Amy Fay - Music-Study in Germany, from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay

It really seems almost as difficult to get a great teacher in Europe as in America. Tausig is the only celebrity who teaches, and now he has given up. He rather advised my taking lessons of Bendel, who is a resident artist here, and a pupil of Liszt's.

I suffered terribly over Tausig's going off. I heard of it first two weeks ago, and couldn't sleep or anything. The only consolation I bare is that I should have been "worn to the bone," as H. C. says, if I had kept on with him, for all his pupils except little Timanoff, who is at the age of plump fifteen, look as thin as rails. However – "the bitterness of death is past!" When one is stopped off in one direction, there is nothing for it but to turn in another. But it seems as if the more one tried to accomplish a thing, the thicker hindrances and difficulties spring up about one, like the dragon's teeth. I suppose I shall end by going to Kullak. He used to be court pianist here before Tausig and has had immense experience as a teacher. Indeed, Professor J. K. Paine recommended me to go to him in the first place, you remember. If I do, I hope I shall have a better fate than poor young N., whom, also, Professor Paine recommended to go to Kullak. He could not stand – or else under stand the snubbing and brow-beating they gave him in Kullak's conservatory, and from being deeply melancholy over it, he got desperate, and actually committed suicide!

Germans cannot understand blueness. They are never blue themselves, and they expect you always to preserve your equanimity, and torment you to death to know "what is the matter?" when there is nothing the matter, except that you are in a state of disgust with everything. Moods are utterly incomprehensible to them. They feel just the same every day in the year.

I suppose that C. has described to you in full our Dresden visit, and what a lovely time we had. It was really a poetic five days, as everything was new to both of us. We were a good deal surprised at many things in Dresden. In the first place, the beauty of the city struck us very forcibly, and we both remarked how singular it was that of all the people we know who have been there no one should have spoken of it. The Brühl'sche Terrasse is the most lovely promenade imaginable. It runs along the bank of the Elbe River, which is here quite broad and handsome, and I always felt myself under a species of enchantment as soon as we had ascended the broad flight of steps that lead to it. We always took tea in the open air, and listened to a band of music playing. The Germans just live in the open air in summer, and it is perfectly fascinating. They have these gardens everywhere, filled with trees, under which are little tables and chairs and footstools; and there you can sit and have dinner or tea served up to you. At night they are all lighted up with gas.

It seemed like fairy land, as we sat there in Dresden. The evenings were soft and balmy, the very perfection of summer weather. The terrace is quite high above the river, and you look up and down it for a long distance. The city lies to the left, below you, and the towers rise so prettily – precisely as in a picture. This air of the culture of centuries lies over everything, and the soft and lazy atmosphere lulls the soul to rest. We used to walk until we came to the Belvidere, which is a large restaurant with a gallery up-stairs running all round it. There was a band of music, and here we sat and took our tea, and spent two or three hours, always. The moonlight, the river flowing along and spanned with beautiful bridges, the thousands of lamps reflected in it and trembling across the water and under the arches, the infinity of little steamers and wherries sailing to and fro and brilliantly lighted up, the music, and the throngs of people passing slowly by, put one into a delicious and bewildered sort of state, and one feels as if this world were heaven!

The day after we arrived we went, of course, to the picture gallery, and here I was entirely taken by surprise. Nothing one reads or hears gives one the least idea of the magnificence of the pictures there. I never knew what a picture was before. The softness and richness of the colouring, and their exquisite beauty, must be seen to be understood. The Sistine Madonna fills one with rapture. It is perfectly glorious, and one can't imagine how the mind of man could have conceived it. One sees what a flight it was after looking at all the other Madonnas in the Gallery, many of which are wonderful. But this one soars above them all. Most of the Madonnas look so stiff, or so old, or so matronly, or so expressionless, or, at best, as in Corregio's Adoration of the Shepherds (a magnificent picture), the rapture of the mother only is expressed in the face. In the Sistine Madonna the virgin looks so young and innocent – so virgin-like – not like a middle-aged married woman. The large, wide-open blue eyes have a dewy look in them, as if they had wept many tears, and yet such an innocence that it makes you think of a baby whom you have comforted after a violent fit of crying. The majesty of the attitude, and the perfect repose of the face, upon which is a look of waiting

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This was written before the full development of the Thomas Orchestra. The writer had heard it only in its infancy.

Christ is risen out of bonds and death. He promises joy and blessing to all the world, which for this glorifies Him.