Elsner. Intimate acquaintance with Bach. Prince Charming of the
piano. Liszt on Chopin. Raphael of music. Playing and teaching.
Tempo rubato. Compositions. Schumann's words. Oscar Bie.


Violins and Violinists--Fact and Fable 151

Volker the fiddler. Nibelungen lay. Videl of days of chivalry. Bow
fashioned like sword. Hagen of Tronje. Wilhelm Jordan, in
"Sigfridsage." Henrietta Sontag and the coming Paganini. Wagner's
Volker-Wilhelmj at Bayreuth. Magic fiddles and wonderworking
fiddlers. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Norse folk-lore. English nursery
rhymes. Crickets as fiddlers. Progenitors of violin. The violin of
Queen Elizabeth and her age. Shakespeare in Twelfth Night. Household
of Charles II. Butler, in Hudibras. Viola d'amore in Milwaukee, Wis.
Brescian and Cremonese violin-makers. Early violinists. Value and
history of some violins. Strings and bow. Violin virtuosi from
Corelli to our day. Mad rush for technique.


Queens of Song 183

Florentine lady, Vittoria Archilei. Embryo opera of Cavalieri.
Peri's "Eurydice." Euterpe. Marthe le Rochois and Lully's operas.
Rival queens in London. Steele, in "Tattler." Second pair of rivals,
Cuzzoni and Faustina. Master Handel. Germany's earliest queen of
song. Frederick the Great and German singers. Mrs. Billington. Haydn
and Sir Joshua Reynold's St. Cecilia. Mozart's operas introduced
into England. Catalani. Pasta. Sontag. Schröder-Devrient and
Goethe's "Erl King." Malibran a dazzling Meteor. Another daughter of