and check the rising sigh. 
 When in the garden, beautiful and fair, 
 The jasmine blossomed, planted by my care, 
 The vi'let, the narcissus, and the rose, 
 The lily, type of virtue and repose, 
 The stately tulip and the fleur-de-lis, 
 Adding their beauty to the scenery, 
 While flowers of fairest and of richest hue, 
 Upon the air their sweetest perfume threw 
 Spring into freshened life at my command, 
 Planted and raised and cultured by my hand. 
 When to the marsh-born magpie and the crow, 
 That garden's gates were ope'd but shut to me, 
 Those names I ioved sustained me in my woe, 
 Checked my despair and soothed my misery. 
 For them I suffered that dogs, wolves, and all 
 The beasts of prey upon my flesh should fall, 
 182
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 Drink the warm current from my bleeding heart, 
 
 And glutted, deaf to all my cries, depart. 
 
 For this I took and nurtured in my breast 
 
 A ravenous beast, more fierce than all the rest, 
 
 In form a dove, but of his plumage shorn 
 
 A dove he came at earliest dawn of morn ; 
 
 I found him plumage mark the change at night, 
 
 A serpent writhes, discovered to my sight, 
 
 Sucks the heart's fountain to the very lees, 
 
 Contemns, betrays, traduces me and flees. 
 
 I quote these lines merely for the curious 
 interest which they possess as a specimen of 
 the old poet's English versification, and as an 
 evidence of the frame of mind in which he 
 kept himself in his last years. In the English 
 preface to the poem he relates that he had 
 determined to return to Italy to die, when 
 dissuaded by the receipt of a letter from an 
 admiring benefactor, inclosing fifty dollars. 
 He concludes as follows: 
 
 I remain. I will try to be known through the 
 testimony of persons worthy of belief. It is my 
 intention to publish fifty letters from distinguished 
 persons in Europe. They are all precious to me 
 for their contents and the names of those who 
 wrote them ; but the name of the benevolent 
 AMERICAN DONOR is, to me, the gem of the collec- 
 tion, both from the moment in which it was 
 written, and all it says. One such citizen ennobles 
 any place. New York may boast of many such 
 183
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 with her will I leave my ashes, as I have given to 
 her thirty years of my life. Perhaps those ashes 
 will receive, even from the ill-disposed and the 
 ungrateful, Vano conforto di tardi sospiri. 
 
 Da Ponte died of old age on August 17, \ 
 1838, at 9 P. M., at his home, No. 91 Spring- ) 
 street. Dr. J. W. Francis attended him, and 
 to him the poet a day before his death, his 
 leading passion inextinguishable, addressed a 
 sonnet. Allegri's " Miserere " was sung at his 
 funeral and, say eye-witnesses, he was buried 
 " in the Roman cemetery in Second-avenue." 
 Between Second-avenue and First at that 
 time there were no buildings. Gulian C. 
 Verplanck and Dr. Macneven were among 
 his pall-bearers. The Italians of the city 
 resolved to rear a monument over his grave, 
 but never did so, and the place of his burial 
 is unmarked and unknown, like the grave of 
 MozarL 1 
 
 1 The death notice in " The Evening Post," of August 
 18, 1838, announces the funeral of Da Ponte as to take 
 place "to-morrow afternoon at five o'clock from his late 
 dwelling-house, No. 91 Spring-street." As a matter of fact 
 the funeral took place in the Cathedral at twelve o'clock of 
 the day after the one set in the advertisement. It is pro- 
 bable that the friends of the dead man, desiring to show 
 him some honors, changed the first plans of the family. 
 Tuckerman says : " The obsequies of Da Ponte were im- 
 pressive The funeral took place at noon of the 2oth of 
 184
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 There arises naturally a curiosity as to Da 
 Ponte's personal appearance. I have seen 
 two portraits, one an oil painting in the 
 
 August, 1838. Allegri's Miserere was performed over his 
 remains at the Cathedral ; the pall-bearers were his 
 countryman, Maroncelli, the companion of Pellico's memo- 
 rable imprisonment at Spielberg; his old friend, Clement 
 C. Moore, and two eminent citizens the Hon. Gulian C. 
 Verplanck and Dr. Macneven ; on the coffin was a laurel 
 wreath, and before it, on the way from the church to the 
 Roman cemetery in Second-avenue (sic. Mr. Ward says 
 simply ' to the Roman cemetery '), whither it was borne 
 followed by a long train of mourners led by the officiating 
 priests and the attendant physician was carried a banner, 
 and on its black ground was this inscription: 
 
 Laurentius Daponte. Italia. Natus. Litterarum. Rei- 
 publua. et Musis. Dilectissimus. Patria. et conciorum. 
 Amantissimus. Christiana. Fidei. Cultor. Adsiduus. 
 In Pace, et Consolatione. Lustrorum. XVII. Die Aug- 
 usti. MDCCCXXXIII. XC Anno. ^Etatis. SUCK. 
 Amplexu. Domini. Ascendit. 
 
 A private letter from Mr. E. Ellery Anderson says : " I 
 can not inform you as to his place of burial. He died during 
 an absence of several months of my father from the city. 
 Some Italian societies, I am informed, took charge of the 
 ceremonies. He was buried in the cemetery near Eleventh- 
 street and Second-avenue. About twenty years since my 
 father received a communication from the authorities of 
 Ceneda, his native village near Venice, asking information 
 as to where he was buried. I spent several days in inves- 
 tigating the matter, but was unable to find any trace of 
 him. My judgment is that his remains were placed tem- 
 porarily in some friend's vault, with the intention of erect- 
 ing a formal monument at a later period, and that this 
 matter has been overlooked or forgotten until all traces of 
 the poet's remains have been lost."
 
 A MOZART CENTENARY 
 
 library of Columbia College, the other a steel 
 engraving put as a frontispiece in the 
 " Frottola per far ridere," of which mention 
 has been made. In the painting Da Ponte 
 sits at a writing-table with a pen in his right 
 hand and the left clasping the top of a large 
 book which rests on his knee. The brow is 
 a noble one, but the face runs down to a 
 rather pointed chin. As a whole the cast of 
 countenance is decidedly more Hebraic than 
 the other portrait, which, of course, was 
 sanctioned by the original or it would not 
 have appeared in one of his books. The 
 latter, which was copied in the " New York 
 Mirror " to illustrate an article on Da Ponte'-s 
 death, written by Samuel Ward, is, however, 
 in better accord with the descriptions to be 
 found in local literature. In " Old New 
 York," published in 1858, Dr. John W, 
 Francis, who attended the old poet on his 
 death-bed, speaks of him as " the stately 
 nonagenarian, whose white locks so richly 
 ornamented his classical front and his grace- 
 ful and elegant person." Mr. Tuckerman, 
 who seems also to have been acquainted with 
 Da Ponte, in the article published years ago 
 in " Putnam's Magazine " describes him 
 thus : " At the age of ninety Lorenzo Da- 
 ponte was still a fine-looking man; he had 
 1 86
 
 DA PONTE IN NEW YORK 
 
 the head of a Roman ; his countenance 
 beamed with intelligence and vivacity; his 
 hair was abundant and fell luxuriantly round 
 his neck, and his manners combined dignity 
 and urbanity to a rare degree." 
 
 In connection with these descriptions it is 
 interesting to read what Michael Kelly (the 
 Irish singer who sang at the first performance 
 of " Le Nozze di Figaro " in Prague, and 
 who caricatured Da Ponte in one of his own 
 operas in Vienna) says in his " Reminis- 
 cences: " 
 
 My friend, the poet, had a remarkably awkward 
 gait, a habit of throwing himself (as he thought) 
 into a graceful attitude by putting his stick behind 
 his back and leaning on it; he had also a very 
 peculiar, rather dandyish way of dressing ; for, in 
 sooth, the abb stood mighty well with himself and 
 had the character of a consummate coxcomb ; he 
 had also a strong lisp and broad Venetian dialect. 
 
 187
 
 BEETHOVEN AND HIS 
 BIOGRAPHER
 
 ALEXANDER WHEELOCK 
 THAYER 
 
 WHEN Alexander Wheelock Thayer died on 
 July 15, 1897, in Trieste, Austria, America 
 lost a citizen who had brought her more 
 renown in the world of music than any of 
 her composers, performers or singers ; yet he 
 wrote no music and had only an amateur's 
 knowledge of the art. He won his emi- 
 nence by writing a biography of Beethoven 
 which is recognized the world over as the 
 court of last resort on all questions of 
 fact concerning the great musician who 
 linked together the eighteenth and nine- 
 teenth centuries. He gave to that work 
 nearly fifty years of his life, yet left it 
 uncompleted, to the infinite regret of all 
 serious students of musical history. Three 
 volumes were printed, in German transla- 
 tion, which brought the story of Beethoven's 
 life down to the end of the year 1816. Eigh- 
 teen years elapsed between the publication 
 of Volume III and Mr. Thayer's death, but 
 191
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 so brain-weary had he become from the 
 labor of gathering, sifting and presenting 
 the vast material contained in the work that 
 the last ten years of his life saw no progress 
 made in his magnum opus. So far as it 
 goes, however, " Ludwig van Beethoven's 
 Leben " is the final and authoritative account 
 of the composer's life and labors. For the 
 first time it places the history of Beethoven's 
 career on a solid basis of fact, rectifying the 
 great mass of fable and error that had grown 
 up around it from the negligence and par- 
 tisan bias of the composer's friends and 
 earlier biographers, and bringing to light a 
 great body of new and convincing data. 
 Thayer's method was that of the modern 
 German school of careful and exhaustive 
 research as exemplified in Jahn's biography 
 of Mozart, and Spitta's of Bach. Unlike 
 those works, however, Thayer's " Beethoven" 
 attempts no analysis or estimate of its sub- 
 ject's compositions. It is a study of the 
 man, not of his music. 
 
 Mr. Thayer was born at South Natick, 
 Mass., on October 22, 1817. He was grad- 
 uated from Harvard College in 1843, and 
 immediately went to work in the College 
 library. While thus employed he formed 
 the resolve the execution of which occupied 
 192
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 him for the rest of his life. He went to 
 Germany, where he lived for two years, col- 
 lecting materials, studying the German lan- 
 guage and otherwise fitting himself for the 
 task which he had set himself. When he 
 came back to the United States in 1852 he 
 became a member of the staff of the " New 
 York Tribune" newspaper; but music en- 
 grossed his attention, his health gave way, 
 and he abandoned the profession of journal- 
 ism, though he did not cease to write articles 
 for newspapers and other journals, until he 
 could write no more. In 1854 he went back 
 to Europe, and saving two years which he 
 spent in Boston, from 1856 to 1858, that 
 country was his abiding-place till his death. 
 The Boston interim brought him into close 
 association with Lowell Mason, who em- 
 ployed him to catalogue his library. In 
 1858, largely supported by funds contributed 
 by Dr. Mason and Mrs. Mehitabel Adams of 
 Cambridge, Mr. Thayer returned to Europe. 
 In 1862 he entered the service of the United 
 States Legation at Vienna and three years 
 later he was appointed United States Con- 
 sul at Trieste by President Lincoln at the 
 request of Mr. Motley and Senators Sumner 
 and Wilson. He remained in office until 
 October ist, 1882, when President Cleveland 
 '3 193
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 removed him to make room for a man be- 
 longing to his political party. All the time 
 that he could spare from his official duties 
 was given to travels undertaken to gather 
 material for the Beethoven biography. 
 
 The first fruits of Mr. Thayer's special 
 study were given to the world in his " Chro- 
 nologisches Verzeichniss der Werke Ludwig 
 van Beethoven's," published in Berlin in 
 1865. The next year the first volume of the 
 biography appeared. This, like the suc- 
 ceeding volumes (the second published in 
 1872, the third in 1879), was written in Eng- 
 lish and translated into German by Dr. Her- 
 mann Deiters of Bonn, to whom, after Mr. 
 Thayer's death, his executor, Jabez Fox, 
 Esq., entrusted the task of completing the 
 work with the aid of the material gathered 
 together by the great biographer. Since Dr. 
 Burney made his memorable tours through 
 Germany, France and Italy to gather mate- 
 rial for his "General History of Music" it 
 is doubtful if any investigator ever made 
 such exhaustive and painstaking researches 
 as Mr. Thayer. Like Dr. Burney, he be- 
 lieved that intelligence as well as mer- 
 chandise capable of adulteration is seldom 
 genuine after passing through many hands, 
 and that it is always best to seek for infor- 
 194
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 mation at its source. He therefore sought 
 out all of Beethoven's friends who were 
 living in the sixth and seventh decades of 
 this century, noted down their recollec- 
 tions of important occurrences in connection 
 with the composer, and a multitude of inci- 
 dents which might enable him the better 
 to straighten out the thread of that life- 
 story which had been sadly tangled by the 
 romancers who, under one pretence or an- 
 other, were first in the field with books on 
 Beethoven. This, however, was probably 
 the least valuable of Thayer's labors; it 
 did not compare with his researches in old 
 archives, court records, etc. , for the evidence, 
 which, as he has presented it, leaves scarcely 
 an important incident in Beethoven's life in 
 doubt, but it resulted in the accumulation of 
 a most interesting body of anecdote and de- 
 scription. To hear this from the lips of 
 witnesses who are speaking from personal 
 knowledge is to be brought nearer to the per- 
 sonality of the great genius than could be 
 done by any amount of ordinary biographical 
 writing; and so I give the following extracts 
 from Mr. Thayer's notebooks (kindly placed 
 at my disposal by Mrs. Fox, a niece of the 
 biographer and his heir) without further 
 change than a translation into English 
 195
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 of the passages which occur in foreign 
 languages : 
 
 January 2, 1860 I visited General Garten- 
 Direktor Peter Lenne", at Potsdam, a native of 
 Bonn. He told me (A. W. T.) that in 1812 he 
 went to Vienna and took a letter from his father 
 to B., also one from Father Ries. As B. heard 
 the Bonn dialect he exclaimed, " I can understand 
 you. You speak Bonnian (Bonniscfi). You must 
 be my guest every Sunday ! " 
 
 " Father Ries " was the father of Ferdi- 
 nand Ries, Beethoven's pupil, and, with 
 Dr. F. G. Wegeler, author of the "Biog- 
 raphische Notizen u'ber Ludwig van Bee- 
 thoven," published in 1838. 
 
 August 29, 1859 I met Musikdirektor Krenn 
 on the Glacis, and he related me the two follow- 
 ing anecdotes : 
 
 Hofrath Kiiffner told him (Krenn) that he once 
 lived with Beethoven in Heiligenstadt, and that 
 they were in the habit evenings of going down to 
 Ntissdorf to eat a fish supper in the Gasthaus 
 " Zur Rose." One evening, when B. was in a 
 good humor, Kiiffner began : 
 
 K. " Tell me frankly which is your favorite 
 among your symphonies ? " 
 
 B. (in great good humor) " Eh ! Eh ! The 
 < Eroica.' " 
 
 196
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 K. "I should have guessed the C minor." 
 
 B. " No ; the Eroica.' " 
 
 Krenn was a pupil of Ignatz v. Seyfried, and at 
 one time he was studying B.'s seventh symphony 
 with his master, and when they came to the place 
 in the finale where the drums are out of harmony, 
 Seyfried told this anecdote : 
 
 Years before they were rehearsing that work 
 with his orchestra. When they came to this place 
 he thought the parts were copied out incorrectly, 
 but on referring to the score it was the same there. 
 As carefully as possible he said to Beethoven: 
 " Dear friend, there seems to be an error here ; 
 the kettledrums are not in tune." Beethoven 
 flared up at once and exclaimed : " It is not in- 
 tended that they shall be." Now, that Seyfried 
 had learned to appreciate the poetic idea which 
 underlies the music, he told Krenn, " Now I com- 
 prehend that the drums ought not to be in tune." 
 
 The passage in the finale of the seventh \ 
 symphony referred to is probably the stub- 
 born and dissonant roll on A near the close 
 of the first portion of the movement. 
 
 The old actor Hopp told me to-day, October 
 28, 1859, that at the opening of the Josephstadt 
 Theatre he was still in Baden, but that a few 
 days later he came to Vienna, November 4, 1822. 
 Hensler gave a dinner in the Garderobeofthe J.S. 
 197
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 Theatre at 3 P. M., it being Hensler's Namenstag, 
 Beethoven, Glaser, Bauerle, Gleich, Meisel, Hopp 
 and others being present. Beethoven had a seat 
 directly under a musical clock. Glaser told Reubl, 
 who provided the entertainment, to set the clock 
 to the overture to " Fidelio " and then wrote 
 Beethoven to listen, as he would soon hear it. 
 Beethoven listened and then said : " It plays 
 it better than the orchestra in the Karnthnerthor." 
 
