THE LATE SIR GEORGE A. MACFARREN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1893, 2 March 1888, Page 31

THE LATE SIR GEORGE A. MACFARREN.

To those by whom he was known only in his later years the lamented professor and composer may have seemed the very incarnation of the practical, even of the prosaic. Keen observers must, however, hare drawn certain conclusions from the peculiarly ornate and fanciful style of his speech and writing. As a matter of fact, the departed musician was in youth, and before the great affliction of blindness fell upon him, a most imaginative and romantic individuality. He belonged to a small group of young and ardent men, each of whom afterwards rose to a certain eminence. The late Sterndale Bennett was one of these, and so was the late James William Davison. They had many amiable extravagances. They worshipped Shelley with the passionate fervour of devotees. They foreswore animal food, and many a time has that brilliant raconteur Davison delighted his friends by picturing Macfarren as the embarrassed recipient of a salmon, which nobody would take off his hands. They formed the most extraordinary plans for self-improvement, covering the whole range of knowledge, and allotting " ten minutes per week for Persian." Then, too, when the tender passion urged them, as it mostly did, in the direction of inaccessible objects, the youths would condolingly go in company to the shrine of each one's beloved, and derive what consolation was obtainable by an outer court worshipper. It may have been this early romanticism and force of sentiment which impelled Macfarren towards the lyric stage, where he strenuously endeavoured to establish himself. His energy for work was unceasing and all the more remarkable, as he laboured from an early age under an impaired eyesight which soon terminated in total blindness, But nature in his case, as in. those

of Handel and of Bach, made up for the loss of one sense by the increased efficiency of another. Few musicians equalled him in the acuteness of hearing which detected every wrong note and every grammatical error in the composition of a pupil, and which, combined with a marvellous memory, enabled him to dictate the elaborate scores of his oratorios and other works without hesitation. Deprivation of sight no more affected him than it did the late Professor Fawcett, with whom Macfarren had characteristics in common. The affliction made his labour slower, more tedious, and much more difficult, but his resources of patience and energy were equal to the strain. Macfarren had his share 'of the keen disappointment which most gifted men know too well. He saw his operas relegated to obscurity, and his oratorios and symphonies —all the greater things upon which he would have rested his fame— treated with comparative indifference. But there were compensations, such as came to him when he succeeded his old friend and whilom boon companion, Sterndale Bennett, as professor at Cambridge and as principal at Tenterden street ; and when in 1883 he received from his sovereign the honour of knighthood. Certain it is that by dutiful consecration of large gifts and great learning, by unswerving fidelity to the best interests of art, entirely free from the striving for popularity at any price, by a noble patience and sublime superiority to physical affliction, he earned the profound respect; of his contemporaries.