Christoph Willibald Gluck

“ And it is hardly relevant to blame him for his inability to write erotic music. In the first place, the libretto is not erotic, though the subject would no doubt become so if treated by a modern poet. In the second place a conflict of passions (as, for instance, where Armide summons the demons of Hate to exorcise love from her heart, and her courage fails her as soon as they begin) has never, even in Alceste, been treated with more dramatic musical force. The work as a whole is unequal, partly because there is a little too much action in it to suit Gluck’s methods ”

“ The emotional power of the music is such that the inevitable spoiling of the story by a happy ending has not the aspect of mere conventionality which it had in cases where the music produced no more than the normal effect upon 18th-century audiences. Moreover Gluck’s genius was of too high an order for him to be less successful in portraying a sufficiently intense happiness than in portraying grief. ”

“ Moreover, in both cases the libretti, though skilfully managed, tell a rather more complicated story than those which Gluck had hitherto so successfully treated; and, where inspiration fails, the musical technique becomes curiously amateurish without any corresponding naïveté. Still these works are immortal, and their finest passages are equal to anything in Alceste and Orfeo. Écho et Narcisse we must, like Gluck’s contemporaries, regard as a failure. ”

“ The great interest of the dramatic aspect of Gluck’s reforms is apt to overshadow his merit as a musician, and yet in some ways to idealize it. One is tempted to regard him as condoning for technical musical deficiencies by sheer dramatic power, whereas unprejudiced study of his work shows that where his dramatic power asserts itself there is no lack of musical technique. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Still Gluck couldn't move.
"Will you pour me out?" said the voice passionately. "I'm too hot."
By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his limbs, took hold of the crucible, and sloped it so as to pour out the gold. But instead of a liquid stream, there came out, first, a pair of pretty little yellow legs, then some coat tails, then a pair of arms stuck akimbo, and, finally, the well-known head of his friend the mug; all which articles, uniting as they rolled out, stood up energetically on the floor, in the shape of a little golden dwarf, about a foot and a half high. ”

“ Gluck made no answer.
"Hollo! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again.
Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight up to the crucible, drew it out of the furnace and looked in. The gold was all melted, and its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of reflecting little Gluck's head as he looked in, he saw meeting his glance from beneath the gold the red nose and sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had seen them in his life.
"Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot again, "I'm all right; pour me out." ”

“ 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. ”

“ D.F. Strauss quotes a description by a merchant of Karlsruhe of this scene: "Old Gluck sang and played, con amore, many passages from the 'Messiah' set to music by himself; his wife accompanying him in a few other pieces." On the 15th of November, 1787, when Gluck was seventy-three years old, he was at his home in Vienna under doctor's care. After dinner, it was his custom to take coffee out-of-doors, in the free, fresh air and the golden sunlight, where he used to have his piano placed when he would compose. Two old friends from Paris had dined with him, and they were soon to leave. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In French, as 'Semiramis,' it appeared in Paris July 9, 1860.—Semiramide riconosciuta, words by Metastasio, was set by Vinci, Porpora, Cocchi, Sarti, Traetta, Meyerbeer, and Gluck—the last of these at Vienna in 1748. It is important as revealing some of the qualities by which Gluck has been rendered immortal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was the son of a forester in the service of Prince Lobkowitz born at Weidenwang in the Upper Palatinate, July 2,1714. Gluck was devoted to music from early childhood, but received, in connection with the musical art, an excellent education at the Jesuit College of Kommotau. Here he learned singing, the organ, the violin and harpsichord, and had a mind to get his living by devoting his musical talents to the Church. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even those most violently opposed to innovation felt compelled to applaud it; for its dramatic force was irresistible, and in flow of Melody it was excelled by none of the best Operas of the period. But Gluck had not yet accomplished his full desire. Encouraged by the triumph of his first attempt in a new style, he carried out his principles still farther, in two other Operas, 'Alceste' (1767) , and 'Paride ed Elena' (1769) , which were not received at Vienna with very great favour. The critics of the day were not yet fully prepared for the amount of reform indicated in their construction. ”

“ 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 ”