 Rust's Anecdote Wilhelm Rust used to relate 
 that in 1809 he was in a coffee-house in Vienna and 
 Beethoven was there also. A French officer hap- 
 pening to pass, B. doubled up his fist and ex- 
 claimed : " If I, as a general, knew as much about 
 strategy as I know about counterpoint as a com- 
 poser, I 'd cut out some work for you fellows ! " 
 This anecdote was told me by Wilhelm Rust, the 
 nephew of the above. 
 
 April 29, 1860 At Link's, where I met 
 Hozalka. He speaks very highly of Schindler 
 and of S.'s disinterested fidelity to Beethoven. 
 Hozalka says that in i82o-'2i, as near as he can 
 recollect, the wife of a Major Baumgarten took 
 boy boarders in the house then standing where 
 the Musikverein's Saal now is, and that Beethoven's 
 nephew was placed with her. Her sister, Baronin 
 Born, lived with her. One evening he, Hozalka, 
 then a young man, called there and found only 
 Baronin Born at home. Soon another caller came 
 198
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 and stayed to tea. It was Beethoven. Among 
 other topics Mozart came on the tapis, and the 
 Born asked Beethoven (in writing, of course) 
 which of Mozart's operas he thought most of. 
 " Die Zauberflote," said Beethoven, and, suddenly 
 clasping his hands and throwing up his eyes, ex- 
 claimed, " Oh, Mozart ! " 
 
 As Hozalka had, as it was the fashion to do, 
 always considered " Don Juan " as the greatest, 
 this opinion by Beethoven made a very deep im- 
 pression upon him. 
 
 At Artaria's I found two of the daily records of 
 expense kept by Beethoven's housekeeper. They 
 consist of two or three sheets of foolscap paper 
 ^ doubled together lengthwise and stitched. I had 
 the curiosity to draw off the wine account as it is 
 scattered among the items. Found it to be as 
 follows : 
 
 Fl. x 
 
 July 7 Wine cost 9 20 W. W. 
 
 " 12 White wine . . . . 4 15 
 
 " " Red " .... 5 25 
 
 " 16 White " .... 3 20 
 
 " " Red " .... 9 20 
 
 " 23 Red " 6 Mass, 3 Seidel 4 43^ 
 
 White " 2 " i " 4 30 
 
 28 Wine 14 
 
 August 6, 7 Red wine, 7^ Mass 5 15 
 
 White " .... 2 22 
 199
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 October 28 Wine 2 30 
 
 " 31- " 6 40 
 
 November 2 Wine .... 3 30 
 
 " 14 " .... 2 
 N. B. A florin (Fl.) or gulden W. W. (Wiener 
 Wahrung) was near enough to be called a franc 
 about 20 or 2 1 cents American money. One English 
 gallon equals 3.9680 Prussian quarts ; one Austrian 
 Mass equals 1.2359 Prussian quarts; one Austrian 
 Mass equals 1.205 English quarts. 
 
 May 24, 1860, I called on Salis in the Nagler 
 Gasse, Wien. His wife was daughter of the 
 violoncellist Willmann, and therefore niece of the 
 Willmann afterward Galvani singer at Bonn, 
 i790-'93. (See Gerber's Lexicon.) She told me 
 that her father had often told her that Beethoven 
 was visibly in love with the beautiful songstress 
 and offered his hand ; but she refused him, he 
 being "ugly and half crazy." 
 
 May 25, 1860 Herr Salis took me to Hof- 
 sekretar Mahler, an old man, eighty-two years of 
 age, born at Coblentz. He came to Vienna in 
 1803. Breuning introduced him to Beethoven. 
 The place of introduction was in the Theater an 
 der Wien, where Beethoven then had rooms. It 
 was probably during the winter i8o3-'o4- They 
 found Beethoven at work finishing the " Eroica." 
 Wishing to hear him play, he sat down and played 
 the Finale theme, variations and fugue and 
 200
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 when it was concluded, instead of leaving off, he 
 continued in a free fantasia for two hours, during 
 all which time, said Mahler, himself a composer, 
 there was not a phrase (Takt, the word he used) 
 which was faulty or which did not sound original. 
 
 May 28 I called again on Mahler and ques- 
 tioned him as to the above, and find I have re- 
 ported correctly. One thing, he says, particularly 
 attracted his attention, and that was that he 
 played with his hands so very still. Wonderful 
 as was his execution, there was no tossing up and 
 about of his hands, but they seemed to glide right 
 and left over the keys, the fingers doing the 
 work. 
 
 He told me that at the grand rehearsal of 
 " Fidelio " the third fagott was absent, that Beetho- 
 ven fussed and fidgeted about it, but that Lobko- 
 witz treated the matter lightly two fagotts were 
 there and a third could make little difference, 
 etc. Whereat B. was enraged, and after the 
 rehearsal, on his way to his lodgings in the city, 
 as he passed over the Lobkowitz-Platz, he could 
 not resist going to the great door and calling out 
 Lobkowitzcher Esel ! (" Lobkowitzian ass.") 
 
 Upon inquiring what portrait Beethoven refers 
 to in the letter to Mahler which I copied the 
 other day, Mahler told me it was a picture which 
 he painted soon after coming to Vienna, in which 
 Beethoven is given nearly at full length, left hand 
 resting on a lyre, right hand extended as if in a 
 201
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 moment of musical enthusiasm he was beating time. 
 In the background a temple of Apollo. Oh ! if 
 he could only know what had become of that pic- 
 ture ! " Why," said I, " it is now hanging up in 
 Widow Carl van Beethoven's room in the Joseph- 
 stadt, and I have a copy of it ! " So it appears 
 that the picture which Luib gave me is a copy of 
 one by Mahler. 
 
 Prince Josef Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz 
 was one of the first and foremost of Bee- 
 thoven's Viennese friends. He was two years 
 younger than the composer, and an intimacy 
 sprang up between the two men (Lobkowitz 
 being an admirable amateur, playing the vio- 
 lin and violoncello and singing like an artist) 
 very soon after Beethoven came to Vienna in 
 1792. His name appears in the dedications 
 of the third, fifth and sixth symphonies, 
 besides a number of other smaller but yet 
 important works. He was one of the con- 
 tributors to Beethoven's annuity, and died in 
 1816. Sir George Grove tells the story in his 
 article on Beethoven in the " Dictionary of 
 Music and Musicians," on the authority of 
 Thayer's biography (Vol. IT, p. 288). The 
 portrait painted by Mahler was until five 
 years ago in the possession of the widow of 
 Beethoven's nephew, Carl van Beethoven, [ 
 
 202
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 whose conduct when young embittered the 
 last years of the master's life. Thayer's copy 
 is in oil, and was exhibited at the opening of 
 the Bonn Beethoven-Haus Museum in 1890. 
 The Thayer copy is now the property of Mrs. 
 Jabez Fox, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 June 5, 1860, I was in Gratz and saw Hiitten- 
 brenner (Anselm), who gave me the following 
 particulars : 
 
 Some ten years before Beethoven's death A. 
 H., then a young man, went to Vienna to spend 
 a few years. He was an amateur musician and 
 composer, and a Beethoven enthusiast, as were so 
 many Gratz people. Dr. Joseph Eppinger intro- 
 duced him to Beethoven, who, he thinks, was 
 living at the time in a narrow street in the city 
 here his memory is not distinct. He remem- 
 bers distinctly, however, the impression made 
 upon him by the room shirts, boots and shoes, 
 books, music, all piled upon or scattered about 
 the floor. As Eppinger introduced him Beethoven 
 said, Ich bin nicht werth dass Sie mich besuchen 
 ("I am not worth a visit from you"), and his 
 manner proved that this was spoken from modesty. 
 
 Huttenbrenner remembers also that it used to 
 be said in Vienna in those days that what gave 
 Beethoven his first reputation in Vienna was his 
 superb playing of Bach's " Wohltemperirtes Cla- 
 vier." As a specimen of his composition he once 
 203
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 took his overture to Schiller's " Robbers " to B., 
 who looked it through and then clapped him 
 heartily upon the shoulder in proof of his appro- 
 bation. He also confirms what I have so often 
 heard of Beethoven's loud, hearty laughter. 
 
 In the winter of 1826-' 27 his friends wrote him 
 from Vienna that if he wished to see Beethoven 
 again alive he must hurry up thither from Gratz. 
 He hastened to Vienna, arriving a few days before 
 Beethoven's death. Early in the afternoon of 
 March 26 Hiittenbrenner went into the dying 
 man's room. He mentioned as persons whom he 
 saw there Stephen v. Breuning and Gerhard, 
 Schindler, Telscher and Carl's mother. (This 
 seems to be a mistake, i. e., if Mrs. v. Beethoven 
 is right.) Beethoven had then long been sense- 
 less. Telscher began to draw the dying face of 
 Beethoven. This grated on Breuning's feelings, 
 and he remonstrated with him, and he put up his 
 papers and left (?). Then Breuning and Schin- 
 dler left to go out to Wahring to select a grave. 
 (Just after five I got this from Breuning himself 
 when it grew dark with the sudden storm, Ger- 
 hard, who had been standing at the window, ran 
 home to his teacher.) Afterward Gerhard v. B. 
 went home, and there remained in the room only 
 Hiittenbrenner and Mrs. van Beethoven. The 
 storm passed over, covering the Glacis with snow 
 and sleet. As it passed away a flash of lightning 
 lighted up everything. This was followed by an 
 204
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 awful clap of thunder. Hiittenbrenner had been 
 sitting on the side of the bed sustaining Beetho- 
 ven's head holding it up with his right arm. 
 His breathing was already very much impeded, 
 and he had been for hours dying. At this star- 
 tling, awful peal of thunder, the dying man sud- 
 denly raised his head from Hiittenbrenner's arm, 
 stretched out his own right arm majestically 
 " like a General giving orders to an army." This 
 was but for an instant; the arm sunk back; he 
 fell back. Beethoven was dead. 
 
 Hiittenbrenner says when Himmel came Bee- 
 thoven said, " I must not receive him in bed," 
 and actually got up and put on a dressing gown to 
 receive him with due respect. 
 
 Another talk with Hiittenbrenner It seems 
 that Beethoven was at his last gasp, one eye 
 already closed. At the stroke of lightning and the 
 thunder peal he raised his arm with a doubled-up 
 fist ; the expression of his eyes and face was that 
 of one " defying death " a look of defiance and 
 power of resistance. 
 
 H. must have had his arm under the pillow. 
 I must ask him. 
 
 I did ask him; he had his arm around B.'s 
 neck. 
 
 Mrs. v. Beethoven says that Carl's mother 
 
 could not have been present at Beethoven's death, 
 
 as it was a matter of complaint with her that no 
 
 news of his dying condition reached her until after 
 
 205
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 all was over. Dr. Breuning also thinks she could 
 not have been there, for he has no recollection of 
 ever having seen either of the sisters-in-law of 
 Beethoven. 
 
 The Mrs. v. Beethoven referred to was the 
 widow of Nephew Carl. 
 
 June 23, 1860, I called upon Professor Hofel, 
 in Salzburg. He related the following: In 1820 
 he was made professor of drawing at Wiener 
 Neustadt. A year or two after he was one even- 
 ing with Eisner (still living in Vienna) and others 
 of his colleagues ; also the Police Commissary of 
 W. Neustadt, in the garden of the Wirthshaus 
 "Zum Schleifen," a little way out of town. It was 
 autumn and already dark when a constable came 
 out and said to the commissary, Herr Commissar, 
 wir haben Jemand arretirt welcher uns kein 1 Ruh 
 gibt. Er schreit immer dass er der Beethoven set. 
 Er ist aber ein Lump, hat kein Hut, alter Rock, 
 etc., kein Aufweis wer er ist, etc. (" Mr. Com- 
 missary, we have arrested one who will give us no 
 peace. He keeps on yelling that he is Beethoven. 
 But he 's a ragamuffin ; has no hat, an old coat, 
 etc.; nothing by which he can be identified.") 
 
 The Commissar ordered that the man be kept 
 
 in arrest until morning, dann werden wir verhdren 
 
 wer er ist, etc. (" Then we will examine him and 
 
 learn who he is.") Next morning the company 
 
 206
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 was very anxious to know how the affair turned 
 out, and the Commissary said that about 1 1 o'clock 
 he was waked up by a policeman with the inform- 
 ation that the prisoner gave them no peace, and 
 demanded that Herzog, Musikdirektor in Wiener 
 Neustadt, be called to identify him. So the 
 Commissary got up, dressed, went out and waked 
 up Herzog, and, in the middle of the night, went 
 with him to the watchhouse. Herzog, as soon as 
 he cast eyes upon the man exclaimed, Das ist der 
 Beethoven! ("That is Beethoven.") He took 
 him home with him, gave him his best room, etc. 
 Next day came the Biirgermeister, making all 
 sorts of apologies. As it proved Beethoven had 
 got up early in the morning, and, slipping on a 
 miserable old coat, and without a hat, had gone 
 out to walk a little. He got upon the towpath of 
 the canal and kept on and on; seems to have 
 lost his direction, for, with nothing to eat, he had 
 continued on until he had brought up at the canal 
 basin at the Unger Thor. Here, not knowing 
 where he was, he was seen looking in at the 
 windows of the houses, and as he looked so like 
 a beggar the people had called a constable and 
 arrested him. Upon his arrest the composer said, 
 Ich bin Beethoven (" I am Beethoven ") . Warutu 
 nicht gar? ("Of course, why not?") said the 
 policeman : ein Lump sind sie ; so sieht der Bee- 
 thoven nicht aus ("You're a tramp; Beethoven 
 doesn't look so"). Herzog gave him some 
 207
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 decent clothes, and the Burgomaster sent him 
 back to Baden, where he was then living, in 
 the Magistrate's state coach. 
 
 This simple story is the foundation for the fine 
 narrative related to me as a fact in Vienna that 
 Beethoven got into this scrape following troops 
 from Vienna who had a sham right near Wiener 
 Neustadt, and taking notes for his " Wellington's 
 Si eg " which whole story thus goes to the 
 ground. 
 
 Cipriani Potter to A. W. T., February 27, 1861. 
 Beethoven used to walk across the fields to Vienna 
 very often. Sometimes Potter took the walk with 
 him. B. would stop, look about and express his 
 love for nature. One day Potter asked, " Who is 
 the greatest living composer, yourself excepted? " 
 Beethoven seemed puzzled for a moment, and 
 then exclaimed, " Cherubini." Potter went n, 
 "And of dead authors?" B. He had always 
 considered Mozart as such, but since he had been 
 made acquainted with Handel he put him at the 
 head. 
 
 The first day P. was with B. the latter rushed 
 into politics and called the Austrian Government 
 all sorts of names. He was full of coming to 
 England, and said his desire was to see the House 
 of Commons. " You have heads upon your 
 shoulders in England." 
 
 One day Mr. Potter asked Beethoven's opinion 
 208
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 of one of the principal pianists then in Vienna 
 (Moscheles). Sprechen Sie nie wieder von lauter 
 Passagen Spieler. (" Don't ever again talk to me 
 of mere passage (scales) players"). 
 
 Once Beethoven told Stein that some strings in 
 his Broadwood P. F. were wanting, and caught up 
 the bootjack and struck the keys with it to show. 
 
 July 4, 1860. Called on Grillparzer. The 
 story of his visit to Beethoven in Hetzendorf, 
 dining with him, and of Beethoven riding back 
 with him to the Burgthor and then leaving money 
 to pay the coachman is true. Beethoven at 
 dinner went into the next room and brought out 
 five bottles of wine ; one he placed at Schindler's 
 plate, one at his own, and three at Grillparzer's. 
 Grillparzer says he was very temperate both in 
 eating and drinking never knew him except on 
 such occasions as when all had a good time gener- 
 ally, to go beyond his single common bottle of 
 common wine. 
 
 When Grillparzer was a child his family lived a 
 summer in the same house with Beethoven in 
 Unter Dobling. Madame Grillparzer was very 
 fond of music and used to listen to Beethoven 
 extemporizing. One day she stood before her 
 own door listening when B. came rushing out 
 and so saw her. From that time on he never 
 played in his own room. Mad. G. sent word to 
 14 209
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 him by his servant that she would lock her door 
 to the common passage and her family should go 
 out and in the other way. No use; B. never 
 played more ! 
 
 In the last years it was a severe task to con- 
 verse with him. While one was writing answers 
 to his questions he kept on talking and would 
 forget the connection of what was written. Grill- 
 parzer describes him as a most kind and good- 
 natured man, halb verriickt (" half crazy "), though 
 I believe he did not use this phrase. 
 
 One day Neate was with Beethoven and while 
 urging him to visit England mentioned the ex- 
 cellence of the English aurists, and was sure B. 
 would find there some remedy for his deafness. 
 
 " No," said Beethoven, in substance, " I have 
 already had all sorts of medical advice. I shall 
 never be cured. I will tell you how it happened. 
 I was once busy writing an opera " 
 
 Neate "Fidelio?" 
 
