Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/101

Rh "does better than he who writes only for a small number."

Now, to be beneficial, Telemann continues, one must be readily understood by all. Consequently the first law is to be simple, easy, lucid:

"I have always thought highly of facility," he says. "Music should not be a labour, an occult science, a sort of black magic…"

Mattheson, writing his Vollkommene Kapellmeister (1739), which is the Code of the new style, the musical manual of the new school, requires the composer to put great art on one side, or at least that he shall conceal it; the problem is to write difficult music in an easy manner. He even says that the musician, if he wishes to write a good melody, should endeavour to ensure that the theme shall have "an indefinite quality with which everybody is already familiar." (Of course, he is not speaking of expressions already employed which seem so natural that everybody thinks he is familiar with them).—As models of this melodic Leichtigkeit he recommends the study of the French.

The same ideas are expressed by the men at the head of the Berlin school of the Lied, whose Boileau was the poet Ramler. In his preface to his Oden mit Melodien (1753–5) Ramler recommends the example of France to his fellow-countrymen. In France, he says, everyone sings, in all classes of society:

"We Germans study music everywhere; but our melodies are not like these songs that pass without difficulty from mouth to mouth. … One should write for all. We live in society. Let