20th. The musical profession has lost a clever and highly respectable member in Mr. Philip Knapton, of York, who died in June last, at an early age. He was author of several popular compositions, both vocal and instrumental: among the former, the songs, ‘There be none of beauty’s daughters,’ and ‘When we two parted,’ will long prevent his name from being forgotten by those who were unacquainted with his personal merits.
26th. All who are interested in German literature have by this time read the Characteristics of Goethe, either in the original, or as admirably translated by Mrs. Austin; but many who have no leisure or no inclination to look into publications of the kind, are anxious to be acquainted with whatever relates to their own professional or favourite pursuit: hence admirers of music will be pleased to meet with the following notices concerning Zelter, who was not long since made known to this country by a memoir of him, and an air, published in the Harmonicon.
The intimacy of Zelter with Goethe was of the closest kind, as will appear from the following extract of a letter to Mrs. Austin from Prince Pückler-Muskau, dated June 25th, 1832. He says, ‘The celebrated composer Zelter, one of Goethe’s most intimate friends, has died at Berlin, literally of Goethe’s death. They wrote to each other regularly every week (the correspondence will soon be published). Zelter was in perfect health. But the first Saturday (the day on which he used to receive his letters) after Goethe’s death, he became dejected and silent: the second found him ill; and on the third, death softly led him to rejoin his immortal friend.’
The great poet mentions his early acquaintance with his friend,—who was divided between that which was then his profession, and that which he wished it to be—in the following energetic language:—‘With Zelter, too, my connexion became nearer; during his fortnight’s visit we had mutually become much more intimate, in both an artistical and moral sense. He found himself in a strange dilemma between a business[88] which he had inherited, exercised from youth up, and mastered, and which secured to him a maintenance, and an innate, powerful, resistless passion for art, which unfolded the whole riches of the world of sound out of his own soul,—carrying on the one, carried along by the other,—possessing in the one an acquired dexterity, in the other striving after a dexterity yet to be acquired: he stood not, like Hercules, on the boundary between what was to be embraced and what to be shunned; but he was drawn hither and thither by two muses equally worthy of his homage; one of whom had already possession of him, the other wished to win him to herself. With his honest, sturdy, citizen-like earnestness, he was as much impressed with the necessity of moral culture as that is akin to, nay, embodied with, æsthetic—and the existence of perfection in the one, and not in the other, is not to be thought of.’—(Tag-und-Jahres Hefte, 1803.)
The correspondence of these two friends, which it is supposed will occupy many volumes, is preparing for the press, and anxiously expected by the lovers of genius, who, in Germany, may be said to include nearly all the adult population.
August 5th. In a work just published, under the title of—‘Exposition of the False Medium excluding Men of Genius from the Public,’ is a direct charge against the musical manager of a theatre, which, if not met by a contradiction, will certainly be believed, and not much to the glory of the party concerned. If true, the only apology to be offered is, that this is the true country of Mammon; nowhere is pelf so eagerly grasped at; notwithstanding which, nowhere are so ostentatiously displayed the outward signs of a religion which makes the contempt of riches, or in fact downright poverty, the condition on which future happiness is to depend.