Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/114

102 that the master who was to have written a cantata for a popular fête in the mountains fell ill. The child profited by the opportunity. He wrote the composition and conducted the orchestra. He was thirteen years of age, and he was so small that a little bench had to be made for him, to lift him up, so that the members of the orchestra could see him. "The worthy mountaineers," says Telemann, "touched by my appearance rather than my harmonies, carried me in triumph on their shoulders." The head-master of the school, flattered by his success, authorised Telemann to cultivate his music, declaring that after all this study was not inconsistent with that of geometry, and even that there was a relationship between the two sciences. The boy profited by this permission to neglect his geometry; he returned to the clavier and studied thorough-bass, whose rules he himself formulated and wrote down; "for," he says, "I did not as yet know that there were books on the subject."

When about seventeen years of age he proceeded to the gymnasium at Hildesheim, where he studied logic; and although he could not endure the Barbara Celarent he acquitted himself brilliantly. But above all he made great progress in his musical education. He was always composing. Not a day went by sine linea. He wrote church and instrumental music principally. His models were Steffani, Rosenmüller, Corelli and Caldara. He acquired a taste for the style of the new German and Italian masters, "for their manner, full of invention, cantabile, and at the same time closely wrought." Their works confirmed his instinctive preference for expressive melody and his antipathy for the old contrapuntal style. A lucky chance favoured him.