Provincial Memories

Extract

What can I talk about that is likely to interest a scientific society such as the Musical Association? It is now twenty-six years since I was a practising musician, and I was never scientific. I have no business in a learned society, and certainly no claim to be addressing one. I can only speak about things I know, and have experienced, and remember. In my musical life I did not experience what you would call great things: my lines were laid in a pleasant but obscure place. Perhaps, however, it is true that the greatness of things is relative. The first hearing of a certain strain of music, even of a certain harmonic combination, may be for the hearer a psychological event. The first hearing of Schubert's C major Symphony may be as great an adventure to one man as the first ascent of the Matterhorn is to another, and a man may faint on catching his first salmon.