Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/47

 issued, among other similar edicts, an order prescribing the substitution of the expression "serious father" for "noble father" in the theatrical vocabulary. Soon the turbulent elements in the crowd would only tolerate on the stage political pieces in which their passions were flattered. Colinette at Court, False Magic, or Silvain were no longer in season. To perform them before the agitators and ranters of the clubs would have been just like giving wild beasts roses to eat.

So, like other musicians, Grétry had to compose revolutionary music. I will not include under this heading a William Tell which appeared in 1791, an unequal work containing spirited passages stamped with the sincere enthusiasm inspired in the composer, as in so many others by a political movement about which it was still possible to have illusions. But I would pick out from the list of his productions between 1792 and 1794, Joseph Barra, "a true history in one act," a Hymn for the plantation of the tree of Liberty, some pieces for the opera, The Congress of Kings, done in collaboration with several other composers, and lastly The Feast of Reason or The Republican Maid. This last work is the only one which casts a shadow over Grétry's memory. It breathes a fanaticism which I believe to be insincere. We have in it a priest who tears his cassock and breviary and appears garbed as a sans culotte, women who go to sleep at the recitation of a Pater and an Ave Maria, and wake to the strains of the Hymn of Reason. This performance was given when the Terror was at its height,—I prefer to let my mind dwell on the castigation which the Memoirs of Grétry inflict on that régime.