Modern Music and Musicians (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt: ...revealed no less clearly in his sonatas and quartets, some would say even more clearly than in his more elaborate orchestral works. In the pianoforte sonatas particularly, we seem to come almost nearer to the composer than in anything that he wrote, and there are certain movements in listening to which one can almost fancy that one is hearing with the ear of faith one of those marvellous improvisations in which the composer poured forth his soul in music, oblivious of all save the passionate emotions that burned within him. To describe the marvellous series of his chamber works and to record the impressions which they produce would take a volume in itself, and I dare not linger over the too fascinating task. Yet I will venture to say something about one of them--the Kreutzer sonata--not because it is one of the most famous things that Beethoven ever wrote, but because it has been the subject of most unsympathetic and unjust criticism in Tolstoi's celebrated novel, called by its name. If it were necessary to prove that Tolstoi is totally without the power of appreciating music, a reference to his "Kreutzer Sonata " would be quite enough. Surely the fact that he speaks of Beethoven's inspired work as sensual, and as having been written to arouse sensual feelings, brands Tolstoi for ever as a Philistine of the Philistines. No man's music is freer from the taint of sensuality than Beethoven's, and no work of his moves in an atmosphere of more radiant purity than the Kreutzer sonata. If I may venture to propose a reading in mere words of that incomparable masterpiece, I would term it the story of the adventures of a soul. In the first movement I seem to see the soul of man, a new arrived guest moving about in a world not realised. Confronted by the gli...