And whenever
the French have been given a musical art of their own, whenever a
composer comparable to the Goujons and Montaignes, the Renoirs and the
Baudelaires has made his appearance among them, they generally have been
swift to turn from him and to prefer to him not only foreigners, which
would not necessarily be bad, but oftentimes the least respectable of
musicians. The triumph of Rameau was of the briefest. Scarcely had his
magnificent lyric tragedies established themselves when the _Guerre des
bouffons_ broke out, and popular taste, under the direction of Jean
Jacques Rousseau and the other Encyclopedists, discovered the light
Italian music of the day more "natural" and infinitely preferable to the
severe and noble forms of the greatest of French composers. The
appearance of Gluck gave Rameau's work a veritable _coup de grace_, and
banished the master from the operatic stage. And for a century and a
quarter, French music, particularly the music of the theater, was
completely unfaithful to the racial spirit. During the greater part of
the nineteenth century, Rossini and Meyerbeer dominated the operatic
world. The native operatic composers, Auber and Boieldieu, Adam and
Halevy, combined the slacknesses of both without achieving anything at
all comparable to their flashy brilliance.
Pages:
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112