Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/103

Rh after 1722 that he organised regular public concerts at Hamburg. These were held twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, at four o'clock. The price of admission was one florin eight groschen. At these concerts, Telemann conducted all sorts of compositions—instrumental music, cantatas and oratorios. These concerts, attended by the most distinguished persons of the city, closely followed by the critics, directed with care and punctuality, became so flourishing that in 1761 a fine hall was inaugurated, comfortable and well warmed, where music found a home of its own. This was more than Paris had had the generosity to offer her musicians until quite recently. Johann Adam Hiller, who taught Mefe, who in turn taught Beethoven—Hiller, one of the champions of the popular style in the Lied and the theatre, in which he founded the German comic opera, contributed greatly, as did Telemann, to diffuse a knowledge of music throughout the nation, by conducting, from 1763 onwards, the Liebhaber-konzerte (Concerts for Music-lovers), at Leipzig, where the famous Gewandhauskonzerte were given at a later date.

Here, then, we have a great musical movement, which is at once national and democratic.

But it has another characteristic which is quite unexpected: this national movement includes a number of foreign elements. The new style, which took shape in Germany in the course of the eighteenth century, and subsequently blossomed forth into the Viennese classics, is in reality far less purely German than the style of J. S. Bach. Yet Bach's style was less purely German than is commonly admitted, for Bach had assimilated something