 B. " No, it was not ' Fidelio.' I had a very 
 ill-tempered primo tenore to deal with. I had 
 already written two grand airs to the same text, 
 with which he was dissatisfied, and now a third, 
 which, upon trial, he seemed to approve and took 
 away with him. I thanked the stars that I was at 
 length rid of him and sat down immediately to a 
 work which I had laid aside for those airs and 
 which I was anxious to finish. I had not been 
 half an hour at my work when I heard a knock at 
 
 2IQ
 
 ALEXANDER W. THAYER 
 
 my door which I immediately recognized as that 
 of my primo tenore. I sprang up from my table 
 under such an excitement of rage that as the man 
 entered the room I threw myself upon the floor as 
 they do on the stage " [here B. spread out his 
 arms and made an illustrative gesture], "coming 
 down upon my hands. When I arose I found 
 myself deaf and have been so ever since. The 
 physicians say the nerve is injured." 
 
 Charles Neate was an English pianist who, 
 out of admiration for Beethoven, went to 
 Vienna in 1815 and made the composer's ac- 
 quaintance, remaining in familiar intercourse 
 with him for eight months. He was the first 
 performer of Beethoven's C-minor and E-flat 
 concertos in England. He lived to be ninety- 
 three years old, dying on Good Friday, 1877, 
 at Brighton. Thayer visited him many years 
 before. If the true cause of his deafness was 
 known to Beethoven he never betrayed the 
 fact. It was constitutional. The story about 
 the fall upon the floor does not tell of the 
 cause, but only of his first observation of the 
 malady. 
 
 211
 
 II 
 
 THE BEETHOVEN MUSEUM 
 AT BONN 1 
 
 A MUSICAL student can not visit the Bee- 
 thoven Museum at Bonn without thinking of 
 Thayer. It is almost as much a monument 
 to the distinguished biographer as to the 
 incomparable genius. Without Thayer's 
 labors, indeed, it is doubtful if the Museum 
 would ever have come into being. More 
 than anything else the discoveries which he 
 made touching the antecedents of Beethoven 
 and the musical affairs of the Electoral 
 Court, helped to stir up that feeling of local 
 patriotism in a small coterie of art-loving 
 citizens in Bonn which culminated in 1888 
 in the purchase of the house in which the 
 composer was born, its preservation from 
 ruin, rescue from degradation and dedica- 
 tion to the lovely purpose to which it is 
 henceforth let us hope in scecula sceculo- 
 
 1 A large portion of this essay was published in " The 
 Century Magazine " and is reprinted here by permission of 
 The Century Co. 
 
 212
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 rum to be devoted. It is singular, in 
 view of the large infusion of sentiment in 
 German nature, that so long a time was 
 permitted to elapse between the death of 
 Beethoven and the taking of these wise 
 and pious steps. But everything is singular 
 which concerns Beethoven. There are singu- 
 lar lies in most of the books that have been 
 written about him ; and even more singular 
 truths. On his deathbed a print of the 
 house in which Haydn was born was placed 
 in the hands of the Titan. " Look, my dear 
 Hummel," said he to the friend who stood 
 at his bedside, "the birthplace of Haydn! 
 I received it to-day as a gift and it has given 
 me a great pleasure. A wretched peasant's 
 hut in which so great a man was born ! " 
 Did his thoughts go back to the lowly walls 
 which echoed his own infant cries? No one 
 can know. He died and gave no sign. It 
 is even doubtful whether he would have 
 been able, had he been asked, to settle a 
 quarrel like that which broke out ten years 
 after his death concerning which of four 
 houses was the one in which he was born. 
 His parents had occupied lodgings in three 
 houses before he was six years old. He had 
 gone away from Bonn when he was twenty- 
 two and he never went back. There were 
 213
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 no domestic ties to recall him. The fulfil- 
 ment of his manifest destiny required that 
 he should live in Vienna whither he had 
 been sent by his master the Elector of 
 Cologne, who was ah Archduke of Austria, 
 the youngest son of Maria Theresa. Bonn 
 forgot him until he was dead, or if it did 
 not quite forget him, it was too much con- 
 cerned with its own petty affairs to remem- 
 ber which of its houses had held the cradle 
 of its greatest son. Only slowly did there 
 dawn on the city's obtuse perceptions a real- 
 ization of the share which it had in the glory 
 created by his genius; the realization never 
 became full and perfect until an American 
 admirer of that genius crossed the ocean and 
 took up the task of writing the life-story of 
 Beethoven, the man. 
 
 I have intimated that it is to Thayer that 
 Bonn is indebted chiefly for knowledge of 
 the part it played in the history of Bee- 
 thoven. It was the confessed purpose of the 
 biographer to strip from his subject a mass 
 of traditional fiction, and he has done so; 
 but he has supplied its place with an integu- 
 ment of romance a hundred-fold more inter- 
 esting and instructive. He has recognized 
 that it is not enough that we interest our- 
 selves in the facts of the artist's outward 
 214
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 life from mere affectionate curiosity con- 
 cerning his personality; the scientific spirit 
 of the times requires that the primary pur- 
 pose be to study the influences that shaped 
 his thoughts, inspired his feelings and 
 prompted his manner of expression. For 
 those who wish to trace the operations of 
 the law of heredity and find long and cumu- 
 lative trains of causes for each effect, Mr. 
 Thayer's researches are invaluable. Grand- 
 father, father, and son, the Beethovens were 
 in the active service of the Electoral Court 
 in Bonn sixty years. Thayer's earliest in- 
 quiries begin with the career of the Elector 
 Joseph Clemens, the predecessor of Elector 
 Clemens Augustus under whom the grand- 
 father of the composer entered the Electoral 
 Chapel. They embrace the personal and 
 artistic character of the potentates with the 
 special purpose of showing what were the 
 social and artistic influences exerted by them 
 in the capital of their political and reli- 
 gious empire. His examination of the Court 
 archives at Dusseldorf and Bonn discovered 
 a number of documents which enable us to 
 reconstruct a perfect picture of the art-life 
 of the city for three-quarters of a century. 
 The opening of the Museum in 1890 was 
 made the occasion of an exhibition of these 
 215
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 documents and a large collection of Bee- 
 thoven relics from all over Germany. The 
 whole partook of the character of a series of 
 illustrations to Thayer's book. As a rule 
 museums in which relics of the great men 
 of the earth are preserved are little else 
 than curiosity shops which provide enter- 
 tainment for sentimental misses and hero- 
 worshippers. The Beethoven Museum is of 
 a different sort. As the complement of 
 Thayer's book it is a contribution of vast 
 significance to the history of the composer 
 which by direct instruction and through 
 suggestion teaches a multitude of things 
 concerning the man and his art which can 
 not be learned elsewhere. The correctness 
 of this proposition is demonstrated in the 
 story of the house itself. Beethoven was 
 dead nearly twenty years before the anti- 
 quaries of his native town had settled a con- 
 troversy touching which of several houses 
 was the one in which he had first seen the 
 light. More than this: Even after the 
 fact had been determined, more than a 
 quarter of a century was permitted to go by 
 before there was what might be called an 
 official recognition of the results of the con- 
 troversy. When Beethoven died in 1827 
 there were four houses in Bonn of each of 
 216
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 which it was thought by some persons that 
 it was the birthplace of the master. 
 
 They were respectively in the Rheingasse, 
 Wenzelgasse, Auf der Briicke and Bonn- 
 gasse. It required but little investigation, 
 however, to narrow the question to two 
 houses, that in the Rheingasse near the 
 river, No. 934 (it has since been demol- 
 ished and the house which is still occa- 
 sionally shown to visitors as Beethoven's 
 birth-house is a new one on the old site) and 
 that in the Bonngasse, old number 515, new 
 number 20, near the market-place in the 
 centre of the town. The former house was 
 generally accepted as the true one for more 
 than a decade after Beethoven died. It was 
 so described in the guidebooks and it seemed 
 as if the majority of the residents who re- 
 membered the great man as a child asso- 
 ciated him with the house. It was chiefly 
 due to Dr. Wegeler, one of the friends of 
 Beethoven's youth, that the claims of the 
 Rheingasse house were disallowed and the 
 truth was established that the Beethoven 
 family were living in the Bonngasse in 
 1770. This was accomplished in a contro- 
 versy carried on in the " Colnische Zeitung " 
 in 1838. There seemed to be no official 
 record to which appeal could be made except 
 217
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 the register of baptisms. This showed that 
 Beethoven had been christened in the parish 
 of St. Remy (Latin, Remigius) on December 
 17, 1770. It being the custom to baptize 
 children in the parish where they were born 
 it followed that Beethoven was born in the 
 parish of St. Remy. On this the cham- 
 pions of the house in the Rheingasse placed 
 their chief reliance, for their street had the 
 proper parochial relation, while the Bonn- 
 gasse throughout its length belonged to the 
 parish of St. Peter in Dietkirchen. The 
 evidence, supported as it was by the testi- 
 mony of an elderly spinster who lived in the 
 house all her life and was eight-and-one-half 
 years older than Beethoven, and who said 
 she distinctly remembered seeing him as a 
 babe lying in his cradle, and also as a child 
 standing on a foot bench before the piano- 
 forte, would have been conclusive had not 
 Dr. Wegeler been able to prove that Bonn 
 had undergone an ecclesiastical reorganiza- 
 tion in 1806 when under French rule which 
 took the Bonngasse out of the parish of St. 
 Remy and put it in the parish of St. Peter 
 in Dietkirchen. This he did by the aid of 
 an aged ex-mayor of the city and a parish 
 priest who had belonged to St. Remy before 
 the re-districting was accomplished. 
 218
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 Having thus disposed of his opponents' 
 syllogism by proving the falsity of its minor 
 premise Dr. Wegeler brought forward certi- 
 fied copies of three lists of subscribers, resi- 
 dent in the two streets, to a fund for the 
 building of .a parochial house in the parish 
 of St. Remy. The lists were dated 1769, 
 1770, and 1771. The name of Beethoven's 
 grandfather appears on the first and third 
 with his official designation as chapel-mas- 
 ter, and the name of " Herrn van Beethoven " 
 on the second ; in every case as residents in 
 the Bonngasse. The " Herrn van Beetho- 
 ven " was obviously the father of the com- 
 poser, since the name is unaccompanied by a 
 title, he being only a tenor singer in the 
 Electoral Chapel of which his father was 
 director. There is no Beethoven in the 
 Rheingasse list, though the name of the then 
 owner of the house, a baker named Fischer, 
 father of the spinster who thought she re- 
 membered baby Louis in his cradle, appears. 
 The disagreements were afterward cleared 
 away by proof that the Beethoven family 
 occupied lodgings in the house in the Rhein- 
 gasse for a space after 1775. The babe in 
 the cradle was a younger brother of the 
 composer, born there. A brother of the 
 spinster Caecilia Fischer, named Gottfried, 
 219
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 was moved by the controversy to write down 
 his childhood recollections, and family tra- 
 ditions, intending to publish them in book- 
 form. He was born ten years later than 
 Beethoven, and in 1838 was a master baker. 
 Literary ability he had none, and his docu- 
 ment grew into a rambling affair full of re- 
 iteration and historical details drawn from 
 various sources, to which he made additions 
 down to 1864. But though its contention 
 touching the birth-place of the composer 
 was disproved, it is an extremely interesting 
 contribution to the history of Bonn and the 
 Beethoven family, and is now one of the 
 treasures of the Beethoven Museum. 
 
 The controversy which had been provoked 
 by a review of Wegeler's "Biographical 
 Notices " was summarized by the Secretary 
 of the Committee under whose auspices in 
 1845 the Beethoven monument was placed 
 in the Mtinsterplatz ; but despite the magni- 
 tude of the celebration which attended the 
 unveiling of the statue no steps were taken 
 to mark the house. The tablet now to be 
 seen upon its front was not affixed until 
 1870, the centenary of Beethoven's birth. 
 As late as 1886 I was invited by an occu- 
 pant of the house which now stands on the 
 old site in the Rheingasse to enter and in- 
 220
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 spect the room in which Beethoven was 
 born. The old tradition, maintained by the 
 thrifty desire to earn a Trinkgeld, "died 
 hard," but it received its quietus when the 
 house in the Bonngasse was bought by the 
 Verein Beethoven-Haus in 1889 and the 
 lying tablet on the house in the Rheingasse 
 was removed to make place for one bearing 
 an inscription in harmony with the facts. 
 
 For nearly one hundred years after Bee-" 1 
 thoven left Bonn, the house in which he was 
 born was permitted to remain private prop- 
 erty, and no steps were taken to protect it 
 against ignoble uses.* Had it been turned 
 into a brothel the municipal authorities 
 might have undertaken its regulation, but 
 as its abuse did not reach that extreme they 
 felt no concern about it. The point at 
 which it stopped in its descent towards in- 
 famy was only a little short of that sug- 
 gested. '' The house was for a time used as a 
 beer-shop, and in the little rear garden the 
 owner built a sort of summer house in which 
 he gave concerts of a low order. The win- 
 dows of the garret room in which the great- 
 est tone-poet that the world has produced was 
 born (the family occupied only the rear por- 
 tion of the building) looked out on what the 
 Germans call a TingeltangeL To make the 
 221
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 degradation of the spot complete the man- 
 ager was wont to advertise his concerts 
 as taking place " in the house in which 
 Beethoven was born." The last programme 
 containing this announcement is one of 
 the curious possessions of the Museum. In 
 1889 the house was bought by a society 
 organized for its preservation for about 
 $14,000 relatively an exorbitant sum, ex- 
 acted by a conscienceless owner who knew 
 the object of the purchasers, and utilized 
 the advantage which his knowledge gave 
 him. The first efforts of the society were 
 directed towards its renovation and the re- 
 moval of all additions which had been made 
 in the century. The concert-saloon was torn 
 down and the old aspect of the garden re- 
 stored; show windows which had been built 
 into the street-front were removed, and a 
 modern pair of stairs was replaced by the 
 original stairs with wrought iron rail which 
 had luckily been stowed away in a store- 
 room. The floors, doors and ceilings in the 
 rear house were thought to be original, and 
 were left unchanged beyond necessary re- 
 pairs. Every bit of wood of which it could 
 reasonably be believed that it was part of 
 the house in the time of Beethoven was 
 piously preserved, and Mr. William Kuppe, 
 222
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 a musician largely instrumental in calling 
 the enterprise into existence, told me with 
 much amusement of the suspicions touching 
 his mental condition which he aroused in the 
 minds of the workmen, when he carefully 
 wrapped the threshold of the birth-room in 
 paper, carried the well-worn, worm-eaten 
 piece of wood away till the work of renova- 
 tion was finished, and then insisted upon its 
 being replaced. In May, 1890, the museum 
 was opened to the public with the exhibi- 
 tion of relics already mentioned, and a festi- 
 val of Beethoven's chamber music, in which 
 the chief performer was Joseph Joachim, the 
 Honorary President of the society. 
 
