Story-Lives of Great Musicians

Story-Lives of Great Musicians

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Story-Lives of Great Musicians by Francis Jameson Rowbotham

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Story-Lives of Great Musicians

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Following the plan of his previous volume of Great Authors, the writer has here endeavoured to weave into more or less story form a few of the facts and incidents in the lives of some great musicians. It is hoped that young readers—and especially those to whom music is a subject of study—will take a greater interest in some of the masterpieces of composition when they have learnt something about the composers themselves, and the circumstances under which they wrote.

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he memory of the beautiful music he had copied with such infinite pains. This in itself must have been a resource of priceless value to him in helping him to bear with his brother's oppression.

A new life opened for Sebastian when, at the age of fifteen, he quitted his brother's roof and, with a school-fellow from Ohrdruff, entered the Michael Gymnasium, or Latin School, attached to the Church of St. Michael at Lüneburg. The discovery that he possessed a beautiful soprano voice gave him a place at once amongst those scholars who were selected to sing the principal parts in the Church services in return for a free education. Lüneburg possessed two schools, attached respectively to the Churches of St. Michael and St. John, and the rivalry between the two was so keen that when, as was the custom during the winter months, the scholars were sent out to sing in the streets in order to collect money for their support, the respective routes to be traversed had to be carefully marked out so a