Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/131

Rh sight, in gloomy weather, under a dim lamp I have composed these pages. Do not scold me for it!"

His ablest musical compositions date from the last years of his life, when he was more than eighty years of age. In 1767, the year of his death, he published yet another theoretical work and wrote a Passion. He died in Hamburg on the 25th June, 1767, overburdened with years and with glory. He was more than eighty-six years of age.

Let us sum up this long career and seek to determine its principal outlines. Whatever our opinion of the quality of his work, it is impossible not to be struck by its phenomenal quantity, and the prodigious vitality of a man who, from his tenth to his eighty-sixth year, wrote music with indefatigable joy and enthusiasm without prejudice to a hundred other occupations.

From first to last this vitality remained fresh and enthusiastic. What is so unusual in Telemann is that at no moment of his life did he begin to grow old and conservative; he was always advancing, with youth. We have seen that at the very beginning of his career he was attracted by the new art—the art of melody—and did not conceal his antipathy for "fossils."