Scan 431
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
4 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 281. See the scan on archive.org.
1crochets and quavers soon finds himself encompassed by a whirlpool of seeming impossibilities, and is frequently heard to exclaim that the passages are impracticable. Vain delusion! Bach was himself a Violinist, and never penned a passage the rendering of which is impossible. The ease and grace with which a Joachim makes every note heard and felt induces many a one to wrestle with Bach, the more so when it is found that the great author has confined himself to the lower positions of the instrument. Vain delusion, number two! Bach exacts more on terra firma than many later writers have claimed in their wildest aerial flights.
3From Bach to Handel is an easy step in our discourse. They were born within a year of each other, and were possessed of minds of similar calibre, though differently exercised. It would not, perhaps, be over-strained to call them respectively the Nelson and Wellington of music. It is curious, too, that like those heroes of war, these harbingers of peace, it has been said, met but once, an event which Dr. Burney mentions as having occurred at Salzburg, where, on their going together to the Cathedral, they found it so full that they could scarcely get to the organ-loft; and when one of them opened the organ it was not possible for more persons to crawl into the church. Those, however, who could not gain admission into the interior of the building procured ladders and placed them at the windows in order to gratify their ears.
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