| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking up the pawn-ticket:
'John Froggs, 85 Pleasance,' he read; and then turning upon
John, with a brief flash of passion and disgust, 'Who is John
Froggs?' he cried.
'Nobody,' said John. 'It was just a name.'
'An ALIAS,' his father commented.
'Oh! I think scarcely quite that,' said the culprit; 'it's a
form, they all do it, the man seemed to understand, we had a
great deal of fun over the name - '
He paused at that, for he saw his father wince at the picture
like a man physically struck; and again there was silence.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: and truth. I quite agree with you that Meyerbeer's learning is
transcendent; but science is a defect when it evicts inspiration, and
it seems to me that we have in this opera the painful toil of a
refined craftsman who in his music has but picked up thousands of
phrases out of other operas, damned or forgotten, and appropriated
them, while extending, modifying, or condensing them. But he has
fallen into the error of all selectors of /centos/,--an abuse of good
things. This clever harvester of notes is lavish of discords, which,
when too often introduced, fatigue the ear till those great effects
pall upon it which a composer should husband with care to make the
more effective use of them when the situation requires it. These
Gambara |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: The first on members of the four-foot breeds
And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged,
Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth
Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat
The mortal generations, there upsprung-
Innumerable in modes innumerable-
After diverging fashions. For from sky
These breathing-creatures never can have dropped,
Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up
Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains,
How merited is that adopted name
Of The Nature of Things |
