Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/42

 three airs "Tis not the dance I love," "I fear to speak to my love at night," "A bandage o'er the eyes." It is the genius of old French song, with the shade of amorous archness that was in vogue at that period, and a stream of melody that is quite Italian. This fusion of qualities is found again in some of the more masculine airs. Blondel's drinking song, "Sultan Saladin," with the calm strength of its rhythm, the expansive frankness of its refrain, its perfection of line, is certainly one of the happiest and daintiest morsels in the whole of music. It is enough to compare with these pieces those of a loftier tone: "O Richard, O my king." "Though the whole universe should me forget," to have proof of the variety to which I drew attention as the reason for placing Grétry in so high a rank. I refrain from bringing up all the witnesses with which scores unknown to the public and not easily accessible would provide me. My aim is to give a general impression, to stimulate curiosity.

Grétry's facility of melodic invention cost him a great deal of thought and trouble. In any art it is always thus that that fine impression of facility and naturalness is obtained. He tells us that before hitting on the air, so touching and destined to become so celebrated, “A burning fever," he lay on his sofa racking his brains from eleven o'clock at night to four in the morning; a new domestic he had just then, whom he ordered to light the fire, thought he had lost his reason. Talking on this subject he would say that a composer "could always be sure of making twelve bars of harmony every morning'"" [sic] but to discover a melody, to put one's hand on the exact spot, the living, hidden spring from which is to issue forth the true accent of nature,—that too may need much labour, but it is