"Counterpoint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steadily from a starting-point of simplicity; then the same complexity and mass resolving itself as it were miraculously back into simplicity, this is an intellectual joy. It does not differ materially, whether found in the study of counterpoint, at thirty, or in the story of the old woman and her pig, at five. It is perfectly natural and wholesome, and it may perhaps be a more powerful developing force for the budding intellect ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... a stitched, wadded lining for body armour. "The word came into English from old French cuilte. This is derived from Latin culcitra, a stuffed mattress or cushion. From the form culcitra came old French cotra, or coutre whence coutre pointe; this was corrupted into counterpoint, which in turn was changed to counterpane. The word 'pane' is also from the Latin pannus, a piece of cloth. Thus 'counterpane,' a coverlet for a bed, and 'quilt' are by origin the ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... time is shown by movements of the arms, (ii) time-values, i.e., note-duration, by movements of the feet and body. In the early stages of the training this principle is clearly observed; later it may be varied in many ingenious ways, for instance in what is known as plastic counterpoint, where the actual notes played are represented by movements of the arms, while the counterpoint in crotchets, quavers or semiquavers, is given ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... chief problems which she will have to face? She must first of all make up her mind whether she wishes to confine her work to the teaching of a solo instrument, together with some work in harmony or counterpoint, along orthodox lines, or whether she wishes to be in touch with modern methods of guiding the general musical education of children, as taken in some schools in the morning curriculum. If the latter, she must enter on a course ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... lights were like little stars rising and falling on the horizon, and always just above a low, black cloud. A moment more, and the evening breeze out of the west brought a long-drawn harmony of chanting to the Lady Goda's ear, the high sweet notes of youthful voices sustained by the rich counterpoint of many grown men's tones. She started, and held her breath, shivered a little, and snatched at the rose bush beside her, so that the thorns struck through the soft green gauntlet and pricked her, though she felt nothing. There was death in the air; there was death ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, majesty—of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed by defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and affect the indefinite ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... writes to me of this work: "The counterpoint is clear and flowing, and is managed with considerable taste and effect. It would be difficult to explain the great cleverness shown in the construction of the Catch without diagrams to illustrate the movements of the parts. It is ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... the poet, is rare in the city of Paris, that inn whither all ideas, like travelers, come to stay for awhile; so rare is it, that Pons surely deserves our respectful esteem. His personal failure may seem anomalous, but he frankly admitted that he was weak in harmony. He had neglected the study of counterpoint; there was a time when he might have begun his studies afresh and held his own among modern composers, when he might have been, not certainly a Rossini, but a Herold. But he was alarmed by the intricacies of modern orchestration; and at length, in the pleasures of collecting, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and at their best. Whence and how I know not, I cannot make out. The things which occur to me I keep in my head, and hum them also to myself—at least others have told me so. If I stick to it, there soon come, one after another, useful crumbs for the pie, according to counterpoint, harmony of the different instruments, &c. This now inflames my soul, that is if I am not disturbed. Then it keeps on growing, and I keep on expanding it more distinctly, and the thing, however long it be, becomes indeed almost finished ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... non-essentiality of the stress of the flesh in the true places of spiritual existence. The life of moments is carried over and made permanent in fancy, and they endure by the purity of their presence alone. There is no violence in the work of Davies. It is the appreciable relation of harmony and counterpoint in the human heart and mind. It is the logic of rhythmical equation felt there, almost exclusively. It is the condition of music that art in the lyrical state has ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... music, singing, dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing, and excelled in the more active of these pursuits. The study of music was also serious, and carried on under two masters. Mr. John Relfe, author of a valuable work on counterpoint, was his instructor in thorough-bass; Mr. Abel, a pupil of Moscheles, in execution. He wrote music for songs which he himself sang; among them Donne's 'Go and catch a falling star'; Hood's 'I will not have the mad Clytie'; Peacock's 'The mountain sheep are sweeter'; and his settings, all ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of the Allegro scherzando, page 25. Possibly this would have gained somewhat by more combination and development, either of the principal subject or