HISTORY OF MUSIC. 



chirruping, Italian poetry without affectation and 

 bombast.' * Notwithstanding this, Gluck's reforms 

 failed to take hold on the Germans at the time, 

 and their effect in France was not permanent. It 

 has been reserved to Wagner, in our own day, to 

 make, with vastly greater genius, and vastly greater 

 resources at command, another, and it is to be 

 hoped a finally successful attempt, to conjoin poetry 

 and music in one harmonious whole, and to sweep 

 away the conventionalities and artificialities which 

 have so nearly destroyed the soul of musico- 

 dramatic art. Gluck remained only a few years 

 in Paris, and then retired again to Vienna, pro- 

 bably worn out with the incessant fightings of 

 his supporters and those of his rival Piccini. 

 His stay in France was long enough to estab- 

 lish his operas so firmly in public favour that 

 they are still often produced, but not long enough 

 to enable him to establish among those who were 

 to be his successors enthusiasm for his principles 

 apart from his music. It may be owing to this 

 cause that those principles have been so sadly 

 neglected and overlooked. 



GLUCK'S SUCCESSORS FRENCH OPERA. 



Among the best known of Gluck's succes- 

 sors were Mehul, Cherubini, and Spontini (the 

 last two Italians, but domesticated in France) ; 

 these all followed Gluck rather than Rossini. 

 Cherubini (1760-1842), who was the last of 

 the great Italians, was so popular in Paris 

 that he has been called the 'musical autocrat 

 of France.' He composed twenty-eight operas, 

 eighteen masses, and numberless other smaller 

 pieces, and was also the author of theoretical 

 works still well known. Two at least of his operas 

 survive, Medea and Les Deux Journe'es, and a 

 few of his overtures. Boieldieu (whose opera, La 

 Dame Blanche, has been performed considerably 

 over looo times in Paris) and Auber were pupils 

 of Cherubini. Auber is better known by his Fra 

 Diavolo and Domino Noir, than by his more 

 ambitious and important Masaniello, but the 

 first-named works are to the musician only the 

 first steps in the direction of Offenbach's ' deeper 

 depths.' 



By successive stages the Parisian taste became 

 more and more depraved, until at last the people 

 that had rejected Beethoven's seventh symphony, 

 and were yet to reject Tannhaitser, found their 

 beau-ide'al of a grand opera in the Robert le Diable 

 of Jacob Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer's instrumentation 

 is sometimes very striking, and he has undoubted 

 dramatic force, as is especially exemplified in parts 

 of the Huguenots, but his highest object was not to 

 produce a noble work of art, but to write an opera 

 which should be successful in Paris, and the two 

 things were totally incompatible. It is not to 

 be wondered at that this man, with his stage 

 devil and dancing nuns, should have excited the 

 bitterest animosity in those who were giving their 

 lives earnestly and enthusiastically to the service 

 of art. Verdi has shewn us the lowest point to 

 which music can be brought by a combination of 

 modern French and Italian ideas. It is hard to 

 say whether the plots or the music of some of his 

 operas are the more thoroughly bad. His orches- 

 tration is noisy and commonplace, and, in fact, he 



* Sonnenfels in the Wiener Diartvm quoted by SchlOter. 



has Meyerbeer's defects without his merits. He 

 was, nevertheless; at one time exceedingly popular, 

 and an audience can even now always be found 

 for Trovatore. It is to be hoped that, with the 

 development of a purer taste, Trovatore, Travi- 

 ata, and the rest will soon be banished from the 

 theatre, for lack of audience to go to listen to 

 them. 



MODERN GERMAN MUSICIANS WEBER, 

 SCHUBERT, MENDELSSOHN, SCHUMANN. 



We left Germany with Beethoven, in order to 

 sketch the development of the Italian and French 

 schools. We must now return to it, in order to 

 trace its progress since that time. Out of the 

 ninth symphony, the music -drama of Wagner 

 seems directly to grow ; but the former was far 

 ahead of its time.* It had been given over as 

 unintelligible to the ' third period,' until this next 

 step forward had been taken ; then a new light 

 seemed to have been thrown upon it, and it is 

 now universally acknowledged to be the combina- 

 tion as well as the conclusion of the greatest series 

 of instrumental works which the world has yet 

 seen. The intervening period has been a most 

 important one for musical art. It contains the 

 names of Weber, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and 

 Schumann. Carl Maria von Weber stands by 

 himself as respects the opera, neither developed 

 from Mozart, nor developing into Wagner ; but 

 yet leaving the one behind, and placing the other 

 under great obligations.t The opinion frequently 

 expressed about Weber's operas is, that they bear 

 a position in reference to the German Volkslied 

 (People's Song) analogous to that which Rossini's 

 bear to Italian melody, and that their superiority 

 is in the main a consequence of the nobler nature 

 of the one type of tune than of the other. This 

 may be true, but it is insufficient, like many very 

 philosophical criticisms. The Volkslied idea does 

 indeed form the foundation of Weber's music, but 

 the Italian melody is Rossini's ; there is nothing 

 else. After Don Giovanni or Figaro, Der Frei- 

 schiitz seems a new genus, its differences are 

 so great There is at length some real unity be- 

 tween the poetry and the music the conventional 

 forms of the latter have been modified (although 

 not yet altogether set on one side) to the exigences 

 of the drama. The subject, too the familiar 

 old legend has real poetic beauty, in marked con- 

 trast to the frivolity of the plots of Mozart's operas, 

 for we cannot hold that the efforts of some critics 

 to make out that the story of Don Giovanni has 

 a high moral purpose have been successful Lastly, 

 the so-called 'unaccompanied' recitative has dis- 

 appeared, its place being taken by spoken dialogue. 

 which has since been turned into accompanied 

 recitative. The overtures of Freischuts and 

 Oberon are of themselves sufficient to immortalise 

 their composer. 



We cannot wholly refrain from mention of Lud- 

 wig Spohr (1784-1859), who wrote music in every 

 form, instrumental and vocal, and whose composi 

 tions were so popular in the earlier part of this 

 century. He had, however, no appreciable influ- 

 ence on musical art, and has disfigured almost the 



We are not forgetting it enthusiastic reception on i 

 performance (at Vienna), but are speaking of the eu 

 which it has been held since that time by the majority. 



t Waiter acknowledges this freely, especially m r 

 TMnk&uttr, and calli Tweber h ' first beknrd model. 



