Abstract
My father was essentially artistic in temperament and had a fine sensitivity for many forms of art. Thus he had an ear for and enjoyed music, he derived much enjoyment from his black-and-white pictures, and took an interest in modern pottery. He was unable to take a symphony to pieces, to talk of good and bad construction in composition, or to argue about schools of painting; but people who do understand these things are often bores and hypocrites of the first order. A good “companion in music” of his writes: “times out of number I have śat with him on the hardest seats imaginable in order that we should go to three concerts in misery rather than to one in comfort. The dear old man was hypnotized by Wagner and Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart, but could not say why—and thank God for it. Your father's appreciation of the arts was, I think, that of the true Artist: underneath the man who possessed a scientific approach to most things lay the makings of a great Artist.”
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ARMSTRONG, E. Henry E. Armstrong*. Nature 147, 373–377 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147373a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147373a0