In one of these airy structures, he
confessed, he could write more in ten days than he could in his
apartments in two months.
Berlioz relates somewhere that the musical ideas for his "Faust" came
to him unbidden during his rambles among Italian hills. Weber's
melodies are so much like fragrant forest flowers that one feels sure
before being told that he came across them in the woods and fields.
His famous pupil, Sir Julius Benedict, relates that Weber took as
great delight in taking his friends to see his favorite bits of
landscape, as he did in composing a fine piece of music; and he adds
that "this love of nature, and principally of forest life, may explain
his predilection, in the majority of his operas, for hunting choruses
and romantic scenery."
Richard Wagner conceived most of his vigorous and eloquent leading
melodies during his rambles among the picturesque environs of
Bayreuth, or the sublime snowpeaks of Switzerland. How he elaborated
them we shall see later on. Of Beethoven's devotion to nature many
curious anecdotes are told by his contemporaries. A harp manufacturer
named Stumpff met him in 1823 and wrote an account of his visit in
"The Harmonicon," a London journal, in which occurs this passage:
"Beethoven is a capital walker and delights in rambling for hours
through wild, romantic scenery.
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