Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/91

 more important place than dramatic music, it is in the first place because his ballets are more numerous than his tragedies: it is also because in two out of his four tragedies, Dardanus and Zoroastre, the moral springs of the tragedy are too feebly conceived to rival the figurative and airy portion which gives scope for symphony properly so-called (in the latter I include dance music).

Rameau as symphonist is a match for the greatest. One has only to go through his scores to recognise that Mozart and Beethoven do not surpass him in invention. His work contains nothing like Beethoven's great contemplative adagios. But Beethoven has not his picturesque fancy—so sturdy and of such astonishing creative originality. The two are equal in force of enthusiasm. But if Beethoven's enthusiasm raises and organises far vaster sonorous masses, Rameau's throws out more brilliant flashes. That is only to say that Rameau is a Frenchman, a Frenchman of the eighteenth century, while Beethoven is of another race. If Rameau (beware, I am about to utter a blasphemy!)—if Rameau had written the finale of the ninth symphony, the Ode to Joy, he would never have made of it that extraordinary architecture of sounds, but on the other hand he would not have put that heaviness into it; he would have really put more joy into it.

In any case this is not the comparison I wish to press; I make it merely to indicate Rameau's rank, rather than to add another stroke to the portrait of a genius. A comparison between Rameau and Handel would be much more fruitful. They are exactly contemporary, and great as are the differences between them, one is conscious that they share a certain common