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164 should have the first opportunity to purchase it at four thousand ducats. The violinist agreed, although he knew it was a big price.

Two years later he was one day dining with Liszt and Mendelssohn in Leipzig, when a letter was handed him bearing an official seal. It was from Vienna, and announced the death of the old violin collector. Rhehazek had told his son that Ole Bull was to have the first opportunity to buy the di Salo violin, and the son faithfully wrote him that he could now purchase it. Liszt declared that Ole must be crazy to pay so much for a violin he had never heard; and Mendelssohn said it was a piece of extravagance that only a fiddler could be capable of. But Ole Bull persisted in buying the violin, and with it won some of his greatest triumphs.  

In this century it is considered necessary to have a congenial theme and inspiring words before a composer can do his best in giving the text a musical setting. But this was not the case in the first half of the last century. Counterpoint, i.e., musical mathematics, held the boards then. The words were secondary in the composer's eyes; and the main thing was whether the music was good as music, and not whether it illustrated the sentiment of the language.

Even the great Händel seemed at times to care little for the words set to his compositions. Perhaps there is a great deal to be said for this view of the matter, for who goes to hear an opera on account of its beautiful words? How many operas have been borne into public favor by the beauty of the music when the words were mere trash? Even in church music, in how many cases are the words understood by the congregation? If the singers don't give the people the opportunity to understand the words, why scan the composition of the poetry very critically? 