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300 we miss neither the Scenery nor the Action. This power of writing good Dramatic Music for the Concert-Room is not common. Mendelssohn exhibits it in the 'Walpurgis Nacht,' Gade in 'Comala,' and Bruch in 'Odysseus': but most young aspirants either overshoot the mark, or fall below it. Bruch has fallen into neither error; and, meanwhile, has taken good care that his Music shall not fail through want of constructive cohesion. In citing him as an authority, we are actuated by no controversial spirit, nor desire for an invidious comparison. But the important appointment which Bruch is now filling at Liverpool, gives his works the opportunity of becoming as popular in England as they are in Germany, and thus renders them apt illustrations of the point in question. In many respects, an inferior Composer would have served our purpose equally well. We frequently find many poor ideas grouped together with the most perfect regularity; while rich ones are exhibited in a confused heap, destitute of any arrangement at all. In the one case, the result fails through the weakness of its conception; in the other, through the inconsequence of its argument. The one appeals too little to the senses; the other, too little to the intellect. The senses may be perfectly satisfied, so long as each character in the Drama is labelled with a distinct melodic phrase, as each locality was labelled, in the days of Shakspeare: but, the intellect demands something more than this; and that something more is, a clearness of narration, which, apart from the extraneous influence of new Instruments introduced into the Orchestra, of alternate crashes and tremolos, and of declamation continued ad nauseam, shall appeal to the mind as well as to the passions, and thus prevent the Lyric Drama from sinking, eventually, to the level of a Serious Extravaganza, or a Tragic Pantomime.

To sum up our argument, we see that the pedigree, even of this latest development of modern progress, descends to us, in a direct line, from the time of Prætorius, through the chain of the Bachs, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Spohr, and Mendelssohn. The modern system of Part-writing, now universally accepted in place of the Counterpoint of the 16th century, originated in the growing taste for Instrumental Music concerning which we learn so much from the details handed down to us in the 'Syntagma.' Under Seb. Bach, this system reached its culminating point, in the Fugue. For this, Haydn substituted the Sonata-form; giving it, in Sæcular Music, the office performed by the Fugue in the Oratorio. Over this form Mozart obtained an absolute mastery: but he did not leave it where he found it. It was he who first invested it with dramatic power, and first succeeded in making that power subservient to the expression of every shade of passion, or of feeling, demanded by his subject. Witness his Overture to 'Il Don Giovanni,' which depicts the determined resistance of the hero of the piece to the warnings of the Statue, the threatenings of Don Ottavio, and the gentler counsels of Zerlina, and Donna Elvira, with such life-like accuracy, that the Movement serves as an epitome of the entire story. Moreover, he showed, in the Overture to 'Die Zauberflöte,' and the Finale to the 'Jupiter Symphony,' that the two great manifestations of the older and the newer systems were neither antagonistic nor incapable of amalgamation: and thus produced, in one splendid inspiration of genius, a third form, identical with neither, though compounded of both—the Symphonic Fugue. Beethoven next demonstrated the permissibility of extending the limits of the Sonata-form, in any desired direction, so widely, that, while offering no restraint whatever to the wildest flights of his Imagination, it enabled him to express his ideas with a clearness of argument which has never been exceeded. His immediate successors accepted this position in its fullest significance: and, attaching themselves either to the Imaginative or to the Romantic School, demanded the freedom from restraint which true Genius claims as its birthright, and which no true Child of Genius has ever yet been known to betray. In so far as this freedom has tended to clothe the comparative meagreness of earlier forms with a richer veil of poetical imagery, its influence has never been otherwise than healthy and invigorating. But, it has not always been thus wisely employed. It has tempted the neophyte to indulge his fancy, when he ought to have been writing Thorough-bass exercises, as Beethoven did before him; and to abuse gifts, which, properly cultured, might have led to something worth preservation. It has tempted false teachers to tell him that the Sonata-form itself is an archaic monstrosity, unworthy of his respect, and only used by Beethoven himself, under the influence of some strange hallucination the root of which it is impossible to discover. That such abuses are only too prevalent, experience has abundantly proved; and it is to be feared that they are inseparable from this peculiar manifestation of artistic power: in which case, their presence must be accepted as a proof that the modern German Schools contain within themselves the elements of their own destruction.

XXXII.In forming, Rossini—perhaps unwittingly—borrowed not a little from his Teutonic brethren. His Instrumental Accompaniments far exceed, both in volume and complication, the modest standard adopted by Cimarosa, and certainly owe something to the influence of Haydn and Mozart. His Harmony, too, is both richer and more varied than that of his Italian contemporaries; and is probably indebted to Vienna for something more than an occasional suggestion. Yet the basis of his style, in all essential particulars, is thoroughly Italian, and thoroughly his own—Italian, in the airy lightness of its Melodies; his own, in its unwonted freshness, even for Italy, and in the passionate expression which adds so much to its dramatic power, without diminishing its brilliancy. What the Romanticism of Weber and Spohr is to the German School, this desperate passion is to the later Schools of Italy. It must always seem extravagant, to those whose