He liked Rabelais, and was
very partial to Claude Tillier, the French novelist of the provinces,
whose _Oncle Benjamin_ has given pleasure to so many German provincial
families, by bringing before them, as Wolf said, the vision of their own
little world, and helping them by his own jovial good humour to bear
their troubles with a smiling face. And so little Wolf, with hardly
enough to eat, found the means of learning both French and English, in
order better to appreciate the thoughts of foreign artists.
In music he learned a great deal from his friend Schalk,[184] a
professor at the Vienna Conservatoire; but, like Berlioz, he got most of
his education from the libraries, and spent months in reading the scores
of the great masters. Not having a piano, he used to carry Beethoven's
sonatas to the Prater Park in Vienna and study them on a bench in the
open air. He soaked himself in the classics--in Bach and Beethoven, and
the German masters of the _Lied_--Schubert and Schumann. He was one of
the young Germans who was passionately fond of Berlioz; and it is due to
Wolf that France was afterwards honoured in the possession of this great
artist, whom French critics, whether of the school of Meyerbeer, Wagner,
Franck, or Debussy, have never understood.
Pages:
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235