Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/244

232 of the symphony, Stamitz, born at Teuchenbrod, the son of the Kantor of the church there. It was in these schools that Gluck received his earliest musical training. It was at Lukavec, near Pilsen, that Haydn, director of music in the private chapel of Count Morzin, wrote his first symphony in 1759. Lastly, the greatest German violinist, Franz Benda, who was, with Philipp Emmanuel Bach, the only musician in Berlin who dared to possess a style of his own, independently of Graun and the Italianisers, was also a Bohemian.

Thanks to these schools and these natural faculties, instrumental music was cultivated throughout Germany, even in Vienna and Munich, preeminently the centres of Italian opera. We say nothing of princely virtuosi: of the flute-playing king in Berlin; of the 'cellist who was Emperor of Austria; of the princely violinists, the Elector of Bavaria and the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg; of the royal pianists, the Duke of Würtemburg and the Elector of Saxony, the latter of whom, by the way, was "so timid in society," says Burney, "that the Electress, his wife, herself had scarcely ever heard him! …" Nor do we insist upon the alarming consumption of concertos on the part of the German dilettanti; an average of three or four concertos to the concert in Berlin, while in Dresden five or six were given in a single evening! … But the nascent symphony was putting forth its shoots on every side. Vienna had a veritable efflorescence of symphonists; among whom the naturalistic Hoffmann and the imaginative