From the Alwinac: More Cello Verses: Sonnets and Songs

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


As on most days, today I was answering the ever-present question of “who WAS that cellist?” when my query results led me off in another direction. I had started off looking for details on the career of Mario Blodeck, a Prague-trained cellist who tried to popularize the viola da gamba in the US during the 1890s. He had played in the Vienna opera, alongside David Popper’s younger brother Wilhelm, and at about the time that Blodeck was perfecting his gamba performances with the help of an anachronistic endpin and cello bow, Baltimore-born cellist (and later Musical Courier president) Louis Blumenberg was in Austria, browsing through a Vienna music store when Wilhelm Popper walked in and recognized him as the boy who lent him a cello when Wilhelm was performing in Baltimore back in the 1870s. (Wilhelm’s cello had been damaged in a “railroad incident.”)

Francis Saltus Saltus (1849-1889)

    This got me thinking about Blumenberg (on a different day it would have got me thinking again about Wilhelm Popper), which led me to a sonnet by Francis Saltus Saltus (1849-1889), who I learned is like a “minor Poe” in terms of style and quality. Dated December 11, 1884, the sonnet is titled “To Louis Blumenberg, Violoncellist,” and appears in the 1890 collection Shadows and Ideals.

The soul that lingers in the silent strings

        Rises in rhythmic magic by thy hand,
        A tuneful vassal e’ver at thy command,
A soul invisible that weeps or sings….

_______________
Read on….

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