The Mass in D
gives several instances where this idea is presented, not by harp (the
customary way), but as Wagner has done in Lohengrin, by the violins and
wood-winds in the highest register, beginning pianissimo, gradually
descending and augmenting in volume and sonority as the picturing merges
from spiritual to worldly concerns. Beethoven's work abounds in
intellectual subtleties of this kind. Wagner is sometimes credited with
having originated this method for the portrayal of celestial music. Mr.
Louis C. Elson says: "Wagner, alone, of all the great masters, does not
use the harp for celestial tone coloring, but violins and wood-winds, in
prolonged notes in the highest positions. Schumann, Berlioz,
Saint-Saens, in fact all the modern tone colorists who have given
celestial pictures, use the harp in them, purely because of the
association of ideas which come to us from the Scriptures, and this
association of the harp with heaven and the angels, only came about
because the instrument was the most developed possessed by man at the
time the sacred book was written.
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