Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/118

 that circle we took an interest in Schopenhauer because he had been Wagner's master in philosophy, and one of the threadbare opinions we favoured was a scandalised reprobation of certain remarks by Schopenhauer on Rossini. The philosopher of Frankfort in a passage in which he seeks to analyse the profound impressions that music produces on the soul, takes his examples from Rossini. My Wagnerians or Wagner-Schopenhauerites were up in arms about it. As though Rossini's little music appealed to the soul! To day, being better instructed (at least so I fancy), I leave these people, who if the truth were known hardly like Mozart any better, to their puritan gloom, and I firmly believe that it is not Rossini's music which is little, but their souls that might be made of a finer flame.

Rossini's musical education, like that of most Italian musicians of the nineteenth century, Verdi for instance, was sadly neglected. He often said himself that he acquired his first experience by rearranging the bass of Haydn's quartets. But unlike Verdi, who by dint of study and progress rendered beautiful a style of writing that was originally rude, Rossini was pure from the very beginning. From the purely musical point of view, the Barber might be called decadent Mozart; it is Mozart thinned and grown puny, but in no way corrupted or soiled. But is not this inferiority almost made up for by its incomparable wealth of wit and humour? Its melodic language is still thin, and the harmonic language is not yet that of William Tell, but they suffice for the distribution of a shower of amazing and delightful inventions. The Barber is unique as a display of that very rare gift, facility and a happy touch combined