at last succeeded in reaching the end of his play, he was taken aside by Count Prata, who said to him:

It seems to me that you have studied rather well the Ars Poetica of Aristotle and Horace, and that your work is written according to the great principles of Tragedy, but in consequence you are quite ignorant of the fact that the Musical Drama is a more imperfect work, subject to rules and customs which lack common sense but which must be most punctiliously observed. If you were in France you might concern yourself with the sole desire of pleasing the public, but here it is imperative that you should strive to please the actors and the actresses, that you should satisfy the musical composer and that you consult the painter who designs the scenery. There are rules for everything, and it would be an offense of high treason against the Drama if you infringed the rules, or failed to observe them. Listen to me (he proceeded), and I will point out to you a few laws that are immutable and which you doubtless ignore: The three principal characters of the Drama must sing five Arie apiece, two in the first act, two in the second, and one in the third. The Second Actress and the Second Soprano can have only three Arie each, and the minor characters must be satisfied with one or two at most. The author of the words must always supply the musical composer with a great deal of variety, which will help to form the chiaroscuro of the music. Attention must be given not to let two pathetic Arie follow one another. The greatest precaution must be taken in the distribution of the Arie of coloratura, those of action, those of semi-character, the minuets and the rondos. Above all, you must be very careful not to give a passionate or coloratura Aria or a Rondo to the minor and secondary characters; these poor people must be glad to get what is given them, and it is essential that they should be kept in the background.

Count Prata was anxious to continue, but Goldoni, "begging him to trouble no further," thanked him for the advice and took his leave. The following day his "Amalassunta" was consigned to the flames.

It is evident that Benedetto Marcello, in his "Teatro alla Moda," had not exaggerated; he must have foreseen the fate of the musical drama when he announced at the foot of his titlepage that the book would be reprinted "every year with fresh additions." It is a great pity the promise was never carried out, especially if he had been able to find a successor to carry on the work of new editions, for, as time went on, there would have been opportunities for a great deal of additional matter for publication.

A German professor, G. G. Engel (1741-1802), in his "Lettere intorno alla Mimica," judges the theatre of his day with great severity and, like all his colleagues, compares it with the Greek

theatre; but when he comes to speak of the musical drama, he admits very ingenuously,

that singing possesses so much, and such great sweetness and can fascinate and dominate our soul by means of the most refined and voluptuous of our senses, that it has power to transfer us far beyond our immediate surroundings; in consequence, we no longer notice or cavil at the lack of balance between the utterances and the state of mind to be expressed, and at the discrepancies between the lyrical and the dramatic sentiments. No doubt, in opera, truth is made to suffer, and thus the effect of the dramatic performance is weakened, but there is compensation for this loss; what is lacking on the side of truth is made up for on the side of beauty. Absurdity of dramatic construction, incoherence of the situations, perversion of sentiments, pass unnoticed, just as, when we admire a string of pearls, we never notice the coarse and unequal thread they are strung on. Remove from an opera its insincerity, and the effect will be lessened; deal similarily with a drama, and the effect will be increased.

Given the epoch in which Engel wrote, it is certainly the Italian opera he was alluding to, and he ignored, or wished to ignore, the reform attempted by Gluck.

Vincenzo Gravina and Stefano Arteaga were less easily satisfied and resigned, Gravina, in his book "Della Tragedia" (1715), makes a fierce attack on the musical drama:

Not only to the ignorant and uncultured, but also to the learned, it appears strange that in days of antiquity Comedies and Tragedies were sung; and that is because we have lost the knowledge of this music that stirred and guided natural expression, and influenced the human heart so powerfully that, according to many testimonies and more especially according to Plato, it both roused and soothed the passions, cured all ills, and affected morals and customs. In our modern theatres we find a very different music, quite unproductive of such effects; such music as we have is lauded to the skies; yet, much as it delights coarse and inharmonious minds, it distresses those whose senses are governed by reason; because, instead of expressing and imitating what is true, rather does it obliterate and destroy every vestige of truth. Perhaps we want music, instead of expressing human passions and sentiments and picturing our actions and customs, to resemble and imitate, as it nearly always does now, the admirable trill of a canary-bird. Nevertheless, there are to-day a few able and intelligent musicians to be found who are at war with general corruption and who, thanks to their wisdom and good sense, are turning towards nature and, if only it could be brought to light, towards the music of the ancients. Poetry having been vitiated, it is not surprising that music too has become contaminated, because all imitative arts have one common idea whose alteration brings about a general alteration; music is subjected to the changes wrought in poetry, just as the shadow is subjected to the body. Poetry, corrupted by an excess of ornaments and by an abuse of metaphors, has communicated the disease to music, already in itself over

burdened and also bereft of all natural expression. It is not for the reason that it pleases the ear that music is to be considered linked to Tragedy, for the pleasure peculiar to the music of the drama lies in the delight that springs from the imitation of poetry itself. The pleasure to be derived from the music of to-day springs from a lack of real thought and also depends on the chance happening of a few voice modulations that attract and affect our senses only, without the cooperation of the mind, in the same way that we are to be moved by the music of a bullfinch or a nightingale.

