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Scan 215
the history of the violin, 1864
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 193. See the scan on archive.org.
1evening Lindley played one of his most difficult concertos, containing passages with double stops, octaves, and even tenths, which his large and powerful hand enabled him to play readily; the applause, when he had finished, was very great. At the end of the first act, Salomon asked Romberg, who had been standing opposite to Lindley during his performance, what he thought of it. Romberg replied, "He is the devil!" With reference to his power of reading at first sight, it may be related that when he was a young man he was at a music party at Clement's Inn, when copies of Romberg's first four concertos for the violoncello were produced, which had only arrived the same morning from the Continent. Lindley played the whole of these without the slightest hesitation or difficulty.
3The beauty of his tone, and extraordinary power of execution, his skill in accompanying, especially in the few but effective notes in a recitative, will be in the recollection of a great part of our readers. 'A friendship of very many years' standing down to the day of his death, will, we hope, prove our excuse for dwelling a little on the subject; indeed, one of the writers was the last with whom he ever played: stopping then, in the middle of a duett, like Haydn in his unfinished quartett, and saying, "I can no more," and he never again played on the instrument.
5He would sometimes in private take the first violin part of a quartett, not only on the violoncello, but when with a few friends would do so on the violin, imitating, good-humouredly, some of the leading performers of the time. His son William, born in 1802, at one time gave promise of equalling his father in tone and execution, until ill-health unfortunately compelled him to leave town. They would play the violin and tenor parts of
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