ement among the audience, not
a murmur of praise or blame, not a sound of applause; they are listening
to a solemn discourse, they are hearing the gospel sung, they are
attending divine service rather than a concert. And really such music
ought to be thus listened to. They adore Bach, and believe in him,
without supposing for a moment that his divinity could ever be called
into question. A heretic would horrify them, he is forbidden even to
speak of him. God is God and Bach is Bach. Some days after the
performance of Bach's _chef d'oeuvre_, the Singing Academy announced
Graun's 'Tod Jesu.' This is another sacred work, a holy book; the
worshipers of which are, however, mainly to be found in Berlin, whereas
the religion of Bach is professed throughout the north of Germany.

MUSIC AS AN ARISTOCRATIC ART

From the Autobiography

Dramatic art in the time of Shakespeare was more appreciated by the
masses than it is in our day by those nations which lay most claim to
possess a feeling for it. Music is essentially aristocratic; it is a
daughter of noble race, such as princes only can dower nowadays; it must
be able to live poor and unmated rather than form a _mesalliance_.

THE BEGINNING OF A "GRAND PASSION"

From the Autobiography

I have now come to the grand drama of my life; but I shall not relate
all its painful details. It is enough to say that an English company
came over to perform Shakespeare's plays, then entirely unknown in
France, at the Odeon. I was present at the first performance of
'Hamlet,' and there, in the part of Ophelia, I saw Miss Smithson, whom I
married five years afterward. I can only compare the effect produced by
her wonderful talent, or rather her dramatic genius, on my imagination
and heart, with the convulsion produced on my mind by the work of the
great poet whom she interpreted. It is impossible to say more.

This sudden and unexpected revelation of Shakespeare overwhelmed me. The
lightning-flash of his genius revealed the whole heaven of art to me,
illuminating its remotest depths in a single flash. I recognized the
meaning of real grandeur, real beauty, and real dramatic truth; and I
also realized the utter absurdity of the ideas circulated by Voltaire in
France about Shakespeare, and the pitiful pettiness of our old poetic
school, the offspring of pedagogues and _freres ignorantins_.

But the shock was too great, and it was a long while before I recovered
from it. I became possess