Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/29

Rh merely a tinkling cymbal. In a German musician reason retains its rights, even over music. But this virile intelligence was beginning to allow itself to be impaired by the seductions of Italy.

In Dresden and Leipzig, as in Florence and Rome, Kuhnau saw princes becoming the patrons of the sensuous and demoralising art which was the natural ally of despotism. His novel affords us a proof of the irresistible attraction which the Italian virtuoso exercised upon all classes of society. When Caraffa puts up at a country inn he is confident of meeting with the same welcome as in the homes of the wealthy city merchants. The public taste was sick.

But Kuhnau was too conscious of his strength to be seriously alarmed. He sees the evil but laughs at it, confident that it will run its course. His unembittered optimism goes so far as to foresee the conversion of the offenders. Caraffa, at the end of the novel, is touched by the remonstrances of a worthy priest, and amends his life; and if this repentance is not very probable in such a character we owe to it, at all events, some noble pages in which the author writes of the true virtuoso and the happy musician: "Der wahre Virtuose und glückselige Musicus."

Of him he requires much. With regard to music, he expects the composer to familiarise himself with all instruments and the singer or the instrumentalist (and above all the harpsichord-player) to be a trained composer. But this professional education is not enough. Kuhnau expects the composer to have some general scientific knowledge, above all of 1em