Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/16

4 a Monday, was completed by the Monday of the following week. I mention this circumstance merely so that no one shall expect to find in them rare and exceptional qualities. It is true that we are not always craving for extraordinary things; we often eat the simplest fruits of our fields with as much pleasure as the rarest and most exquisite foreign fruits, although the latter may be very costly and come from a great distance. I know there are gourmets among the amateurs of music who will accept nothing save that which comes from France or Italy—above all when fortune has permitted them to breathe the air of those countries. My fruits are at the disposal of all; those who do not find them to their taste have only to seek elsewhere. As for the critics, they will not spare them; but the venom of the ignorant is powerless to injure them more than a cool dew will harm ripened fruit."

That same year (1700) Kuhnau published his noble and expressive Biblische Historien, and a novel which we shall consider at greater length. He was thirty-three years of age. He stood alone in the midst of Italians and "Italianisers." His friends and pupils had deserted him. He witnessed the decline of German music and made unavailing efforts to check its fall. In vain did he appeal to the City Council to protect public education, jeopardised not only by the spell of foreign art but also by the bait of cheap pleasures and easy profits, which debauched the youth of the Leipzig schools, drawing them in flocks to the Opera. The Council decided against Kuhnau and in favour of success. On Kuhnau's death in 1722 Italian opera was supreme in Germany. It would seem that such injustice on the part of Fate must have filled the old master's