Amorevoli. Hïller would sit up all night to
copy Hasse's scores. Probably he was the best
singing-master Germany ever produced, from
having imbibed Italian traditions; certain it
is, that he formed the greatest German singer
of whom history makes mention—Mara. His
compositions, however, have perished utterly; it
may be owing to their want of style. A few
years later than Hïller, was born that fertile,
versatile, and ingenious musician, Ditters, who
figures in musical dictionaries as Ditters von
Dittersdorff, and whose "Doctor and Apothecary,"
and "Little Red Riding Hood," still
appear in the theatres of Germany from time
to time. Born at Vienna in 1739, Ditters
entered his musical career as a violinist, and
by a solo wliich he played in a church service,
attracted the notice of the Prince of Hildburghausen,
who took charge of his musical education.
When this was complete, young Ditters
entered the opera orchestra at Vienna, and
there was fortunate enough to gain the favour
of Metastasio and of Gluck; who, it is worth
noting, by way of assisting the career of a
German musician, took him into Italy. There, too,
Ditters had the good luck, or good talent, rather,
to make himself friends. One day, after playing
his best, he was surprised by an anonymous
letter of compliments and thanks;—and, what
was better, a very rich watch. They came, he
afterwards learned, from the princely soprano,
Farinelli. Later, again, we find Ditters passing
through the hands of Joseph Haydn, probably
the best master of composition among the great
composers who ever existed: seeing that, for the
most part, poets can do little in the way of
teaching the art of poetry.

The first essays of Ditters in composition
were anything but comical, four stout oratorios
written for the Bishop of Grosswardein, in
Hungary—Isaac, David, Job, and Esther. It
is evident, from these, that he was more solid
and dreamy than one of those light-hearted and
slightly-read Italians who, in their day, made such
capital musical buffoonery,—and, further, the list
of his compositions (many of which were written
to Italian words) includes an Ossianic song, also
fifteen grand symphonies on the subject of Ovid's
Metamorphoses—a foreshadowing of the
romantic and transcendental productions in which
Germany has since proved so rich. He could also
write criticisms and essays, and left behind him
memoirs of his life, which are said to be amusing.
But his industry, his popularity, and his patronage,
could not save him. He quarrelled with
his great friends—conceived himself elbowed
out of his place by the success of Mozart, fell
sick and into want, and died under the roof of
a charitable Bohemian baron, soured and worn
out. "What I know of the music of Von Dittersdorf,
however, has never seemed to me comic, so
much as slight and neatly made. In truth, the
element of fun, among our cousins German, seems
spare and rare, as compared with the farce of
Italy and the wit of France, especially in music.
In his operas, Mozart only displays it in the part
of Osmin in " Die Eutführung" ("the Seraglio"),
and in the bird man and woman in "Die
Zauberflöte"—whimsical as Mozart could be in
his catches and chamber music. It would be hard
to name a national German play which we
English could accept as comedy of more modern
date than Kotzebue's time. That writer had in him
the true spirit of mirth and satire, besides great
fertility of invention. But Kotzebue's is a name
from which every earnest intense German
patriot turns with aversion. To go back to
music—the pieces found delightful in the
popular theatres of licentious, laughing, vacant
Vienna, even those with tunes composed and
selected for them by Wenzel Müller, are dead
and dreary as compared with the contemporary
vaudevilles of France. If there be anything
beyond mere theory spinning in the above
speculation, Von Dittersdorf is better
characterised as a son of the soil by his mystical
Ovid symphonies than by the correct yet
colourless music of his little comedies—the
precursors of the yet milder mirth of Conradin
Kreutzer and Lortzing.

One of the few genuine bits of German musical
stage fun that could be named, and one of the
most genuine in being, is the Pedlar's song in
Mendelssohn's operetta, known in England as
"Son and Stranger." But he was full of real
merriment, perhaps in part, because he had Italian
blood in his veins. It was among his many
unfulfilled plans, cut short by early death, to write
an opera based on Shakespeare's Winter's Tale;
and, in a letter on the subject which exists, besides
due regard to the interests of Hermione and
Perdita, an anxious wish is expressed that
Autolycus shall be well seen after.

Here chronological boundaries have been
broken, in order completely to trace as among
outlines the small amount of indigenous gaiety to
be found in German opera music, from the
moment at least when it began to take a special
place of its own, and to cease from having what
may be called a cosmopolitan existence, largely
tinctured by Italian and French inspirations.
From that moment, a disposition to be thoughtful,
sentimental, dreamy, began to make itself
increasingly felt, pertinently aided by the development
of another expressive power than that of
the voice—to wit, the orchestra—in support of
the singer and in suggestion of the situation.

The birth of this may be seen in the experiments
and combinations of Sebastian Bach,
curious in the extent of their complication and
variety, entirely in advance of their time in their
difficulty, yet now largely obsolete, because of
the changes in the facture of instruments. Many
of those Bach employed are superseded by
modern inventions and improvements—and only
exist in museums; some, as the trumpets, are
matters of antiquarian dispute. There is nothing
analogous in point of science or intricacy in
contemporary French or Italian instrumental
music. On the other hand, we have seen that
Bach was not above being pleased with "the
pretty Dresden songs." He was willing to
appropriate the best things of every style, as a
real, royal man of genius will do. French