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Music from the North. 177 |
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Dervishes. Schubert, again, if I mistake not, got much inspiration from the world of the woods and of the hills. Not only do his own lieder bespeak this, but also (which is noticeable in reference to my argument), his predilection for Sir Walter Scott's lyrics. All know his 'Ave Maria' from 'The Lady of the Lake': his 'Coronach' from the same Scotch romance, less familiar, is no less characteristic as a wail for the dead in music. German as these songs are, there is something English in his ' Hark, the Lark' from ' Cymbeline,' something North British in his setting of those mournful lines :
He is gone to the mountain,
He is lost to the forest, Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
When speaking of the National Music of GerÂmany and its influence, it would be impossible to pass over the name of W'eber, whom, I conceive, with reference to my peculiar subject, to be the most national composer of Germany.
Weber was essentially a wild composer : a man who, with all his genius and technical power as a pianist, was still imperfectly versed in the rules of his art and in the precepts of its science. He was
fanciful and fantastic, as no composer before or
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