Modern music and musicians : [Encyclopedic] . n, January 6, 1816: You would<Jo a great service to me and the Grerman theater if you would beg Baronde la Motte Fouque in my name to find a subject for an opera which wouldbe suitable for yourself. I should like to write something of this kind forthe Berlin theater; for, with our niggardly management, I shall never beable to bring out a new opera here. What splendid pictures the thoughtof a second opera by Beethoven conjures before us! German art pos-sesses great treasures among its works, but Fidelio will always be thegreatest. A comprehensive
Modern music and musicians : [Encyclopedic] . n, January 6, 1816: You would<Jo a great service to me and the Grerman theater if you would beg Baronde la Motte Fouque in my name to find a subject for an opera which wouldbe suitable for yourself. I should like to write something of this kind forthe Berlin theater; for, with our niggardly management, I shall never beable to bring out a new opera here. What splendid pictures the thoughtof a second opera by Beethoven conjures before us! German art pos-sesses great treasures among its works, but Fidelio will always be thegreatest. A comprehensive review of the condition of Our modern dramatic stagedoes not reveal any recent advance, and in one respect — singing — it has 109 110 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN obviously retrograded. We have no singers in the real meaning of theword, for which we must undoubtedly thank the Wagnerian school. Ouryoung singers no longer value the thorough cultivation of the voice. Theybelieve it sufficient to be able to bellow out the music, accent sharply, and. SKETCHES OF BEETHOVEN BY LYSER. use a peculiar declamatory speaking-voice. We very rarely hear a goodcantilena. In Beethovens time, actual singing — il bel canto — was all-important. It is not necessary to degrade the orchestra into, as Wagnerput it, a guitar accompaniment, but it is against all art to degrade thehuman voice, which nature intended to carry the melody, into a plain in-strument, and even an accompaniment to fill in. Every great innovator is sometimes willing to shoot beyond the forced his great idea of the reformation of dramatic art into ex-tremes. He despised the bounds prescribed by the laws of beauty, notindeed in every work,—the Meistersinger and parts of Tristan andIsolde are exceptions,— but m his strivings, his principles. These havebecome the laws of his school, for it is the rule that pupils imitate theweaknesses and mannerisms of their master. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN 111
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