Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/20

6, in great ideas: but he writes badly; his music sounds hard: his “crust” is hollow, hard, tough. That is not the case with Grétry. He is fully and subtly a musician. All that he writes sounds agreeable, his technique is pure: his melody, which is sometimes of the utmost grace and beauty, and which in general recommends itself by a rare justness of accent and expression, is attached to the movements of a bass that is easy, neat and elegant. To what point then does our reproach, or one might far better say regret, apply? To the narrowness, the relative meagreness of his technique, to a certain lack of richness and variety in the harmonies of his lyre. Our pleasure is in no way lessened thereby in places where richer combinations were not needed. But when, not contenting ourselves with the pleasure of so many delicious pieces, and scenes, we step back a little to judge the general effect either of Grétry’s work or of one of his works, we cannot console ourselves for his not having possessed craftmanship to that degree that makes the greatest masters and produces works that are armed at all points against the blows of time. It seems to us that he was meant for such work, that he was born to achieve larger flights, constructions of greater breadth and more sustained. There is a perceptible contrast between the strength, the often masterly completeness of his ideas and the exiguity of the dramatic field in which they are produced and flourish so successfully. We have his efforts in the grand style (Céphale et Procrès, Andromaque, etc) in which superb elements of invention do not attain an effect worthy of themselves, because the style of the mass of the work is not kept up to the same level. We have his conceptions of dramatic music as he has set them out in his