scheme of orchestral composition, put things in the right direction to move on towards the accomplishment of the highest and richest achievement in the story of music-the employment of the complicated resources of an immense aggregate of different instruments for the purposes of vivid and infinitely variable expression

CHAPTER X

THE MIDDLE STAGE of modern operA

EVERY form of art has a variety of sides and aspects which appeal to different men in different degrees. A work may entrance one man through the beauty of its colour, while another finds it insupportable for its weakness of design. One man cares only for melody, when another is satisfied with grand harmony; one wants artistic skill, when another cares only for expression. This is true even of symphonies and sonatas, and such pure examples of human artistic contrivance; but in opera the complication and variety of constituent means of effect intensify the difficulties of the situation tenfold, and the chances of satisfying all tastes are necessarily extremely remote, for the elements that have to be combined seem to be almost incompatible. Scenic effect has to be considered as well as the development of the dramatic situations, and the dialogue, and the music. The action and the scenery distract the attention from the music, and the dialogue naturally goes too fast for it. Music, being mainly the expression of states of mind and feeling, takes time to convey its meaning; and in all but the most advanced stages of art the types of design which seem indispensable to make it intelligible require the repetition of definite passages of melody, and submission to rules of procedure which seem to be completely at variance with dramatic effect. If the action halts or hangs fire, the dramatic effect is paralysed; but if a phase of human passion which has once been passed has to be re-enacted to meet the supposed requirements of music, the situation becomes little less than ridiculous. So, in early days it seemed as if people had to take their choice, and either accept the music as the

essential, and let the words and scenic appurtenances cease to have any dramatic significance; or to fasten their attention on the action and dialogue, and allow the music to be merely an indefinite rambling background of tone, which was hardly fit to be called music at all. The Italians, who enjoyed the distinction of developing the first stages of the operatic form, were much more impressionable on the musical than on the dramatic side, and as soon as the new secular type of music began to take shape, they gave their verdict absolutely in favour of the former; and the drama rapidly receded farther and farther into the background. The scheme was well devised up to a certain point; but as soon as the typical form of movement known as the aria had been fairly established, the ingenious artifices which had seemed to settle the plan of operations degenerated into mere conventions, and even musical progress in general came to a dead standstill. It was impossible for the music to grow or develop, for there was nothing in the occasion to call for any human expression or human interest. The sole purpose of existence of the opera was to show off a few celebrated Italian singers, who required to be accommodated according to fixed rules of precedence, which precluded any kind of freedom of dramatic action. The only glimpse of life which was apparent for some time was in the little humorous operas which began to come into notice about the beginning of the eighteenth century. The regular singer's opera was a most solemn and sedate function, and hardly admitted of anything so incongruous as humour. Humorous scenes had been attempted, even by Alessandro Scarlatti; but apparently they were considered out of place, and humour in general was relegated to the little musical comedies called intermezzos, or "opera buffa," which were performed in between the acts of the opera seria. From one point of view this made the situation even more absurd. It was like performing "King Lear" and the "School for Scandal" in alternate acts. But the ultimate result was eminently beneficial to opera in general. The composers who took the opera buffa in hand developed a special style for the purpose -merry, bright, vivacious, and pointed, and in its way very

characteristic. In the music of the opera seria no attempt was made to follow the action in the music, because action in such situations could have amounted to nothing more than stilted gesticulation. But the composers of the intermezzi tried to keep the scene in their minds, and to accentuate gestures by sforzandos and queer surprising progressions, in accordance with the meaning of the actions, and so to bring all the resources of effect into the closest union. And this is a point of more importance than might appear without paying a little attention to it. As has before been pointed out, music mainly implies vocal expression in melody, and expressive gesture in rhythm and accent; and in the condition into which Italian opera had degenerated, the rhythmic element had for the most part retired into the background. Under the circumstances, the rhythmic animation and gaiety which was adapted to humorous purposes was the very thing that was wanted to reinfuse a little humanity into the formal torpor of opera seria.

The

The importance of the new departure may be judged by its fruits. A direct result of considerable importance was the French light comic opera, which started into existence after a visit of an Italian opera troupe to Paris in 1752, who performed Italian intermezzi, and aroused much controversy and opposition, mainly on the ground that Italians were not. Frenchmen. But the style took root and was cultivated by French composers, who developed on its basis a type of light opera of the neatest and most artistic kind. But of still more importance was its actual influence on opera in general. style inaugurated by the Italians in intermezzi is the source of the sparkling gaiety of Mozart's light and merry scenes in "Seraglio," "Nozze di Figaro," and "Don Giovanni." Osmin's famous song in the "Seraglio" is a direct descendant of the style which Pergolese so admirably illustrated in "La Serva Padrona ;" and so is all Leporello's and Figaro's music. The style indeed was so congenial to Mozart's disposition that it coloured his work throughout; and traces of it peep out in symphonies, quartettes and sonatas, as well

as in his operas. And even Beethoven sometimes gives clear indications that he knew such ways of expressing lighter moods.*

The powerful influence which such a slight and rather trivial style exerted upon music in general at that time is clearly owing to the fact that it was the only line of operatic art which had any real life in it. When serious art drifts into formality, and composers and artists show that their efforts are concentrated upon the utterance of mere barren conventionalities, light music, and even vulgar and trivial music, which gives people a strong impression of being genuinely human, is bound to succeed best of the two. The audiences of the comic opera were at least allowed to take some genuine interest, and to get a genuine laugh out of the human perplexities and comic situations, and to feel that there was a reality about them which the heroic complacencies of the opera seria did not possess. As far as solid reforms of the opera seria itself are concerned, the public might have allowed things to go on in the same perfunctory way till the present time. The courtly fashionable people neither wanted nor deserved anything better; and the general reforms had to be forced on the notice of an indifferent world by the irrepressible energy of a personal conviction.

Gluck deserves great homage as a man of the rarest genius. But he deserves fully as much again for the splendid sincerity with which he refused to put up with the shams which the rest of the world found quite good enough to amuse them, and made men wake up to realise that opera was worth reforming. He brought about the first crisis in the history of this form of art, by calling attention to the fact that a work of art is always worth making as good as possible, and that opera itself would be more enjoyable and more worthy of intelligent beings if the dramatic side of the matter received more consideration. He was premature, as it happened, for the resources of his art were not yet fully equal to such undertakings as he

Quartett in Bb, Op. 18, No. 6, at beginning. Opening scene of Fidelio. Violin sonata in C minor, last movement.