“ For two weeks Paris has been thinking and dreaming nothing but music. Music is the subject of all our debates, of all conversation; it is the life of all our suppers, and it would be simply ridiculous to show interest in anything else. To a political question the reply is a melody, to a moral reflection, the ritornelle of an aria; if one tries to excite interest in Racine or Voltaire he is reminded of the effect produced by the orchestra in the recitative of Agamemnon. Need I say that it is Gluck's 'Iphigénie' which has excited such a furore? ”

“ It will be remembered that we traced the growth of the opera from its beginning under the hand of Peri, through its development by Scarlatti, Legrenzi, Logroscino, Jomelli, Pergolesi, Salieri and Piccinni, its ennoblement by Gluck, on to its perfection as a purely Italian production, through the genius of Cimarosa. The last-named composer invested his works with a charm which has never been surpassed, and glorified its outward form with a symmetrical grace which raises his compositions more nearly than those of any other composer to the height of Mozart. ”

“ The value of works of art, moreover, is not to be estimated by their number or extent. Haydn wrote over one hundred symphonies, Beethoven only nine, yet the composer of "Fidelio" certainly does not rank below Haydn in importance. These later organ pieces of Bach's are creations of a universal type. Into each one of them the artist infused the whole of his giant intellect, animating by the breath of his genius the masses of sound poured forth from the organ in prodigious volume, yet governed in the smallest details by the most rigorous rules of art. ”

“ Beside his operas, seventy-six in all, Cimarosa composed several oratorios, cantatas and masses, which were much admired in their day. His real talent lay in comedy, in his sparkling wit and unfailing good humor. His invention was inexhaustible in the representation of that overflowing and yet naïve liveliness, that merry, teasing loquacity, which is the distinguishing feature of the genuine Italian buffo style. His chief musical excellence lay in the vocal parts, but the orchestra is delicately and effectually handled, and some of his ensembles are real masterpieces. ”

“ Because in our time this art has been lost, the beauty of Handel's opera arias remains for the most part concealed from us, but that another change will one day take place there is no doubt. An immediate revolution, to be sure, is not to be expected. Music has fallen by degrees from that lofty height, and only by degrees can she again attain unto it. ”

“ The opera composer should not be judged by any other canon of art than that which he has followed in writing his work; and when Wagner's Tristan sings his love according to the composer's idea of musical and dramatic propriety, he is no less ridiculous, per se, than is Verdi's Ernani in the like situation. The composer who creates the precise impression that he strives to create by the music he places in the mouths of his characters is the composer who has made all that can be made of his art, whether he be Wagner or Verdi. ”

“ Five more centuries rolled away and counterpoint had passed the period of mechanical development and reached the loftiest heights of ecclesiastical expression. Orlando Lasso and Palestrina built great Gothic temples of music that will stand longer than Westminster Abbey. But still counterpoint meant canon and fugue. Then came the birth of opera. The labors of the Netherlanders ended, and music saw that her mission was to sing not alone man's love of God, but his love of woman, his fear, his joy, his despair—in short the unspeakable emotions of his boundless soul. ”

“ They do not seem to have the least idea that it is Rossini who has emancipated musical art as applied to the theatre; that it is Rossini who has given freedom to melodic form; that it is Rossini who has substituted for the majestic and uniform solemnity of the ancient lyric declamation, a rational diction, with an expression more vivacious, more intense and more vigorous; that it is Rossini who, by the movement and variety communicated to the rhythm, has given to the musical phrase the natural sentiment and warmth of action which it too often lacked ”

“ To restore their original dignity to those arts which the populace have been accustomed to regard as the tools of sensual enjoyment, and to seat Nature firmly on a throne which has been long usurped by the arbitrary power of fashion, luxury and voluptuousness, is a great and daring venture. Gluck has shown us what might be done by music, if in our day there were an Athens anywhere in Europe, and if, in this Athens should appear a Pericles who should do for the opera what he did for the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. ”

“ Donizetti's life fell all within the most brilliant and inspiring period of Italian opera, touching the earlier great at its beginning, running parallel with other distinguished men and overlapping the rise of Verdi, Ricci and the elder writers of the present time. All things considered, it does not seem as if his talent could have been turned to better account, although his astonishing facility made him often take the quickest rather than the best way to reach his ends. ”

“ My idea is that the relation of music to poetry is much the same as that of harmonious coloring and well-disposed light and shade to an accurate drawing, which animate the figures without altering their outlines. I have therefore been very careful never to interrupt a singer in the heat of a dialogue in order to introduce a tedious ritornelle, nor to stop him in the middle of a piece either for the purpose of displaying the flexibility of his voice on some favorable vowel, or that the orchestra may give him time to take breath before a long-sustained note. ”

“ A genius, fertile and luminous, gifted with an inspiration warm and generous, an imagination ardent and active, he astonished the world for twenty years by his creative power, and after having enchanted his native land by a long series of works which were distinguished, now by the grace, now by the grandeur, now by the novelty of their forms, he prematurely terminated his dramatic career at the age of thirty-seven, by a marvellous masterpiece written expressly for the French stage. ”

“ We do not intend to draw any comparison between the respective qualities of the music of these composers, but we insist that no one who hears the music of either master for the first time, as mere instrumental music, can tell what it is intended to express on the stage. Hence it is folly to urge that the opera music of any school expresses more than that of another. It is folly to speak of nature in connection with the emotions of love, hate, hope, despair, joy and woe, when sung by actors to the accompaniment of an orchestra. ”

