human
Songs Without Words
gpt
Nineteenth Psalm, was performed shortly after his entry. In 1825 his father took him to Paris to consult Cherubini, as to his future. Cherubini offered to take him as a pupil, but his father preferred to bring him up in the musical atmosphere of his own home. There the boy perfected himself as a piano player and wrote a host of early compositions. The overture to
human
A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in 1826, when Mendelssohn was but seventeen years old. Two years later his first opera,
gpt
The Marriage of Camècho, was given at the Berlin Opera. In Berlin, Mendelssohn became the leading figure in the propaganda for the music of Bach. Having undertaken a journey to England, at the suggestion of Moscheles, he gave a series of concerts there, after which he travelled throughout Europe. It was at this time that he wrote his
human
Songs Without Words, and composed the overture,
gpt
A Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. After filling a musical directorship at Düsseldorf, he was summoned to conduct the orchestra of the Gewandhaus there. This proved an important turn in his career. In 1841, Frederick William IV. of Prussia invited him to Berlin, where he organized the famous Cathedral choir. Returning to Leipzig, he founded the musical conservatory in that city. The sudden death of his favorite sister, Fannie, gave him such a shock that he died within a few months after her. Mendelssohn exerted little influence as an operatic composer, but achieved the highest rank by such vocal compositions as the oratorios
human
St. Paul and
gpt
Elijah, and some of his beautiful songs, which have become folksongs. Of his orchestral pieces, the most famous are his concert overtures, such as that of the
human
Midsummer Night's Dream, or
gpt
Ruy Blas, and his
human
Funeral March. The most celebrated of his piano pieces are the popular
gpt
Songs Without Words, the
human
Wedding March and the brilliant
gpt
Rondo Capriccioso.
human
That exhibition was Marilhat's swan song, and the works he sent were eight diamonds. After Marilhat's death, some of his unfinished paintings commanded great prices. Thus his
gpt
Entrance to Jerusalem, at the Wertheimer sale at Paris in 1861, fetched 16,000 francs. Fifteen years later, at the Oppenheim sale in Paris, Marilhat's
human
Ruins Near Cairo brought no less than 29,000 francs. It was as a painter of Oriental subjects that Marilhat won his most lasting distinction. Having travelled to the East with Baron Hugel, he remained for many years in Egypt, painted portraits of the Khedive and decorated several of the buildings of Alexandria. In an obituary article published in the
gpt
Revue des Deux Mondes, Théophile Gautier wrote:
human
Marilhat was a Syrian Arab. He must have had in his veins some blood of the Saracens whom Charles Martel did not kill.... One of the glories of Marilhat was that he preserved his originality in presence of Decamps. The talents of these two men are parallel lines, it is true, but they do not touch each other. The more fruitful fancy of the one is balanced by the character in the works of the other.
gpt
Histoire des Girondins. Napoleonic traditions were revived by a series of events following the death of General Drouot. In September came the death of Marshal Oudinot, the hero of Bitche, Moorlautern, Trêves, Ingolstadt, Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Ostralenka, Friesland and Wagram. Oudinot was wounded innumerable times and was twice made a prisoner. He bore a prominent part throughout the Russian campaign and that of 1814. During the Hundred Days he remained in retirement. For this he was made Commander-in-chief of the National Guards under the Restoration, and passed through the campaign of Spain in 1823, when he captured Madrid. After his death, Marshal Soult, another veteran of the Napoleonic wars, succeeded him as general commander of the French army. Before this, Marshal Grouchy had likewise expired in his eighty-first year. He it was who was held responsible by Napoleon for the final crushing defeat at Waterloo. There he failed to support his chief, when Blücher came to the support of Wellington. To the end of his days, Grouchy insisted that Napoleon's orders to this effect never reached him, but it was held up against him that some of his officers on that occasion had vainly urged him to march on the sound of the cannons at Waterloo. On October 10, Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother and the quondam king of Westphalia, was permitted to return to France after an exile of thirty-two years. Late in the year, ex-Empress Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife, died at the age of fifty-six in Austria. Never beloved like her predecessor Josephine, she lost the esteem of all Frenchmen by her failure to stand by her husband after his downfall and exile to St. Helena, and by her subsequent liaison with her chamberlain, Neipperg, to whom she bore several children. Other events of lasting interest in France, during this year, were the opening of the great canal from Marseilles to Durano, the death of Duc de Polignac, who helped cause the downfall of his royal master Charles X., and the publication of Mérimée's
human
Carmen and of
gpt
Aventures de Quatre Femmes et d'un Perroquet,