A Great Composer
mong the best-known residents of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz when Hans Pumpernickel first appeared in that beautiful city were three musicians—Herr von Kärlingtongs, who was the only, and consequently the best, violinist in town, Dr. Otto Teutonstring, and Heinrich Flatz, who had played the 'cello once before the King of Prussia with such effect that the king said he'd never heard anything like it before. The town was naturally very proud of the trio, and particularly of Dr. Teutonstring, who, though far from being a muscular man, had once played the bass-viol for sixteen consecutive hours in the musical contest at the Schnitzelhammerstein carnival, beating by one hour and twenty-two minutes the strongest and most enduring bass-viol player in Germany. They were the most amiable old gentlemen in the world. It very seldom happened that they failed to agree, which was rather wonderful, because it often happens, unhappily, that musicians grow jealous of one another, and say and do things that make it impossible for them to live together peaceably. You may not all of you remember that famous and very sad instance of the lengths to which this jealousy is sometimes allowed to run wherein Luigi Sparragini, the well-known Italian violinist, in his rage at the applause received at a concert by his rival, Siegfried von Heimstetter, broke a Stradivarius violin valued at a thousand pounds over Von Heimstetter's head, to be rebuked in return by Von Heimstetter, who induced Sparragini to look at the mechanism of a grand piano he had, letting the cover fall on the other's head as soon as he had poked it in, thereby utterly ruining the piano and severely injuring Sparragini's nose.
Nothing of this kind, as I have intimated, ever marred the serenity of the three amiable musicians of Schnitzelhammerstein-on-the-Zugvitz.
"We have no cause each other to be jealous of," Herr von Kärlingtongs had said. "I the fiddle play; they the fiddle do not play."
"True," observed Heinrich Flatz. "The potato just as well the watermelon might be jealous of. If I the fiddle played, then might I Von Kärlingtongs be jealous of. Therefore also already can the same be said regarding Teutonstring. In no manner are we each other the rivals of."
In all of which, as Hans Pumpernickel said to me, there was much common-sense. "Discord is not music," said he, "and if these men were discordant they would not be musicians. If they were not musicians they would have to make a living in some other kind of business. They are not fit for any other kind of business, wherefore they are wise as well as amiable."
The consequence of all this harmony between the three dear old gentlemen was that they were always together. They practised together, and on public occasions they played together, and their fellow-townsmen were delighted with them. At weddings they played the wedding-marches, each as earnestly as though he were playing a solo. At the Mayor's banquets they were always present, adding much to the pleasure of these sumptuous repasts by the soft and beautiful strains which they discoursed. "I am not a king," said Mayor Ehrenbreitstein upon one of these occasions; "but if I were, I could not hear better music. We have an orchestra without a court. What more can we desire?"
"Nothing," said Hans Pumpernickel, "unless it be another tune."
"A good idea," cried one of the aldermen. "Let us have another tune."