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64 National Music of the World. |
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queer, harsh cries of the singing voice are somehow rudely methodised and brought into some order. One must go to the Peninsula to know the uses and privileges of the guitar. The pungency and adroitness of the performers on it are hard to overpraise, and no less hard to define—including as they do, tricks, preludings, modulations crude enough to make a master of harmony's hair stand on end— instinct the while with an irresistible spirit and vivacity to be paralleled, it may be, but not to be exceeded under any other sun. Some few of those who read these paragraphs may recollect the guitar vagaries of Senhor Huerta, who many years ago came into England. But his guitar (so to say) had been tamed, washed, and combed, as compared with the 'unfeigned' guitar to be heard in Spanish cities, even in these later days, and no doubt existing in nooks and corners far more obscure, for the delectation and the incitement of people of the soil. I shall never forget an old blind creature whom I followed about for several evenings in Madrid : a man who would plant himself on the causeway, sitting with his feet in the kennel, scrupulously clean in his linen, totally engrossed with his guitar; and who hardly seemed to care if coppers were flung to |
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