On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
in a magazine , having for its title « On the character of Rossini ' s compositions . * As to what relates to the Scotch romance writer , being a writer of romances myself , I will only speak of the feelings experienced by myself ; I shall thus endeavour to establish
a parallel between these two minds , which seem to me twins , though born under such different skies . The favour which is awarded by the public to one man—to one
thing—to one work of genius , draws its origin from secret germs which are found not only in the disposition of the age , but still more in the natural disposition of the man . The crowd are contented with giving the merit of it to Fashion ; and nothing is
more common than to hear it said . Rossini '' s music is fashionmore common than to hear it said , " " Rossinis music is fashionable music "—or , " Historical Romance is the fashion of the day . " Let it be so if you will : but , what you call fashion is nothing less than the measure of the inclinations of the age ; that is
to say , of those modifications to which an aggregate of civil and political circumstances gives birth . Let us suppose that Rossini had made his appearance in the world seven centuries ago , when all Europe , possessed with the rage for conquest , precipitated itself into Asia : would those little airs ( marked allegro con brio ) which strike and delight us so much by their brilliancy , supposing
him to have been able to compose them , would they then have obtained the favour which they now enjoy ? Was the character
of that age in unison with that of a fantastic and unbridled genius , accustomed to range through all the notes of the scale with a variety and masterly precision sufficient to awaken in the heart ' s chords all the vibrations and emotions that the Lyre of Timotheus awakened in the heart of Alexander ? The vivacity and inexhaustible correvolezza of Rossini ' s movements , which form the chief merit of his music , do not seem ingredients very well adapted to the wants of men anxiously begging for indulgencies , or panting for the honour of kissing the dust of the Holy Land , and moistening it with their blood ! If we transport Sir Walter Scott also to that age in which Italy , Franco , and Spain had a rage for knighterrantry and perilous adventures , to that age in which the Courts of Love sent forth the decrees which we find registered in the
Code of Andrea ; if Sir Walter Scott had then written on Sorcery and Witchcraft with that freedom of his , so far from attaching to the subject the species of sacred halo in which the Cavaliers and Dames were accustomed to involve themselves and it , —would he then have been reverenced as the most fascinating- magician of polite literature ? I am not inclined to think so . But , if roen give the impression to the age , the age gives an impression to men ; the physiognomy of the one constitutes , as if by reflection , the physiognomy of the other ; and what we call Fashion , includ-? He would hnvo been burnt . — Ed .
Untitled Article
2 V' 2
Untitled Article
Rossini and Walter Scott . 559
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1836, page 559, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2661/page/35/
-