Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/196

184 Rossini was another "jolly good fellow" who could compose divinely, not only when at the tavern but after he had been turned out of it. After a night of revelry his compunctions of conscience would cause him to sit down to work at the dawn of day and note his inspirations which were arranged into permanent shape later in the day, perchance while entertaining visitors and friends. Withal, Rossini is noted as being one of the laziest of musicians. It is related that a friend once found him composing in bed, doing his writing there that he might keep warm. A piece of music had fallen off the bed, and, rather than get up after it, Rossini turned over and wrote out another duet to take its place.

Mendelssohn was a well-balanced man, and a man of few idiosyncracies or unpleasant peculiarities. Scholarly and refined, he was in every sense a gentleman. He, like Mozart and others, composed mentally, did all the drudgery of composition in his head, even to the details of orchestration, and left nothing to experiment on paper or at piano. A friend relates that when once calling on Mendelssohn he was told by that composer to sit down and talk to him, and while a lively conversation was carried on, Mendelssohn was all the while writing music as fast as pen could fly, and each measure for each instrument was completed as he went.

Wagner was a genius, and in some ways a queer genius. When he wished to compose he desired absolute quiet and freedom from disturbance, and at these times not even his wife or his favorite servant dared interrupt him. But his queerest fancy was that he could compose better if he were dressed in the costume of the age that the opera which he happened to be working on represented, or the character whose music he was then writing. He wished to place his surroundings in harmony with his mental attitude, and who can say that this peculiarity did not aid him in the wonderful historic accuracy for which his operas are noted.