CHAP. IV - Quartetts and Amateurs.—1839

Summary

Whatever influences constraint and disunion, patronage capriciously bestowed, and authority turned into an engine of cabal, may have exercised in the Prussian capital to the deterioration of its opera, they have still not been able to destroy a spirit of strong musical vitality, taking forms too exclusively German to be passed over. There was admirable chamber-music to be heard in Berlin in 1839—40 — quartett-playing, worth a journey thither to seek; to say nothing of that magnificent institution, the offspring of Fasch, and the god-child of Zelter—the Sing-Academie.

I visited Berlin in 1839, during its flat season, when the amateurs were taking health at some brunnen or other, or pastime among that fine scenery which the Germans enjoy so heartily. The court was at Potsdam for the reviews, with its army of fiddlers in attendance. To a Londoner, then, who is accustomed to the utter pause and desolation which September brings—when the one-eyed street musician, who hobbles along his doleful way, scraping out his surgical tunes, is about the only specimen of the genus Violin to be found; when every Cello is holidaying it in the provinces, or gone home to Germany to recruit himself; when even Golden Square, that centre of instrumental study, is as guiltless of melody as a Friend's meeting-house—it was a welcome surprise, and an evidence of the wealth of the city, that, at such a stagnant time, to collect a quartett was possible, even to the active hospitality to which I was so largely indebted. Yet more remarkable it seemed, that, when collected, the quartett should be one of such rare excellence as our own metropolis could not then match in the very prime of its fullest season.