Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/104

 of the French can have no time, or again his theory on incomplete chords and harmonic padding, which would make a schoolboy laugh, while Rameau refused to reply otherwise than by a shrug of the shoulders.

More deserving of attention is his comparison between the languages, from the point of view of their respective sonority. He states, what is obviously true, that Italian lends itself far better to singing. Must we draw from that the conclusion that French refuses to be sung, and necessarily renders singing indistinct and harsh? Let us put it at its worst, and admit that German is to French, in respect of natural harmony, what French is to Italian. The songs of Schubert and Schumann sung in German, have a great deal of charm, and it is disagreeable to hear them in another language after receiving one's first impression of them in the original. The fact is that a music closely associated with its words by the double tie of fitness of sentiment and prosodic accuracy (with words of course that have been well chosen) communicates to them all the sonority that can be desired. Can anything sound finer than "Sad Preparations"?

Rousseau is not anxious to contrast French and Italian music in general. Little as he knows of the subject, he knows enough not to be unaware that the reasons for which he rejects Rameau would be equally applicable to the Italians of a past, but still quite recent, age, such as Monteverde, Stradella, Carissimi and others, not to mention Lulli, whom he makes a Frenchman. Rameau's musical formation and conception affiliate him to these great masters, and if his art is profoundly French, if it is French as the work of Descartes and Racinę was French, yet this