Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/153

 dominated by all the styles of poetry which have successively prevailed in France from the Pléiade to Victor Hugo and Ronsard. He writes scenes of plays, tirades beginning in the manner of Racine, or at any rate of Crebillon, and continuing in the manner of Hugo, or it may be of Auguste Vacquerie. That would have been impossible in literature, even at periods of relative corruption in our taste. But the like has been seen in music. To the coarsening of taste have been added, by way of cloaking the scandal, all the camouflage of which opera admits the use. But if, in France at any rate, this scandal has never been unmasked and denned by criticism, there has been an obscure consciousness of it ever since a more sincere expression has reappeared on the boards, and it has been the death of Meyerbeer. "Something for all tastes," might be the motto of his work. It exploited pell-mell all the forms which had been successful in all the countries of Europe, and dragged them in side by side in musical utterance with no other rule of choice than the inflexible purpose of forcing success. It is a known fact that for certain important passages Meyerbeer wrote several airs. He used to try them at the public rehearsal and plump for the one which produced most effect.

Imitation conceived in this manner allows the most precious part of what it imitates to be lost. It is useless for Meyerbeer to take as model the masters of impassioned eloquence or brilliant lightness; he himself is more often than not cold and heavy. The forms that he steals are no longer animated in his hands by the vibration of the life-impulse which created them. There is a certain quality, the most enviable of all that music can possess, more easily