Handel’s work in Opera, especially in England, will make an interesting study for a short paper to be read before the class by some member of it.
Gluck’s career is full of interest and incident and his growth is clearly a matter of experience. A pupil can, to advantage, study his life in some biography or in Grove’s Dictionary and present an abstract to the class.
In what respects did Mozart’s and Beethoven’s operas show differences from the conventional Italian form?
A study of Rossini’s life and works is full of interest, on account of his strong personality and striking characteristics.
What is “Passion Music”? Why is it specially suited to the German Protestant Church?
Compare Handel’s, Haydn’s, Spohr’s and Mendelssohn’s work in Oratorio.
Excellent results will be obtained by having pupils prepare charts which are filled up from lesson to lesson. Take a large sheet of paper, divide it into columns, each column into quarter sections, each column representing a century, each section, twenty-five years. Add dates of birth and death of the great musicians, marking each name I, F, G, to show nationality (Italian, French, German, etc.). Another chart should show the various national schools, France, Germany, Italy, etc., by centuries and quarter centuries; another the development of such phases as opera, oratorio, singing, sonata, etc.
A very valuable chart is one showing contemporaries, in musical and general history, also parallel events, for example, the musicians who lived in a certain century, famous kings, statesmen, explorers, poets, scientists, discoveries (such as America, printing, etc.), famous battles, events in Biblical and American history, and other political events of the same century. Credit should be given in class standing for these charts.
LESSON XXV.
The Evolution of the Pianoforte.
While the violin, on account of the simplicity of its construction, arrived early at a stage of perfection, the complicated mechanism of the pianoforte required many generations and many scores of more or less successful experiments to attain anything like a corresponding plane. Indeed, such experiments are still constantly in progress; so that the pianoforte of the future may conceivably realize possibilities as far ahead of the present piano as that is ahead of its predecessors. The first attempts at piano manufacture, however, had little in common with our modern pianos, save the principle of the combination of the keyboard with strings; since in construction and resulting tone few points of similarity exist.