Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/129

Rh news of all that happened in the North. When he was ill he dictated to his son.

Who will reckon up the total sum of his work? In twenty years alone of his life (roughly from 1720 to 1740) he produced—it is his own rough estimate—twelve complete cycles of sacred music for all the Sundays and feast-days of the year; nineteen Passions, whose poems too were often from his pen; twenty operas and comic operas; twenty oratorios, forty serenades, six hundred overtures, trios, concertos, clavier pieces, etc.; seven hundred airs, etc., etc.

This fabulous activity was interrupted by only one journey, which was the dream of his whole life. It was to Paris. More than once he had been invited thither by the Parisian virtuosi, who admired his works. He arrived in Paris at Michaelmas, 1737, and remained there for eight months. Blavet, Guignon, the younger Forcroy and Édouard played his quartets "in an admirable manner," he tells us. "These performances impressed the Court and the city and quickly won for me an almost universal favour, which was enhanced by a perfect courtesy." He profited by it to have these quartets and six sonatas engraved. On the 25th of March, 1738, the Concert Spirituel gave his seventy-first Psalm with five voices and orchestra. He wrote in Paris a French cantata, Polyphême, and a comic symphony based on a popular song—Père Barnabas. "And I departed," he says, "fully satisfied, in the hope of returning."