What Dreams May Come
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. THE OVERTURE. Constantinople; the month of August; the early days of the century. It was the hour of the city's most perfect beauty. The sun was setting, and flung a mellowing glow over the great golden domes and minarets of the mosques, the bazaars glittering with trifles and precious with elements of Oriental luxury, the tortuous thoroughfares with their motley throng, the quiet streets with their latticed windows, and their atmosphere heavy with silence and mystery, the palaces whose cupolas and towers had watched over so many centuries of luxury and intrigue, pleasure and crime, the pavilions, groves, gardens, kiosks which swarmed with the luxuriance of tropical growth over the hills and valleys of a city so vast and so beautiful that it tired the brain and fatigued the senses. Scutari, purple and green and gold, blended in the dying light into exquisite harmony of color; Stamboul gathered deeper gloom under her overhanging balconies, behind which lay hidden the loveliest of her women; and in the deserted gardens of the Old Seraglio, beneath the heavy pall of the cypresses, memories of a
that is as much as I could expect at a Birmingham Musical Festival. It
was somewhat unfortunate that in 1885 there were too many new works. No
less than seven original compositions were included in the scheme, and
they killed each other. The musical public will not swallow and cannot
digest too much new music, consequently they would not make a good, fair
musical meal off any of the new dishes so liberally provided, with the
result that most of them went into the larder after just; being tasted
and no more. Some of them--even mine--are at times brought out, smelt,
turned over, and looked at, but as I have hinted, none, not even those
by Gounod, Dvorak, and Cowen, have become standing dishes in constant
request at musical feasts.
Speaking generally, many splendid compositions seem to have missed fire
through sheer bad luck. To go no further than Sir Arthur Sullivan, some
of his finest and most important works have had an ill-starred
existence, and even several of his best songs, though introduced to the
public under the most favourable auspices, have not "taken on."
Sullivan's splendid ditty "Love laid his sleepless head," though sung by
Mr. Edward Lloyd all over the country, did not make a hit, whilst the
more trivial ballad "Sweet-hearts" became a boom and a property. At
least, I remember being told that after Sullivan had been receiving good
royalties from this song for years, the publishers offered him L1,000
for his rights.
I am afraid I have been guilty of a digression, but I will recall my
wandering steps. I have mentioned the Birmingham Festival of 1885, which
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. THE OVERTURE. Constantinople; the month of August; the early days of the century. It was the hour of the city's most perfect beauty. The sun was setting, and flung a mellowing glow over the great golden domes and minarets of the mosques, the bazaars glittering with trifles and precious with elements of Oriental luxury, the tortuous thoroughfares with their motley throng, the quiet streets with their latticed windows, and their atmosphere heavy with silence and mystery, the palaces whose cupolas and towers had watched over so many centuries of luxury and intrigue, pleasure and crime, the pavilions, groves, gardens, kiosks which swarmed with the luxuriance of tropical growth over the hills and valleys of a city so vast and so beautiful that it tired the brain and fatigued the senses. Scutari, purple and green and gold, blended in the dying light into exquisite harmony of color; Stamboul gathered deeper gloom under her overhanging balconies, behind which lay hidden the loveliest of her women; and in the deserted gardens of the Old Seraglio, beneath the heavy pall of the cypresses, memories of a