The Lure of Music Author:Olin Downes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GAETANO DONIZETTI A SCOTCHMAN left his bluebells and heather to seek fortune in the wars. His name was Izett, son of a weaver of Perthshire. He was soon captu... more »red by a French general, who made him his secretary and took him first to France and later to Italy. In Italy Izett became Izetti. Izetti settled and married. As a compliment, some say, to the lady, he prefixed the syllable "Don" to his name. But Fortune did not deal very kindly with this Donizetti. He ended his life in a basement in Bergamo, a little town in the north of Italy. In this place his grandson, Gaetano, a composer of genius, was born November 29, 1797. Writing of his birthplace to his teacher, Mayer, in a later year, he said, "I was born underground — Borge Cavale; you had to go down by the cellar stairs, where no light ever penetrated." Donizetti's father, a minor official at the Monte di Pieta, was paid by that civil institution a salary of about one hundred and ten dollars a year. The mother, in the intervals of her family duties, wove linen. Neither parent had any musical inclination, but one of Gae- tano's brothers became leader of the city band and ultimately concert-master for the seraglio of the Sultan in Constantinople. The other brother was a tailor whom Gaetano more than once helped in his shop. In this shop there worked also the celebrated tenor, Ru- bini, who was later to sing in operas composed by his fellow-workman, and who died a millionaire. Donizetti, whose bent was toward the arts, finallysucceeded in inducing his parents to send him to a school of music which had recently been opened in Bergamo by Simon Mayer. Mayer was an uncommonly practical and serious teacher, and Donizetti made such rapid progress under him, especially in singing and violin-playing, that a public subscription was ...« less