Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/18

4 in him, and he was considerably excited by the representations of an Italian troupe who were touring the large towns with the opéra bouffes of Pergolesi and Galuppi. This troupe spent a year at Liège, and FrancoisFrançois [sic] Grétry got the boy admitted to the orchestra. Coming into touch with Pergolesi’s work was a revelation to him. On hearing the Serva padrona, André (as he writes) nearly “died of pleasure,” and the idea that he too one day might compose operas threw him into ecstasies.

He had a very fine treble voice. Having resumed his place in the choir of the collegiate church, with his musical sense exalted and instructed by the Italians, he made an extraordinary impression as a soloist. The musicians of the orchestra in which his father was first violin, began to play pianissimo the better to hear him. A canon, a great music lover and a rich man, M. de Harlez was filled with enthusiasm and promised the young virtuoso whatsoever material help he might need to develop his talents. But the boy was eager to establish himself as a composer. He wrote, without any knowledge, a motet and a fugue: in his Memoirs he confesses that he had pilfered the ideas from various pieces, but had altered their form and given them new turns to render them unrecognisable. His father thereupon decided that he should study; he placed him at first under the direction of Renekin, organist at the church of St. Pierre, and afterwards under Moreau, organist at St. Paul’s. Renekin, delighted at his pupil’s happy nature, was inclined to guide him with a loose rein. Moreau, a stern master, would have liked to drive him into hard studies of musical science. He greeted coldly the faulty attempts of the little genius, whereas Renekin had revelled in