Music And Manners In France And Germany

Henry Fothergill Chorley

Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years. This three-volume book, published in 1841, originated in a journal written by Chorley while travelling in Europe. His aim was to ‘illustrate the present state of theatrical, orchestral, and chamber music abroad’, focusing on aspects that would be least familiar to an English readership. There are detailed accounts of Paris and Berlin, with prominence given to opera, theatre, art galleries and monuments. Chorley also describes visits to Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden and Nuremburg, and performances by artists including Mendelssohn and Liszt. He intersperses anecdotes about transport, lodgings, landscapes and local customs. Chorley’s incisive and entertaining eyewitness accounts will fascinate music-lovers and theatre historians, as well as others interested in the performing arts or travel writing in the nineteenth-century. Volume 2 describes his visits to the Harz mountains and Berlin.

Bibliographic Details

Contents

• Part I. Three Days in the Harz Country: 1. A night on the Brocken
• 2. Rubeland
• 3. The ross-trappe
• Part II. Glimpses of Berlin: 1. First impressions
• 2. The court and the opera
• 3. Specimens of German nationality
• 4. Morning hours
• 5. A letter to a lady
• 6. Quartetts and amateurs
• 7. A Gluck pilgrimage
• Part III. Parisian authorities: 1. French critics – the journalists.