Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/83



Rameau's Airs are of two kinds, or one might better say of two degrees. The shorter ones offer an intermediate form between the Recitative and the airs on a larger scale. They coalesce with the recitative itself; they are inserted in its development and are as it were a more sustained phase of recitative. Free declamation gives place to song properly so called, but it is song that has its melodic movement so adjusted as not to contrast excessively with the declamation, and seems to be its natural sequel. The musician's tact has to tell him the exact points at which the utterance requires this slightly more elevated tone, this more rhythmic diction. Two airs, in the second scene of the first act, "Let your foe's fate …" and "How poor a victory!" may be quoted as examples. The melodic restraint of these passages allows the same natural ease in the return to recitative.

This form is necessary to truth of expression in dramatic music. Its absence leaves an appreciable void and the liveliest musical pleasure experienced in other parts does not make up for the discomfort which this gap causes to any good judge. It disappeared from opera at the same time that there disappeared that great richness, that superabundance of musical resource employed in opera by the old Italians, such as Monteverde and Stradella, and by Rameau their true successor. We see the lack of it in the modern Italians, and one must add, in Glück, though this remark must not be taken as detracting from his genius. It disappeared at a time when a doctrine prevailed which made it a grievance against