The tragedies of Shakespeare were occasionally produced, special
prominence, however, being given to the works of the great Germans,
Lessing, Schiller and other philosophers and poets of the Fatherland,
the exalted sentiments and pure intellectuality of which are unmatched
by any people. This early acquaintance with the best literature of his
time gave him an intellectual bias which served him well all his life.
It is fortunate that his opportunity came so early in life, when the
activity of the brain is at its highest and when lasting impressions are
produced. The mental pictures called up by the portrayal of these
tragedies came to the surface again in after years sublimated, refined,
in symphony and sonata, in mass and opera. Every one of his works has
its own story to tell; sometimes it is just the record of the events of
a day as in the Pastoral Symphony, but told with a glamour of poetry and
romance, that for the time gives us back our own youth in listening to
it; sometimes it is a tragedy which is unfolded, as in the Appassionata
Sonata or the Fifth Symphony; or it will be a Coriolanus Overture, that
seething, boiling ferment of emotion and passion, the most diverse,
contradictory, unlike, that can be imagined.
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