...," so sings he (with the most beautiful male
voice of his time) under Rosina's balcony; and soon Rosina's voice (the
most beautiful female voice of hers) is heard behind her curtains--so
girlish, so innocent, so young and light-hearted, that the eyes fill
with involuntary tears.
Thus encouraged, he warbles that his name is Lindoro, that he would fain
espouse her; that he is not rich in the goods of this world, but gifted
with an inordinate, inexhaustible capacity for love (just like Peter
Ibbetson); and vows that he will always warble to her, in this wise,
from dawn till when daylight sinks behind the mountain. But what matter
the words?
"Go on, my love, go on, _like this_!" warbles back Rosina--and no
wonder--till the dull, despondent, commonplace heart of Peter Ibbetson
has room for nothing else but sunny hope and love and joy! And yet it is
all mere sound--impossible, unnatural, unreal nonsense!
Or else, in a square building, decent and well-lighted enough, but not
otherwise remarkable--the very chapel of music--four business-like
gentlemen, in modern attire and spectacles, take their places on an
unpretentious platform amid refined applause; and soon the still air
vibrates to the trembling of sixteen strings--only that and
nothing more!
But in that is all Beethoven, or Schubert, or Schumann has got to say to
us for the moment, and what a say it is! And with what consummate
precision and perfection it is said--with what a mathematical certainty,
and yet with what suavity, dignity, grace, and distinction!
They are the four greatest players in the world, perhaps; but they
forget themselves, and we forget them (as it is their wish we should),
in the master whose work they interpret so reverently, that we may yearn
with his mighty desire and thrill with his rapture and triumph, or ache
with his heavenly pain and submit with his divine resignation.
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