Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/170

158 "This outcry should be extremely loud, firstly because truth requires that it should be so, and further, in order to give value to the silence which is then imposed upon the tumultuous populace by the mere presence of Regulus. … The instruments should be silent when the other characters are speaking; on the other hand, they accompany Regulus continually in this scene; the modulations and movements should be made to vary, not in accordance with the mere words, as is done by other writers of music, but in accordance with the inner emotion, as is done by the great musicians, your peers. For you know as well as I that the same words may, according to the circumstances, express (or conceal) joy or sorrow, wrath or compassion. I am fully convinced that an artist such as yourself will be able to contrive a large number of instrumental recitatives without fatiguing the hearers: in the first place, because you will carefully avoid allowing things to drag, as I have so insistently advised you; and more especially because you possess in perfection the art of varying and alternating the piano, the forte, the rinforzi, the staccati or congiunti concatenations, the ritardi, the pauses, the arpeggios, the tremolos, and above all those unexpected modulations whose secret resources you alone understand. …"

"Do you think I have done with annoying you? Not yet … I should like the final chorus to be one of those which, thanks to you, have given the public the desire, hitherto unknown, to listen to them. I should like you to make it obvious that this chorus is not an accessory but a very necessary part of the tragedy and the catastrophe with which it closes."