| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: melody, exquisitely sweet, a perfect harmony, disturbed only by
revolutions independent of the divine will, as passions are
uncontrolled by the will of men.
"I, therefore, had to seek a vast framework in which effect and cause
might both be included; for the aim of my music is to give a picture
of the life of nations from the loftiest point of view. My opera, for
which I myself wrote the /libretto/, for a poet would never have fully
developed the subject, is the life of Mahomet,--a figure in whom the
magic of Sabaeanism combined with the Oriental poetry of the Hebrew
Scriptures to result in one of the greatest human epics, the Arab
dominion. Mahomet certainly derived from the Hebrews the idea of a
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: might, in diligent prayer and crying to God, all the best gifts
for you and for your see. But those who have hitherto endeavoured
to terrify me with the majesty of your name and authority, I have
begun quite to despise and triumph over. One thing I see
remaining which I cannot despise, and this has been the reason of
my writing anew to your Blessedness: namely, that I find that
blame is cast on me, and that it is imputed to me as a great
offence, that in my rashness I am judged to have spared not even
your person.
Now, to confess the truth openly, I am conscious that, whenever I
have had to mention your person, I have said nothing of you but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: found it more pleasant than diplomatic dinners usually. At the
English tables we meet people who know each other well, and have a
common culture and tastes and habits of familiarity, and a fund of
pleasant stories, but of course, at foreign tables, they neither
know each other or the English so well as to give the same easy flow
to conversation. I am afraid we are the greatest diners-out in
London, but we are brought into contact a great deal with the
literary and Parliamentary people, which our colleagues know little
about, as also with the clergy and the judges. I should not be
willing to make it the habit of my life, but it is time not misspent
during the years of our abode here. . . . The good old Archbishop of
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