Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/122

 bravura, such as "Matilda, idol of my soul," and passages of artificial and chilly energy ("For our love no hope remains") or of faded grace ("Upon the alien shore"). I will not defend whole-heartedly "Dark Forests," which is however thoroughly musical, with a tinge of old fashioned poetry. But all that is inspired, either in individuals or in the crowd collectively, by patriotism, enthusiasm for liberty, and that love of rustic and pastoral life which among the Swiss mountain folk is identified with those sentiments,—the whole of that (in other words, the greater part of the work) is animated with that spirit of life which confers immortal youth. And of those two inseparable signs of youth, namely, vigour and freshness, it is the latter in particular which is felt in William Tell, as was fitting in a poem whose subject is steeped in the atmosphere of Alpine nature.

It is well known that after William Tell, Rossini deliberately ceased to write for the theatre. He was only thirty-seven, and during the thirty-nine years that he lived after this he hardly composed anything except his Stabat. This retirement is one of the curiosities of the history of art. The reason given by the artist was that he feared his work would deteriorate, and evidently that explanation must be accepted. But if Rossini had died on the morrow of his triumph, the world would have speculated on the magnificence of the career that had been left unfinished. William Tell introduced a fresh style and showed, in comparison with the master's previous works, a progress, an enrichment, a deepening in his music which give the impression of a possibility of being carried much further; new modes of expression are attacked, whereby the musician seems at last to have put