Publisher's Synopsis
This volume is an attempt on the part of two industrious and thoughtful teachers to bring home to their young pupils the essential facts of musical history. They have sought to do this in the form of letters from the great composers, each of whom purports to give an account of his life and times, and of his artistic ideals as well, in the familiar form of a personal letter.
Naturally many difficulties arise in this form and method of treatment, the chief one being that of imparting to the alleged correspondence of the most formal and high minded of men a flavor of familiarity.
Quite a number of examples might be cited where the problem has been solved by drawing the line perhaps a trifle too low on the scale of the permissible; as, for instance, in the letter of John Sebastian Bach, who is made to write: ''I will tell you now about the fugue. The learned say that no one has written fugues like mine, uniting both mastery of the science and the poets thought." etc. But, perhaps, on the whole it is better to extend to the work an approval, if not unqualified, at least ample and cordial, its motive and the generally successful quality of the historical condensation here effected entitle the authors to the grateful remembrances of young students - not to say of older ones who may have the former in charge.
-Music, A Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3 [1893]
