Front Matter

Preface

Following the plan of his previous volume of Great Authors,  the writer has here endeavore to weave into more or less story form a few of the facts and incidents in the lives of some great musicians. It is hoped that young readers—and especially those to whom music is a subject of study—will take a greater interest in some of the masterpieces of composition when they have learnt something about the composers themselves, and the circumstances under which they wrote.

The author desires to express his acknowledgments for the assistance he has derived from the following works:

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians;  Bitter's Life of Sebastian Bach  (translated by J. E. Kay-Shuttleworth); Rockstro's Life of George Frederick Handel;  Williams's "Handel" in The Master Musicians;  Townsend's "Haydn" in The Great Musicians;  Jahn's W. A. Mozart  (translated by P. D. Townsend); Schindler's Life of Beethoven;  Nohl's Life of Beethoven;  von Hellborn's Franz Schubert  (translated by A. D. Coleridge); Benedict's Sketch of the Life and Works of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy;  Hensel's The Mendelssohn Family;  Hiller's Mendelssohn: Letters and Recollections;  Devrient's Recollections of F. M. Bartholdy  (translated by C. N. Macfarren).