Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/133

 when his works were brought out. But we shall perhaps find that his art itself had some of the characteristics of a successful flotation, and that if Meyerbeer's genius and Meyerbeer's money were certainly two quite different things, yet they were not two things between which there was exactly the solution of continuity that we should normally expect.

Having shown very early a turn for music he was entrusted to the care of the Abbé Vogler, precentor at Darmstadt, at whose school he had for fellow-pupil the future author of Freischütz and of Oberon, Carl Maria Weber. In the excellent notice of Meyerbeer written by MM. Victor Debay and Paul Locard for Lavignac's Musical Encyclopaedia, I see the "principles of musical discipline" taught by the Abbé Vogler are characterised as "severe." These gentlemen are no doubt better informed than I on the teaching of the Abbé Vogler. But there is one branch of classical musical discipline which Meyerbeer soon forgot completely, assuming he ever had any solid grounding in it. He shewed himself utterly impotent in the symphonic side of the art. In principle I certainly would not make that a reproach against him; he was a musician of the theatre, and the example of more than one great genius, Grück and Grétry for instance, proves that masterpieces of dramatic music can be written by men who have not made themselves masters of this side of their art. That is a fact. But it is only one fact, and it would be wrong to conclude that a studious apprenticeship in symphonic technique is valueless for all musicians, or that they can dispense with it without running a dangerous risk; or even that those great men would have gained nothing from it in resources of expression and composition in which