Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/136

124 This is a correspondence with Graun, in 1751–2, on the subject of Rameau. Graun had sent Telemann a long letter in which he severely criticised  the recitatives in Castor and Pollux. He blamed the lack of naturalness, the false intonations, the arioso  introduced inappropriately in the recitative, the  changes of time made with insufficient motive,  which, he says, "cause difficulties for the singer  and the accompanist; for they are not natural.  And I hold it to be a capital rule that one should not  introduce any unnatural difficulty without an urgent  reason." In short, he declares that "French recitative singing sounds to him like the howling of  a dog; that French recitative pleases nowhere,  save merely in France, as he has found by experience,  all his life long;" and he derides Rameau. "Rameau, whom the Parisians call the great Rameau,  the honour of France. … He must have  ended by believing it himself: for according to Hasse  he says that he cannot write anything bad. …  I should much like to know where one is to find his  rhetorical, philosophical and mathematical science;  in melody or in polyphony? … I confess  that I have made little or no study of mathematics;  I had no opportunity of doing so in my youth;  but my experience has shown me that the  mathematical composers accomplish nothing of any  value. Witness Euler, who used to write false  harmonies …"

Telemann replies:

"Most nobly born, most honourable Sir and my