 Of the articles exhibited at that time many 
 have remained in the possession of the soci- 
 ety. It is my purpose to speak of only a 
 few of them which serve markedly to illus- 
 trate the educational value of the institution. 
 Prominent among these is the portrait of the 
 mother of the composer, which was never 
 publicly exhibited before 1890, though fora 
 long time before then in the possession of a 
 collector of Bonn. Belief in its authenticity 
 is based chiefly on an uninterrupted tradi- 
 tion reaching back through the century, and 
 its correspondence with the description of 
 her personal appearance in the Fischer manu- 
 223
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 script : " Stature of Madame van Beethoven 
 rather large; longish face ; nose a little bent; 
 spare ; earnest eyes. " She was a native of 
 Ehrenbreitstein and her father was chief 
 cook in the service of Caspar Wenzelaus, 
 the Elector of Treves. This fact in a man- 
 ner connects the story of the composer with 
 an interesting episode in the career of 
 Prince-Bishop Clemens Augustus the cul- 
 minating incident in that career indeed. 
 Of Clemens Augustus, Thayer says that he 
 "literally danced himself out of this world 
 into the next." It is extremely likely (evi- 
 dence on this point is not forthcoming, how- 
 ever) that when he accomplished this feat 
 the father of Beethoven's mother was on 
 hand to see. It was in 1761 that on his way 
 to Munich the Elector of Cologne stopped at 
 Castle Ehrenbreitstein to visit his brother 
 in Church and State, the Elector of Treves. 
 There he fell ill and was unable to partake 
 of the dinner which the chief cook, who may 
 have been Beethoven's maternal grandfather, 
 had provided. But if he could not eat, 
 neither could he withstand the charms of 
 the Baroness Waldendorf, sister of his august 
 and very reverend host. To her he gave his 
 episcopal and electoral hand for not less than 
 nine dances. Not to be thought wanting in 
 224
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 gallantry to others of the fair he forgot the 
 need of moderation, fell in a swoon, and was 
 carried to his chamber, where he died next 
 day. The spectacle of an Archbishop danc- 
 ing himself to death through admiration of a 
 pretty woman, though calculated to make us 
 marvel to-day, was not so singular a century 
 or two ago. Their vows sat lightly upon 
 many of the men who exercised a double 
 despotism by reason of their headship in 
 both church and state. Most of them were 
 prelates only in authority and name. Joseph 
 Clemens, the uncle and predecessor of 
 Clemens Augustus, was a Bavarian prince. 
 A papal dispensation enabled him to post- 
 pone the taking of holy orders for seventeen 
 years after he entered upon his office. How 
 much appreciation of the sanctity of the 
 priesthood he felt is illustrated in a story 
 which tells how once, while an exile in Val- 
 enciennes (he had espoused the wrong side 
 of the war about the Spanish succession and 
 his army had fallen foul of Marlborough), 
 he announced a purpose to preach a sermon 
 on the approaching first day of April. When 
 the time came the church was thronged by 
 the faithful. Clad in the sacred vestments 
 and greeted by the joyous noise of trumpets 
 the Archbishop climbed into the pulpit. 
 15 225
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 Gravely he bowed his head, decorously made 
 the sign of the cross, then shouted "April 
 fool ! " and withdrew in pomp from the pres- 
 ence of his astounded congregation. Of this 
 Prince-Bishop it is related that after he had 
 been consecrated by the saintly Fenelon, he 
 attested the sincerity of his piousness by 
 never giving audience to the mother of his 
 children save in the presence of witnesses. 
 His nephew, who made the saltatorial exit 
 from life's stage, never found it necessary to 
 resort to so burdensome a formality. He 
 was content to yield up a place in the heart 
 of his mistress to his minister, Belderbusch, 
 and the minister requited the kindness by 
 assuming the paternity of the children in 
 the case. The lady was not only a countess 
 but also an abbess, and she and the minis- 
 ter were the godparents of a younger brother 
 of Beethoven's, Caspar Anton Carl. 
 
 I seem to have digressed, but perhaps the 
 brief sidewise excursion will be pardoned 
 for the sake of the light which it throws 
 upon some of the social influences which 
 were in force in Bonn during the early 
 stages of Beethoven's life-history. These 
 influences seem to have left his paternal 
 grandfather and his mother untouched. If 
 it be true that the cause of Beethoven's deaf- 
 226
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 ness was an inherited disorder, they may be 
 said to have contributed indirectly to the 
 misfortune which embittered his life. But 
 this is matter only for scientific speculation. 
 Yet if it be so it serves to throw into higher 
 relief the nobility of his character, the chas- 
 tity of his mind, and the purity of his life. 
 It also accounts for his life-long reverence 
 and love for the memory of his grandfather 
 (who died when he was a child), and for that 
 of his sweet, patient, suffering mother. To 
 her we must recur for a moment. Her 
 maiden name was Maria Magdalena Keve- 
 rich. Before she was seventeen years old 
 she was married to Johann Laym, a servant 
 of the Elector of Treves, who left her a 
 widow before she was twenty. She was 
 married to Johann van Beethoven, tenor 
 singer in the Chapel of the Elector of 
 Cologne at Bonn, on November 12, 1767, 
 and died of consumption at the age of forty- 
 one years. Her last sickness hastened the 
 return of Beethoven from his visit to Vienna 
 in 1787. The portrait of her in the museum 
 is supposed to be the work of Casper Bene- 
 dict Beckenkamp, also a native of Ehren- 
 breitstein and like the chief -cook Keverich 
 also in the service of the Elector of Treves. 
 The portrait of Beethoven's mother, as- 
 227
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 suming it to be such, is the most valuable 
 contribution which the museum has made to 
 this branch of Beethoveniana. It has a rival 
 in interest, however, in the picture of the 
 Countess Brunswick. This has long been 
 known to the cognoscenti, but it has acquired 
 a new and special value of late years from 
 the fact that investigators, acting on a hint 
 thrown out by Thayer, have at last identified 
 the Countess as the " immortal beloved " of 
 the passionate love-letters by Beethoven, 
 long but falsely believed to have been writ- 
 ten to the Countess Guicciardi. There can 
 now be little doubt that the Countess Bruns- 
 wick was the other party to the mysterious 
 betrothal of which so much has been said. 
 
 The collection of over a hundred paint- 
 ings, prints, casts, etc. of Beethoven now in 
 the museum serve a double purpose by 
 directing attention at once to the few 
 authentic portraits of the composer in exist- 
 ence, and to the wideness and wildness of 
 the flights in which artistic fancy has in- 
 dulged in trying to produce his counterfeit 
 presentment. There are exceedingly few 
 pictures in existence which were made in 
 Beethoven's youth and early manhood. 
 
 It was only after he became famous in 
 Vienna that artists were eager to paint him, 
 228
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 and he was to the end uncontrollable in the 
 matter of sittings. The only full and fair 
 opportunity which he ever gave to a good 
 artist was in 1814 when he agreed to sit a 
 few times to enable Blasius Hofel to correct 
 some defects in a pencil drawing made two 
 years before by Latronne, a French artist. 
 This drawing was an engraving on copper for 
 the publisher Artaria. Beethoven sat in pose 
 for about five minutes, then rushed to his 
 pianoforte and began improvizing. The poor 
 engraver was at his wits' end, but was relieved 
 of his embarrassment by the composer's ser- 
 vant, who told him to take a position near the 
 instrument and work as long as he pleased, 
 as Beethoven had entirely forgotten him and 
 did not know that any one was in the room. 
 Hofel took the advice and made so much 
 progress with his plate that its completion 
 required only two more sittings of less than 
 an hour each. He left the room without 
 the knowledge of the composer. Beethoven 
 always esteemed this portrait highly, and in 
 1815 sent a copy of it to his friend Wegeler 
 in Bonn. Its excellence is strongly con- 
 firmed by comparison with the cast of Bee- 
 thoven's face made in 1812 by Franz Klein, 
 a Viennese sculptor. All the strong char- 
 acteristics of the mask are reproduced in 
 229
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 the engraving the magnificently rounded 
 forehead, broad cheek-bones, unlovely nose 
 and unyielding mouth though it must be 
 confessed with some loss in ruggedness. In 
 the mask made by Danhauser two days after 
 death, the marks of the mutilations made by 
 the surgeons for the purposes of the autopsy, 
 the organs of hearing having been removed 
 in the hope of learning the cause of his deaf- 
 ness, are too evident to make contemplation 
 anything but sorrowful. The tiny silhouette 
 which holds a place of honor in the museum 
 and is comparatively little known is not only 
 the earliest of all Beethoven portraits, but 
 the only one of unquestioned authenticity 
 dating back to the Bonn period. It shows 
 him in Court dress, peruke and ruff as he 
 appeared when on duty as member of the 
 Electoral Chapel. It was made in 1789 or 
 1790 by a painter named Neesen in the 
 house of the von Breuning family where 
 Beethoven was a frequent visitor before he 
 went to Vienna. The house is now the home 
 of Hermann Neusser, one of the founders of 
 the Verein Beethoven-Haus. The singu- 
 larly youthful aspect of the features shown 
 in the silhouette is to me inexplicable. 
 Beethoven was at the time eighteen or nine- 
 teen years old. In the familiar pen-sketch 
 230
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 by the painter and novelist Lyser, Bee- 
 thoven's contemporaries were wont to praise 
 the correctness of the attitude and carriage. 
 This judgment now finds confirmation in the 
 memoirs of Gottfried Fischer which men- 
 tion the fact that already as a lad Bee- 
 hoven bent forward when walking. The 
 uncontested genuineness of the portrait of 
 1808 painted by W. J. Mahler is its chief 
 commendation. 
 
 For nearly a century the world has tried 
 to solve the riddle propounded by an inscru- 
 table Providence when it permitted Beetho- 
 ven to become deaf. Among the objects in 
 the Museum are those most pitiful memo- 
 rials of the physical calamity which over- 
 took the man and musician Beethoven, the 
 ear-trumpets and pianoforte with whose help 
 he strove so long and so hopelessly to remain 
 in communion with the world of sound. The 
 pianoforte was specially made for him by 
 Graf of Vienna. Its peculiarity is that 
 through the greater part of its compass it 
 has four unisonal strings for each key. So 
 long as he could be made to hear a tone 
 Beethoven improvized upon this instrument. 
 But under what distressful circumstances! 
 Maelzel, the mechanician who invented and 
 made the ear-trumpets for him, built a reso- 
 231
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 nator for the pianoforte. It was somewhat 
 in the shape of those prompters' boxes which 
 we see in the theatres of Germany, and was 
 placed on the instrument so that it covered 
 a portion of the sounding-board and pro- 
 jected over the keys. Seated before the 
 pianoforte, his head all but inside the wooden 
 shell, one of the ear-trumpets held in place 
 by an encircling brass band, Beethoven would 
 pound upon the keys till the strings jangled 
 discordantly with the violence of the per- 
 cussion, or flew asunder with shrieks as of 
 mortal despair. Though the ear-trumpets 
 had been useless for five years, they were 
 kept in Beethoven's study till his death. 
 Then they found their way into the Royal 
 Library at Berlin where they remained until 
 Emperor William II presented them to the 
 museum. The smallest one was used by 
 Beethoven oftenest and for the longest time. 
 Maelzel made the instruments for Beethoven 
 at the time when the two were contemplat- 
 ing a visit to London. The inventor in- 
 tended to exhibit his panharmonicon, and 
 Beethoven composed for it the descriptive 
 piece called "Wellington's Victory" in 
 imitation of the battle pieces which were 
 at the height of their popularity then and 
 still maintain themselves on and beyond 
 232
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 the periphery of our musical communities. 
 The projected tour was never made, and the 
 scheme ended in a quarrel and lawsuit for 
 which the blame was thrown on Maelzel 
 though the fault was the composer's. A 
 year before Beethoven died Maelzel came to 
 America, where he remained until his death 
 in 1838. Here, as in Europe, he depended 
 for a livelihood on exhibitions of his me- 
 chanical contrivances, and though the biog- 
 raphers down to Thayer have maligned his 
 character, he left an excellent reputation, 
 especially in Philadelphia, where he lived 
 longest. One of his masterpieces of mech- 
 anism was a forerunner of Ajub, the chess- 
 playing automaton. 
 
 What shall be said at the end of the nine- 
 teenth century of him who was the musical 
 glory of its beginning? The question can 
 not be answered without a preliminary in- 
 quiry into the influence which deafness 
 exerted upon his artistic character. Half a 
 century ago the features of Beethoven's art 
 which are now looked upon by many as evi- 
 dences of progress were considered mournful 
 aberrations due to loss of the sense of eu- 
 phony and the development of an unlovely 
 egotism which chose to assert itself in a dis- 
 regard of recognized law. It is scarcely 
 233
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 worth while now to discuss to what extent 
 the critics of his time and a few decades 
 after were right. There has been a marvel- 
 lous change in the point of view. Other 
 times, other manners. It is possible now 
 
 it was not possible then to see that in 
 Beethoven music accomplished one cycle of 
 growth and started out on another. Start- 
 ing from simple expressions of feeling which 
 at first were unvolitional and therefore truth- 
 ful but crude, it has passed through a period 
 of mixed scientific and aesthetic development 
 which lifted it to the dignity of an art, and 
 enabled it to give keen gratification to the 
 ear and the faculty of taste. In the process 
 of this development a portion of its mission 
 had been forgotten, though there were at all 
 times men who apprehended and strove to 
 promote it. Beethoven was not only the 
 embodiment of all that was before him, but 
 also of that which was yet to come. In his 
 works music returned to its original purpose 
 with its power raised a hundred-fold. It is 
 possible, nay more it is extremely likely, 
 
 that what seemed to him and the world 
 the greatest evil was in fact the highest 
 good. His deafness, while it changed his 
 social instincts, left his moral nature un- 
 harmed. 
 
 234
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 If it drove him away from companionship 
 with man it drew him closer to nature. If 
 it hushed the amiable sounds of the external 
 world, it also shut out some of its turmoils 
 and enabled him the better to hear the whis- 
 perings of his own soul. Many of his ad- 
 mirers have found comfort in this reflection 
 without thinking how inevitable was the 
 consequence to his art. I can only suggest 
 a line of thought which may bring some 
 of the results to the mind of the reader. 
 Macaulay, in his demonstration that the poetry 
 of young civilizations is the best poetry, 
 says that the progress of refinement rarely 
 supplies music, painting, sculpture and 
 poetry the last least of all with better 
 objects of imitation. At best this is a hasty 
 generalization. Music has as little associa- 
 tion with the other arts in respect of its con- 
 tents as it has in respect of its materials. It 
 has in its best and true estate no object of 
 imitation, and because of this, as well as for 
 other reasons, it stands isolated from all the 
 other products of the human mind. On the 
 one hand are the things which are projected, 
 grasped, comprehended by the intellect; on 
 the other in awe-inspiring solitude, outside 
 the domain of reason and therefore beyond 
 its reach, stands music, bodying forth "the 
 235
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 forms of things unknown." It is a pure ex- 
 pression of the will, the most individual, the 
 most lawless of the arts and the one most 
 subject to change. Its very existence is 
 transient and contingent upon the recurrent 
 and harmonious cooperation of three factors : 
 creator, interpreter and hearer. 
 
 Consider it well, each tone of one scale in itself is 
 
 nought, 
 It is everywhere in the world, loud, soft and all is 
 
 said. 
 
 Give it to me to use : I mix it with two in my thought 
 And there ! Ye have heard and seen. Consider 
 
 and bow the head. 
 
 Unperformed music is nothing, and with 
 each act of performance there goes a new act 
 of creation. The activities, physical, intel- 
 lectual and emotional, which the three fac- 
 tors must exercise if music is to be at all 
 must touch hands ; yet they can not be iden- 
 tical. What is cause in the first case, is 
 purpose in the second and effect in the third. 
 \Creation does not stop with the composer as 
 it does with the painter, sculptor or archi- 
 tect; it is carried over to the interpreter 
 whose work is not exposition merely but re- 
 creation. It is this fact which entitles the 
 instrumental performer or the singer to the 
 name of artist. He cannot bring the crea- 
 236
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 tion of the composer to the apprehension of 
 the hearer without blending with it some- 
 thing of himself. Upon the hearer, finally, 
 devolves the duty of perceiving with the ear, 
 judging with the intellectual and aesthetic 
 faculties and enjoying with all these media 
 plus the emotions; and this complicated 
 activity is again in a high sense re-creative. 
 It is because of this common element in the 
 work of composer, performer and hearer that 
 the body of music which one generation be- 
 queaths to its successor is comparatively so 
 small. We do not persist in creating what 
 we do not like. Every composer is kept in 
 court for daily judgment until the inevitable 
 changes in taste, which follow the equally 
 inevitable variations in percipience, relegate 
 him to oblivion or the closed pages of his- 
 tory. To Beethoven music was not only a 
 manifestation of the beautiful, an art, 
 it was akin to religion. He felt himself to 
 be a prophet, a seer. All the misanthropy, 
 engendered by his unhappy relations with 
 mankind, could not shake his devotion to 
 this ideal which had sprung from the truest 
 artistic apprehension and been nurtured 
 by enforced introspection and philosophic 
 reflection. 
 
 It may be we cannot yet say that he 
 237
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 went too far, that he failed to recognize the 
 limitations which the materials of music set 
 for the art ; but there can be no doubt that 
 he started it on the only paths along which 
 progress was possible. Many of the things 
 which gave offence to the taste of his time, 
 and the first decade after, are as inexcusable 
 now as they were then if we set it up as an 
 inexorable maxim that the ear must always 
 be pleased. But that conception of the aim 
 of music is as narrow as were the rules of 
 formal construction which he was faulted for 
 violating. We know now that change of 
 form is not destruction, but that in art the 
 vessel must conform to its contents. The 
 seemingly false entry of the horn in the first 
 movement of the "Heroic" symphony, the 
 rhythmical and melodic distortion of the 
 concluding measures of the Allegretto of 
 the symphony in A major, the crashing dis- 
 cord composed of all the tones of the minor 
 scale in the instrumental introduction to the 
 last movement of the " Choral " symphony are 
 not to be set down as beauties per se ; they 
 derive their justification from their signifi- 
 cance which, in turn, is to be found in the 
 emotional and poetical contents of the works 
 in which they occur. For the conception of 
 characteristic beauty as opposed to the old 
 238
 
 THE MUSEUM AT BONN 
 
 conception of absolute beauty Beethoven 
 stood sponsor. Whither will it lead us? 
 We cannot tell, nor will those be able to 
 answer who shall listen to the music of a 
 century hence. The limits of music have 
 not been set, and can not be set. Music is 
 the freest mode of expression open to the 
 imagination, and Ruskin tells us 
 
 while as it penetrates into the nature of things, 
 the imagination is pre-eminently a beholder of 
 things as they are, it is, in its creative function, an 
 eminent beholder of things when and where they 
 are not ; a seer, that is, in the prophetic sense, 
 calling the things that are not as though they 
 were ; and forever delighting to dwell on that 
 which is not tangibly present. 
 
