Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/59

Rh affected his general health materially, though his vigor seemed little impaired.

Up to the time of his failing sight, in 1747, we have no record of any sickness of Bach, while his untiring energy, as shown in his vast amount of work, bears sufficient testimony to his great vitality. He was able to be, besides a marvelous maker of music, "a particularly excellent father (he had nineteen children), friend and citizen."

Of Beethoven it is sufficient to know that he was spoken of as the "image of strength," as power personified—that there was concentrated in him "the pluck of twenty battalions." He was a great walker, and no day in Vienna, however busy or stormy, passed without its constitutional, "a walk, or rather run, twice round the ramparts. . . or further into the environs." Notwithstanding the constant effect of his deafness and the fact that digestive disturbances early began to keep him company, "his splendid constitution and extreme fondness for the open air counteracted his physical defects and even in his last illness" "his constitution, powerful as that of a giant, blocked the gates against death for nearly three months" and during the struggle his fancy seemed to soar more vigorously than ever.

Of the third of the great B's, Brahms, burly, well-knit, muscular, the "very image of strength and vigor," there is little to say beyond the fact that he was never sick. Widmann says "he displayed an absence of physical sensitiveness of which few could boast." "His constitution was thoroughly sound, the most strenuous mental exertion scarcely fatiguing him," and he could "go soundly to sleep at any hour of the day he pleased." Like Beethoven, Brahms was a lover of nature and a tireless walker.

If we step down from the company of the greater to that of the lesser gods of music, Mozart, Weber and Chopin are presented by the advocates of the feebler life for genius. Chopin we have already mentioned. Weber was weakly and tuberculous. With health and strength he might have equaled Beethoven. Mozart, though of inferior bodily presence, did a lifetime's work before his early death from typhus fever. He was trained by his father to take care of himself and would probably have lived the allotted time but for the stress of want, and overwork for thankless and unremunerative patrons.

Over against these few exceptions we could set quite a company of master musicians full of health and vigor. Handel and Haydn with their "continuous, sunny healthfulness." Spohr, "of sound health and herculean frame," his life filled with uninterrupted success and honors up to seventy years.

Then there was Wagner, "the best tumbler and somersault-turner of the large Dresden school," an adept at every form of bodily exercise, who "still performed boyish tricks (such as standing on his head)