Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/17

Rh and on Sundays Jean Noé used to set the peasants dancing to the sound of his fiddle. No sooner was his son François able to hold a bow, than he began to help his father; the little fellow was so talented that at twelve years old he gained by competition the place of first violin in the church of St. Martin at Liège. He was soon to become the most eminent violinist in the town. He too made a marriage of affection, but more lucky than his father, he forced the consent of his future wife’s parents, though they considered his position too humble or too uncertain. This was the father of the great Grétry. Here then we see at least one family in which the famous law of hereditary progress is faithfully observed. The village fiddler begets the leading violin, and the latter gives the world the composer of operas.

André’s early infancy was passed chiefly in the country with his grand-parents. I like to imagine that old Jean Noé was still playing dances, and to find in the memory of these village Sundays the source of inspiration at once so gracious and so lively, so sturdy and so elegant, so rustic and so dainty, with which the musician of Colinette and of Richard was to depict and animate the gaiety of peasants making holiday.

It was a great grief to the child to leave Blegny when his father put him in the choir of the collegiate church of St. Denis. There his existence was divided between the duties of choir boy, and music lessons, which he received with his comrades from a very rough master. He left St. Denis at the age of twelve, and next received private tuition from a musician named Leclerc, whose gentleness and kindness he praises in his Memoirs. The desire to compose was born