 239
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF GOETHE 
 AND LISZT 
 
 WEIMAR ceased to be specifically a musical 
 Mecca with the departure of Liszt. I fancy 
 that if some of its secret archives were 
 thrown open to literary students, especially 
 those who still find Goethe an interesting 
 subject for study, it might for awhile be- 
 come a literary Mecca; but in spite of its 
 idyllic park, it has been neglected by tourists 
 of late years and only historical interest is 
 ascribed to it by the travelling newspaper 
 correspondent. It is scarcely necessary to 
 say that things were not always thus. Dur- 
 ing two periods in its history, both long, 
 both eventful and both big with significance 
 in the development of two intimately related 
 arts, the little town held the attention of 
 the world as cities with twenty times its 
 population, forty times its wealth and a 
 hundred times its commercial and political 
 importance could not hold it. To-day it 
 lives chiefly on the memories of those golden 
 243
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 eras; and if those memories were not so 
 perennial in their beauty and inexhaustible 
 in their educational value, the persistence 
 with which they are forced upon the atten- 
 tion of the visitor would be horribly oppres- 
 sive. This is especially true of the first and 
 most glorious era, that of which the Grand 
 Duke Charles Augustus was the Pericles, 
 and which was illuminated by light from the 
 minds of Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Wie- 
 land. He who comes to Weimar now with 
 the ordinary equipment of the tourist 
 Baedecker, umbrella and ostrich-appetite 
 for relics of the great dead can still find 
 occupation for a day or two; but he must be 
 panoplied in good-nature, and patience must 
 wrap him about like a garment, if he wishes 
 to avoid being thrown into a high fever by 
 the appeals which will be made to him to 
 inspect places and things hallowed to the 
 local mind by association with Goethe. 
 Though he come for the very purpose of put- 
 ting himself as much as possible in touch 
 with the intellectual activities which have 
 been felt as a direct influence from the mind 
 of the last poet of antique greatness, he shall 
 find it difficult at times to avoid paraphras- 
 ing the remark made by Mark Twain to his 
 Italian guide when he requested him to lump 
 244
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 the matter of his disquisition and say that 
 God Almighty made the world "after de- 
 signs by Michelangelo." Goethe is as per- 
 vasive in Weimar as Buonarotti in Rome. 
 
 A splendid row of volumes containing the 
 programmes, almost complete, of the per- 
 formances given at the Theatre and Opera 
 House at Weimar from 1793, two years after 
 Goethe became its artistic director, down to 
 to-day, is preserved in the Grand Ducal 
 Library. In them the starting-point for 
 many a discourse on the drama, spoken and 
 sung, might be found. The most timely of 
 all would perhaps suggest itself if after a 
 perusal of their contents one were to go over 
 to the Theaterplatz and take a look at the 
 modest play-house which has figured so 
 proudly in the history of the stage. For 
 more than a quarter of a century Goethe 
 swayed the artistic fortunes of the institu- 
 tion from 1791 to 1817. For a decade, 
 forty years later, Franz Liszt was the soul 
 of its operatic department. During the 
 first period the classical German drama was 
 wrought into its perfect form; verse tri- 
 umphed over prose as a vehicle of artistic 
 utterance; Goethe and Schiller told the 
 actors how they wanted their lines read, and 
 even attempted to act in the parts created 
 245
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 by them; all Germany studied the traditions 
 of Weimar. In the second period the pre- 
 eminence which the theatre enjoyed was 
 transferred from its dramatic to its musical 
 department. There Liszt, having with- 
 drawn from a career as a virtuoso at the 
 meridian of its effulgence, expended his 
 wonderful powers in behalf of the classical 
 masters and the gospel of the neo-romantic 
 art. Toward Weimar the great fugitive 
 Wagner turned his face from his Swiss 
 asylum and longed to be among those who 
 heard the first strains of " Lohengrin. " Most 
 pitifully did he implore Liszt, who had un- 
 dertaken the task of converting the world to 
 belief in the new evangel, to bespeak pro- 
 tection from his great friend and patron the 
 grandson of that Grand Duke who knew how 
 to fasten Goethe to his side for fifty-six 
 years, so that he, the political outcast, might 
 visit Weimar in disguise but for one night 
 and hear in fact the strains to which he had 
 so long listened in fancy. 
 
 But it was not Wagner alone for whom 
 the unselfish Liszt made propaganda while 
 Chapel-master Extraordinary at Weimar. 
 Berlioz's " Benvenuto Cellini," Schumann's 
 "Genoveva," Raff's "King Alfred," Schu- 
 bert's "Alfonso and Estrella" and Corne- 
 246
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 lius's "Barber of Bagdad," besides many 
 other works of younger or less renowned 
 composers, all saw the light of the stage- 
 lamps in this secluded theatre. Yet when 
 Goethe administered the affairs of the Court 
 Theatre, Weimar had only ten thousand in- 
 habitants; and when Liszt made the Court 
 Opera the heart of musical Germany, send- 
 ing out from it the rich, red, arterial blood 
 which the country needed, the institution 
 cost less in a year than the Metropolitan 
 Opera House in New York costs in a month. 
 This points out the great lesson which is 
 enforced by the history of the Weimar 
 Theatre in its two periods of glory: true 
 culture is dependent neither on fashion nor 
 on wealth. 
 
 I have taken the trouble to look a little 
 into the financial history of the institution. 
 The theatre had existed in one form or 
 another for a long time, when, at the sug- 
 gestion of Goethe, it was raised to the dig- 
 nity of a Court Theatre in 1791. The 
 orchestra was established in 1756 by the 
 Grand Duke Ernst Augustus, father of 
 Goethe's patron. This Grand Duke, like 
 many of Germany's royalties, had been 
 musical in his youth. He was a pupil of 
 Johann Ernst Bach, and reckoned a good 
 247
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 player on the viol da gamba and lute. Later 
 in life, he grew too fond of hunting and 
 fighting, and maintained only a hunting band 
 of pipers; but when he made Weimar his 
 residence he established a court orchestra 
 and called his old teacher from Eisenach 
 to be chapel-master. The band numbered 
 twenty men, among them being Johann 
 Casper Vogler, who by the confession of 
 Johann Sebastian Bach was his greatest 
 pupil. The orchestra has been maintained 
 ever since, and has had men like Hummel 
 and Chelard among its conductors, though 
 it never attracted attention as a concert body 
 save under Liszt. This, however, is aside 
 from my purpose, which is to show how 
 economically Weimar's illustrious theatre 
 has been run. In Goethe's time the receipts 
 at the performances in Weimar, Lauchstadt 
 and Rudolstadt averaged eleven thousand 
 thalers; the grand ducal subvention was 
 seven thousand thalers for the theatre and 
 six thousand thalers to pay the orchestra; in 
 all, twenty-four thousand thalers, or about 
 $ 1 8, ooo in American money. And this sum 
 sufficed to meet all expenses, for it is of 
 record that no supplementary contribution 
 from the privy purse of Charles Augustus 
 was ever called for during Goethe's admin- 
 248
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 istration. A generation later the subven- 
 tion had been raised to twenty-one thousand 
 thalers for the theatre, and twelve thousand 
 thalers for the orchestra, but the receipts 
 were only one thousand thalers more, and 
 the Grand Duke was called on to pay a 
 deficit of ten thousand thalers. To under- 
 stand the modesty of these figures it is neces- 
 sary to know that the theatre seats only one 
 thousand persons, and that the prices of ad- 
 mission during all these palmy days ranged 
 from twelve and a half to seventy-five cents. 
 On ordinary subscription nights it was pos- 
 sible to take in only one hundred and fifty 
 thalers at these rates, and when Sontag sang 
 for the first time in Weimar and the prices 
 were raised two and a half times, the receipts 
 were yet less than twelve hundred thalers, 
 say about $800 in the United States. 
 
 Of course all this presupposes a vastly 
 different state of things from what our thea- 
 tres and opera houses are accustomed to. 
 In Goethe's day the play was the thing, and 
 not its clothes. He found it as little nec- 
 essary as Shakespeare to rely on gaudy trap- 
 pings and adornments. In his loft were 
 scenes depicting a forest, a city, a few rooms, 
 a rocky landscape, and a temple. They were 
 not many, nor even well painted, but they 
 
 249 
 \
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 sufficed. "Iphigenia," "Tasso," "Faust," 
 "Don Carlos," "The Robbers," could be 
 played with their aid. The entire company, 
 lyric as well as dramatic, numbered only 
 twenty-one men and women. Sometimes 
 the principals had to appear in two parts, 
 and the members of the dramatic company 
 were obliged, under their contracts, to sing 
 in the operas. Even the costumer and car- 
 penter had to make themselves as useful and 
 ornamental as possible on the stage. When 
 Mozart's operas were given the chorus was 
 recruited from pupils of the Teachers' Sem- 
 inary, and simple dances were executed by 
 the children of court officials and private citi- 
 zens. This draft on the pupils of the semi- 
 nary gave rise to a somewhat acrimonious 
 controversy between Herder and Goethe. 
 Herder had under his care the educational 
 as well as religious institutions of the Duchy. 
 He had long complained about the neglect 
 of study caused by the pupils' attendance on 
 rehearsals at the theatre, when one day, at a 
 performance of "Don Giovanni," the red 
 cloak of one of the little imps that had come 
 to carry the wicked hero to the realms of 
 Pluto got caught in a trap. The imp was, 
 of course, one of the seminarians. Herder 
 thought that the cause of education was 
 250
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 brought into ridicule by the amused laughter 
 of the audience at the awkward mishap. He 
 sent a protest to the Grand Duke against 
 the further use of pupils at the theatre and 
 argued with great force that the influence of 
 this unnatural union of theatre and school 
 was demoralizing to the latter. Goethe, 
 mindful only of his beloved theatre, took 
 arms against him and had his own way, just 
 as a little later he persuaded Charles Augus- 
 tus to give one of the theatre musicians 
 charge of the church music, though he was 
 a Frenchman and a Catholic and knew nothing 
 of the institution given into his care. Again 
 Herder complained bitterly, but in vain, and 
 the righteousness of his position was not 
 made plain until the experiment had proved 
 a failure and the mischief he feared had been 
 done. 
 
 It suggests a singular commentary on 
 human nature, even grand ducal human 
 nature, that though Goethe's influence was 
 powerful enough to persuade Charles Augus- 
 tus to mar the work of so illustrious a man 
 as Herder in a department of government in 
 which the equally great preacher and 'scholar 
 stood pre-eminent, it was not great enough 
 to withstand the combined assaults of a 
 prima donna and a poodle dog. But the 
 
 25 1
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 prima donna was the Grand Duke's mistress 
 ("companion of my moments of recreation," 
 he called her) and the dog was the progenitor 
 of that talented race, some of whose mem- 
 bers are still popular in the Bowery theatres. 
 He was a "star" performer who came in 
 April, 1817, with his master from Vienna 
 to exhibit a historical, romantic drama trans- 
 lated from the French, entitled "The Dog 
 of Aubri de Mont-Didier. " Goethe objected 
 to the engagement, but the Grand Duke 
 granted the request of Fraulein Jagemann, 
 who had long ruled the theatre and opera, 
 and ordered the pair from Vienna to display 
 their talents. There seems to be no ques- 
 tion but that the poodle played his part 
 brilliantly throughout three long acts. He 
 pulled the bell-rope at a tavern door, carried 
 a lantern into the forest at a critical point 
 in the plot, discovered the murderer of his 
 master, pursued him from rock to rock and 
 attacked him with a rage that was only half 
 simulated, for it was thought for awhile that 
 the poor actor who had the unamiable part 
 of murderer to play was really in danger of 
 his life from the dog's attack. Yet Goethe, 
 who seems to have forgotten that he had 
 developed Mephistopheles out of a poodle 
 in his great dramatic poem, remained obsti- 
 252
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 nately blind to the moral and intellectual 
 grandeur of the performance. The play was 
 given twice, on April 12 and 14, 1817, with 
 uproarious success, and on April 17 Goethe 
 resigned the artistic direction of the Weimar 
 Court Theatre. And Fraulein Jagemann got 
 a title and estates as Frau von Heygendorf. 
 
 A portrait of Fraulein Jagemann hangs 
 in the Grand Ducal Library. It was evi- 
 dently painted at a time when she had begun 
 to put on matronly proportions. Inasmuch 
 as she survived Charles Augustus full twenty 
 years and died at the age of about seventy in 
 1848, the picture is probably the counterfeit 
 presentment of her as she appeared between 
 her fortieth and fiftieth year. It shows her 
 in the character of Sappho, with Greek robe 
 and lyre. If the tale of Charles Augustus's 
 infatuation and the many contemporaneous 
 records were not on hand to attest the fact, 
 this portrait would yet prove that she was a 
 woman of extraordinary beauty. In spite of 
 the somewhat too generous upholstery of 
 integument, the Greek lines of her profile 
 are still to be seen, and the faint reflection 
 of what must have been a peculiarly lustrous 
 and speaking pair of eyes. Her talent seems 
 to have been commensurate with her beauty, 
 for the programmes show that she took part 
 253
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 in comedy, tragedy and opera, and the judg- 
 ment of the time is that she was equally 
 great in all departments. Musically, her 
 gifts shone brightest in Mozart's operas, and 
 in the spoken drama her principal parts were 
 Maria Stuart, Thekla, Portia and Iphigenia. 
 
 It is through this brilliant woman that we 
 of to-day, prone to look back upon an artistic 
 institution which felt the direct influence of 
 men like Goethe and Schiller and enjoyed a 
 renown almost without parallel in the history 
 of the stage with a feeling of awe, are privi- 
 leged also to see that in those classic days 
 of the German drama there was also present 
 the alloy of weak human nature. Brilliant as 
 this Demoiselle Jagemann was, I have yet to 
 learn that Goethe ever sang her praises. The 
 episode of "The Dog of Aubri de Mont- 
 Didier" tells part of the story. It was the 
 culmination of twenty years of effort to 
 acquire complete mastery of the theatre. 
 She was a prima donna like many prima 
 donnas of to-day. Tears and hysterics 
 marked her triumphant path. Her unfor- 
 tunate colleagues were despoiled of their 
 best roles the moment she lusted after them, 
 and the stage manager stood ceaselessly upon 
 the treadmill of perplexity. Once, it was in 
 1801, an unhappy conductor thought he knew 
 254
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 more than she about the proper tempi of 
 Donna Anna s airs in " Don Giovanni. " A 
 quarrel in the rehearsal left each determined 
 to choose the time. At the performance the 
 conductor, Kranz, used the advantage which 
 the baton gave him. Jagemann quit sing- 
 ing, burst into tears and left the stage. Of 
 course she appealed to the Grand Duke, with 
 whom each saline drop weighed more than 
 all the eloquent arguments of the musician. 
 Poor Kranz was suspended from office, and 
 when later he was permitted to resume his 
 functions, it was with the condition that he 
 should never conduct when Jagemann sang. 
 
 Nevertheless a glory which Jagemann 
 never won with all her beauty, talent and 
 influence was garnered by one who had pre- 
 ceded her on Weimar's stage, and whose 
 portrait also hangs, a legacy from Goethe, 
 in the library at the other end of the room 
 which contains Charles Augustus's "Sap- 
 pho." The picture shows the features of 
 Corona Elizabeth Wilhelmine Schroeter, and 
 is doubly interesting from the fact that it 
 was painted by its subject and presented to 
 Goethe as a souvenir of an occasion when 
 she had been made happy by the privilege of 
 participating with him in one of his own 
 plays. To have been admired, perhaps 
 255
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 loved, by the greatest poet of his time, and 
 one of the handsomest men, is enough in 
 the opinion of the impressionable German 
 maiden of to-day to give any woman a claim 
 on immortality. The claim is recognized as 
 valid only in the case of a favored few, for 
 alas ! the claimants were so many ! Goethe 
 himself, however, put the sign of his approval 
 on the case of Corona Schroeter, not by put- 
 ting her name in the mouths of scandal- 
 mongers, but by embalming it in the verses 
 which he wrote " On the death of Miedling. " 
 Miedling was an actor of the company which 
 was wont to entertain the grand ducal court 
 before the Court Theatre had been called 
 into existence. So was Corona Schroeter, 
 whom Goethe met first in Leipsic and 
 brought to Weimar in 1778. She was then 
 thirty years old, a singer, actress, composer 
 of songs (she set some of Goethe's verses), 
 and, in an amateur way, painter. The por- 
 trait which she gave to Goethe contrasts 
 strongly with that of Jagemann in respect 
 of spirituality, and would attract attention 
 aside from its associations. I fear but little 
 of the beauty of Goethe's tribute will appear 
 in the following attempt at a translation of 
 the lines which are devoted to this lovely 
 woman in the poem referred to : 
 256
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 More room, my friends ! Fall back a little space ! 
 See one approach with bearing full of grace ! 
 'T is she herself, on whom we e'er depend 
 Our pray'rs are heard their gift the muses send ! 
 You know her well, the cause of sure delight, 
 A wondrous flower she bursts upon our sight. 
 To be a model she to earth was sent 
 Wherein the real and ideal should be blent. 
 Of all their gifts the nine withheld no part, 
 And nature breathed in her the breath of art. 
 To lend her charms the world itself is spent, 
 And e'en thy name, Corona, is an ornament. 
 Behold her now ! Her movements light as air, 
 Unconscious she who seems with purpose fair ! 
 In her observe with grateful, deep surprise, 
 An ideal mixture, saved for artists' eyes ! 
 
