104.

Paris, May 29, 1778.

I am pretty well, thank God! but still I am often puzzled to know what to make of it all.  I feel neither hot nor cold, and don’t take much pleasure in anything.  What, however, cheers and strengthens me most is the thought that you, dearest papa, and my dear sister, are well; that I am an honest German, and though I cannot say, I may at all events think what I please, and, after all, that is the chief thing.  Yesterday I was for the second time at Count Sickingen’s, ambassador from the Elector Palatine; (I dined there once before with Wendling and Ramm.) I don’t know whether I told you what a charming man he is, and a great connoisseur and devoted lover of music.  I passed eight hours quite alone with him.  The whole forenoon, and afternoon too, till ten o’clock at night, we were at the piano, playing all kind of music, praising, admiring, analyzing, discussing, and criticizing.  He has nearly thirty scores of operas.  I must not forget to tell you that I had the satisfaction of seeing your “School for the Violin” translated into French; I believe it is about eight years since the translation appeared.  I have just returned from a music-shop where I went to buy a sonata of Schobert’s for one of my pupils, and I mean to go again soon to examine the book more closely, that I may write to you about it minutely, for to-day I have not time to do this.

105.

Paris, June 12, 1778.

I must now write something that concerns our Raaff. [Footnote:  Mozart wrote the part of Idomeneo for Raaff in the year 1781.] You no doubt remember that I did not write much in his favor from Mannheim, and was by no means satisfied with his singing—­in short, that he did not please me at all.  The cause, however, was that I can scarcely say I really heard him at Mannheim.  The first time was at the rehearsal of Holzbauer’s “Gunther,” when he was in his every-day clothes, his hat on his head, and a stick in his hand.  When he was not singing, he stood looking like a sulky child.  When he began to sing the first recitative, it went tolerably well, but every now and then he gave a kind of shriek, which I could not bear.  He sang the arias in a most indolent way, and yet some of the notes with too much emphasis, which is not what I like.  This has been an invariable habit of his, which the Bernacchi school probably entails; for he is a pupil of Bernacchi’s.  At court, too, he used to sing all kinds of airs which, in my opinion, by no means suited his voice; so he did not at all please me.  When at length he made his debut here in the Concert Spirituel, he sang Bach’s scena, “Non so d’ onde viene” which is, besides, my great favorite, and then for the first time I really heard him sing, and he pleased me—­that is, in this class of music; but the style itself, the Bernacchi school, is not to my taste.  He is too apt to fall into the cantabile.  I admit that, when he was younger and in his prime, this must have