of some secondary subject; for instance, a little anodyne counterpoint, it seems to me, would not be out of place on pages 26, 27. etc., etc., and so on. Item for pages 50 to 54, in which the simple breadth of the period with the holding on of the accompaniment chords leaves rather a void; I should like there to be some incidence and polyphonic entanglement, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... development. Metastasio is musical throughout; but, to follow up the simile, we may observe, that of poetical music, melody is the only part that he possesses, being deficient in harmonious compass, and in the mysterious effects of counterpoint. Or, to express myself in different terms, he is musical, but in no respect picturesque. His melodies are light and pleasant, but they are constantly repeated with little or no variation: when we have read a few of his pieces, we know them all; and the composition as a whole is always without ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Father Johannes.] My cousin told me beforehand what kind of man he was, so we soon became as well acquainted as if we had known each other for twenty years. I lent him the mass in F, and the first of the short masses in C, and the offertorium in counterpoint in D minor. My fair cousin has undertaken to be custodian of these. I got back the offertorium punctually, having desired that it should be returned first. They all, and even the Prelate, plagued me to give them a litany, De venerabili. I said I had not got it with me. I ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... it all for a minute or two as the south-west wind went past his ears, and played a strange tune on the innumerable stems of the bents and the hard-stalked blossoms, to which the bees sang counterpoint. Then the heart arose within him, and he drew the sword from the scabbard, and waved it about his head, and shook it toward the south, and cried out, "Now, welcome world, and be thou blessed from one end to the other, from the ocean sea to the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... such vigour and force, but it was useless. That was undoubtedly the work of a great genius, and everything I had written was nothing short of a libel upon myself, strung together so as to be quite correct in harmony and counterpoint, but full, nevertheless, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... wilfull arrogaunce; 1135 Such followes those whom fortune doth advaunce. But the false Foxe most kindly plaid his part: [Kindly, according to his nature.] For whatsoever mother-wit or arte Could worke, he put in proofe: no practise slie, No counterpoint of cunning policie, 1140 [Counterpoint, counterplot.] Ne reach, no breach, that might him profit bring, But he the same did to his purpose wring. Nought suffered he the Ape to give or graunt, But through ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... at Sheffield in 1863, another student of the Royal Academy, is one of England's most gifted musicians at the present time. She became assistant teacher of piano, harmony, and counterpoint, and won many prizes, being the first woman to obtain the Lucas medal for composition. Her two piano concertos are praised by critics for their "bright and original fancy and melodious inspiration of ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... abandon in despair. A gash of children and refuse cut straight from river to Park, it got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and other foods, while the "wash" of five hundred families blew its banners overhead. Vendors of all kinds uttered their nasal or raucous cries, in counterpoint to the treble screams ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... stand to music very much as spelling and grammar stand to language. They are the fundamentals of good writing and of good—that is, of correct—thinking in music. Harmony is the art of putting tones together so as correctly to make chords. Counterpoint has to do with composing and joining together simple melodies. A modern writer[45] on counterpoint has said: "The essence of true counterpoint lies in the equal interest which should belong to ever part." By examining a few pieces of good counterpoint you will readily see just what this means. ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... the Volkslied in its latest and most complete development is practically an instrumental composition, retaining, however, its bond with the past on the one hand through the words, on the other through the canto fermo in the tenor, the familiar ancient tune round which the counterpoint was woven in a kind of canonical imitation, first (fifteenth century) in three parts then (sixteenth) in four, but always with the canto fermo in rhythmic contrast to the rest of the composition. It has been pointed out by Liliencron[17] that what appears at ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... main characteristic, and this fault was largely due to the Flemish composers, who thought most of displaying their technical skill. They frequently selected some well-known secular tune around which to weave their counterpoint, many masses, for instance, having been written on the old Provencal song of "L' Homme Arme." Some of the melodies chosen as the basis for masses were nothing but drinking songs. At that time the tenor generally sang the melody, and, as in order to show on what foundation their work ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... even anticipate composer. Bach's absolute knowledge. Fire of Prometheus. Inner sanctuary of art. Science of acoustics. Prime elements. Dr. Marx and Helmholtz. Motive. Beethoven's