Edward Wilberforce

“ They are connected with him now after his death, as he was with them in his life, and from the first work of manhood to the unfinished idea of age, you may trace him as it were through life to the tomb. He rests from his labours, and his works follow him. ”

“ Wagner, the chief prophet, is a better poet than musician. He writes his own libretti, and very well; they merely need setting to music to be excellent operas. The reforms he desires to introduce on the lyric stage are more connected with the libretto than with the partition. He has succeeded in reforming the words, but another school will be needed to reform his music. For, however many reforms music can bear, there is one it cannot bear, the omission of tune. Difficulty of comprehension is but a slight impediment to the success of a musician, so long as he conceals it beneath melody. ”

“ All who have read Shelley will remember his description of it in the preface to Adonais. “The romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid of which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.” ”

“ No noise breaks his repose, save the light footfall of some visitor on the asphalt. Around, in wide halls and cabinets, are ranged the productions that have made him the first of modern sculptors, from the glorious young life of his Grecian mythology to the settled calm repose of his Christ and the Apostles. A more appropriate tomb could hardly be found for one whose life was art, than to lie among his offspring. Can a man give a better account of his life than by pointing to his labours? ”

“ There is something friendly, something unstudied in the group, that makes it come home to the heart more than Schwanthaler’s majestic Goethe at Frankfort or Thorwaldsen’s musing Schiller at Stuttgardt. ”

“ To be sure, when the young Mozart went to Paris he did not meet with undivided approval. Wagner may lay this flattering unction to his soul to compensate for his failure. But how will he reconcile himself to the treatment he received from Berlioz, on whose help he had relied, whom he had considered his alter ego, the Wagner of Paris, and from whom he received a most unflattering dressing in the feuilleton of the “Débats.” That Scudo, the musical critic of the “Révue des Deux Mondes,” an unflinching lover of old music, and the champion of Mozart, should attack an innovator, was to be expected ”

“ The South German music is considerably qualified by the neighbouring influences of Italy, and expresses sentiment if not passion; the North German is confined by rules, and unless acted upon by some peculiarity in the composer’s character, is pedantic. Melody is far more an object with South Germany, though in search of it they almost abandon the higher aims of music. Compare the fresh melody of Mozart and Haydn in their symphonies with the correct but colder symphonies of Mendelssohn ”

“ Great cities have wisely decreed that their dead shall be carried outside the walls, and not pile up a mass of corruption in the heart of populous life. Every one has his wish for his grave, and many think of honouring a pretty churchyard by reposing in it, as great exiles have refused their bones to their ungrateful country. ”

“ Perhaps you do not know the meaning of this German word; it maybe literally translated “futurists,” and is the name applied to those gentlemen who cultivate the music of the future. This grandiloquent phrase has been given to a school of music intended to supersede Mozart. Its prophet-in-chief is Richard Wagner; one of its heads is Franz Liszt, the pianist, Kapellmeister at Weimar. I fear it may be said of the name of this school, as it was said of some poet’s Epistle to Posterity, that it is never likely to reach its address ”

“ One more German musician, though he died in London, lies buried at Dresden, where he was born, and in whose neighbourhood he composed his greatest works, Carl Maria von Weber, of the Freischütz and Oberon. ”