216 ON THE PRESENT STATE OP THE OPERA IN LONDON. 



principle would seem, from the context, to be an increase of sim- 

 plicity and clearness of melody. But such has been by no means 

 the tendency of the art ; the course which it has followed, at any 

 rate, for a century back, has rather been in an opposite direction. 

 Compare the melodies of Weber, Spohr, Marschner, Ries, Reissiger, 

 with those of Haydn, Mozart, Winter, Himmel, Weigl, and Kreut- 

 zer. The latter will be relished by persons totally ignorant of mu- 

 sical science, while the former require the harmony and the whole 

 design of the composer to be understood before they can impart the 

 slightest pleasure. The style of the Mozart school, again, was so 

 much more complicated than that of preceding composers that many 

 critics ascribed the admiration of their partisans to affectation. Had 

 the reviewer ever seen an opera of Graun or of Hasse, he might 

 possibly, on account of their simplicity, have preferred them to the 

 works of later masters ; yet this very simplicity has caused them to 

 be forgotten even in name ; they are no where to be met with save 

 in the cabinets of the curious, and were they produced before a mo- 

 dern audience, would infallibly send them to sleep. 



If we turn to the Italian school, a similar change appears to have 

 taken place. Where do w^e find airs so clear, simple, and intelli- 

 gible, as in the unexplored works of Sacchini, Guglielmi, Sarti, 

 Paisiello, and Zingarelli ? The motivi of their successors, Cimarosa, 

 Mayer, and Paer, although of exquisite beauty, are more inter- 

 woven and connected with the harmony, or, in other words, bear a 

 certain similarity to the German works of the same period. It is 

 impossible, consistently with beauty, to find melodies more simple 

 than those of the first mentioned composers, nor can the piquancy 

 of the latter be surpassed ; Rossini, therefore, wisely struck into a 

 different track, and the great sensation which he created may be 

 fairly attributed to the lightness and flippancy of his melodies, and 

 to the gayety which invariably pervades them. Where then do we 

 find traces of this simplifying process to which Bellini is said to 

 put the finishing stroke ? The true history of melody would seem 

 rather to be the following: — In the early part of the eighteenth 

 century, while the opera was in its infancy, the melodies of Jomelli, 

 Vinci, and Galuppi in Italy, and those of Graun and Hasse (Italian 

 in character, but written in Germany), although beautiful, were 

 not possessed of sufficient animation and vigour to render them ap- 

 propriate on the stage. The accompaniments were meagre, and in- 

 tended rather to fill up the harmony than to take an active share in 

 forwarding the dramatic action. In the hands of the successors of 

 these composers, with Sacchini at their head, melody became more 



