André Gluck

“ And as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he saw a little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath,—just as Hans had seen it on the day of his ascent. And Gluck stopped and looked at it, and then at the Golden River, not five hundred yards above him; and he thought of the dwarf's words, "that no one could succeed, except in his first attempt"; and he tried to pass the dog, but it whined piteously, and Gluck stopped again. "Poor beastie," said Gluck, "it'll be dead when I come down again, if I don't help it." ”

“ These were followed by a long list of similar works, for Gluck displayed, even then, a restless activity, though in 1750 he married, and with his Marianna, a daughter of the rich Venetian merchant Pergin, experienced all the joy of a happy marriage which remained undisturbed till his death. Two impulses in the next decade of Gluck's activity deserve special mention; one was his eager interest in literature. "Gifted by nature with as great a love for literature as for music," says his biographer Anton Schmidt, "he now worked with incessant energy in this province as well. ”

“ As for the rest, he trusted to the excellence of his work, and his motto—“Truth makes its way through all things;” and even in anticipation of the most unfavorable event, consoled himself by the reflection—“Well! the worst success does not make a good work a bad one!” [8]
He sat in his chamber the morning of the day before the representation of his Iphigenia, preparing for the final rehearsal, when the servant announced young Mehul.—“Come in, my dear friend!” cried Gluck cheerfully, as he rose and went to the door to meet his visitor. ”

“ The composition of these two great works did not prevent his writing the intermezzi of 'Le Feste d' Apollo,' 'Bauci e Filemone,' and 'Aristeo,' produced at the court theatre of Parma in 1769, but not published.
In spite of the favour he enjoyed at the court of Vienna, and of the incontestable beauties contained in 'Orfeo,' 'Alceste,' and 'Paride ed Elena,' Gluck's countrymen criticised his new style in a manner so galling, that, conscious of his own power, and by no means devoid of vanity, he resolved to carry out elsewhere the revolution he had determined to effect in dramatic music. ”

“ To earn his bread he gave lessons, and composed two sonatas (1781) which bear no traces of a master mind; but this was not the line in which he was destined to distinction. In 1779 he was present at the first performance of 'Iphigénie en Tauride,' and the effect produced on one with his cultivated intellect, his love of the beautiful, and passionate though reserved nature, was immense. He expressed his admiration to Gluck himself, who received the young enthusiast graciously, gave him valuable advice, and undertook his instruction in the philosophical and poetical parts of music. ”

“ Just as he had cut a large slice out of the mutton, there came a tremendous rap at the door. The old gentleman jumped off the hob, as if it had suddenly become inconveniently warm. Gluck fitted the slice into the mutton again, with desperate efforts at exactitude, and ran to open the door.
"What did you keep us waiting in the rain for?" said Schwartz, as he walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's face. "Ay! what for, indeed, you little vagabond?" said Hans, administering an educational box on the ear, as he followed his brother into the kitchen. ”

“ When Gluck found that Schwartz did not come back he was very sorry, and did not know what to do. He had no money, and was obliged to go and hire himself again to the goldsmith, who worked him very hard, and gave him very little money. So, after a month or two, Gluck grew tired, and made up his mind to go and try his fortune with the Golden River. "The little king looked very kind," thought he. "I don't think he will turn me into a black stone." So he went to the priest, and the priest gave him some holy water as soon as he asked for it. ”

“ But here we perceive the moral justice of certain of the decrees of history; it is not enough to be a talented artist; it is not enough even to add application to talent— (for who worked harder than Telemann?) —there must be character. Gluck, with much less music than half a score of other German composers of the eighteenth century—than Hasse, Graun, or Telemann, for example—achieved where the others amassed material (and he did not utilise even a tenth part of it) . The fact is that he imposed a sovereign discipline upon his art and his genius. He was a man. ”

“ Then Gluck struggled with himself, and determined to bear the thirst a little longer; and he put the bottle to the child's lips, and it drank it all but a few drops. Then it smiled on him, and got up, and ran down the hill; and Gluck looked after it, till it became as small as a little star, and then turned and began climbing again. And then there were all kinds of sweet flowers growing on the rocks, bright green moss, with pale pink starry flowers, and soft belled gentians, more blue than the sky at its deepest, and pure white transparent lilies. ”

“ Duplessis's portrait of Gluck almost takes the man out of paint to put him in flesh and blood. He looks down with wide-open eyes, swelling nostrils, firm mouth, and massive chin. The noble brow, dome-like and expanded, relieves the massiveness of his face; and the whole countenance and figure express the repose of a powerful and passionate nature schooled into balance and symmetry: altogether the presentment of a great man, who felt that he could move the world and had found the pou sto. ”

“ Indeed only a great musician could so reform opera as to give it scope for dramatic power at all. Where Gluck differs from the greatest musicians is in his absolute dependence on literature for his inspiration. Where his librettist failed him (as in his last complete work, Écho et Narcisse) , he could hardly write tolerably good music; and, even in the finest works of his French period, the less emotional situations are sometimes set to music which has little interest except as a document in the history of the art. ”

“ Gluck sat down quite close to the fire, for it was raining very hard. He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and brown.
"What a pity," thought Gluck, "that my brothers never ask anybody to dinner. I'm sure, when they have such a nice piece of mutton as this, it would do their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them." Just as he spoke there came a double knock at the house door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up. "It must be the wind," said Gluck; "nobody else would venture to knock double knocks at our door." ”

