Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/147

Rh modern in style. The orchestra includes three clarini sordinati (deep-toned muffled trumpets), two oboes, which play a plaintive melody in long-drawn notes, two violins, a viol and the saxhorn senza cembalo. Its sonority is extremely fine. "Telemann really obtained the fusion of the various sonorous groups," which until then had hardly been attempted. The piece is full of serene emotion, which has already the neo-antique purity of Gluck. It might be a chorus from Alceste, and the harmony is full of expression.

We find also in Telemann a romantic note, a poetical feeling for Nature, which is not unknown in Händel, but which is perhaps more refined in Telemann—when he really does his best—for his sensitiveness is of a more modern type. Thus, the "nightingale aria" sung by Mirtilla in Damon (1729) stands out, amid the innumerable "nightingale arias" of the period, by reason of its subtle impressionism.

Telemann's operas are not sufficient to judge him by. Those which have been preserved until our day, which are eight in number—together with La Serenata and Don Quichott der Löwenritter—were all written at Hamburg, within a period of no great length—between 1721 and 1729. In the fifty years that followed Telemann greatly developed his powers; and we should be unjust to him if we did not estimate his capacity by the works of the