It appears, however,--so at least I am assured,--that the Italians do
occasionally listen. But at any rate, music to the Milanese, no less
than to the Neapolitans, Romans, Florentines, and Genoese, means nothing
but an air, a duet, or a trio, well sung. For anything beyond this they
feel simply aversion or indifference. Perhaps these antipathies are
mainly due to the wretched performance of their choruses and orchestras,
which effectually prevents their knowing anything good outside the
beaten track they have so long followed. Possibly, too, they may to a
certain extent understand the flights of men of genius, if these latter
are careful not to give too rude a shock to their rooted predilections.
The great success of 'Guillaume Tell' at Florence supports this opinion,
and even Spontini's sublime 'Vestale' obtained a series of brilliant
representations at Naples some twenty-five years ago. Moreover, in those
towns which are under the Austrian rule, you will see the people rush
after a military band, and listen with avidity to the beautiful German
melodies, so unlike their usual insipid cavatinas. Nevertheless, in
general it is impossible to disguise the fact that the Italians as a
nation really appreciate only the material effects of music, and
distinguish nothing but its exterior forms.
Indeed, I am much inclined to regard them as more inaccessible to the
poetical side of art, and to any conceptions at all above the common,
than any other European nation. To the Italians music is a sensual
pleasure, and nothing more. For this most beautiful form of expression
they have scarcely more respect than for the culinary art. In fact, they
like music which they can take in at first hearing, without reflection
or attention, just as they would do with a plate of macaroni.
Now, we French, mean and contemptible musicians as we are, although we
are no better than the Italians when we furiously applaud a trill or a
chromatic scale by the last new singer, and miss altogether the beauty
of some grand recitative or animated chorus, yet at least we can listen,
and if we do not take in a composer's ideas it is not our fault. Beyond
the Alps, on the contrary, people behave in a manner so humiliating both
to art and to artists, whenever any representation is going on, that I
confess I would as soon sell pepper and spice at a grocer's in the Rue
St. Denis as write an opera for the Italians--nay, I would _sooner_
do it.
Added to this, they are slaves to routine and to fanaticism to a degree
one hardly sees nowadays, even at the Academy. The slightest unforeseen
innovation, whether in melody, harmony, rhythm, or instrumentation, puts
them into a perfect fury; so much so, that the _dilettanti_ of Rome, on
the appearance of Rossini's 'Barbiere di Seviglia' (which is Italian
enough in all conscience), were ready to kill the young maestro for
having the insolence to do anything unlike Paisiello.
But what renders all hope of improvement quite chimerical, and tempts
one to believe that the musical feeling of the Italians is a mere
necessary result of their organization,--the opinion both of Gall and
Spurzheim,--is their love for all that is dancing, brilliant,
glittering, and gay, to the utter neglect of the various passions by
which the characters are animated, and the confusion of time and
place--in a word, of good sense itself. Their music is always laughing:
and if by chance the composer in the course of the drama permits himself
for one moment not to be absurd, he at once hastens back to his
prescribed style, his melodious roulades and _grupetti_, his trills and
contemptible frivolities, either for voice or orchestra; and these,
succeeding so abruptly to something true to life, have an unreal effect,
and give the _opera seria_ all the appearance of a parody or caricature.
I could quote plenty of examples from famous works; but speaking
generally of these artistic questions, is it not from Italy that we get
those stereotyped conventional forms adopted by so many French
composers, resisted by Cherubim and Spontini alone among the Italians,
though rejected entirely by the Germans? What well-organized person with
any sense of musical expression could listen to a quartet in which four
characters, animated by totally conflicting passions, should
successively employ the same melodious phrase to express such different
words as these: "O, toi que j'adore!" "Quelle terreur me glace!" "Mon
coeur bat de plaisir!" "La fureur me transporte!" To suppose that music
is a language so vague that the natural inflections of fury will serve
equally well for fear, joy, and love, only proves the absence of that
sense which to others makes the varieties of expression in music as
incontestable a reality as the existence of the sun.... I regard the
course taken by Italian composers as the inevitable result of the
instincts of the public, which react more or less on the composers
themselves.