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On Conducting (Üeber Das Dirigiren) : a Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music, by Richard Wagner
page 91 of 95 (95%)
so indispensable to good singing--but monotonously enunciated,
just as one might pronounce some arithmetical number--and then,
let us endeavour to form a conclusion as to the vast difference
between the master's original intention, and the impression thus
produced. The dubious value of the veneration for Mozart,
professed by our music-conservators, will then also appear. To
show this more distinctly, let us examine a particular case--for
example, the first eight bars of the second movement of Mozart's
celebrated symphony in E flat. Take this beautiful theme as it
appears on paper, with hardly any marks of expression--fancy it
played smoothly and complacently, as the score apparently has it-
-and compare the result with the manner in which a true musician
would feel and sing it! How much of Mozart does the theme convey,
if played, as in nine cases out of ten it is played, in a
perfectly colourless and lifeless way? "Poor pen and paper music,
without a shadow of soul or sense." (Eine seelenlose
Schriftmusik).



APPENDIX B.



[See p. 62, et seq. of Wagner's "Beethoven," translated by E
Dannreuther, London, 1882.]


"A BEETHOVEN DAY:" Beethoven's string quartet in C sharp minor.
"If we rest content to recall the tone-poem to memory, an
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