Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/35

 The first solution was to shelve the difficulty, the solution of disdain. Grétry put aside the contradiction which instrumental music seemed to offer to his principles by treating it with contempt. He declared that he saw in it only an inferior and ill-determined form of musical invention, as it were a mere natural noise or wailing, a phantom music, almost a false music. To those who enjoy it he says that they are taking pleasure in the metaphysical (in a bad sense), and the vague emotion received from pure instrumental music appears to him to be the mark of dissolute sensibility.

It must be admitted that at the time he talked like that he knew next to nothing of instrumental music. Lacking the special technical education that it requires, he felt not the slightest inclination to try it himself. His attention was given entirely to theatrical work; he had not paid any to the masterpieces which had already appeared in Italy and France, not in the way of symphonies, which had not then appeared, but in pieces for the harpsichord and the organ. Later when the symphonies of Haydn began to find their way all over Europe, he bowed before those admirable works and generously changed his opinion; he exclaims that it is very wrong to profess not to know what message a fine sonata or a fine symphony has for us. But he invents a kind of conciliation between this late-formed opinion and his opinion of early days. He says that instrumental music when it is beautiful is as it were an unconscious vocal music. It is made for words, it is waiting for them, and it will be well to fit it with words. The symphonist (if he feels a real inspiration, a genuine glow) is inspired by an inherent or latent poem, which it becomes one’s duty