Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/99

 It must indeed be admitted that Rameau had done all that it lay in him to do to bring the storm upon himself. Rousseau had respectfully asked him to examine the score of the Muses galantes (his first musical work), but the master excused himself because the reading of scores wearied him. He consented however to hear some extracts from this comic opera performed at the house of M. de la Popelinière. The experiment was disastrous, a fact of which one can have no doubt inasmuch as the accounts of the scene given by the two interested parties agree even in the smallest details. Rameau explained that some of these pieces were by a consummate artist, while others were by an ignoramus who simply didn't know Music, and he concluded by stating baldly that what was good had been stolen.

It is obvious that he was wrong in not being civil, especially towards a morbidly irritable man. But the question that interests posterity is whether he was right in his judgment. We cannot refer to the text of the Muses galantes, as the score has not come down to us. But we have the observations of Jean-Jacques, which throw all the light that is necessary on the matter. "It is quite true," he writes, that my work, being unequal and not conforming to rules was sometimes sublime and sometimes very flat; that must be the case with anyone who soars only on occasional bursts of genius, and is not sustained by science." Is that true? . No, it is not true, at least as Rousseau states it; it cannot be true. It is as impossible without science to write fragments of sublime music, as it is impossible to make discoveries in higher mathematics without a mastery of the elements. Intention does not make power, and power only comes from sufficient studies. With the finest natural