Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/192

180 , until at last the happy thought occurred to her to sing to them. "Assai, assai!" they exclaimed when the song was finished; "here is your letter, for no one but Sigrid Arnoldson can sing like that."  

By all of the composers whom we call great, with one notable exception, other men's ideas have been held sacred. Genius is sufficient unto itself. No more would Mendelssohn have thought of stealing musical ideas from Beethoven than Beethoven would of appropriating them from Mozart, or Mozart from Bach. True, after a man once gives his ideas to the world they become the world's property. But they are the world's to use, not to claim as its own productions.

The great exception to this code of musical morality was one who was himself so great as to have no need of using other people's brains; yet perhaps he thought that very ability would excuse wholesale stealings on his part.

This monumental thief of musical ideas was—Händel.

Händel's originality was fertile, and his treatment of musical themes was superb; yet, rather than go to the trouble of composition, he would frequently appropriate right and left, taking a theme here, a melody there, a chorus yonder, until the question has almost become, "What really is Händel's?" To many, Händel is a musical god, a sun around which revolves the lesser orbs—all other composers. Händel's abilities have been recognized by all of his craft, and especially in England is his music most popular, and deservedly so. But still, in the light of modern research, one must continually question how much of it was originally his own. We do not speak at random in this matter. Reference to our illustrations of Händel's wholesale borrowing will prove the above statement.

Two of the best choruses in "Israel in Egypt" ("He