 The collection of programmes in the 
 Library reaching from 1793 down to date, 
 and encompassing both periods of renown 
 enjoyed by Weimar's Theatre, tempted me 
 once to a comparative study for which I did 
 not have sufficient time. Instead I sought 
 to gain what light I could by noting the 
 repertories of certain years, selected because 
 of their chronological relation. These were, 
 so far as the opera under Goethe's adminis- 
 tration was concerned, first, the third year 
 of the existence of the theatre as a Court 
 Theatre, say from October, 1793, to the end 
 of 1794. The operatic list within this time 
 was not imposing. Interesting appeared the 
 17 257
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 first performance of Martini's "Tree of 
 Diana," on October 10, 1793. This is the 
 opera of which Da Ponte wrote the libretto 
 simultaneously with that of "Don Gio- 
 vanni," if his extremely fantastical memoirs 
 written in New York are to be credited. 
 Another first performance was that of 
 Mozart's "Magic Flute" on January 16, 
 1794. It became popular at once as fre- 
 quent repetitions evidence. 
 
 These are the only operatic first produc- 
 tions falling within the time, but a perform- 
 ance of Mozart's "Entfuhrung" on June 16, 
 1794, deserves to be noticed because of a 
 note upon the house-bill : Madame Weber 
 ivird in der Rolle der Constanze sick zu 
 empfehlen die Ehre haben. The Madame 
 Weber who made her d6but in the Weimar 
 opera on this occasion was the mother of the 
 composer of " Euryanthe " and " Der Frei- 
 schutz." Carl Maria von Weber was eight 
 years old at the time. His mother remained 
 a member of the company from June to 
 September, 1794, but as her name does not 
 appear on the house-bills after the occasion 
 just noted, I fancy that she did not succeed. 
 The composer's talent was inherited from 
 his father, Major Franz Anton von Weber, 
 a soldier who was so passionately fond of 
 258
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 music that he carried his violin with him on 
 his promenades. Finally, it is said, his 
 devotion to music caused him to neglect his 
 duties as an officer and he was discharged 
 from the service. He retired to private life 
 and finally became a professional musician. 
 The mother of Carl Maria was his second 
 wife. The archives of the Weimar Theatre 
 contain several letters from him, in one of 
 which he deplores that he ever left Weimar, 
 having yielded to bad advice, and in another 
 offers to sell the score of an opera composed 
 by his young son, which showed great talent. 
 The opera was " Silvana. " The remainder 
 of the operatic list during the year under con- 
 sideration consisted of Mozart's "Figaro," 
 Dalayrac's "The Two Savoyards," Gretry's 
 " Richard, Cceur de Lion, " Paisiello's " King 
 Theodore in Venice, " Cimarosa's " Die verei- 
 telte Ranke, " Anf ossi ' s " Circe, " " Das Som- 
 merfest der Braminen," by Wenzel Mueller, 
 Martini's " Cosa Rara" (which Mozart hon- 
 ored by a humorous quotation in "Don 
 Giovanni "), and three of Dittersdorf's clever 
 musical comedies. 
 
 This list is fairly representative of the 
 
 activities of small theatres at the time. A 
 
 study of the programmes of the year 1807, 
 
 the middle of Goethe's term as Artistic 
 
 2 S9
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 Director of the Theatre, shows a great 
 improvement. The performances are more 
 frequent, the list more ambitious, the novel- 
 ties more frequent, and the character of the 
 works seems to indicate a most marked bet- 
 terment of the interpreting forces. The 
 chief novelties are Paer's "Camilla" (May 
 26), Salieri's "Palmira" (May 31), Mehul's 
 "Treasure Diggers" (June 14), and Paer's 
 "Die Wegelagerer" (December 19). The 
 fact that every one of these operas has dis- 
 appeared from the stage may set some one 
 to reflecting on the peculiar mortality of 
 operas, for Paer, Salieri and Mehul belonged 
 to the great composers of their age. The 
 other composers represented in the year's 
 list were Cimarosa, Cherubini, Martini, 
 Schenck, Delia Maria, Gaveaux, Ditters- 
 dorf, Monsigny, Winter, Mozart and Wran- 
 itzky, whose " Oberon " was considered a 
 wonderful romantic opera till Weber's came. 
 In the last year of the Consulship of Goethe 
 the engagement of a pair of Italian singers 
 led to the performance of some of those sin- 
 gular pot-pourri operas, the music of which 
 was put together more or less deftly by the 
 conductors of those days. Another singular 
 episode is the appearance on the list of 
 Maggie Mitchell's "Fanchon" (with an- 
 260
 
 GOETHE AND LISZT 
 
 other woman in the titular r61e, however) 
 for which Himmel had written the music. 
 In this period falls the first production at 
 Weimar of "Fidelio," which took place on 
 September 4, 1816, the companion of the 
 Grand Duke's hours of recreation being the 
 Leonore of the occasion. I went no further 
 than the programmes to learn what measure 
 of success Beethoven's opera enjoyed. It 
 was given five times in eight months. And 
 Beethoven is set down as a "von" instead of 
 a "van" on the programme. Besides Bee- 
 thoven's the names of Weigl, Isouard, Benda, 
 Boi'eldieu, Spontini, appeared in company 
 with most of those already mentioned. Then 
 came the fatal I2th of April, 1817, and Jage- 
 mann's effective instrument the poodle. 
 
 Goethe could not approve the action of the 
 Grand Duke who opened his theatre to a 
 poodle, and resigned. That was the end of 
 the first period in the history of the theatre 
 which made Weimar a stopping place in one 
 of my musical pilgrimages. The second 
 period, specifically musical, also ended with 
 a resignation. This time the Jagemann 
 appears to have been Madame Public Taste, 
 though it still seems a mystery how after 
 ten years of such training as Liszt gave the 
 people of Weimar they could have been deaf 
 261
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WEIMAR 
 
 to the beauties of Cornelius's "Barber of 
 Bagdad." There is a comical juxtaposition 
 in the circumstance that a career which began 
 with a successful production of "Martha " as 
 a novelty should have ended with a disas- 
 trous production of "The Barber." There 
 is also, doubtless, a chapter of unwritten 
 history somewhere which explains Liszt's 
 withdrawal from the conduct of the opera at 
 Weimar more satisfactorily than the current 
 accounts. Herr Pohl has rendered unneces- 
 sary any detailed account of Liszt's activi- 
 ties as Court Conductor Extraordinary at 
 Weimar; but I confess that the evidences 
 of his labors surprised me. Never was the 
 devotion of an artist to high ideals more 
 quickly demonstrated, never was liberality 
 of taste more generously displayed, never 
 was a lofty ideal more deeply impressed 
 upon the artistic activities of an institution 
 than in the case of Liszt's career in Weimar. 
 Scarcely is his presence announced, as the 
 conductor of the new opera " Martha," before 
 the evidences of his lofty strivings begin to 
 accumulate. In two weeks the orchestral 
 concerts begin, and soon the entr' -actes at 
 the plays are filled with high class musical 
 performances. 
 
 262
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 ACCOMPANIED recitative, 31. 
 
 Aria cantabile, 35. 
 
 " Achille," ii, 13, 32. 
 
 Aria d'agilita, 36. 
 
 Achilles, 29. 
 
 Aria di bravura, 36. 
 
 Adams, Mrs. Mehitabel, 193. 
 Addison, 23, 33, 34, 35. 
 " Adriano in Siria," 32. 
 Albertarelli, singer, 77. 
 
 Aria di mezzo carattere, 35. 
 Aria di note e parola, 36. 
 Aria di portamento, 35. 
 Aria di strepito, 36. 
 
 " Alceste," 26. 
 
 Aria infuriata, 36. 
 
 ' Alcide," 32. 
 
 Aria parlante, 36. 
 
 " Alcino," 22. 
 
 " Ariodante," 22. 
 
 " Alessandro," 8, 9, 12, 32, 51. 
 
 Ariosti, composer, 22. 
 
 " Alfonso and Estrella," 246. 
 
 " Armida,"3o. 
 
 Allegri, " Miserere," 184, 185. 
 
 " Arminio," 22. 
 
 Amorevoli, singer, 14, 40, 50. 
 
 Arne, Dr., composer, 92. 
 
 Amfhion Thebas, ego domttm, 
 
 Arnold, Dr., composer, 63, 77. 
 
 5 2 - 
 
 Arrigoni, Carlo, composer, 3, 14, 
 
 Ancient Music, concerts of, 63, 
 
 22, 27. 
 
 72. 
 
 " Arsace," 27. 
 
 Anderson, Edward Henry, 177. 
 
 Artaria, music publisher, 229. 
 
 Anderson, Elbert Ellery, 177, 
 
 " Artaserse," 8, 9, n, 21, 32, 
 
 185. 
 
 53. 92- 
 
 Anderson, Henry James, 177. 
 
 " Atalanta," 22. 
 
 " Andromaca," 9. 
 
 " Attilio," 32. 
 
 Anfossi, composer, 259. 
 
 
 " Antigone," 32. 
 
 BABBI, singer, 14, 40, 49. 
 
 Antis, bishop and composer, 79. 
 
 Bacchierotti, singer, 77. 
 
 Appianino, singer, 14, 40, 49. 
 
 3ach, generic name for Thurin- 
 
 Apprentices in London, 76. 
 
 gian musicians, 131. 
 
 Araia, Francesco, singer, 13. 
 
 Jach, Johann Christian, "the 
 
 Archbishop of Salzburg, 138, 
 
 English Bach," 97. 
 
 139- 
 
 Jach, Johann, Ernst, 247. 
 
 Archbishop of London, anecdote 
 
 Jach, Johann Sebastian, Spitta's 
 
 of, 71. 
 
 life of, 192; " Well Tempered 
 
 Aria agitata, 36. 
 
 Clavichord," 203. 
 
 265
 
 INDEX 
 
 Badini, poet, 77. 
 
 Bagnolese, singer, 13, 40. 
 
 Bangs, Francis, 4. 
 
 " Barber of Bagdad," 247, 262. 
 
 Barbieri, singer, 13, 40. 
 
 Barck, Miss, singer, 77. 
 
 Barry more, Lord, 81. 
 
 Barthelemon, Mr., 64, 77, 83. 
 
 Barthelemon, Mrs., 77. 
 
 Barthelemon, Miss, 78. 
 
 Bassi, Luigi, singer, 159. 
 
 Bass singers in the eighteenth 
 century, 41. 
 
 Baumgarten, composer in Lon- 
 don, 77. 
 
 Baumgartner, conductor at Co- 
 vent Garden, 86. 
 
 Bayreuth festivals, 116, 147. 
 
 Beethoven, Mrs. Carl van, 202, 
 204, 205, 206. 
 
 Beethoven, Caspar Anton Carl 
 van, brother of the composer, 
 226. 
 
 Beethoven, Haus Verein, 221, 
 230. 
 
 Beethoven, Johann van, father 
 of the composer, 219, 227. 
 
 Beethoven, Louis van, grand- 
 father of the composer, 215, 
 219, 227. 
 
 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 58, 78, 
 131, 134, 144, 149, 161; an- 
 ecdotes of, 196 et seq.; meets 
 a friend from Bonn, 196 ; the 
 kettledrums in the seventh 
 symphony, 197; his favorite 
 symphony, 196; the Karnth- 
 nerthor orchestra, 197 ; Rust's 
 anecdote, 198; Schindler's de- 
 votion, 198 ; Hozalka's anec- 
 dote, 198; appreciation of 
 Mozart, 199, 208 ; his 
 wine bill, 199; Salis's anec- 
 
 dote, 200; offers marriage 
 to a singer, 200 ; meeting 
 with Mahler, 200 ; his piano- 
 forte playing, 201 ; the ab- 
 sent bassoon player, 201; 
 anger at Prince Lobkowitz, 20; 
 plays the "Well Tempered 
 Clavichord," 203; disorder in 
 his room, 203 ; death of, 204 ; 
 courtesy to Himmel, 205 ; 
 under arrest, 206 ; intercourse 
 with Cipriani Potter, 208 ; 
 opinion of Mozart and Handel, 
 208 ; appreciation of Cheru- 
 bini, 208 ; admiration for Eng- 
 land, 208; opinion of Mosche- 
 les, 209 ; uses a bootjack on his 
 pianoforte, 209 ; antipathy to 
 being overheard, 209 ; his 
 deafness, 210, 226, 233 ; his 
 biographer Thayer, 189 et 
 seq., 192, 212 et seq. ; tem- 
 perance at table, 209 ; birth- 
 place, 213 et seq. ; museum 
 at Bonn, 203, 212 et seq. ; 
 monument at Bonn, 220; por- 
 traits of, 228 ; his " im- 
 mortal beloved," 228 ; his 
 mother, 223 et seq. ; piano- 
 forte, 231 ; ear trumpets, 231 ; 
 position in musical history, 
 233 et seq. ; " Fidelio," 197, 
 201, 210, 261; "Eroica" 
 symphony, 196, 200, 238; C 
 minor symphony, 197; seventh 
 symphony, 197, 238; ninth 
 symphony, 238; "Welling- 
 ton's Victory," 208, 232; 
 pianoforte concertos, C minor 
 and E flat, 211. 
 
 Beaumarchais, 165. 
 
 Beckenkamp, Casper, painter, 
 
 227. 
 
 266
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Begehre nicht ein Gliick zu 
 
 gross," 80. 
 
 Belderbusch, minister, 226. 
 Benda, composer, 77, 261. 
 " Benvenuto Cellini," 246. 
 " Berenice," 22. 
 Berger, Freiherr von, 125. 
 Berlioz, Hector, 74, 248. 
 Bernacchi, singing teacher, 42. 
 Bernasconi, Andrea, singer, 14, 
 
 25, 26. 
 Bernasconi, Antonia, singer, 26, 
 
 27. 
 
 Bertolli, singer, 14, 40. 
 Beyle, Henri, 66. 
 Bianchi, Bianca, singer, 154. 
 Billington, Mrs., 65, 66, 67, 77, 
 
 86. 
 
 Biswanger, Herr, 59. 
 Blake, Lady, 63. 
 Blake, Sir Patrick, 85. 
 Bland, Mrs., singer, 77. 
 Blumb, Mr., 78. 
 Boi'eldieu, 261. 
 Bombet, L. A. C., pseudonym, 
 
 67- 
 
 Borghi, violinist, 78. 
 Born, Baroness. 198. 
 Brandt-Forster, Ella, singer, 
 
 144, 145; '54, 158- 
 Brassey, London banker, 83, 94. 
 Breuning family, 230. 
 Breuning, Dr. Gerhard von, 204, 
 
 206. 
 
 Breuning, Stephen von, 204. 
 Bright, E., 7. 
 Brignt, John, 8. 
 Bright, Richard, 7, 8. 
 British Nobility, opera of the, 
 
 21, 22. 
 
 Broschi, Carlo (Farinelli), 27. 
 Broschi, Riccardo, 14. 25, 27. 
 Brunswick, Countess, 228. 
 
 Buononcini, composer, 17, 19, 
 
 21, 22. 
 Burney, Dr. Charles, 24, 26, 27, 
 
 2g , 3. 3', 33, 37, 46, 47, 5, 
 
 77, 194- 
 
 Burney, Mrs., pianist, 77. 
 Byrom, John, 19, 21. 
 Byron, Lord, 161. 
 
 CADENZA, sung by Farinelli, 
 
 52; by Tesi, 48. 
 Caffarelli, singer, 48, 50, 51. 
 Calcagni, singer in London, 77. 
 Calvesi, singer in London, 79. 
 Cambridge, University of, 85. 
 " Camilla," 260. 
 Campo, Marquis del, 79. 
 Capelletti, singer in London, 
 
 77- 
 
 Capua, 30. 
 
