Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 363
Scan 363
The violin and its music, 1881
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 329. See the scan on archive.org.
1quantity, only the quality was bad." Much of what Mr. Carlyle has here said with regard to the state of German literature at the close of the Thirty Years' War, is applicable to German music at the same period. The work of Orlando Lassus at the Bavarian Court of Albert V., of Heinrich Isaac at the court of Maximilian, and the labours of other skilled musicians in the chief German cities, prior to that eventful struggle, were rendered all but abortive. In music, as in literature, the Germans were not idle, but the quality of their work was bad.
3There appears to have been, however, one musical genius, the character of which serves to render it an exception, and at the same time to take us back to our subject. I refer to Thomas Baltzar, born at Lubeck, in 1632. The information we have relative to him is wholly connected with England. John Evelyn says: *"I was invited by Mr. Roger L'Estrange to hear the incomparable 'Lubicer,' on the Violin. His variety on a few notes and plain ground, with that wonderful dexterity, was admirable. Though a young man, yet so perfect and skilful, that there was nothing, however cross and perplexed, brought to him by our artists, which he did not play off at sight with ravishing sweetness and improvements, to the astonishment of our best masters. In sum he played on a single instrument a full concert, so as the rest flung down their instruments, acknowledging the victory. As to my own
5* Diary, Vol. I., p. 298.
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