QUEEN VICTORIA AS A VOCALIST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1514, 7 March 1901, Page 16

QUEEN VICTORIA AS A VOCALIST.

Mr Frederick J. Crowest, in an article in the December “Sunday Maga'ine,” gives some interesting particulars of the late Queen’s love for music. Mendelssohn was at Buckingham Palace in 1812, and of course tliere v* as music. A favourite song of the Queen’s* was “Italy,” which appeared in Mendelssohn’s first book of songs. “She sang it most beautifully in tune, strictly in time, and phrased it charmingly,” Mendelssohn has told us; “but where it goes down to D natural, followed hv D sharp, she sang both notes D sharp! With this exception its was really delightful, and I have not heard the last long G sung by any amateur with such ease and in such perfect time.’’ On Mendelssohn on the same occasion pressing her Majesty to sing one of his own songs, the Queen said that “if I would give her plenty of help she would willingly do so.’’ Just as she was about to sing she exclaimed, “But the parrot must go out of the room first, or lie’ will screech louder than I can sing.” “She sang r The Pilgrim’s Song,’ ” continues Mendelssohn, “really quite faultlessly, 'and with beautiful feeling and expression. I praised her very heartily and with the best conscience in the world, for that phrase near the end having the long-sustained C she sang so well, joining the C to the three following notes—all in one breath, as one rarely hears it done—that it highly amused me that she herself should have spoken about the very long breath it required.” “Oh! if I had not been so frightened!” said the Queen.