A Little Night Music

Im Grunde wollen wir Klavier sein, sagte er [Glenn Gould], nicht Menschen sein, sondern Klavier sein, zeitlebens wollen wir Klavier und nicht Mensch sein, entfliehen dem Menschen, der wir sind, um ganz Klavier zu werden, was aber misslingen muss, woran wir aber nicht glauben wollen, so er.

- THOMAS BERNHARD, DER UNTERGEHER

It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music which, like Baudelaires's lovers, "rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind." It has, then, unity through intuitive perception, unity born of craft and scrutiny, mellowed by mastery achieved, and revealed to us here, as so rarely in art, in the vision of subconscious design exulting upon a pinnacle of potency.

- GLENN GOULD, NOTES ON THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS OF J.S.BACH

He has the true pianist's temperament, and I can only imagine him happy in the embrace of that lumbering exo-skeleton, that brute music-machine which he is accustomed to abuse at will. From a close engagement with anything alive I believe he would shrink. His is not so much the air of a man who has never had a woman, as of a boy who has not yet even wanted one. A certain mischief goes out of us once we take up with women. But then, if he is not her lover, what is he?

- GRACE ANDREACCHI, SCARABOCCHIO

Au Theatre Des Sons Imaginaires

Thomyris, Queen of the Amazons came on dressed in a very equivocal manner; for, in order to give her a martial look, she had her petticoats trussed up in front above her knees, which were very discernible through her black breeches. However strange this appeared to me, the audience clapped violently, as they did constantly at the worst and most absurd things in the piece. There was a great deal of religion in it, and such anachronisms, that they talked of J. C. and the Trinity, nor were Free-will and Predestination forgotten; and when Cyrus is dying of the wound he received in battle, he is examined by a Jewish priest, a principal character in the play, as his confessor, concerning his religious principles, and he makes to him a profession of faith.

-CHARLES BURNEY, THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC IN FRANCE AND ITALY

Nichts vom Triumph mir! Nichts vom Rosenfeste!

Es ruft die Schlacht noch einmal mich ins Feld. 

Den jungen trotz'gen Kriegsgott bänd'g' ich mir, 

Gefährtinnen, zehntausend Sonnen dünken, 

Zu einem Glutball eingeschmelzt, so glanzvoll 

Nicht, als ein Sieg, ein Sieg mir über ihn.

- HEINRICH VON KLEIST, PENTHISILEA

With all zeal mighty Bellerophontes seized the winged steed [Pegasos], setting between his jaws the soothing charm, and mounting him, in his bronze panoply played him in sport, to try his pace. And once [in Lykia], with him, he smote the Amazones, from the chill bosom of the lonely air, that archered host of women-kind.

- PINDAR, OLYPIAN ODE 13 

One God, One Farinelli!

Thursday, August 23.[1770] It will give pleasure to every lover of music, especially to those who have been so happy as to have heard him, to learn that Signor Farinelli still lives, and is in good health and spirits. I found him much younger in appearance than I expected. He is tall and thin, but seems by no means infirm. Hearing that I had a letter for him, he was so obliging as to come to me this morning at Padre Martini's, in whose library I spent a great part of my time here. Upon my observing, in the course of our conversation, that I had long been ambitious of seeing two persons, become so eminent by different abilities in the same art, and that chief business at Bologna was to gratify that ambition, Signor Farinelli, pointing to P. Martini, said, " What he is doing will last, but the little that I have done is already gone and forgotten." I told him, that in England there were still many who remembered his performance so well, that they could bear to hear no other singer; that the
whole kingdom continued to resound his fame, and I was sure tradition would hand it down to the latest posterity.

*

He told me, that for the first ten years of his residence at the court of Spain, during the life of Philip the Vth, he sung every night to that monarch the same four airs, of which two were composed by Hasse, Pallido il sole, and Per questo dolce amplesso. I forget the others, but one was a minuet which he used to vary at his pleasure.

*

He likewise confirmed to me the truth of the following extraordinary story, which I had often heard and never before credited. Senesino and Farinelli, when in England together, being engaged at different theatres on the same night, had not an opportunity of hearing each other, till, by one of those sudden stage-revolutions which frequently happen, yet are always unexpected, they were both employed to sing on the same stage. Senesino had the part of a furious tyrant to represent, and Farinelli that of an unfortunate hero in chains: but, in the course of the first song, he so softened the obdurate heart of the enraged tyrant, that Senesino, forgetting his stage-character, ran to Farinelli and embraced him in his own.
- CHARLES BURNEY, THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC IN FRANCE AND ITALY