"*
He fretted because "the flute had been the black beast in the orchestra."
With his mastery of its technique and his own marvelous ability
to bring new results from it, he looked forward to the time
when it would have a far more important place therein.
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 38.
--
Lanier played not only for the Peabody Orchestra, but for
the Germania Maennerchor Orchestra, -- one of the many companies of Germans
who did so much to develop music in different parts of the country, --
the Concordia Theatre, charity concerts, churches, and in private homes.
He was very popular in Baltimore. Most of the musicians were Germans,
but Lanier was an American and a Southerner, who had graces of manner
and goodness of soul. He was a close friend of the Baltimore musicians,
such as Madame Falk-Auerbach, a pupil of Rossini's and a teacher
in the Conservatory of Music, "a woman who plays Beethoven
with the large conception of a man, and yet nurses her children all day
with a noble simplicity of devotion such as I have rarely seen,"
said Lanier. Outside of musical circles he had access
to the homes of the most prominent people of Baltimore,
in which he frequently played the flute or piano, while members of the family
accompanied him. "Memory pictures," says one of his admirers,
"that frail, slender figure at the piano, touching with white, shapely hands
the chords of Chopin's `Nocturne'." "He was a frequent visitor to our house,"
says another, "and would often play for us on his beautiful silver flute.
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