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Music from the North. 163
connoisseurs of all creeds, races, and dialects, are agreed : in its slow and sentimental form tempting every composer, be he ever so disdainful of trifling, and in this guise displaying the most exquisite melodies of a land not very rich in vocal melody; in its own rapid and practical existence calling out an amount of ingenuity, air, grace, and variety, which entirely conceal the narrowness of the limits within which they move. In no desire to misrepresent a trifle as a treasure, but in consistency with my former speculations on dance music, do I call attention to the Austrian waltzes, as to one of the most unique sections of the world of music. The flowing melody is rarely vulgar; the tunes are many of them derived from other than German sources—French, Italian, Scotch, and what not. Rut they were so transformed, so varied, by happy accidents and suspenses of rhythm—by natural yet piquant successions of key to key—in the hands of such men as those who have been named, that they have gained a life, a reality, a pertinence of their own, which no foreigner can reach. The tunes worked on by Strauss were other people's tunes, but he made them new, as gold can be made new, whether it be worked
into a bar, or a trifle for a lady's chamber.
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