Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/218

206 supremacy over them. Nothing better shows the Italianisation of Germany better than this fact; the most famous representative of Italian opera chose as his residence not Rome or Venice but Vienna, where he held his court. Poet Laureate to the Emperor, he disdained to learn the language of the country in which he lived; he knew only three or four words of it; just what he needed, as he said, 'to save his life'; that is, to make himself understood by his servants. Worshipped by Germany, he did not conceal his disdain of her.

His right hand in Vienna, his principal interpreter in music, was the composer Hasse, the most Italianate of German musicians. Adopted by Italy, baptised by her il Sassone (the Saxon), the pupil of Scarlatti and Porpora, Hasse had acquired a sort of Italian chauvinism that surpassed that of the Italians themselves. He would not hear of any other music; and he was ready to fall upon President de Brosses when the latter, while in Rome, attempted to uphold the superiority of François Lalande in the matter of church music.

We may say that the German Hasse was, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the favourite