Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/222

 overwhelmed us with it, not stopping to think that it was specifically suited to Wagner's class of creation, and to no one else's. An analogous remark may be made on the very subtle and delicate harmonies of such men as Ernest Chausson and Gabriel Faure. They depict the soul of a sensitive and highly strung French period, the period from 1880 to 1900, the period that saw itself in Verlaine. They will always charm, and these masters are assured of immortality by the purity of their manner of writing. But France's coming generations will not meet their like again except in a more vigorous and simpler art, a more open style.

The question of orchestration has its part in all these general observations, but with one reservation. Of all the elements of technique this one is affected by a condition peculiar to itself. Its progress does not depend only on discoveries of the mind and the ear as to properties of sounds in general. It depends also on the inventions of the instrument maker, on the instruments available at a given period. It would have been impossible for Lulli to introduce colour into his orchestra by means of horns, since the harmonic horn did not exist in his day; Rameau was the first (in France) to employ it. We will admit for the sake of definiteness that the material basis of modern instrumentation appears complete in the symphonic orchestra of Beethoven, and that such as we find it there it suffices for all natural and human modes of expression by sound-character. What has been added since is of very limited application, and is only capable of giving certain special and episodic picturesque effects. We may say then that the four great musicians who have, since the days of Beethoven,