employs all the resources of his art on an unworthy object, but fritters away the interest, on which he makes claims at once too extensive and too rapidly succeeding one another. Musical representation works immediately upon the mind and the emotions, and can do this so much more strongly and vividly than verse, which, however forcibly declaimed, appeals primarily to the intellect and the imagination, that a painful incongruity occurs when music, with all her resources of accurate characterisation, follows step by step the words of the poet. It is therefore an error to suppose that the music must always yield to the words; "as in a correct and well-composed picture," adds Gluck, "the animation of the colouring and of well-disposed light and shade vivifies the forms without distorting the outlines." But the true painter does not colour or illumine the naked outline; he considers the form in its total effect as a piece of colouring, and it exists for him only in this totality, which it is his object to represent. The distinction between form and colour is only technically important, and does not affect artistic perception and production. In the same way the musician has something more to do with respect to the words of his text than to colour given outlines. The conceptions which the poet has formed, with the consciousness that they could only attain complete independence by their combination with music, must be absorbed by the musician, and reproduced in the forms appointed by the nature of his art.

The exaggerations attending on all forms of opposition and attempted reformation will not suffice to explain this GLUCK'S MUSIC. important error. 64 In dealing with so great and powerful a mind as Gluck's we must go deeper, and seek for the cause in his artistic organisation alone. An ardent admirer of Gluck has pronounced 65 that he was "more intellectually than musically great"; and certainly his musical productions do not correspond to the energy of his feelings and his will. His organisation fitted him for a reformer; as a creative artist his weakness became apparent. Gluck's works are not exactly one-sided; he expressed every variety of passion with equal skill, and he is never wanting in grace and charm; but he cannot be said to be rich or spontaneous. The lofty sentiment which he expresses in firm and comprehensive melodies is natural to him, but his exact and confined mode of composition is in part the result of his limited power of invention. The final cause of his desire to deprive music of her rights as an independent art in favour of verse lies in this weakness of his musical organisation. Closely connected with this is another phenomenon. It has been justly remarked 66 that Gluck's powers of characterisation extend only to soliloquies, that he failed to give proper expression to the dialogue proper, the contrast of voices and characters which, either in opposition or agreement, demonstrate their different natures; the polyphonal power of music, in its intellectual sense, remained undeveloped by Gluck. Failing in this, he failed in the highest object of music, by virtue of which alone she can make any claim to dramatic force. The fact that Gluck did not feel himself impelled to express his dramatic situations after this fashion is a proof that his imagination was more easily stirred poetically than musically. The narrow limits within which he occasionally confines even the music whose expression is intended to be purely lyrical may be traced to the same source. For Gluck did not think it necessary that action on the musical stage should maintain the same uninterrupted FRENCH OPERA. flow as in real life. He thought it far more important to give a well-sustained musical representation of some one mood or disposition; and the more broadly such moods were indicated by the poet the better he was pleased. It is true that even then he keeps within the limits of the strictest form, but he is fond of employing frequent repetition, particularly when the chorus and a solo voice are set in opposition to each other. This way of rendering a dramatic idea is often of powerful effect; but, considered from an artistic point of view, it should be subordinated to the design of a grandly conceived composition expanding into a living organism.

It cannot be denied, therefore, that Gluck failed in the working out of his subjects, and that he sometimes betrays a certain amount of weakness as well in the structure of his compositions as in their details. It was not for want of industry or care; it was that he did not feel the necessity for mastering this important side of musical representation, and the fact affords fresh testimony of the singularity of his musical organisation.

Gluck's first opera, "Orfeo ed Euridice," adheres most closely to the usual Italian style, and was indeed successfully performed in Italy. 67 Of action in this opera there is hardly any; the introduction of Cupid at the beginning and the end gives it the cold allegorical character of the then customary festival entertainments. The broadly represented situations in which Orpheus mourns for Eurydice, and charms by his music the demons of the lower world, form the main portions of the opera; and they are expressed with striking fidelity and fervour of sentiment, as well as with great force and beauty. The use which is made of the chorus, and the cultivation of the orchestra, betoken great and important advances on the older style. The opera was well received by connoisseurs, both in Vienna and Paris, 68 but it does not appear to have been regarded as the inauguration of a reformation "ALCESTE," 1767. in music; indeed, during the next few years Gluck composed several Italian operas quite after the old fashion.

"Alceste," however, is an avowed attempt towards a reformation of dramatic music, and it manifests the settled purpose and the complete individuality of the master. The poet offers nothing but a succession of situations without any progressive action; the situations turn exclusively on the decision of Alceste, and are employed less as psychological developments of character than as opportunities for a rhetorical representation of certain frames of mind. The character of Hercules is omitted, and the task of deliverance is entrusted to Apollo as an apparition in the clouds; this destroys an effective contrast; and the two confidants retain a suspicious likeness to the parte seconde of Italian opera. But Gluck considered the separate scenes not only with regard to their fitness for musical treatment; he felt firm ground in which he might strike root. It testifies to his marvellous energy of mind that no weakness was discernible in the repetition of such closely allied situations, and that he had always new shades of expression and climacteric effects at his command. The connection with the forms of Italian opera is not by any means completely severed; an unprejudiced survey discovers numerous