fifth symphony. Phrase. Period. Simple melody. "God Save the King." Our "America." Masters of counterpoint. Bach's fugues. Monophony and polyphony. Classical and romantic. Heretic and hero. Hadow on musical laws. Form the manifestation of these. Good music versus ragtime. Dr. Corson ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... general agreement. Should the musical courses be exclusively cultural, or should they be so shaped as to provide training for professional work in composition or performance? Should they be "practical" (that is, playing and singing), or simply theoretical (harmony, counterpoint, etc.), or entirely confined to musical history and appreciation? Should credits leading to the A.B. degree be given for musical work, and if so, ought they to include performance, or only theory and composition? Should musical degrees be granted, and if so, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... enthusiasm, while its deeper thoughts and feelings are not of the kind which translate themselves readily into artistic form. But, after all, a fine piece of colouring, a well-balanced composition, a sonorous stanza, a learned essay in counterpoint, are not enough. They are all excellent good things, yielding delight to the artistic sense and instruction to the student. Yet when we think of the really great statues, pictures, poems, music of the world, we find that these are really great because of something more—and that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... indispensable rudiments of the art, and are not for a moment to be mistaken for its ultimate and incommunicable secrets. Beethoven could not have composed the Ninth Symphony without a mastery of harmony and counterpoint; but there are thousands of masters of harmony and counterpoint who could not compose ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... prose-writing there must be scales run, fingerings worked out, and harmonies mastered. For in a page of lo bello stile you will find trills and arpeggios, turns, grace notes, a main theme, a sub theme, thorough-bass, counterpoint, and form. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... dexterity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a little further on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will reach their solution ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I can scarcely think that, sir. They seem to have had only the minor key, and to have known no more of counterpoint ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... memory, and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it; that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... forest, the heat of the southern day, the woodland fragrances of which the air was full, and the sense of being intimately alone with her, set up within him a turbulent vibration, half of delight, half of pained suspense. And the complaisant informality with which she met him played a sustaining counterpoint. 'What luck, what luck, what luck,' were the words which shaped themselves to the strong beating of his pulses. What would happen next? Whither would it lead? He had savoured the bouquet, he was famished to taste the wine. And yet, so complicated are our human feelings, he was obscurely vexed. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... myself so intelligent, he often talked to me about his music and his studies; he had an Italian translation of Cherubini's Treatise, and had nearly finished all the exercises down to the end of florid counterpoint in four parts. His professor was much pleased with him, and had congratulated him upon possessing a mind full of resource and originality—just the sort of mind that is required for composing music of the highest class. He ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Bach has written has been changed. The sonatas are technically among the most difficult things written for the violin, excepting Ernst and Paganini. Not that they are hard in a modern way: Bach knew nothing of harmonics, pizzicati, scales in octaves and tenths. But his counterpoint, his fugues—to play them well when the principal theme is sometimes in the outer voices, sometimes in the inner voices, or moving from one to the other—is supremely difficult! In the last sonatas there is a larger number ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... counterpoint sung or played above a theme. Highest part sung in part music. Discussion ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... came to share with my master his contempt for singing, the higher did he rate my musical genius. He took a great and zealous interest in instructing me in counterpoint, so that I soon came to write the most ingenious toccatas and fugues. I was once playing one of these ingenious specimens of my skill to my uncle on my birthday (I was nineteen years old), when the waiter of our first hotel stepped into the room ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... touching are its effects! In studying music as a mere matter of intellectual science, all is simple; it is only an easy chapter in acoustics. But in studying it on the side of the emotions, in studying the laws of counterpoint and of musical form, which are governed by the effect upon the ear and the heart, we find intricacy and difficulties, increased beyond our power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... principal key, but there is no repetition of the opening theme. After a cadence ending on the tonic (B flat), and two coda-like bars, comes a fugal movement, still in the same key. The vigorous subject, the well-contrasted counterpoint, the interesting episodes, and