For Every Music Lover: A Series of Practical Essays on MusicMoore, Aubertine Woodward
History
For Every Music Lover: A Series of Practical Essays on Music
Moore, Aubertine Woodward
Music -- History and criticism
Living to-day in London at the advanced age of ninety-seven is the elder
brother of Malibran and Viardot-Garcia, Manuel Garcia, the inventor of
the laryngoscope, author of the renowned "Art of Song," and teacher of
Jenny Lind. It was in 1841 that the ever-beloved Swedish Nightingale,
then twenty-one years old, sought him in Paris, with a voice worn from
over-exertion and lack of proper management. In ten months she had
gained all that master could teach her in tone production, blending of
the registers and breath-control. Her own genius, her splendid
individuality, her indefatigable perseverance, did the rest in investing
her dramatic soprano with that sympathetic timbre, that power of
expressing every phase of her artistic conception, that bird-like
quality of the upper notes, that marvelous beauty and equality of the
entire range of two octaves and three quarters (from B below the stave
to G on the fourth line), that exquisite sonority, that penetrating
pianissimo, that unrivalled messa di voce, that mastery over technique
of which so much has been written and said.
Jenny Lind was to Sweden what Ole Bull was to Norway, the inspirer of
noble achievement. The faithful interpreter of the acknowledged
masterpieces of genius in opera, oratorio and song, she also freely
poured forth in gracious waves the poetic, the rugged, and the
exquisitely polished lays of the Northland, making them known for the
first time to thousands of people. It was through her pure and noble
womanhood, quite as much as through her artistic excellence that she
swayed the public and left so deep and enduring an impression. True to
the backbone in her artistic allegiance, she believed that art, the
expression and embodiment of the spiritual principle animating it, could
not fail to elevate to a high spiritual and moral standard the genuine
artist.
She had lived thirty-five happy years with her husband, Mr. Otto
Goldschmidt, pianist, conductor and composer, who still survives her,
when death overtook her at their home on the Malvern Hills, November 2,
1887. When the end drew near, one of her daughters threw open the window
shutters to admit the morning sun. As it came streaming into the room,
Jenny Lind uplifted her voice, and it rang out firm and clear as she
sang the opening measures of Schumann's glorious "To the Sunshine." The
notes were her last. A bust of her was unveiled in Westminster Abbey in
1894.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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