



Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: W. S. B. MATHEWS.]





THE

MASTERS AND THEIR MUSIC



  A SERIES OF ILLUSTRATIVE PROGRAMS, WITH
  BIOGRAPHICAL, ESTHETICAL, AND
  CRITICAL ANNOTATIONS



  DESIGNED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO
  MUSIC AS LITERATURE



  FOR THE USE OF CLUBS, CLASSES, AND
  PRIVATE STUDY



BY

W. S. B. MATHEWS


Author of "How to Understand Music," "A Popular History of Music,"
"Music: Its Ideals and Methods," "Studies in Phrasing," "Standard
Grades," Etc., Etc.




Philadelphia

Theodore Presser

1708 Chestnut Str.




COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY THEO. PRESSER




PREFACE.

When a musical student begins to think of music as a literature and to
inquire about individualities of style and musical expression, it is
necessary for him to come as soon as possible to the fountainheads of
this literature in the works of a few great masters who have set the
pace and established the limits for all the rest.  In the line of
purely instrumental music this has been done by Bach, Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner.  The
latter, who exercised a vast influence upon the manner of developing a
musical thought and in the selection of the orchestral colors in which
it can be expressed advantageously, powerfully stimulated all composers
later than himself, nevertheless exerted this influence at second-hand,
so to say, never having written purely instrumental movements, but
merely dramatic accompaniments of one