1.
Dost thou remember one morning last summer, Charley and I were walking
in the upper part of the yard, before breakfast, and saw a swarm of gnats,
of whose strange evolutions we did relate to thee a marvelous tale?
I have put the grave oaks, the quiet shade, the sudden sunlight,
the fantastic, contrariwise, and ever-shifting midge movements,
the sweet hills afar off, . . . all in the piece, and thus -I- like it;
but I know not if others will, I have not played it for anybody."*
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* `Letters', p. 98.
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During this winter and the succeeding one Lanier gave
almost his entire time to music. He practiced assiduously,
took every opportunity to play with the best musicians,
-- both those of his own orchestra and of Theodore Thomas's, -- and often
spent evenings with three or four of the choicest spirits he could command.
Hamerik was of special inspiration to him, bringing to him as he did
much of the spirit of music that prevailed in German cities.
Lanier studied the technique of the flute, mastering his new silver Boehm,
which "begins to feel me," he writes. "How much I have learned
in the last two months!" he exclaims. "I am not yet an artist, though,
on the flute. The technique of the instrument has many depths
which I had not thought of before, and I would not call myself a virtuoso
within a year." He suffers agony because he does not attain
a point in harmony which the audience did not notice. Writing of
the temptation of flute soloists, he once said: "They have rarely been able
to resist the fatal facility of the instrument, and have usually
addressed themselves to winning the applause of concert audiences
by the execution of those brilliant but utterly trifling and inane variations
which constitute the great body of existing solos for the flute.
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