Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/131



In the discussions provoked, or rather renewed, by the war, on the subject of French and German music, the names and works of many famous musicians have come up for judgment, but not much has been said about Meyerbeer. Wagner's apologists have given him a few hard knocks, but have not pressed the attack. Doubtless they do not see much danger for the future of their cult in the author of the Huguenots. M. Saint-Saëns has made a brief reply, and in particular has asked whether they regarded the fourth act of the Huguenots as a small thing. The point was quite inadequate as a general defence of Meyerbeer's work, but it was not ill-chosen. The fourth act of the Huguenots is Meyerbeer's most successful effort; he has perhaps written other pages as strong, but he has never written an equally long sequence of strong pages. I say strong, not fine, pages; there is a distinction. M. Saint-Saëns has by no means proved by this reference as much as he would have wished to prove; he will not have changed in the least the opinion of those who, knowing Meyerbeer's musical work by hearing and reading it, judge it as a whole with severity. But he has done well in indicating a certain limit, a certain restraint which should be observed in this severity if one wishes that it should remain strictly fair and rightly proportioned to the interests of taste.

I will justify to the best of my ability the estimate which I propose to offer of the value of Meyerbeer's