 Capuzinerberg, 138, 139. 
 Carestini, 8, 9, n, 22, 40, 51. 
 Carter, composer in London, 77. 
 Carpani, " Le Haydine/' 66. 
 Gary, Annie Louise, 4. 
 Casentini, singer in London, 79. 
 Caspar, Wenzelaus, Elector of 
 
 Treves, 224. 
 
 Castelcicala, Prince de, 79. 
 Catherine II., of Russia, 24. 
 " Catone," 8, 9, 12, 27, 32. 
 Celestina, singer, 13, 40. 
 Celestini, singer, 77. 
 Ceneda, Bishop of, 164. 
 Charity Children, singing of, 73, 
 
 74- 
 
 harles Augustus, Grand Duke 
 of Weimar, 244, 248, 251, 253. 
 
 -herubini, 208, 260. 
 hesterfield, Lord, 54. 
 
 Dhoris, singer in London, 77. 
 
 Cimarosa, 259, 260. 
 
 : Circe," 259. 
 
 267
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Giro riconosciuto," n, 32. 
 Claremont, Lord, 91. 
 Clarence, Duke of, 93. 
 Clemens Augustus, Elector of 
 
 Cologne, 215, 224, 225. 
 Clement, violinist, 77, 78. 
 dementi, 77. 
 
 "Clemenza di Tito," 8, 32. 
 Cleveland, Grover, President of 
 
 the United States, 193. 
 Colloredo, Hieronymus, 150. 
 Columbia College, 174. 
 Composers in London, 77. 
 Concerts of Ancient Music, 63, 
 
 72- 
 
 "Contesa de' Numi," 10, 38. 
 
 Conti, Gioacchino, 50, (also see 
 Giziello). 
 
 Contralto voice in the eigh- 
 teenth century, 46. 
 
 Cornelius, Peter von, 247, 262. 
 
 Corri, Miss, 84. 
 
 "Cosi fan tutte," 146, 161. 
 
 Covent Garden Theatre, 86. 
 
 Cramer, J. B., 75. 
 
 Cramer, William, 63, 77, 78. 
 
 "Creation," The, 58. 
 
 Crouch, Mrs., singer in London, 
 77- 
 
 Cuzzoni, singer, 9, 12, 22, 40, 
 43. 44, 45> 5; her rivalry 
 with Faustina, 43 ; Handel's 
 threat, 44. 
 
 DALAYRAC, " The Two Savoy- 
 ards," 259. 
 
 Danhauser, Joseph, sculptor, 
 230. 
 
 Da Ponte, Lorenzo, his aim in 
 "Don Giovanni," 156; in 
 New York, 1 59 et seq. ; career 
 of, 161 et seq.; not a poet 
 laureate, 161 ; his grave un- 
 
 known, 162 ; arrival in Amer- 
 ica, 163, 1 66; born a Jew, 
 164; indecent attack on, 169; 
 arrival in New York, 171 ; 
 business ventures of, 171 ; 
 residences in New York, 1 73 ; 
 becomes professor at Colum- 
 bia College, 174; transactions 
 with the College, 175, 179; 
 death and burial of, 132, 160, 
 163, 184; appearance of, 185 ; 
 autobiography of, 164; " Com- 
 pendium," 167; "Frottola 
 per far ridere," 180, 186; 
 " Storia Americana," 181; 
 " Tree of Diana," 181. 
 
 Da Ponte, Lorenzo, Bishop of 
 Ceneda, 164. 
 
 Da Ponte, Lorenzo L., 171. 
 
 Dassie, artist in London, 91. 
 
 " Das Sommerfest der Brami- 
 nen," 259. 
 
 Davide, singer, 77. 
 
 Davis, Signorina, singer, 77. 
 
 " Deidama," 21. 
 
 Deiters, Dr. H., 194. 
 
 De la Valle, Mrs., 79. 
 
 Delia Maria, 260. 
 
 " Demetrio," 8, 30. 
 
 " Demofoonte," 9, 32. 
 
 Devonshire, Duchess of, 73. 
 
 " Didone," 12, 32, 71. 
 
 Dies, biographer of Haydn, 95, 
 
 99- 
 
 " Die Entfiihrung aus dem 
 Serail," 46, 258. 
 
 " Die vereitelte Ranke," 259. 
 
 " Die Wegelagerer," 260. 
 
 Dittenhoffer, composer in Lon- 
 don, 77. 
 
 Dittersdorf, Carl Ditters von, 
 134, 259, 260. 
 
 Dobson, Austin, 3, 4, 6, 12, 15. 
 
 268
 
 INDEX 
 
 Doctors of Music in London, 77. 
 
 " Dog of Aubri de Mont- 
 Didier," the, 252, 254. 
 
 Dom Musikverein in Salzburg, 
 144. 
 
 " Don Carlos," 250. 
 
 " Don Giovanni," 143, 144, 149, 
 54, 155. '59. i6i| 165, 178, 
 199, 250, 255, 258, 259. 
 
 Dorelli, singer in London, 77. 
 
 Dresden opera, 46, 50. 
 
 Dresden Tonkiinstlerverein, 159. 
 
 Duprez, at the Charity Chil- 
 dren's concert, 75. 
 
 Dupuis, Dr., 63, 77. 
 
 Durastanti, singer, 50. 
 
 Dussek, 77. 
 
 " EGERIA," 33. 
 Egiziello (Giziello), n. 
 Ende-Andriessen, 154. 
 England, national debt of, 62. 
 Eppinger, Dr. Joseph, 203. 
 Ernst Augustus, Grand Duke of 
 
 Weimar, 247. 
 " Eroe," 32. 
 
 EssipofT, Madame, 146, 149. 
 Esterhazy, Prince, 86. 
 " Euryanthe," 258. 
 " Ezio," 29, 32. 
 
 " FANCHON," 260. 
 Farfallino, singer, 9, 40, 50. 
 Farinelli, singer, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 
 22, 27, 28, 34, 40, 43, 48, 49, 
 
 5'. 5 2 - 
 
 "Farnace," 12. 
 " Faust," Goethe's, 250. 
 Faustina, singer, 8, 9, 13, 28, 
 
 4> 43>44, 45- 
 
 Felix, violinist in London, 78. 
 Felix, Benedikt, singer, 155. 
 Fenelon, 226. 
 
 Ferri, skill of, 34. 
 
 F ^tis, 37, 97, 98. 
 
 "Fidelio," 78, 197, 201,210, 
 261. 
 
 Fini, Michele, 12, 14, 25, 26. 
 
 Fischer, oboist in London, 78. 
 
 Fischer, Caecilia, 219. 
 
 Fischer, Gottfried, 219, 231. 
 
 Fleming, Marjorie, 97. 
 
 Forgery, now punished in Eng- 
 land, 70. 
 
 Forster, Gustav, 130. 
 
 " For unto us," 64. 
 
 Fox, Charles James, 72. 
 
 Fox, Jabez, 194. 
 
 Fox, Mrs. Jabez, 195, 203. 
 
 Francesco, Carlo, 165. 
 
 Francis, Dr. J. W., 184, 186. 
 
 Frederickson, Charles W., 4, 8. 
 
 " Freischiitz," 258. 
 
 Freny, Rudolf, opera singer, 
 154. 
 
 Friderici, composer in London, 
 
 77- 
 Frike, composer in London, 77. 
 
 GALUPPI, 3, 14, 22, 23, 24, 26, 
 
 27, 3> 3 2 - 
 
 Galvani and Beethoven, 200. 
 
 Game, prices of, in London, 72. 
 
 Garcia, Manuel, 177. 
 
 Gaveaux, 260. 
 
 " Genoveva," 246. 
 
 Genziger, Mrs., 59. 
 
 George I., King of England, 20. 
 
 German singers and Mozart's 
 music, 155. 
 
 " Gerusalemme liberata," 30. 
 
 Giacomelli, 9, 25, 27. 
 
 Giaii, Antonio, 9, 13, 25. 
 
 Giardini, 71, 78. 
 
 Giornowichi, violinist in Lon- 
 don, 78. 
 
 269
 
 INDEX 
 
 Girowetz, composer in London, 
 
 77- 
 
 " Giustino," 22. 
 Giziello, singer, n, 22, 40, 50, 
 
 Gluck, 26, 32. 
 
 " God save the King," 91. 
 
 Goethe, 98, 134; his influence in 
 Weimar, 243 et seq. ; and 
 Shakespeare, 249 ; quarrel 
 with Herder, 251 ; episode 
 with a poodle, 251, 261 ; admi- 
 ration for Corona Schroeter, 
 255 ; "On the death of Mied- 
 ling," 256. 
 
 " Gott im Herz," 80. 
 
 Graf, pianoforte maker, 231. 
 
 Graff, musician in London, 77, 
 78. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, his musical col- 
 lection, 3 et seq. ; his taste, 
 15; his singing, 17; as a 
 harpsichord player, 17 ; inter- 
 est in opera, 200. 
 
 Gre'try, 259. 
 
 Grillparzer, recollections of 
 Beethoven, 209 ; relations 
 with Beethoven, 209. 
 
 Grosdill, violincellist in London, 
 
 77- 
 Grove, Sir George, dedication, 
 
 25,27,29,97, 166, 202. 
 Guglielmi, " La Pastorella 
 
 nobile," 79. 
 
 Guicciardi, Countess, 228. 
 Guildhall, 59. 
 Guttenbrun, painter in London, 
 
 91. 
 Guy Fawkes Day, 81. 
 
 " HALLELUJAH " chorus, 64, 
 
 83, 89. 
 Handel, 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 29, 
 
 30, 42, 43, 50, 51, 76; his 
 
 operatic ventures, 20 et seq. ; 
 
 and Cuzzoni, 44 ; and Tesi, 
 
 46 ; his bass singers, 41 ; 
 
 Commemoration, 82, 83 ; 
 
 admired by Beethoven, 208 ; 
 
 " Jephtha," 18. 
 " Hannibal." 29, 30. 
 Hardy, painter in London, 91. 
 " Harmony in an Uproar," 
 
 27. 
 Harrington, oboist in London, 
 
 78. 
 
 Harrison, singer in London. 77. 
 Hartman, flautist in London, 
 
 79- 
 
 Hasse, Johann Adolf, 8, 9, 13, 
 17, 21, 28, 31, 32, 33, 41, 45, 
 
 48, S 2 , 53- 
 
 Hastings, Warren, 64. 
 
 Hauser, Anna, 155. 
 
 Haydn, in London. 55 et seq. ; 
 his note-books, 57 et seq. ; 
 "Creation," 58 ; his descrip- 
 tion of the Lord Mayor's din- 
 ner, 59 ; gifts for friends, 59 ; 
 description of the races, 67; 
 at Charity Children's concert, 
 73 ; his description of Vaux- 
 hall Gardens, 76 ; visits the 
 Duke of York, 84 ; visits Cam- 
 bridge University, 85 ; records 
 Mozart's death, 87 ; describes 
 Haymarket Theatre, 88 ; 
 visits Oxford University, 88, 
 89 ; canon, " Thy Voice, O 
 harmony," 89; bled in Lon- 
 don, 89 ; visit to Mr. Shaw, 
 89 ; trip on the Thames, 89 ; 
 concerts in London, 91 ; por- 
 traits of, 91 ; purchases for 
 friends, 92 ; his English IOTC, 
 95 ; love letters to, 95 et seq. ; 
 
 270
 
 INDEX 
 
 his wife, 96 ; tempo of Ins 
 minuets, 149; his birth-place, 
 213 ; symphony in D, 84, 
 90 ; symphony in B flat, 90. 
 
 Haymarket Theatre in London, 
 20, 71, 88. 
 
 Hellmesberger Quartet, 146. 
 
 Herder, 244, 250, 251. 
 
 Herschel, Dr., 64. 
 
 Herzog, theatrical director in 
 Vienna, 207. 
 
 Hess, Mus. Doc. in London, 77. 
 
 Heygendorf, Frau von, 253. 
 
 " Hide me from day's garish 
 eye," 19. 
 
 Hillisbury, dancer in London, 
 
 79- 
 
 Himmel, composer, 205, 261. 
 
 Hindmarsh, violinist in Lon- 
 don, 77. 
 
 Hiifel, Blasius, 206, 229. 
 
 Hogarth on the opera of the 
 eighteenth century, 35. 
 
 Hohensalzburg, 117. 
 
 Hoppner, painter in London, 
 91. 
 
 " How to listen to Music," 34. 
 
 Hozalka's anecdote of Bee- 
 thoven, 198. 
 
 Hiillmandl, composer in Lon- 
 don, 77, 78. 
 
 Hiittenbrenner, Anselm, his ac- 
 count of Beethoven's death, 
 203. 
 
 Hummel, J. F., 125, 144, 145, 
 
 55- 
 
 Hummel, J. N., 78, 213. 
 Hungarian Gypsy bands, n. 
 Hunter, surgeon in London, 62. 
 
 " Hydaspes," 33. 
 IMAGINATION, Ruskin on the, 
 
 271 
 
 " lo vi mando questo foglio," 
 
 75- 
 
 " Ipermestra," 32. 
 " Iphigenia," 250. 
 Isouard, 261. 
 " Issipile," 8. 
 Italian basses, lack of, 42. 
 
 JAGEMANN, Fraulein, 252, 261. 
 
 Jahn, Otto, 192. 
 
 Jahn, Wilhelm, 120, 143, 148, 
 
 158. 
 Jansa, Miss, pianist in London, 
 
 78. 
 Jarowez, violinist in London, 
 
 78. 
 
 "Jephtha," 18. 
 Joachim, Joseph, 223. 
 Jomelli, 31. 
 Jones's Chant, 74. 
 Jordan, Dora, 93. 
 Joseph Clemens, Elector of 
 
 Cologne, 215, 225. 
 Joseph II., of Austria, 165, 181. 
 
 KAULICH, Louise, singer, 144, 
 
 154. 
 
 Kees, Mr. and Mrs. von, 59, 92. 
 Kelly, Michael, 63, 64, 66, 77, 
 
 187. 
 
 " Kenne Gott," a canon, So. 
 Kettledrummer, anecdote of, 72. 
 Keverich, Maria Magdalena, 
 
 227. 
 
 " King Alfred," 246. 
 " King of Arragon," 27. 
 " King Theodore in Venice," 
 
 259. 
 King's Theatre, London, 20, 21. 
 
 239- 
 
 Klein, Franz, sculptor, 229. 
 Kranz, conductor in Weimar, 
 
 255. 
 I Krenn, musikdirektor, 196.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Krolop, Franz, singer, 154. 
 Krumpholz and wife, 78, 79. 
 Kuffner, Hofrath, 196. 
 Kuppe, William, 221. 
 
 LABORDE, 26. 
 
 " Lacrymosa," 125, 126. 
 
 Lampugnani, 13, 15, 22, 25, 27. 
 
 Latilla, 9, 15, 24, 25, 26. 
 
 La Trobe, composer in London, 
 
 77- 
 
 Latronne, painter, 229. 
 Laym, Johanu, 227. 
 Lazarini, singer in London, 77, 
 
 79- 
 
 Leeds, Duke of, 59. 
 Lehmann, Marie and Lilli, 154. 
 Lenn6, Peter, 196. 
 Lenz, pianist in London, 78. 
 Leo, Leonardo, n, 16, 17, 28, 
 
 32. 
 Leopold, Emperor of Austria, 
 
 166. 
 
 Lichnowsky, Prince, 78. 
 Ligi, Celestino, 14, 27. 
 Lincoln, Abraham, President of 
 
 the United States, 193. 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, 21. 
 Linnaeus, " Systema Naturae," 
 
 3- 
 
 Liszt, his influence in Weimar, 
 243 et seq. 
 
 Livington family, 174. 
 
 Lobkowitz, Prince, Beethoven's 
 friend, 201. 
 
 Lockhart, 75. 
 
 " Lohengrin," 246. 
 
 Lolli, oboist in London, 78. 
 
 London, composers in, 77 ; con- 
 sumption of coal by, 70 ; 
 Doctors of Music in, 77; fog, 
 93; houses built in, 70-81; 
 deaths in, in 1791, 75 ; oboists 
 
 in, 78 ; pianists in, 77, 78 ; 
 
 singers in, 77 ; street-cleaning, 
 
 89 ; violinists in, 77, 78 ; 
 
 violoncellists in, 77 ; Lord 
 
 Mayor's dinner, 59. 
 Lops, singer in London, 77. 
 Lorenzino, 40, 50. 
 Louis, Dauphin of France, 10. 
 Louis XV., of France, 10. 
 Louis XVI., of France, 10. 
 Lully, his overture form, n. 
 Lyser, portrait of Beethoven, 
 
 231. 
 
 MACAULAY, 235. 
 
 Macneven, Dr., 184, 185. 
 
 Maelzel, 231, 233. 
 
 Maffei. singer in London, 77, 78. 
 
 "Magic Flute," 116, 138, 144, 
 
 5. 153. *99, 2 58. 
 Mahler, J. W., 200, 201. 231. 
 Male sopranos and contraltos, 
 
 42. 
 
