Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/98

 Diderot, Grimm, and even d'Alembert to join the crycry. [sic] We must devote ourselves first to the part played by Rousseau, the ringleader of this orchestra in full blast; by the rumpus produced the whole thing might I have been an affair of state. As leader Rousseau was himself led away by the gloomy resentment of his pride, his ideas of persecution and his delusions.

He had begun by shewing for Rameau an admiration of which there is abundant evidence. He recognised his genius as a theorist, acknowledged in him the true creator of the synthesis and classification of harmony. He was equally appreciative of his operas, and praised their power of pathetic expression, richness of harmonisation and colour. These eulogies, which have special reference to Dardanus, the Indes galantes and Hippolyte, occur in a comparison of French and Italian music; this has not been published, but M. Tiersot after studying it in manuscript, gives us an analysis of it. In this comparison Italian music is put far below French music. Rousseau allows the former the credit of "fine sounds" and of brilliant melodic artifices such as refrains, repetitions, glides and vocalisations, but as for sentiment he finds it "frozen" and says that only French music can touch the heart. The amusing thing is that the great attack upon Rameau which is two or three years later than this little document, is also presented in the form of a comparison between French and Italian music, and that practically one has only to interchange the characteristics which Jean Jacques had previously attributed to them respectively, to get the drift of his new criticisms. But French music is worse treated than the Italian had been. It is now the French music which is frozen and repulsive in its insipidity; it has not even the "fine sounds".