Wondrous Words Wednesday - Music!

Can you stand it if I bring you something else from Les Miserables? I'm STILL reading it :) I promise that it will be interesting...

Cosette is living with her foster father, Jeam Valjean, who is away. She is playing the piano, and our author, Victor Hugo, tells us that she is playing, "the chorus from Euryanthe: Hunters Wandering in the Woods! which is perhaps the finest piece in all music."

It got my attention that Victor Hugo called this the finest piece in all music! That is pretty high praise - right? Also, I was wondering what a Euryanthe was - and that is my word for today!

While she is playing, Cosette hears someone walking outside (at night) in the garden. And, here, I think, is the difference between a good writer and a great writer, because now Hugo brings the plot of the music piece from "Euryanthe, which she is playing, into the plot of his book.

He says, "It was a hallucination produced by Weber's somber and majestic chorus, which opens before the mind startling depths, which trembles before the eye like a bewildering forest, and in which we hear the crackling of the dead branches beneath the anxious step of the hunters dimly seen in the twilight."

So, do you see what Hugo is doing? He is having Cosette play music about men walking around outside, when there is indeed, a man walking around outside! Clever!

So, of course, I looked this up(!) Turns out, according to Wiki (from which I got the above picture), that Euryanthe is an 19th century opera by Weber, about a 13th century story.

Briefly, Euryanthe (that is her name) is engaged to a man. Another man bets that he can get her to betray her fiance (nice - right?). Another woman wants the fiance for herself so she sets Euryanthe up. At this point there is a lot of running around in the woods, and in the end the other woman is found out for having framed Euryanthe and she is killed. Everyone else lives happily ever after.

One last thing...I am wondering whether the plot of Euryanthe in anyway foreshadows the plot of Les Miserables? I have never seen the play, so I do not know how this book is going to turn out. (If you know, please don't tell me in the comments!)

Oh, one last LAST thing, see the button on my top right? I am unveiling my first ever meme, challenge thing!! Push the button! It is about going to book-related locale's and blogging about it! If any of you know how to put the code in that column so people can actually "Grab the Button" please let me know - lol! Also...if there are any other problems, please tell me - I'm new :)

Here then, is the finest piece of music ever written!

Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted at bermudaonion.net. We talk about and share new words that we have come across in our reading - go over to WWW and check it out!