Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/98

86 Even in France, where people were much more stay-at-home, not caring greatly what was happening in Germany, it was realised that a revolution was taking place. As early as 1734, Séré de Rieux recorded Händel's victory over Germany.

Grimm, who was a snob, and would have taken good care not to advertise a kinship that would have injured him in the eyes of the public, congratulates himself, in a letter to the Abbé Raynal in 1752, on being the compatriot of Hasse and Händel. Telemann was fêted in Paris in 1737; Hasse was no less warmly welcomed in 1750, and the Dauphin requested him to write the Te Deum for the accouchement of the Dauphiness. J. Stamitz obtained a triumphant reception for his first symphonies in Paris, about 1754–5. And soon after this the French newspapers made a crushing reference to Rameau, contrasting him with the German symphonists; or, to be exact, they said: "We shall not commit the injustice of comparing Rameau's overtures with the symphonies which Germany has given us during the last twelve or fifteen years." German music, then, had regained its position at the summit of European art; and the Germans realised it. In this national feeling all other differences were effaced; all German artists, to whatever group they belonged, set aside their causes of dispute; Germany united them without distinction of schools.