Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/149

Rh disappear, or are no longer employed, except in a very sober fashion, at moments when the drama is not opposed to them."

Recitatives, airs, chorales and choruses are confounded, interpenetrating one another, so that their values are made apparent by contrast, doubling their dramatic effect. Telemann applied himself with a joyful heart to a subject that afforded him opportunity for such sumptuous descriptions: the crepitations and tumultuous surgings of the violins in the chorus which opens the second part: Es rauscht, so rasseln stark rollende Wagen, with its dramatic, almost Beethovian climax; the recital of the prodigious events foretelling the end of the world, the flames bursting from the earth, the impetuous cohorts of the clouds, the shattering of the harmony of the spheres, the moon forsaking her orbit, the rising ocean, and lastly the trumpet of the Judgment. The most impressive of all these choruses is that of the sinners hurled into hell, with its syncopation of terror and the rumbling of the orchestra .—There is no lack of charming airs, above all in the last portion, but they are less original than the accompanied recitatives with descriptive passages on the orchestra. This is the style of Händel or J. S. Bach, liberated from the strictness of contrapuntal writing. The new art of melody is