An ardent disciple of Wagner sums up his ideas of the mania for the
Rossini music, which possessed Europe for fifteen years, in the
following--"Rossini, the most gifted and spoiled of her sons [speaking
of Italy] sallied forth with an innumerable army of Bacchantic
melodies to conquer the world, the Messiah of joy, the breaker of
thought and sorrow. Europe, by this time, had tired of the empty pomp
of French declamation. It lent but too willing an ear to the new
gospel, and eagerly quaffed the intoxicating potion, which Rossini
poured out in inexhaustible streams." This very well expresses the
delight of all the countries of Europe in music which for a long time
almost monopolised the stage.
The charge of being a mere tune-spinner, the denial of invention,
depth, and character, have been common watchwords in the mouths of
critics wedded to other schools. But Rossini's place in music stands
unshaken by all assaults. The vivacity of his style, the freshness of
his melodies, the richness of his combinations, made all the Italian
music that preceded him pale and colourless. No other writer revels
in such luxury of beauty, and delights the ear with such a succession
of delicious surprises in melody.
Henry Chorley, in his _Thirty Years' Musical Recollections_, rebukes
the bigotry which sees nothing good but in its own kind--"I have never
been able to understand why this [referring to the Rossinian richness
of melody] should be contemned as necessarily false and
meretricious--why the poet may not be allowed the benefit of his own
period and time--why a lover of architecture is to be compelled to
swear by the _Dom_ at Bamberg, or by the Cathedral at Monreale--that
he must abhor and denounce Michael Angelo's church or the Baths of
Diocletian at Rome--why the person who enjoys 'Il Barbiere' is to be
denounced as frivolously faithless to Mozart's 'Figaro'--and as
incapable of comprehending 'Fidelio,' because the last act of 'Otello'
and the second of 'Guillaume Tell' transport him into as great an
enjoyment of its kind as do the duet in the cemetery between Don Juan
and Leporello and the 'Prisoners' Chorus.' How much good, genial
pleasure has not the world lost in music, owing to the pitting of
styles one against the other! Your true traveller will be all the more
alive to the beauty of Nuremberg because he has looked out over the
'Golden Shell' at Palermo; nor delight in Rhine and Danube the less
because he has seen the glow of a southern sunset over the broken
bridge at Avignon."
As grand and true as are many of the essential elements in the Wagner
school of musical composition, the bitterness and narrowness of spite
with which its upholders have pursued the memory of Rossini is equally
offensive and unwarrantable. Rossini, indeed, did not revolutionise
the forms of opera as transmitted to him by his predecessors, but he
reformed and perfected them in various notable ways. Both in comic and
serious opera, music owes much to Rossini. He substituted genuine
singing for the endless recitative of which the Italian opera before
him largely consisted; he brought the bass and baritone voices to the
front, banished the pianoforte from the orchestra, and laid down the
principle that the singer should deliver the notes written for him
without additions of his own. He gave the chorus a much more important
part than before, and elaborated the concerted music, especially in
the _finales_, to a degree of artistic beauty before unknown in the
Italian opera. Above all, he made the operatic orchestra what it is
to-day. Every new instrument that was invented Rossini found a place
for in his brilliant scores, and thereby incurred the warmest
indignation of all writers of the old school. Before him the
orchestras had consisted largely of strings, but Rossini added an
equally imposing element of the brasses and reeds. True, Mozart had
forestalled Rossini in many if not all these innovations, a fact which
the Italian cheerfully admitted; for, with the simple frankness
characteristic of the man, he always spoke of his obligations to and
his admiration of the great German. To an admirer who was one day
burning incense before him, Rossini said, in the spirit of Cimarosa
quoted elsewhere, "My 'Barber' is only a bright farce, but in Mozart's
'Marriage of Figaro' you have the finest possible masterpiece of
musical comedy."
With all concessions made to Mozart as the founder of the forms of
modern opera, an equally high place must be given to Rossini for the
vigour and audacity with which he made these available, and impressed
them on all his contemporaries and successors. Though Rossini's
self-love was flattered by constant adulation, his expressions of
respect and admiration for such composers as Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven,
and Cherubini, display what a catholic and generous nature he
possessed. The judgment of Ambros, a severe critic, whose bias was
against Rossini, shows what admiration was wrung from him by the last
opera of the composer--"Of all that particularly characterises
Rossini's early operas nothing is discoverable in 'Tell;' there is
none of his usual mannerism; but, on the contrary, unusual richness of
form and careful finish of detail, combined with grandeur of outline.
Meretricious embellishment, shakes, runs, and cadences are carefully
avoided in this work, which is natural and characteristic throughout;
even the melodies have not the stamp and style of Rossini's earlier
times, but only their graceful charm and lively colouring."
Rossini must be allowed to be unequalled in genuine comic opera, and
to have attained a distinct greatness in serious opera, to be the most
comprehensive, and, at the same time, the most national composer of
Italy--to be, in short, the Mozart of his country. After all has been
admitted and regretted--that he gave too little attention to musical
science; that he often neglected to infuse into his work the depth and
passion of which it was easily capable; that he placed too high a
value on merely brilliant effects _ad captandum vulgus_--there remains
the fact that his operas embody a mass of imperishable music, which
will live with the art itself. Musicians of every country now admit
his wondrous grace, his fertility and freshness of invention, his
matchless treatment of the voice, his effectiveness in arrangement of
the orchestra. He can never be made a model, for his genius had too
much spontaneity and individuality of colour. But he impressed and
modified music hardly less than Gluck, whose tastes and methods were
entirely antagonistic to his own. That he should have retired from the
exercise of his art while in the full flower of his genius is a
perplexing fact. No stranger story is recorded in the annals of art
with respect to a genius who filled the world with his glory, and then
chose to vanish, "not unseen." On finishing his crowning stroke of
genius and skill in "William Tell," he might have said with
Shakespeare's enchanter, Prospero--
"... But this magic
I here abjure; and when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff--
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book."
_DONIZETTI AND BELLINI._