Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/119

 with genius. The Barber is a fine thing, but how far away it seems—one of the last rays of smiling beauty falling on this Europe in which romanticism, Germanism and industrialism were already beginning to make the twilight of art prevail, and were destined to mingle confusion and pain with genius in artists even of the highest gifts.

I find in the character of Basile and the air "Calumny" opportunity for a general note on a gift which seems to me to be peculiar to the Italians. They are musically inspired by sentiments and ideas which our composers would, I think, consider incapable of translation into music. We Frenchmen are disposed to believe that music can only express the soul's expansive states—love, enthusiasm, avowed hate, grief, hope, meditation. We believe that song can only well forth from a soul entirely given up to what it feels, and pouring itself forth in song. The idea of depicting by sounds movements of the heart and blood traceable to the absence of generosity, calculated and tortuous sentiments, cold passions that restrain themselves the better to obtain satisfaction, and that seek for means to do so in subtle and dark efforts of the mind—such an idea would seem to us against nature. Or let us say that it is not in keeping with our nature. But there is no doubt it is not excluded by Italian nature; for it is obviously a feature common to the great musicians of Italy in all ages that they have managed to translate into dramatic music of extraordinary truth and beauty the inspirations of cowardice, knavery, treachery, and of vengeance