Books › The violin : some account of that leading instrument and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time : with hints to amateurs, anecdotes, etc., 1852 › scan 276
Scan 276
The violin : some account of that leading instrument and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time : with hints to amateurs, anecdotes, etc., 1852
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 260. See the scan on archive.org.
1brought together, to aid in the solemnities of public worship, all that was best in vocal and instrumental skill. Vociferated dissonance, exempt from rule, and from accompaniment, has their approval, far above any tempered and balanced harmony; because (as they persuade themselves) the one comes from the heart, and the other does not. To such persons, I can only (in the words of the Archbishop of Granada to Gil Blas) wish all happiness, and a little more taste—regretting that the influence of what I conceive to be their mistake should have helped, with the other cited causes, to lessen the diffusion among us of the most delightfully recreative of all the arts, which, thus discouraged, has been driven to become the spoiled favourite of the great and rich, instead of being the constant friend and solace of the whole community.
3Adverting now specifically to the English School of the violin, I would remind the reader of what has been previously observed respecting the very low estimation in which that instrument was for some time held, after its first advent to this country. To raise it into favorable regard, and to stimulate the efforts of our native professors, successive importations of foreign talent (chiefly from Italy) were required, and supplied. Our debt of this kind to the Italians has been larger than that of our continental neighbours, either of France or of Germany. Indeed the very fact of our possessing a School of our own, in this branch of art, has, I believe, been commonly overlooked by the musical writers of the continent: nor is this very surprising, when it is considered how the great masters from Italy, taking the lead in concerts and public performances, became "the observed of all observers," and the sole marks, or at least the principal ones, for the pen of the writer. It may be
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