Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/141

 use the expression in its most general application) is after all nothing but the modern form of the ancient and natural union between music and poetry; without that union complete enjoyment seems impossible—the absence of it leaves something wanting. By uniting herself in this form and setting to poetry of proved nobility, grandeur or delicacy, music bound herself in turn to seek these virtues and to display them in opera, as she had displayed them before the days of opera in the choruses of Greek tragedy, in the fine hymns of the church, which were a continuation of ancient music, and in that wonderful choral music of the sixteenth century which was written to the verses of Ronsard and the masters of the "Pleiad." The very titles of the operas of Monteverde, Lulli, Rameau, Glück, Mozart, Méhul—of all the great masters (not to mention the lesser, and without quoting those who, after Meyerbeer, reverted to this custom, or the heroic Berlioz who was faithful to it all his life), bear absolutely unanimous witness to the truth of my remark. I am not in the least attempting to lay this down as a sine qua non of good opera; but all the same the age-long persistence of a certain artistic practice and the great number of masterpieces in which we come across it, do oblige us to accept it as a convention almost equivalent to a necessity. The reasons why this convention showed itself eminently favourable to beauty of expression are obvious. In view of the very dominant part that music plays in opera, it is hardly to be expected that many librettists will be found who combine disinterested enthusiasm with the power to create anything equivalent to the accepted masterpieces of literature. If this combination should be found, so much the better; but all