Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/171

Rh Kreutzer, and Schubert. The twenty-fourth variation was by Franz Liszt, then eleven years old; and despite his youth, his variation is on a par with those of the older and more celebrated composers. This is the only one of Liszt's earlier compositions that has been preserved.  

We have elsewhere spoken of the growth and culmination of Robert Schumann's sad malady. The more serious phases of this affliction were preceded by an occasional absence of mind that sometimes produced ludicrous results.

A characteristic instance of his forgetfulness occurred when he was once conducting a rehearsal of Bach's "Passion Music." The choir had begun the great opening chorus and were singing bravely along, when it was noticed that his beat grew less and less decided, and finally stopped altogether. He then laid down his baton, rapidly turned over fifty or sixty pages of the score before him, and became absorbed in reading a movement in the second part of the work. The chorus kept on singing and Schumann kept on reading, utterly oblivious to what was going on around him.

After a while he became conscious of the singing, and finding that what he heard did not agree in the least with the music he was reading, he stopped the singers and cried out to them: "Good heavens! ladies and gentlemen, what on earth are you singing there?"  

There has never been a vocalist who secured more favor on these shores than Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," as she was called. The people went wild over her singing; in fact, to rave over the young lady was at