| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
Music from the North. 171 |
||
|
scheme of human life. The poor scholars might sing chorals in the streets at the doors of the merchants; but the merchants' sons wanted something more jolly to sing over their pipes and their bottles of Rhine wine and Lubeck beer. Before an Elector of Saxony rejoiced in his Italian Opera company, brought from afar at a vast expense: and an Electress amused her amateurship by composing a ' Talestri,'16 as a later Dresden Princess did plays; before a King of Prussia could at once Frenchify his theatre and dragoon it, as he dragooned his grenadiers, and indulge his amateurship by composing marches and playing three flute concertos every night; the merchants and tradesmen of Hamburg had established an opera for themselves, and set up a composer of their own. When the guilds began to get together, and the students to escape some very short steps from beyond the pedantic thraldom of the old notions— when the spirit of association began to possess itself of the young men, whether for purposes of craftsmanship or gcod-fellowship—then, gradually, a spirit began to manifest itself in the North in the form of the part-song for men.
Lfi A 'sot ions drama' thus entitled. Ed. |
||