Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/136

 of the matter which they help to express and make felt. They might be compared to a colour scheme of which the least important appeals have an inestimable charm when the picture that it expresses recommends itself by the poetry of its thought, the beauty and energy of the composition, the strength of the movement. Are these higher virtues absent? Then a connoisseur will certainly not let himself be captured by the brilliant palette-work which a clever artist offers us by way of compensation. There you have the point that it is important to note about Meyerbeer's instrumentation. The passages in which the fascination that he knows so well how to put into his work is in true proportion to the poetry of the idea are absolutely exceptional. One of the passages that does give me the impression of this due proportion is the celebrated bit in the Africaine, "Wonderful Land." There the feeling of gracious and calm enthusiasm which is exhaled from the melody and harmony calls for the fascination of a cleverly smooth orchestration. But take "Whiter than the ermine white," or again, "O fair land of Touraine." Here the special charm of the orchestral tones is nothing but the adornment of a hollow emptiness.

The brilliance of this exploitation of instrumental resources was something new for French ears, it was largely this that attracted them—one might say, as regards a good deal of it, took them in. By this feature of his art Meyerbeer was destined to exercise a most unfortunate influence on the future of music in our country. He required of combinations of sound—mere sound effects—that they should make up for the inadequacy, the mediocre and often low quality of the actual musical thought; how then could he be content with the orchestra of such as Rameau, Mozart, Beethoven or