Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/150

 what is the use of quoting these gems? Even when the style of speech of the Meyerbeer–Scribe characters is less incorrect or less extravagant, it is still separated from what is natural by a mysterious gulf. A feature that is not noticed so much is the outrages on prosody with which the musical text teems. In the quick movements especially, the musician, whose mother-tongue was German, completely loses the small sense he may ever have acquired of the values of syllables in French.

For your instruction, look at the Polonaise in the first act of the Northern Star. As regards prosody it is appalling, it is really unsingable. Only a Boche could keep smiling when rendering soldat with the sol long and the dat short; or qui marche droit with the che long and droit short—or when giving s'élance with the same length for s'é and lan. An example familiar to everyone is that of Robert's Ballade at the words: "Et Berthe jusqu-alors si fière." I don't know how singers get over it, but it's much more difficult than fruit cuit, fruit cru. And I repeat, these horrors abound. They are absolutely intolerable, and to my way of thinking, a page of music in which they occur has no right to see the light of day.

It remains for me to consider the musician separately. Not that the judgment to be delivered on a work of dramatic music taken alone and the judgment concerning the quality of the dramatic work itself can be made independent of each other. What is attempted is merely to observe separately the elements of the whole work, poetry and music, in order to form a