Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/97

 novelty of his expression. Rameau was all the more sure of overcoming it because so far from seeking to dethrone the Florentine, he proclaimed him, and with justice, his master and guide. His art, compared with Lulli's, had nothing revolutionary about it; it was a continuation of Lulli. It was the art of Lulli with a very great advance in musical richness, variety,supplenessvariety, suppleness [sic] and colour. It was the musical tragedy of Lulli resumed by an artist who joined to a poetic genius at least as fine and an equally lofty sense of expression, the advantage of being a greater musician and far more fertile in resource. People were not used to this copiousness of invention, all this magnificent stream of music; at first the ears of theatre-goers were stunned and bewildered by them. But they soon recovered, and Rameau had his devoted admirers

The attacks of which I shall now speak were far less honest. Personal feeling, the spirit of clique and intrigue, had far more to do with them than loyal and disinterested conviction. It is practically impossible to accuse Jean Jacques of bad faith in his pamphlet against Rameau; for to shew bad faith one must be capable of good faith, and of such a character as Jean Jacques one may say indifferently that he always shewed good faith or that he never did so. At any rate when we examine without prejudice the substance of the objections that he raises to Rameau's teaching, we are certainly compelled to recognise their purely artificial and fictitious quality. Before a cool judgment on which wild blows of verbiage and irrelevant displays had no effect, Jean Jacques would have cut a contemptible figure, if forced to set out the objective reasons that led him thus to discredit the musician.

We will deal presently with the motives which led