Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/79

 in this department with Rameau's. In the work of the Italians from Pergolesi onwards, in Glück, Mozart and Rossini, in the Frenchmen of the first half of the nineteenth century, Recitative is presented as the part that is sacrificed; it is employed in passages of subdued dramatic interest, where the lilt and lyric expression of the air are unsuitable; and it is admitted that what befits these passages (at any rate in the absence of any thing better) is sung declamation, a chant more or less accentuated in its outlines, and accompanied by a few chords the object of which will be rather to sustain the voice than to make any real contribution to the expression. But is nothing better possible?

Could not an effect be obtained intermediate between the musical vacuum proper to the recitatives of this school and the plenitude of music which distinguishes the airs? Must one necessarily accept as an imperfection fatally inherent in opera this eternal alternation of void and fulness, of desert tracts and flowery oases, as repellent to the spectator as they are offensive to truth and nature? I have mentioned Monteverde and Rameau as the two greatest operatic musicians who have been of the contrary opinion. I hasten to add that they were so because they could afford to be so, and they could afford it because they were incomparable masters in the handling of harmony. Except Mozart (who no doubt paid no great attention to this point) the exponents of the recitativo secco, whatever genius some of them may have shewn elsewhere, were far from equalling these two in this department, and that is why they were, as one may say, condemned to the recitativo secco.

The truth is that what properly belongs to recitative passages is the expression of sentiment, and fine shades