But You Must Know All That Far
Better Than I Could Succeed In Writing It.
So let us talk of something else - for instance, Baron
Vietinghoff's [He took the noun de plume Boris Scheel,
And in
1885 he performed his opera "Der Daemon" in St. Petersburg, which
originated twenty years before that of Rubinstein.] Overture,
which you were so kind as to send me, and which I have run
through with B[ronsart] during his short stay at Weymar - too
short to please me, but doubtless much too long for you! - The
Overture in question is not wanting either in imagination or
spirit. It is the work of a man musically much gifted, but who
has not yet sufficiently handled his subject. When you have an
opportunity, will you give my best compliments to the author, and
give him also the little scale of chords that I add? It is
nothing but a very simple development of the scale, terrifying
for all the long and protruding ears, [Figure demonstrating a
descending whole-tone scale] that Mr. de Vietinghoff employs in
the final presto of his overture (page 66 of the score).
Tausig makes a pretty fair use of it in his Geisterschaff; and in
the classes of the Conservatoire, in which the high art of the
mad dog is duly taught, the existing elementary exercises of the
piano methods, [Figure: Musical example; a five-finger exercise]
which are of a sonorousness as disagreeable as they are
incomplete, ought to be replaced by this one, which will thus
form the unique basis of the method of harmony - all the other
chords, in use or not, being unable to be employed except by the
arbitrary curtailment of such and such an interval.
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