" In the execution of our heroic _adagios_
it is rather required that each note shall be maltreated. From the
viewpoint of the historian of culture it is an important fact that the
first half of the eighteenth century had not yet acquired an ear for the
sentimental, feminine _adagio_. The _adagios_ of Bach and Haendel are all
of the masculine gender. And then what a remarkable alteration of the
musical ear took place, when, in the second half of the same century,
the soft-as-butter _adagios_ of the composers of the day all at once
caused every beautiful soul to melt with tender emotion! At the same
time that the Werther-Siegwart period starts in literature, the layman
acquired an ear for the _adagio_. How very slightly as yet has the
intimate concatenation between the development of music and that of
literature been investigated. The entire _Siegwart_ is indeed nothing
but a melting Pleyel _adagio_, translated into windy words. A
priceless passage in _Siegwart_ treats of the _adagio_. Siegwart and his
school friend are playing one evening an _adagio_ of Schwindl on the
violin: "And now they played so meltingly, so whimperingly and so
lamentingly, that their souls became soft as wax. They laid down their
violins, looked at one another with tears in their eyes, said nothing
but 'excellent'--and went to bed." The ear of the sentimental period,
which had so suddenly become sensitive to the _adagio_, has never been
so tersely branded! From that time on there was a regular debauch of
_adagio_ beatitude.
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