Arteaga, in his most interesting work "Le Rivoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano" (1785), examines and analyses with a profound critical sense the development of the musical drama from its origin to his own day, and voices his disapproval of the audience, censuring above all the "man of fashion":

These foolish slaves of prejudice, these bodies without souls, these indefinable creatures who make up what is termed Society! They are ruled by maxims that are the destruction of all natural feeling, on the ruins of which they raise up the idol of public opinion. They reduce affections to mere sensuousness and every moral idea to personal interest. They substitute courtesy for all virtues, and they cloak with brilliant paradoxes the horror of their vices, just as old worm-eaten wood is to be concealed under shining varnish, and such people make the same use of the theatre as they do of all else. As their rule of life and thought is not feeling but custom, they do not go to the theatre in order to experience the pleasing charm of dramatic art, but only because all the world goes there. To see in order to be seen by others, to discover some unknown land in the realm of intrigue, to watch with an air of importance the secret movements of Irene or Nice towards Celadon or Silvandro, to occupy the intervals between the long hours of the acts with exquisite and delicious gossip or with gambling-to such purposes as these do they turn to account the great art of Sophocles and of Menander. As an audience they are as troublesome for their indiscreet behaviour as for their unfortunate judgment, for they have no understanding and they are dangerous rather than useful for the improvement of public taste. The necessary expenditure towards the upkeep of a theatre makes their presence inevitable, just as the need of great numbers in an army obliges a general to admit a certain proportion of cowards to the ranks.

Take up one of the histories of music referred to previously, or any other that has not been mentioned, and open it at the page corresponding to the epoch in which were written the above-quoted passages; you will find that the latter are not in keeping with what is related by the historians of music, who prefer to pass over in silence the more living particularities of musical life which might disturb established opinion that dates from the day on which a history of music was first written. Writers like Romain Rolland, Henry Prunières, and a few others who have

gathered their information from archives or from wherever it could be traced, must not be forgotten; but their work is to illustrate either a thesis (as Romain Rolland has done in his "Histoire de l'Opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti"), or the personality of one special musician, and this is not sufficient to atone for the deficiencies complained of. There is still lacking a complete picture of the various centuries that have marked the stages of the evolution of music.

With the approach of the nineteenth century, criticism becomes the means of spreading confusion.

Carpani, for instance, who was one of the most eminent critics of his day, after having sung the praises of Haydn and cheerfully attacked Beethoven in a volume called "Le Haydine," did not hesitate in his "Lettera sulla Musica di Gioacchino Rossini" (1826) to utter the most startling appreciations. Carpani went so far as to affirm that Rossini in his newest opera, "Zelmira,'

was

another composer as new, as agreeable and as prolific as of yore, but sounder, freer and more masterly and, above all, more respectful of the text. . . Furthermore, the bass part of the instrumentation is more studied and assured than in former works. Every note is an effect which victoriously decides the harmonious conflict of chords in favour of the bass. The transitions are scholarly and are suggested more by reason and a sense of poetry than by mere whim or a mania for innovation.

Speaking of the Finale of the first act, Carpani exclaims:

Ah! whoever does not feel his heart melt at the development of this celestial harmony and of this angelic song can have no heart at all and has ears that avail him not. In this Finale, Rossini makes a show of all his knowledge, and he can rank next to our best contrapuntists (!). He has also shown us his profound esthetical sense in the tragic parts and also in the vivacity of the dialogue.

In reference to a piece in the second act he goes on to say:

No composer exists who can be said to have preceded him; in this piece, the originality of ideas is so illuminating and the dignity of tragedy so well preserved in the midst of the furious conflict, that I thought I was witnessing a contest of heroes in Homer who are able to insult one another without ever degrading the beauty of the epic.

If, after all this hyperbolic praise, one examines the score of "Zelmira," one finds oneself in presence of one of Rossini's

weakest works, and it is impossible to discover one of the qualities extolled by Carpani, who thus seems to be a precursor of modern critics.

Following on this, to open one of Fétis's volumes is to discover the germs of Meyerbeerism and other musical calamities of the nineteenth century. The first words of his book "La Musique à la portée de tout le monde" (1839) are the following:

Music can be defined as the art of moving us by means of sound. This is not the definition given in dictionaries. Jean-Jacques Rousseau says that Music is the art of combining sound in such a manner as to be agreeable to the ear; but this is limiting to a physical sensation an art that has a moral effect. Kant, the celebrated philosopher, defines music as the art of expressing a pleasant succession of sentiments by means of sound; but this would exclude from the realms of music the strong emotions that belong to it. Mosel, a German writer, said that music was the art of expressing sentiment by well coördinated sounds; but sentiments can be determined only by means of the words fitted to the music, and, furthermore, sentiments are undefined in instrumental music, yet are none the less powerful. I consider mine to be the best translation.

It was the special joy of the nineteenth century to lose itself in a maze of very precise and very unnecessary definitions, and meanwhile the musical tradition was being lost, that might have preserved a wider field of action for music than that wherein the critics bestirred themselves in order to proclaim the advent of great works of art; time was to prove such works to be endowed with very ephemeral vitality. At the same time it is not impossible to find in the numerous publications of the beginning of the nineteenth century some writers who did not too easily swing the thurifer of incense in homage, and who were not satisfied with the existing conditions of the music of their day.

In "Caffè," a magazine appearing in Milan every ten days, Pietro Verri devotes an article to music, displaying a musical sensibility very different from that of his contemporaries. Among other things, he says:

There is nothing more painful than to see certain composers, thoroughly acquainted with the laws of harmony, skillfully turn their knowledge to account very much in the way a maker of anagrams turns over and over the consonants and dissonants with the feet first one way and then another; they do not seek the way to awaken the passions of the heart, and have never felt them themselves. disgust follows after listening to their compositions which, with the help of my imagination, have been able to arouse sentiments in me such as these composers are never likely to experience. It is as if my selfesteem is wounded that a man in cold blood can move me, and I should