many attractive details help one to forget the monotony of key so prevalent in the days in which this sonata was written. This, and indeed other fugues of Kuhnau show strong foreshadowings ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... Albrechtsberger in composition, also having violin, and even vocal lessons from other masters. Beethoven realized, on coming to Vienna, more fully than before, the necessity for close application to his studies. Though a finished performer, he knew but little of counterpoint, and the more purely scientific side of his art had been neglected. That he applied himself with all the ardor of his nature to his studies we know. They were given precedence over everything else. He even delayed for a long while writing ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... "Albrechtsberger has said—-," and you slap your head and stop. They think, "He is polite, and will not quote a German authority to us": and they think, "He will not continue his quotation; in truth, he scornfully considers it superfluous to talk of counterpoint to us poor Italians." Your Christian name is Johann?—you are Herr Johannes. Look at her well. I shall not expose you longer than ten minutes to their observation. Frown meditative; the elbow propped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... three examples from Samson Agonistes of interwoven tunes, a sort of counterpoint of two ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... practice, is but common decency in the palace of high philosophy, wherein dwells evolution. If we leave evolution alone, we may stick to common practice and the law courts; touch evolution and we are in another world; not higher, not lower, but different as harmony from counterpoint. As, however, in the most absolute counterpoint there is still harmony, and in the most absolute harmony still counterpoint, so high philosophy should be still in touch with common sense, and common sense with ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the logical charm of Beethoven—ah, what Jovian repose; what keen analysis! He has not the logic, minus the charm, of Brahms; he never smells of the pure, open air, like Dvorak—a milkman's composer; nor is Tchaikovsky master of the pictorial counterpoint of Wagner. All is froth and fury, oaths, grimaces, yelling, hallooing like drunken Kalmucks, and when he writes a slow movement it is with a pen dipped in molasses. I don't wish to be unjust to your 'modern ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... was Giovanni Pietro Aloysio da Palestrina, and at that time he was in the prime of his powers. He was master of polyphonic music as well as plain-song, and he proposed applying it to grace the older mode, preserving the solemn beauty of the chant but adding the charming chords of counterpoint. He wrote three "masses," one of them being his famous "Requiem." These were sung under his direction before the Commission. Their magnificence and purity revealed to the censors the possibilities of contrapuntal ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Counterpoint. Sir J. Frederick Bridge. This book has freshness and plainness combined with thoroughness, and must commend itself to young students and ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... have entered into Michael's head this morning to tell to his mother about Sylvia than to have discussed counterpoint with her. But then this morning he had not been really aware that he had a mother. But to tell her now was ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... are filled up, and their coverings have become more simple. Man possesses the most perfect osseous structure, the least and most insignificant covering. The whole force of organic power has attained an inward and centripetal direction. He has the whole world in counterpoint to him, but he contains an entire world within himself. Now, for the first time at the apex of the living pyramid, it is Man and Nature, but Man himself is a syllepsis, a compendium of Nature—the Microcosm! Naked and helpless cometh man into the world. Such ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with our accentual system of reasonable or emotional emphasis, can barely if at all attain; studying, for instance, the metrical movements of a prose as scientifically as a modern musician studies harmony and counterpoint, and, I need hardly say, with much keener aesthetic instinct. In this they were right, as they were right in all things. Since the introduction of printing, and the fatal development of the habit of reading amongst the middle and lower classes of this ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... through a dozen bars, and leading directly into the triumphant and majestic chorus, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The second subject, introduced by the word "repent" descending through the interval of a diminished seventh and contrasted with the florid counterpoint of the phrase, "and believe the glad tidings of God," is a masterpiece of contrapuntal writing, and, if performed by a choir of three or four hundred voices, would produce an overpowering effect. The divine call of Simon Peter and his ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... engineer is a very monster of competence and efficiency within his limits, these are sharply marked, and to any detailed knowledge of that "beautiful necessity" which determines spatial rhythm and counterpoint he is a stranger. The ideal relation between architect and engineer is that of a happily wedded pair—strength married to beauty; in the period just passed or passing they have ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... vitality burns into one passion. If a somewhat fanciful comparison from another art may throw any light on this feature of his work we might say that his characters are to those of Galdos, for instance, as counterpoint music to the complex modern symphony. Joaquin Monegro, the true hero of his Abel Sanchez (1917), is the personification of hatred. Raquel in Dos Madres[1] and Catalina in El Marques de Lumbria[1] are two widely different but vigorous, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Favognana this meant that, in both cases, they choose for their resting-place the second island they come to. There is no mistake about this being what I read, for I made a memoria technica about it at the time out of what Rockstro, my old counterpoint master, used to say musicians do in performing the diatonic major scale unaccompanied. In ascending they pass over the grave supertonic and take the acute supertonic, and in descending they pass over the acute supertonic and take the grave supertonic; the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... himself. "It'll be easily a month before I hear from old Howe in America, and longer before I hear from Henslowe, and already I've spent twenty francs on food. Can't make it this way. Then, in real possessions, I have one volume of Villon, a green book on counterpoint, a map of France torn in two, and a moderately ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... "parted, and became into four heads."—The Gospels therefore, (to call them by their common name,) are not to be regarded as four witnesses, or rather as four culprits, brought up on a charge of fraud. Rather are they Angelic voices singing in sweetest harmony, but after a method of Heavenly counterpoint which must be studied before it can ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the same thing in the drama that counterpoint is in music; nothing in themselves but the primary condition ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... choice sweets are, if they are to be adequately enjoyed, compatible only with a minimum of L300 a year. The religious sense and the musical are in many points alike. If you wish to develop an initially melodious soul, it means expense: you must go to professors, study counterpoint, practice many hours daily, and attend concerts of the most exclusive and expensive kind. Similarly with religion in its finest flower. You need slaves to cook and wash for you if you mean to ecstaticise and see beatific visions: you must ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... imagine, can only be attained by dint of study, and knowledge of the system and theory upon which musical composition is founded. Such miserable jargon as our country psalm-singers practise, which may be justly deemed the lowest class of counterpoint, or singing in several parts, cannot be acquired, in the coarse manner in which it is performed in the churches, without considerable time and practice. It is therefore scarcely credible, that a people, semi-barbarous, should naturally arrive at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... "Caduta de' Giganti," one of Gluck's very earliest works, written when he was yet corrupted with all the vices of the Italian method. "Mein Gott! he is an idiot," said Handel; "he knows no more of counterpoint then mein cook." Handel did not see with prophetic eyes. He never met Gluck afterward, and we do not know his later opinion of the composer of "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Iphigenia in Tauris." But Gluck had ever the profoundest admiration for the author of the "Messiah." ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... overthrows best, is passion.—We must try and be clear concerning this question of passion. Nothing is cheaper than passion! All the virtues of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no need to have learnt anything,—but passion is always within our reach! Beauty is difficult: let us beware of beauty!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} And also of melody! However ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... 2/2 time. Graf Graf Graf Graf (in 3-part harmony) Graf (in 3-part counterpoint) Graf Graf Graf, liebster Graf, liebstes Schaf, bester Graf, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... multiformity of the active type. The attractions of fame never cheated Rousseau into forgetfulness of the commanding principle that a man's life ought to be steadily composed to oneness with itself in all its parts, as by mastery of an art of moral counterpoint, and not crowded with a wild mixture of aim and emotion like distracted masks in high carnival. He complains of the philosophers with whom he came into contact, that their philosophy was something foreign to them and outside of their own ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... to teach Butler counterpoint. See the Memoir. Taken by Butler at 15 Clifford's Inn, ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... biographers have perhaps for this reason greatly underrated Zachow's musicianship. Zachow cannot indeed be classed as a great composer, but he was considerably more than merely a sound average teacher. For one thing, he possessed a large library of music. Handel was not only made to master the arts of counterpoint and fugue, but he was also set to study the works of other composers, and to train his sense of style by writing music in direct imitation of them. In those days there was no possibility of buying all sorts of music ready printed. Printing was expensive, ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent |
