Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/291

Rh , 15; Gounod, 13; Wagner, 13; and Bellini, 10; while from Beethoven's colossal mind there came but one lone opera.  

Composers get queer ideas into their heads sometimes. Some think they can represent storms and battles in music; but they always take pains to tell one in plain type just what is supposed to be going on, thus showing the inadequacy of music to depict concrete ideas. One old composer, Kuhnau, undertook to illustrate the Bible by clavichord sonatas, but it is not recorded that he made any converts to religion thereby or that his exegesis was satisfactory to the theologians. Another, Matheson, Händel's rival, undertook to represent a rainbow when setting music to the words, "And there was a rainbow round the throne." He made the notes on the full score look like an arch beginning and ending in the low double bass notes, the apex being in the piccolo part. While this might give a faint idea of a rainbow to the eye, we doubt if it would to the ear.  

The border-land between great genius and insanity is narrower than we sometimes realize. Some of the great minds in the music life have passed over the dividing line; some have come back to a correct mental balance, but others suffered this mental affliction until relieved by the Grim Reaper.

It is not generally known that Hans von Bülow spent some time in an asylum. But such was the case, and the rest and quiet restored his tired and slightly unbalanced mind to its usual strength.

Next to Beethoven in intensity of thought and feeling, stands Robert Schumann. It was perhaps the continual habit of mental concentration and overtaxing his 