Great Italian and French Composers 33 – Ferris · Verses Across
Literature · Music
Great Italian and French Composers 33Part 6 · Chapter 4
18
Literature · Music
Great Italian and French Composers 33
Part 6 · Chapter 4
FerrisEnglish
MEHUL labored successfully in adapting the noble and severe style of Gluck to the changing requirements of the French stage. The turmoil and passions of the revolution had stirred men's souls to the very roots, and this influence was perpetuated and crystallized in the new forms given to French thought by Napoleon's wonderful career. Mehul's musical conceptions, which culminated in the opera of "Joseph," were characterized by a stir, a vigor, and largeness of dramatic movement, which came close to the familiar life of that remarkable period. His great rival Cherubini, on the other hand, though no less truly dramatic in fitting musical expression to thought and passion, was so austere and rigid in his ideals, so dominated by musical form and an accurate science which would concede nothing to popular prejudice and ignorance, that he won his laurels, not by force of the natural flow of popular sympathy, but by the sheer might of his genius. Cherubini's severe works made them models and foundation stones for his successors in French music; but Mehul familiarized his audiences with strains dignified yet popular, full of massive effects and brilliant combinations. The people felt the tramp of the Napoleonic armies in the vigor and movement of his measures.
Spontini embodied the same influences and characteristics in still larger degree, for his musical genius was organized on a more massive plan. Deficient in pure graceful melody alike with Mehul, he delighted in great masses of tone and vivid orchestral coloring. His music was full of the military fire of his age, and dealt for the most part with the peculiar tastes and passions engendered by a condition of chronic warfare. Therefore dramatic movement in his operas was always of the heroic order, and never touched the more subtile and complex elements of life. Spontini added to the majestic repose and ideality of the Gluck music-drama (to use a name now naturalized in art by Wagner) the keenest dramatic vigor. Though he had a strong command of effects by his power of delineation and delicacy of detail, his prevalent tastes led him to encumber his music too often with overpowering military effects, alike tonal and scenic. Riehl, a great German critic, says: "He is more successful in the delineation of masses and groups than in the portrayal of emotional scenes; his rendering of the national struggle between the Spaniards and Mexicans in 'Cortez' is, for example, admirable. He is likewise most successful in the management of large masses in the instrumentation. In this respect he was, like Napoleon, a great tactician." In "La Vestale" Spontini attained his chef-d'oeuvre. Schuelter in his "History of Music" gives it the following encomium: "His portrayal of character and truthful delineation of passionate emotion in this opera are masterly indeed. The subject of 'La Vestale' (which resembles that of 'Norma,' but how differently treated!) is tragic and sublime as well as intensely emotional. Julia, the heroine, a prey to guilty passion; the severe but kindly high priestess; Licinius, the adventurous lover, and his faithful friend Cinna; pious vestals, cruel priests, bold warriors, and haughty Romans, are represented with statuesque relief and finish. Both these works, 'La Vestale' (1802) and 'Cortez' (1809), ire among the finest that have been written for the stage; they are remarkable for naturalness and sublimeness, qualities lost sight of in the noisy instrumentation of his later works."
Halevy, trained under the influences of Cherubini, was largely inspired by that great master's musical purism and reverence for the higher laws of his art. Halevy's powerful sense of the dramatic always influenced his methods and sympathies. Not being a composer of creative imagination, however, the melodramatic element is more prominent than the purely tragic or comic. His music shows remarkable resources in the production of brilliant and captivating though always tasteful effects, which rather please the senses and the fancy than stir the heart and imagination. Here and there scattered through his works, notably so in "La Juive," are touches of emotion and grandeur; but Halevy must be characterized as a composer who is rather distinguished for the brilliancy, vigor, and completeness of his art than for the higher creative power, which belongs in such preeminent degree to men like Rossini and Weber, or even to Auber, Meyerbeer, and Gounod. It is nevertheless true that Halevy composed works which will retain a high rank in French art. "La Juive," "Guido," "La Reine de Chypre," and "Charles VI." are noble lyric dramas, full of beauties, though it is said they can never be seen to the best advantage off the French stage. Halevy's genius and taste in music bear much the same relation to the French stage as do those of Verdi to the Italian stage; though the former composer is conceded by critics to be a greater purist in musical form, if he rarely equals the Italian composer in the splendid bursts of musical passion with which the latter redeems so much that is meretricious and false, and the charming melody which Verdi shares with his countrymen.