 Malibran, 177. 
 
 Manzuoli, Giovanni. 14, 40, 49. 
 Mara, 'cellist, 63, 77. 
 Mara, Madame, 63, 71. 77, 89. 
 Marcello, Benedetto, 16. 
 Marches!, Signor, 82. 
 Marchetti, 23. 
 Maria Theresa, 214. 
 Marie Antoinette, 166. 
 Marionet Theatre, 91. 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 225. 
 Maroncelli, 185. 
 
 Vlarriage customs in London, 85. 
 ' Marriage of Figaro," 120, 125, 
 
 142, 143, 150, 154, 155, 156, 
 
 157, 161, 187, 259. 
 ' Martha," 262. 
 Martini, 181, 258, 259, 260. 
 Hason, Lowell, 193. 
 
 272
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mason, the Rev. William, 7, 16, 
 18, 19. 
 
 Mayer, Frederike, singer, 146. 
 
 Mazini, composer, 77. 
 
 Mazzanti, singer in London, 77. 
 
 Mazzoni, composer, 14, 25. 
 
 Mehul, " The Treasure Dig- 
 gers," 260. 
 
 Mendel's German Lexicon, 31. 
 
 Mendelssohn, 149. 
 
 Menel, 'cellist in London, 77. 
 
 " Messiah," The, 64. 
 
 Metastasio, poet, 10, 32, 33, 36. 
 
 Meyerbeer, 32. 
 
 Michelangelo, 245. 
 
 Milk, how preserved, 83. 
 
 Mingotti, 28. 
 
 Minuets at Lord Mayor's din- 
 ner, 60. 
 
 Minuet, tempo of, 149. 
 
 Mitchell, Maggie, American 
 actress, 260. 
 
 Mitford, the Rev. John, 16, 18. 
 
 " Mitridate," 26. 
 
 Monchsberg, the, 139. 
 
 Monsigny, 260. 
 
 Montagnana, 22. 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 
 
 54- 
 
 Monticelli, 12, 40, 51. 
 Montressor, 178. 
 Moore, Clement Clarke, 174, 
 
 180, 185. 
 Moravian clergyman, anecdote 
 
 of. 7 '. 
 
 Morelli, singer, 77. 
 M.^cheles, Beethoven's opinion 
 
 of, 209. 
 
 Motley, John Lothrop, 193. 
 Motzert family, 129. 
 Mozart, Carl, 129. 
 Mozart, Leopold, 136, 139. 
 Mozart, Marie Anna, 130. 
 
 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 26, 
 32; and Manzuoli, 49; part- 
 ing with Haydn, 87; cente- 
 nary of his death, 113 et seq. ; 
 music at, 142 ; birth-place, 119, 
 136; death and burial of, 87, 
 
 125, 131, 160, 184 ; his music 
 slowly appreciated, 134; rel- 
 ics of, at Salzburg, 134 ; his 
 poverty, 135; his clavichord 
 and pianoforte, 135, 136; his 
 " Wohnhaus," 139 ; domestic 
 life. 128 ; descendants of, 128 ; 
 widow, 130, 132; Beethoven's 
 appreciation, 198, 199, 208 ; 
 Viennese performances of his 
 music, 146; the spirit of his 
 music, 148 ; German singers 
 and his music, 155 ; Jahn's 
 biography, 192 ; his operas in 
 Weimar, 250, 254, 260 ; " Re- 
 quiem," 116, 118, 121, 125, 
 
 126, 142, 143, 144, 145- '53: 
 " Jupiter " symphony, 143, 
 146, 148, 149 ; G minor sym- 
 phony, 143, 148 ; operas, see 
 " Cosi fan tutte," " Die Ent- 
 fiihrung," " Don Giovanni," 
 "Marriage of Figaro," and 
 " Magic Flute ; " pianoforte 
 concerto in D minor, 146, 
 149 ; quartet in D minor, 146; 
 quintet in G minor, 146 ; 
 " Bundeslied," 141 ; " Vergiss 
 Mein Nicht," 146; "Das 
 Veilchen," 146; "O Isis," 
 146 ; Pamina's air, 146 ; 
 " Dies Bildniss," 146; " In 
 diesen heil'gen Hallen," 146; 
 " Wiegenlied," 146; " Porge 
 amor," 155- 
 
 Mozart, W. A., son, 128, 
 129. 
 
 2 73
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mozarteum in Salzburg, 115, 
 144, 145, 155. 
 
 Mueller, Wenzel, " Das Som- 
 merfest," 259. 
 
 Murder, how punished in Lon- 
 don, 70. 
 
 Music, its relationship to the 
 other arts, 235. 
 
 Musical tradition, 147. 
 
 Musico, the, 42. 
 
 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 161, 
 
 1 80. 
 Neate, Charles, and Beethoven, 
 
 230. 
 Neesen, portrait of Beethoven, 
 
 210, 211. 
 
 Negri, singer in London, 77. 
 Nicolai, Royal Chamberlain and 
 
 composer, 79. 
 Nicolini, singer, 33, 34. 
 Nissen, G. N. von, 130, 132, 
 
 137- 
 
 "Nitetti," 32. 
 
 Nobilita Britannica, opera of, 
 
 21, 22. 
 " No more to Ammon's God," 
 
 18. 
 Noyan, a drink, 93. 
 
 OATLANDS, Castle, 84. 
 
 "Oberon," 260. 
 
 Oboists in London, 78. 
 
 Old Hundredth Psalm, 75. 
 
 " Olimpiade," n, 12, 13, 32. 
 
 Opera, artificiality of, 35. 
 
 Operatic formula in the eigh- 
 teenth century, 36. 
 
 Operatic lovers, 42. 
 
 Operatic singing in the eigh- 
 teenth century, 34. 
 
 Oranges from Portugal, 93. 
 
 Orlandini, 13, 14, 25. 
 
 " Orlando Furioso," 30. 
 Ott, painter in London, Si, 91. 
 Oulibischeff, 163. 
 Oxford, University of, 85. 
 
 PAGET, Violet, 23. 
 
 Paer, Ferdinand, 260. 
 
 Paisiello, 259. 
 
 Palestrina, 16, 18. 
 
 " Palmira," 260. 
 
 Pantheon Theatre, burned, 70. 
 
 "Partenope," 33. 
 
 " Pastorella nobile," 79. 
 
 Pellico, 185. 
 
 Pembroke, Countess, 45. 
 
 Perez, David, 9, 15, 29. 
 
 Pergolese, 3, 9, 12, 13, 16, 28, 
 
 51- 
 
 " Per questo dolce amplesso," 
 
 53- 
 
 Pertici, 26. 
 Peterborough, Lord and Lady, 
 
 54- 
 
 Petrarch, 174, 179. 
 Philharmonic Society of Vienna, 
 
 120, 124, 143, 147. 
 Philip V., of Spain, 53. 
 Pianists in London, 77, 78. 
 Piccini, 26, 31. 
 Pistocchi, 42. 
 
 Pitt, Prime Minister, 59, 61. 
 Pleyel, Ignaz, 79, 88. 
 Pohl.C. F., 57, 58, 63, 67, 84, 
 
 95- 
 
 Pohl, R., 262. 
 Polignac, Marquis de, 10. 
 Pool, Miss, singer in London, 
 
 77- 
 
 Porpora, 21, 22, 42. 
 Potter, Cipriani, and Beethoven, 
 
 208. 
 
 Prescott, W. H., 174. 
 Price, Mr., 18. 
 
 274
 
 INDEX 
 
 Prince of Wales, 82, 84. 
 Professional concerts, 72, 76, 88. 
 Punch, Prince of Wales's, 82. 
 Purcell, 72. 
 
 QUAKERS and the king's tax, 
 
 82. 
 Queen's Theatre, 20. 
 
 RAFF, Joachim, " King Alfred," 
 
 246. 
 Raimondi,' violinist in London, 
 
 78. 
 
 Raymond, Mrs. C. M., 4. 
 Recitative, accompanied, 31. 
 Rees's Encyclopaedia, 97, 98. 
 Regole per 1'accompagnamento, 
 
 3. 12- 
 Reichenberg, Franz, singer, 144, 
 
 146. 
 
 Reichmann, Theodor, 154. 
 Reimschneider, bass, 41,42. 
 Reinhold, bass, 41. 
 " Re pastore," 32. 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 66, 67. 
 " Richard, Cceur de Lion," 259. 
 Richter, Hans, 154. 
 Ries, Ferdinand, 196. 
 " Rinaldo," 30, 34. 
 Rinaldo di Capua, 14, 28, 29, 
 
 30, 37. 
 
 Ritter, F. L., 167. 
 Ritter, Josef, singer, 145, 154. 
 Rivafinoli, opera manager in 
 
 New York, 178. 
 " Robbers," The, 250. 
 Robinson, Anastasia, singer, 54. 
 " Rodelinda," 12, 44. 
 " Romolo ed Ersilio," 33. 
 Roschi, basso, 41. 
 Rossi, librettist, 32. 
 Rossini, 32, 134, 156, 157. 
 Royal Society of Musicians, 63. 
 
 " Ruggiero," 33. 
 Ruskin, John, 3, 239. 
 Rust, Wilhelm, 198. 
 
 SACCHINI, 31. 
 
 Saint Peter, picture of, 71. 
 
 Salieri, 134, 165, 181 ; " Pal- 
 mira," 260. 
 
 Salis, anecdote of Beethoven, 200. 
 
 Salomon, 72, 76, 77, 87, 88, 91. 
 
 Salterio, n. 
 
 Salzach, the, 139. 
 
 Salzburg, 115, 118, 136; Lieder- 
 tafel, 146 ; description of, 
 137 ; Royal Imperial Theatre, 
 150. 
 
 Sarro, Domenico, 13, 25, 32. 
 
 Sarti, 71. 
 
 Sassarelli, singer, 34. 
 
 Sassone, il (Hasse), 8, 9, 13, 28. 
 
 Scalzi, singer, 12, 40, 50. 
 
 Scarlatti, A., 31. 
 
 Scarlatti, D., 17, 22. 
 
 Scheener, violinist in London, 
 78. 
 
 Schenck, 260. 
 
 Schiassi, Yaetano, 14, 25, 27. 
 
 Schiller, 204, 244, 245, 254. 
 
 Schindler, Anton, 204, 209. 
 
 Schinotti, singer in London, 77. 
 
 Schmidt, Victor, 155. 
 
 Schnittenhelm, Anton, 155. 
 
 Schroeter, Corona Elizabeth 
 Wilhelmine, 98, 255. 
 
 Schroeter, Johann Heinrich, 98. 
 
 Schroeter, Johann Samuel, 97. 
 
 Schroeter, Mistress, 62 ; love 
 letters to Haydn, 95 et seq. 
 
 Schubert, Franz, 161 ; " Alfon- 
 so and Estrella," 246. 
 
 Schumann, R., " Genoveva," 
 246. 
 
 Schwanthaler, sculptor, 128, 131. 
 
 275
 
 INDEX 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 97, 161. 
 Scramb, 'cellist in London, 77. 
 Seconda, singer in London, 77, 
 
 78. 
 
 Selitti, composer, 14, 25. 
 " Semiramide," 9, 32. 
 Senesino, singer, 9, 13, 22, 34, 
 
 4, 43, 5 X > 54- 
 
 Serra, violinist in London, 78. 
 
 Sex in singers, 41. 
 
 Seyfried, Ignaz von, 197. 
 
 Shaw, Mr., visited by Haydn, 
 89. 
 
 Shield, composer in London, 77. 
 
 "Siface," 32. 
 
 " Silvana," 259. 
 
 Silvester, advocate and alder- 
 man, 59. 
 
 Silvester Chamberlain, 63. 
 
 Simoni, singer in London, 77. 
 
 Singers in London, 77. 
 
 Singers of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, 40 et seq. 
 
 " Siroe," 8, 9, 12. 
 
 Sonnenburg, Baroness von, 130. 
 
 Sontag, Henrietta, 249. 
 
 Sperati, 'cellist in London, 77. 
 
 Spitta, Philipp," Life of Bach," 
 192. 
 
 "Sponsali d'Enea," 26. 
 
 Spontini, 261. 
 
 "Stabat Mater," 12. 
 
 Stadion, Count de, 79. 
 
 Stanhope, Lord, 54. 
 
 Staudigl, Jos., singer, 154. 
 
 Steele, R., 23, 33. 
 
 Stein, pianoforte maker, 209. 
 
 Stonehewer, Richard, 7, 8. 
 
 Storace, 63, 77. 
 
 Strada, singer, n, 14, 22, 40, 
 
 43- 
 
 Strauss, Richard, 25. 
 Sumner, Charles, senator, 193. 
 
 Sussmayr, 126. 
 Swift, Dean, 19. 
 
 " TASSO," 250. 
 
 Taylor, opera manager in Lon- 
 don, 1 66. 
 
 Telscher, artist, 204. 
 
 " Temistocle," 12, 13, 33. 
 
 Tenor singers, 41. 
 
 Tesi, singer, 8, u, 12, 13, 40, 
 43, 46 et seq. 
 
 Thayer, Alexander W., 58 ; 191 
 et seg.; birth, 192; gradua- 
 tion, 192; with United States 
 Legation in Vienna, 193; ap- 
 pointed Consul at Trieste, 
 193 ; member of the staff of the 
 "New York Tribune," 193; 
 works in the library of Har- 
 vard College, 193 ; catalogues 
 Lowell Mason's library, 193; 
 removed from consulship, 
 194; " Chronologisches Ver- 
 zeichniss," 194; his note- 
 books, 195 et seq. ; biography 
 of Beethoven, 202, 212. 
 
 Theft, how punished in Eng- 
 land, 70. 
 
 Tipping, in Austria, 123. 
 
 " Tito Manlio," 12. 
 
 Tomich, composer in London, 
 
 77- 
 
 " Treasure Diggers," 260. 
 " Tree of Diana," 258. 
 " Trionfo di Clelia," 33. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., 166, 184, 
 
 1 86. 
 
 Turcotti, singer, 12, 14. 40. 
 Twain. Mark, 244. 
 " 'T was the Night Before 
 
 Christmas," 174.' 
 
 "UNA COSARARA," 259. 
 
 276 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSE OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 INDEX 
 
 VAUXHALL, 76. 
 
 Veracini, composer, 22. 
 
 Verdi, 23. 
 
 Verein Beethoven-Haus, 221, 
 
 230. 
 
 Verplanck, Giulain C., 184, 185. 
 Viardot-Gartia, 159. 
 Vienna, Mozart's music in, 146. 
 Vinci, Leonardo, 9, 17, 22, 29, 
 
 3 2 - 37- 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, 37 ; " Di- 
 
 done abbandonata," 39. 
 " Viol de gamboys," 38. 
 Violinists in London, 77, 78. 
 Violoncellists in London, 77. 
 Viscontina, singer, 12, 40. 
 Vogler, Johann Casper, 248. 
 "Vologeso," 30. 
 
 WAGNER, Richard, 147, 154 ; 
 festival in Bayreuth, 116; on 
 minuet tempo, 149; "Lohen- 
 grin," 246. 
 
 Waldendorf, Baroness, 224. 
 
 Wales, Prince of, 68, 82, 84. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 3, 15, 18, 21, 
 24. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, 45. 
 
 Walter, Gustav, singer, 144, 146. 
 
 Waltz, basso, 41. 
 
 Ward, Samuel. 185, 186. 
 
 Weber, Carl Maria von, mother 
 of, 258 ; " Freischiitz," 258 ; 
 
 " Euryanthe," 258 ; " Sil- 
 vana," 259; " Oberon," 260. 
 
 Weber, Franz Anton von, 258. 
 
 Wegeler, Dr. F. G., 196, 217, 
 
 2l8, 219, 220, 229. 
 
 Weigl, Joseph, 57, 134, 181, 
 261. 
 
 Weimar, Grand Ducal Theatre, 
 134, 247 ; Reflections in, 241 
 et seq. ; theatre and opera in, 
 245 et seq. 
 
 " Wer mit Veraunft betracht'," 
 So. 
 
 Wieland, 244. 
 
 William II., German Emperor, 
 232. 
 
 Willmann, singer, and Beetho- 
 ven, 200. 
 
 Wilson, William, United States 
 Senator, 193. 
 
 Wilt, Marie, singer, 124, 146, 
 154. 
 
 Windsor Chapel, 91. 
 
 " Woodman, The," 86. 
 
 " Worthy is the Lamb," 64. 
 
 Wranitzky, "Oberon," 260. 
 
 YORK, Duchess of, 63, 82, 84. 
 York, Duke of, 84. 
 
 ZAMPERELLI, Dionigi, 3,14, 25. 
 Zeno, Apostolo, 32. 
 "Zingara," 31. 
 
 277
 
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