Читать книгу Memories of a Musical Life - William Mason - Страница 19

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I WELL remember the feeling of awe mingled with interest with which I looked upon every German whom I met in the streets of Leipsic on my first arrival in that famously musical city. I looked on even the laboring-men, the peasants as well as those in higher positions, as being Mozarts and Beethovens, and the idea gained such ascendancy that I felt my own inferiority and metaphorically held down my head. This feeling, however, was not of long duration, and changed in the course of a month or two on account of what happened at a concert of the Euterpe Society which I attended. The concerts of this musical society were second only to those of the famous Gewandhaus, and their audiences were made up largely of those who attended the concerts of the latter. At this concert the program was classical and unimpeachable as to the orchestral concerted pieces, but one of the numbers was a solo for clarinet. At my age I was disposed to look down on this as an inferior kind of music, and as decidedly unsuitable to an educated and musically cultivated taste. Therefore, when, to my surprise, this turned out to be the most popular piece of the evening and received the most vociferous applause of the entire audience, I found my high opinion of the select musical taste of the Germans sensibly decreased.

Since then I have learned that there is a place for everything good in its way; but the clarinet solo seemed out of place in the classical atmosphere of a symphony concert.