The Saunterer

Robert Louis Stevenson on seeing the first electric arc lights in London and Paris

    The Saunterer likes cranky but good-natured people. You may know the type from several PBS TV series: John Thaw playing in Inspector Morse, and Martin Clunes in Doc Martin. To this type we can now add Robert Louis Stevenson for his reaction to the introduction of electric arc lights:

    A new sort of urban star now shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly, obnoxious to the human eye; a lamp for a nightmare! Such a light as this should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten horror. To look at it only once is to fall in love with gas, which gives a warm domestic radiance fit to eat by. Mankind, you would have thought, might have remained content with what Prometheus stole for them and not gone fishing the profound heaven with kites to catch and domesticate the wildfire of the storm.

    (Quoted from page 105 of Brilliant: The evolution of artificial light, by Jane Brox. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, click here. For images of or relating to Robert Louis Stevenson, click here.
    For information about Jane Brox, click here. For images of or relating to Jane Brox, click here.

Maurice André on when musician and instrument are one

    French player of the piccolo trumpet –- smaller and pitched an octave above the standard B-flat trumpet –- Maurice André died last week. About him, William Benzon once wrote:

    Maurice André’s comment, that on occasion it felt like there was no trumpet, suggests unimpeded ease of execution and the complete assimilation of the trumpet to his mind and body.

    (Quoted from page 145 of Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in mind and culture, by William Benzon. Basic Books, 2001.)
    For two minutes of Maurice André playing in Telemann’s Sonata in D, click here.
    For a brief biography of Maurice André, click here. For images of or relating to Maurice André, click here.
    For information about William Benzon, click here. For images of or relating to William Benzon, click here.

Claude Debussy on second, third, and further acts in creative work

    This is how Claude Debussy describes it:

    I believe the principal fault of the majority of writers and artists is having neither the will nor the courage to break with their successes, failing to seek new paths and give birth to new ideas. Most of them reproduce them twice, three, even four times. They have neither the courage nor the temerity to leave what is certain for what is uncertain. There is, however, no greater pleasure than going into the depth of oneself, setting one’s whole being in motion and seeking for new and hidden treasures. What a joy to find something new within oneself, something that surprises even ourselves, filling us with warmth.

    (Quoted from page 239 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001)
    For a brief biography of Claude Debussy, click here. For images of or relating to Claude Debussy, click here.