“ Was it possible to enroll a young artist whose genius announced itself in so brilliant a fashion, and could they force this artist, who promised to win distinction for his country, to take the chances of combat? All Italy was as one voice which demanded that Rossini be exempt from military service. Prince Eugène, who bore the title and fulfilled the functions of viceroy, took it upon himself to pronounce this exemption, and the future author of William Tell was able to pursue in peace the career in which he was to find honor and glory. ”

“ Scarcely have the words of the gods died away when the basses are heard, in dull, sustained tones, descriptive of the murmur of the multitude. The murmuring grows louder and individual cries are heard until finally the entire mass of orchestra and chorus unites in the cry: "Let us away!" The full power of the Gluck orchestra, however, is revealed in the chorus of the gods of death which is sung upon one key by the basses, while the melody is sustained by the instruments. ”

“ Hence I believe that the song which in my opera wholly takes the place of declamation, must imitate in the Helen the native rudeness of her race; I have thought, also, that because I sought to sustain this character in the music, I should not be blamed if I occasionally descended to the trivial. If one really wishes to follow the truth he must never forget that according to the measure of the subject in question even the supreme beauties of melody and harmony, if employed in the wrong places, may become faults and imperfections. ”

“ J'irai voir la reine et je lui dirai, il m'est impossible de faire jouer mon opéra. Puis je monterai dans ma voiture et je reprendrai la route de Vienne." ("Mademoiselle, I am here to bring out Iphigenia: if you will sing, nothing can be better; if not, very well, I will go to the Queen and will say: It is impossible to have my opera performed; then I will take my seat in my carriage and return to Vienna.") ”

“ Only in the hope of finding imitators did I resolve to bring out the music of 'Alceste,' and flattered myself that men would follow eagerly the path which I had opened in order to suppress the abuses which had crept into Italian opera and impaired its worth. I am convinced, however, that my hopes were vain. Smatterers, would-be judges of poetry and music, a class of people which is unfortunately very large and is always a thousand times more detrimental to the progress of art than is ignorance, threaten to be the death of their own presumption. ”

“ It can truly be said of Sebastian Bach that not a single species of art was known in his time which he did not make use of for his own purposes. Whatever Handel and Mozart could draw from Italian music for the realization of their artistic ideals they unhesitatingly appropriated, employing it partly as the foundation of their productions, partly as supplementary material. In all such instances, the point to be considered is whether the strength of the artist is sufficient to vivify and renew the foreign elements. That this was the case with Cherubini, I have already remarked. ”

“ It was indeed a difficult period for a new writer; the stage was not yet weary of the operas of Cimarosa, Paisiello, Zingarelli, Paër and Mayer, while the few opportunities of which a new comer might hope to avail himself were scarcely more than sufficed for the genius of Rossini and of Bellini. Any attempt to rival in his own field either of these would necessarily have been fatal, and Donizetti was prudent enough to create an independent style for himself while maintaining, like them, that the melody of human voices was of the first value in the lyric drama. ”

“ That in Bach we behold the highest degree of development attained by a race of musicians who flourished through many generations, is due to his wonderful and manifold musical gifts, rather than to his having followed directly in the footsteps of any of the more important composers among his ancestors. He was endowed with a talent for composition of the very first order, has not been excelled as a performer upon the organ and the clavier up to the present day, and was a violin player of the profoundest intelligence, exhibiting complete mastery over the technique of his instrument. ”

“ It is, unfortunately, too often the case that trifling obstacles of a similar character interfere with a proper appreciation of the finest productions of genius. The fact that the name of Cherubini does not stand inscribed in the temple of fame with those of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven must be attributed in some degree to unfamiliarity with his works on the part of the public, but is still further owing to the peculiarity of the artist's musical nature, and to the remarkable place which he has created for himself in and beyond the musical life of the nations. ”

“ Unlike the greater number of Italian composers, whose highest aim was a cheerful, agreeably stimulating artistic enjoyment, there is in Cherubini an element of severity, an aristocratic elegance of expression, which often border on coldness. Strains such as enchant the multitude are of infrequent occurrence in his music. ”

“ Such a place was Paris, whose artistic conditions were the more favorable for Gluck's plans of reform in that the representatives in philosophy and belles-lettres set the standard in musical matters also, and with cultured people their opinion went much farther than that of the exceedingly conservative professional musicians. What attractive conditions for a composer who, at war with tradition, assigned to poetry the first place in the opera, while music should be but its servant! ”

“ Still more, if we look backward and contrast the greatest representative of the older Italian opera, Handel, with Gluck, we are astonished at the progress made by opera-music through the former. The old-fashioned ornate music of Handel has disappeared; true expression has gained the supremacy, although it never reigns at the expense of the melody which is almost inexhaustible and in its grace betrays in every measure the country whence it came. ”

“ Complexity has given way to simplicity. The music harmonizes with the characteristic spirit of the text; the melodies are brief; recitative is sparingly used, and musical declamation makes up the greater portion of the score. The orchestra no longer follows, but has risen to equal importance with the voice, and lends its own appropriate color and accent to the illustration and enforcement of the sentiment of the text. Graceful and exquisite tunefulness is maintained, but it falls into its proper place and continues no longer than it justly expresses the sentiment of the situation. ”