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Cromwell Argus, Volume VI, Issue 274, 9 February 1875, Page 7

The following paragraph will doubtless interest our musical readers. In the course of a sermon on miracles delivered by the Rev. T. M. Fraser, at the high Church, Geelong (as stated in the Advertiser), the rev. gentleman drew a comparison between the three great musical composers in the following words ;—" Has it never struck you that the miracles of scripture derive a certain hue or complexion from the character of the medium through which they passed, so that while all of them are divine in their origin, each bears the style of its human agent ? A practised ear, for instance, can easily recognise the style of the three great musical composers ; if it combines grand effects with great economy of tones, majesty with simplicity ; above all, if it rings the changes on notes of equal length, we know, though we have never heard the air before, that it must couie from Handel, the great master of counterpoint. If it abounds in rich, full chords, with an almost wasteful profusion of notes, in which melody is subordinated to harmony, and when wild, wierd long-diawnsounds cither lift you into heaven or plunge you into hell, yon feel instinctively that you are listening to Beethoven, the great master of harmony. Or if you listen to strains which I sweep the whole range of human feeling from the angelic to the devilish ; which soothe the feelings, yet rouse the passions ; which melt to tears, yet spur to fury ; which touch the heart strings with the levity of fairies' play, or clash, jar, trample them with the tread of armies in battle ; if, in short, you are swept along by swen voices, in which both harmony and melody exhaust their utmost resources, you know that you are entranced by the spell of the Shakespeare of music, the grent master of sentiment, the seraphic satanesque, [Mozart."