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Description - Nicolo Paganini; His Life and Work by Stephen Samuel Stratton

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI. HERE remains the consideration of Paganini as a JL composer. It is a truism to say that a composition has primarily to be judged from the standpoint of the age in which it was written. A Genius, we are told, is not only before his own age, but before all ages. All the same, the great Geniuses come into the world precisely at the right moment. To some music one may fitly apply the epithet "Immortal"; for it seems to be written, "not for an age, but for all time." That title is not claimed for the music of Paganini, but, in view of what has been written for the violin, it is necessary to take into consideration the date of Paganini's compositions. Take the two greatest surviving forms--the symphony and the concerto--and compare works in those forms, belonging to different periods. Mendelssohn and Schumann were innovators, so it was said, in regard to symphonic form. Both wrote symphonies of which the movements were connected, and Schumann by the recurrence of themes anticipated the "organic whole " of the symphonic poem. But in 1776, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed symphonies in the modern one-movement style. This is not the time to discuss them, but just taking the first, in D, I may point to the coda of the opening movement, which effects a modulation to E flat, the key of the slow movement. In this the subject enters, for the second time, in B flat; and a deceptive cadence is followed by a passage ending on the dominant of D, and so returning to the primary key for the last movement. The score is for flutes, oboes, one bassoon, horns, first and second violins, viola, violoncello, violone, and cembalo. Now, here is a work quite modern in its disregard of key relationship, and in the linking together of the different...

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