A Ramble Among the Musicians of Germany Giving Some Account of the Operas of Munich, Dresden, Berlin, With Remarks Upon the Church Music, Singer (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830 edition. Excerpt: ... A MONO MUSIC AND MUSICAL PROFESSORS IN GERMANY. ANTWERP. If the reader be one who finds variety and satisfaction in church music, if with the masses of Haydn and Mozart, with paintings and architecture, he be content to eschew theatrical amusements, this place will give him pleasure. Antwerp is especially a religious city, that is, after the continental fashion, where religion is unmixed with gloom, and cermonies and observances serve as playthings for the inhabitants--ever giving them something to stare at and talk about; and where they keep up the ball very pleasantly between the excitement of sinning and the amusement of shriving. For the English musician it is however a sort of Utopia. No temporal business interferes to stop the daily performance of that class of music which in our Protestant country is eagerly sought after by amateurs in the various holes and corners of our metropolis which furnish B Catholic chapels--places in which the imagination can but ill conceive the pompous celebration of the mass as it takes place in the vast churches of the continent, where music, painting, and architecture blending together, form, like colours when combined, another material, and produce in the mind poetry. I can give but a faint idea of the sweet half-monastic life one leads in Antwerp, it would be as impossible there to neglect attendance at matins, nones, or vespers, as if one had for years taken the vows of St. Francis or St. Dominic; and the magnificent tower of the cathedral, which stands out most majestically from the Scheld, is ever and anon sending forth with its deep-toned heavy bell, some "note of preparation," some warning of duties to be fulfilled. Indeed, without entering the churches, the critical musical faculty is...