“ As far as theory went, his system was not new, as it rested on the outlines already sketched by Benedetto Marcello in his 'Teatro alia Moda' (1720) ; but theory and practice are two different things, and Gluck has the rare merit of showing in his 'Alceste' and 'Paride' that he was both composer and critic, and could not only imagine but produce an opera in which all is consecutive, where the music faithfully interprets each situation, and the interest arises from the perfect adaptation of the ensemble of the music to the whole of the drama. ”

“ Paris in those days was a place in which it was hard for a young man to fear God and himself, and that Gluck lived free from the sins of those about him ought to make us less severe in judging the weakness of his later years. He began to use stimulants for his health, and gradually became addicted to drinking to drown thought and fire him for his work.
Fashion governed art and music very curiously in those days. It was in 1746 that there was a rage in England for what was called the "glasses." ”

“ Gluck’s whole life was illumined by an indomitable sense of his own strength, and lifted by it into an atmosphere high above that of his rivals, whom the world has now almost forgotten, except as they were immortalised by being his enemies. ”

“ The second man might be an artificial soprano or a contralto. The third man might be a bass or tenor. But it was not at all unusual to confide all the male parts to artificial sopranos. Each principal character claimed the right to sing an aria in each of the three acts of the drama. Each scene ended with an aria of some one of the classes already mentioned, but no two arias of the same class were permitted to follow each other. Gluck was the reformer destined by the fates to rectify some of these artificial traditions. He was educated at the Jesuit seminary in Komotow, and later in Prague. ”

“ These airs, it must be confessed, succeed each other too rapidly, and one cannot but regret that the librettist did not perceive how much the action is retarded by making three airs follow each other in one act, a mistake which might easily have been avoided. But how ingenious are the artifices to which Gluck resorts in order to give variety to the recitative and the declamatory passages! How skilfully he brings in his short incisive symphonies, and how much effect he produces by syncopation! How appropriately he introduces the orchestra to emphasise a word, or to point a dramatic antithesis! ”

“ The last and decisive step in the revolution was the coming of Gluck. ‘It seems as if a century had worked to the limit of its strength to produce the flower of Gluck—the great man is always the composite genius of all the confluent temporal streams.’ [7] Yet he himself was one of these composite forces from which the artistic purpose of his life was evolved. The Gluck of the first five decades, the Gluck of Italian opera, of what we may call the Metastasio period, was simply one of the many Italians unconsciously working toward that end. ”

“ They always require double pay; those who have been accustomed to receive one ducat, when Gluck directs receive two. No fortissimo can be strong enough and no pianissimo weak enough for him at certain times. Yet it is quite curious how every emotion, the wild, the gentle and the sad is expressed in look and gesture." It is natural that even the most indolent was unable to resist the inspiring influence of such a leader, and even the bearer of the title-rôle, the male alto singer, Guadagni, willingly submitted to the master, and after each rehearsal was more disposed to agree with his ideas. ”

“ His studies in the severer contrapuntal forms speedily gave him the greatest technical mastery of choral music attained since Bach; and more than one stray piece of church music, or movement from a mass or litany, written before he was fifteen, deserves to take rank as a true masterpiece of which the date is immaterial. At the age of fifteen we see a loss of freshness, especially in the numerous operas which show at its worst that hopeless condition of operatic art from which only Gluck’s most drastic reforms could rescue it. ”

“ If Gluck's achievements as a reformer have been overestimated by some musical historians, his value as a composer can hardly be exaggerated. He is the principal spokesman of a period of reaction, and it is to his eternal credit that his profound realization of the hollowness and artificiality of the older school of opera drove him into no excesses by way of counteracting the abuses which he strove to combat. ”

“ From 1755–61 Gluck was stationary in Vienna, and to all appearance failing; he wrote divertissements for the palaces of Laxenburg and Schönbrunn; composed airs for the comedies or comic operettas performed at the court theatre; and produced only one opera in 3 acts, 'Tetide' (1760) , of which nothing has survived. These six years however, far from being wasted, were probably most useful to him, for by these apparently insignificant works he was acquiring flexibility of style, and securing powerful patrons, without losing sight of his ultimate aim. ”

“ That the Jesuits are most thorough in their instruction is well known; but whether the blind obedience and abject slavery exacted of the scholars in the name of "a true Church" is calculated to develop mind and character successfully, seems doubtful. Gluck's strength of character through life shows that the pernicious influence of the Jesuitical teaching had no serious effect upon his nature. Among the advantages derived from his sojourn in Kommatau, the instruction received upon the piano and organ is of the greatest importance.
Yet violin and violoncello were still his favorite instruments ”

“ Moreover he was aware of his defects as well as of his capacities. 'In the midst of popular applause how dissatisfied an artist often feels with his own work!' he exclaims at the end of his analysis of 'Huron.' Elsewhere in speaking of his works as a whole, he puts the following words into Gluck's mouth, 'You received from Nature the gift of appropriate melody, but in giving you this talent she withheld that of strict and complicated harmony.' This is true self-knowledge, and by such remarks Grétry has shortened and simplified our task. ”

“ He was a man of earnest thought and strong will. The tendency of German literature to give dignity and importance to poetry did not pass by him unnoticed, and he was a warm admirer of Klopstock, whose odes he set to music. 58 The efforts then being made to raise the German stage in Vienna had an influence on him, and his own first attempts at reformation were greeted with loud applause by Sonnenfels.
Gluck has professed his principles of dramatic composition in the well-known dedication to his "Alceste." ”