Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/110

 scraps of song, frayed ideas, noise, flights, triumph, rushes, murmurs, gasping victories, dance airs that are to last for ever, which after superseding the Florentine will be superseded by the Italian virtuosi. He had a presentiment of this which made him dark and gloomy and surly, for no one is so peevish—not even a pretty woman who gets up in the morning with a pimple on her nose—as an author doomed to survive his reputation, witness Marivaux and the younger Crébillon."

One might call this an ingenious piece of spoof.

D'Alembert intervened in a second phase of the contest. Rameau, not willing to let Rousseau have the last word, had published a vigorous pamphlet against Musical Errors in the Encyclopædia, the musical articles being by Rousseau. To do this was to lay his hand on the Holy of Holies. D'Alembert wrote a reply; Rameau retorted and exposed himself to the enemy. He was getting old, and, irritated by this campaign, was no longer quite master of his ideas. He imprudently mixed metaphysics with his music. He said that music was the foundation of geometry and the mother of all sciences. D'Alembert handled somewhat roughly these extravagances of an obstinate old man.

The turn of the tide began about twenty years ago, in the resurrection of Rameau who had lain buried throughout the nineteenth century under the waves of the successive invasions of musical Italianism and Germanism. Credit for this is due to the initiative of Charles Borde and M. Vincent d'Indy, who had numer