Victorian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Victorian Era’
The extraordinary productivity and social mobility of the Victorian era is to the credit not of the governing class, but of the working man.
Samuel Smiles inspired millions of ordinary workers to achieve their dreams. In this passage, he urges them to rely on their own strength of character rather than on the State’s empty promises.
The blessing of trade free from political interference was one of most important insights in British, indeed world history.
In his day, Richard Cobden (1804-1865) was regarded as Britain’s answer to Karl Marx. Where Marxism stands for State control, bloody violence and political oppression, Cobden showed that the free market led to prosperity through peace, cooperation, and freedom.
Moscheles taught his adopted country how to write enchanting music for decades to come.
Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) was a Czech composer who came to England in the 1820s and instantly felt at home. England warmed just as quickly to him, and he became a kind of godfather to a generation of Victorian composers writing particularly tuneful music.
As the storm raged around him, raindrops fell like music on the pianist’s heart.
In 1838, Chopin and Georges Sand (a lady whose real name was Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) stayed at a Carthusian monastery in Valldemossa, Mallorca. While seated at the piano during a storm, Sand tells us, Chopin experienced a disturbing dream.
A Scottish widow’s lullaby for her fatherless child inspired his music, but Brahms’s message struck closer to home.
Johannes Brahms never came to Britain, apparently because he was so idolised here that the modest composer found every excuse to avoid it. Nonetheless his ‘Three Intermezzi’ Op. 117 were inspired by a Scottish folksong, and are a reflection on his complex relationship with Clara Schumann and her children, whom he supported financially and emotionally after Clara’s husband (and Brahms’s friend) Robert was taken from them.