Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/60

 Music as practised after the principles of M. Rameau (1752) gives us a most simple and lucid summary of the doctrines of the Treatise. The trouble taken by this great and illustrious geometrician on behalf of the conceptions of a musician, shows the rank that he assigned to him among men of intellect.

When the Treatise appeared, Rameau, born in 1683, was entering upon his fortieth year. He had so far published nothing but a collection of pieces for the harpsichord. During the ten following years he produced two other collections of the same kind and four "French Cantatas," short compositions, full of charm but lacking in relief, for one or two voices with accompaniment by three or four instruments.

The collection for the harpsichord contains masterpieces that became celebrated; M. Louis Diemer's marvellous execution and clever transcriptions have re-won popularity for them in our own day. And yet these works contributed far less to Rameau's fame among his contemporaries than the Treatise, which enjoyed considerable success.

We must not be surprised at the favour accorded by the public to a work so dry and technical. It was in keeping with the spirit of the age. Fontenelle's Talks on the Plurality of Worlds had brought into fashion the material of experimental knowledge, or rather they had provided wonderful sustenance for the craving for natural philosophy which the evolution of ideas had engendered in polite society. This taste had spread and become generalised. It found striking and amusing expression in the fact of Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet setting up in the country a physical laboratory, though they had hardly mastered the elements of Physics, and translating the Principles