Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/211

Rh the greatness of German music, is none the less continually shocked by the clumsiness of musical performances; he gnashes his teeth over the ill-tuned instruments, the inharmonious organs, the shrieking voices.

In the musical schools of Saxony and Austria "the playing of the pupils is generally hard and clumsy."

At Leipzig the singers produce merely a disagreeable noise, a yelping, when the high notes are taken; a sort of stricken shriek, instead of emitting the voice while diminishing or swelling the tone.

In Berlin the instrumental school "makes hardly any use of forte and piano. Each performer simply vies with his neighbour. The chief aim of the Berlin musician is to play louder than he… There is no gradation … no attention to the nature of the tone produced by the instruments, which have only a certain degree of power when producing a musical note, after which there is nothing but a noise."

At Salzburg the very large orchestra of the Prince Archbishop "was remarkable chiefly for its inelegance and its noise." Mozart speaks of it with disgust: "It is one of the great reasons why Salzburg is hateful to me; this Court orchestra is so uncouth, so disorderly and so debauched! An honest man with decent manners cannot live with such people!"