shoulders, tugging away at a barge which moved slowly up from the distance, past a clump of trees, and then gradually disappeared around a bend in the river; and in yet another moment, one was thrilled through and through with religious fervor in response to the grandeur and majestic stateliness of the Mendelssohn Motet, Judge Me, oh God.
It was interpretation of this type too that gave the actor-singer Wüllner such a tremendous hold upon his audiences a few years ago, this artist achieving a veritable triumph by the tremendous sincerity and vividness of his dramatic impersonations in singing German Lieder. in spite of the fact that he possessed a voice of only average quality.
It was an emotional response of this character that the Greek philosophers must have been thinking of when they characterized drama as a "purge for the soul"; and surely it must still be good for human beings to forget themselves occasionally and to become merged in this fashion in the wave of emotion felt by performer and fellow-listener in response to the message of the composer.
It is emotion of this type also that the great composers have sought to arouse through their noblest compositions. Handel is said to have replied, when congratulated upon the excellence of the entertainment afforded by the Messiah, "I am sorry if I have only entertained them; I hoped to do them good." An English writer, in quoting this incident, adds:[1]
What Handel tried to do … by wedding fine music to an inspiring text, Beethoven succeeded in doing through instruments alone … for never have instruments—no matter how pleasing they were in the past—been capable of stirring the inmost feelings as they have done since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
There is danger, of course, here as everywhere, that one may go too far; and it is entirely conceivable that both soloist and conductor might go to such extremes
- ↑ C. F. A. Williams, The Rhythm of Modern Music, p. 13.
