Great Violinists and PianistsFerris, George T. (George Titus)
History
Great Violinists and Pianists
Ferris, George T. (George Titus)
Pianists -- Biography; Violinists -- Biography
In 1851 Ole Bull returned home with the patriotic purpose of
establishing a strictly national theatre. This had been for a long time
one of the many dreams which his active imagination had conjured up as
a part of his mission. He was one of the earliest of that school of
reformers, of whom we have heard so much of late years, that urge the
readoption of the old Norse language--or, what is nearest to it now,
the Icelandic--as the vehicle of art and literature. In the attempt to
dethrone Dansk from its preeminence as the language of the drama, Ole
Bull signally failed, and his Norwegian theatre, established at Bergen,
proved only an insatiable tax on money-resources earned in other
directions.
The year succeeding this, Ole Bull again visited the United States,
and spent five years here. The return to America did not altogether
contemplate the pursuit of music, for there had been for a good while
boiling in his brain, among other schemes, the project of a great
Scandinavian colony, to be established in Pennsylvania under his
auspices. He purchased one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of
land on the Susquehanna, and hundreds of sturdy Norwegians flocked over
to the land of milk and honey thus auspiciously opened to them. Timber
was felled, ground cleared, churches, cottages, school-houses built,
and everything was progressing desirably, when the ambitious colonizer
discovered that the parties who sold him the land were swindlers without
any rightful claim to it. With the unbusiness-like carelessness of the
man of genius, our artist had not investigated the claims of others
on the property, and he thus became involved in a most perplexing and
expensive suit at law. He attempted to punish the rascals who so nearly
ruined him, but they were shielded behind the quips and quirks of the
law, and got away scot free. Ole Bull's previously ample means were so
heavily drained by this misfortune that he was compelled to take up
his violin again and resume concert-giving, for he had incurred heavy
pecuniary obligations that must be met. Driven by the most feverish
anxiety, he passed from town to town, playing almost every night, till
he was stricken down by yellow fever in New Orleans. His powerful frame
and sound constitution, fortified by the abstemious habits which had
marked his whole life of queer vicissitudes, carried him through this
danger safely, and he finally succeeded in honorably fulfilling the
responsibility which he had assumed toward his countrymen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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