MÉHUL labored successfully in adapting the noble and severe style of
Gluck to the changing requirements of the French stage. The turmoil and
passions of the revolution had stirred men's souls to the very roots,
and this influence was perpetuated and crystallized in the new forms
given to French thought by Napoleon's wonderful career. Méhul's
musical conceptions, which culminated in the opera of "Joseph," were
characterized by a stir, a vigor, and largeness of dramatic movement,
which came close to the familiar life of that remarkable period. His
great rival Cherubini, on the other hand, though no less truly dramatic
in fitting musical expression to thought and passion, was so austere
and rigid in his ideals, so dominated by musical form and an accurate
science which would concede nothing to popular prejudice and ignorance,
that he won his laurels, not by force of the natural flow of popular
sympathy, but by the sheer might of his genius. Cherubini's severe works
made them models and foundation stones for his successors in French
music; but Méhul familiarized his audiences with strains dignified yet
popular, full of massive effects and brilliant combinations. The people
felt the tramp of the Napoleonic armies in the vigor and movement of his
measures.
Spontini embodied the same influences and characteristics in still
larger degree, for his musical genius was organized on a more massive
plan. Deficient in pure graceful melody alike with Méhul, he delighted
in great masses of tone and vivid orchestral coloring. His music was
full of the military fire of his age, and dealt for the most part with
the peculiar tastes and passions engendered by a condition of chronic
warfare. Therefore dramatic movement in his operas was always of the
heroic order, and never touched the more subtile and complex elements
of life. Spontini added to the majestic repose and ideality of the Gluck
music-drama (to use a name now naturalized in art by Wagner) the keenest
dramatic vigor. Though he had a strong command of effects by his power
of delineation and delicacy of detail, his prevalent tastes led him to
encumber his music too often with overpowering military effects, alike
tonal and scenic. Riehl, a great German critic, says: "He is more
successful in the delineation of masses and groups than in the portrayal
of emotional scenes; his rendering of the national struggle between the
Spaniards and Mexicans in 'Cortez' is, for example, admirable. He
is likewise most successful in the management of large masses in
the instrumentation. In this respect he was, like Napoleon, a great
tactician." In "La Vestale" Spontini attained his _chef-d'oeuvre_.
Schülter in his "History of Music" gives it the following encomium: "His
portrayal of character and truthful delineation of passionate emotion
in this opera are masterly indeed. The subject of 'La Vestale' (which
resembles that of 'Norma,' but how differently treated!) is tragic and
sublime as well as intensely emotional. Julia, the heroine, a prey to
guilty passion; the severe but kindly high priestess; Licinius, the
adventurous lover, and his faithful friend Cinna; pious vestals,
cruel priests, bold warriors, and haughty Romans, are represented with
statuesque relief and finish. Both these works, 'La Vestale' (1802)
and 'Cortez' (1809), ire among the finest that have been written for the
stage; they are remarkable for naturalness and sublimeness, qualities
lost sight of in the noisy instrumentation of his later works."
Halévy, trained under the influences of Cherubini, was largely inspired
by that great master's musical purism and reverence for the higher laws
of his art. Halévy's powerful sense of the dramatic always influenced
his methods and sympathies. Not being a composer of creative
imagination, however, the melodramatic element is more prominent than
the purely tragic or comic. His music shows remarkable resources in the
production of brilliant and captivating though always tasteful effects,
which rather please the senses and the fancy than stir the heart and
imagination. Here and there scattered through his works, notably so
in "La Juive," are touches of emotion and grandeur; but Halévy must
be characterized as a composer who is rather distinguished for the
brilliancy, vigor, and completeness of his art than for the higher
creative power, which belongs in such preeminent degree to men like
Rossini and Weber, or even to Auber, Meyerbeer, and Gounod. It is
nevertheless true that Halévy composed works which will retain a high
rank in French art. "La Juive," "Guido," "La Reine de Chypre," and
"Charles VI." are noble lyric dramas, full of beauties, though it is
said they can never be seen to the best advantage off the French stage.
Halévy's genius and taste in music bear much the same relation to the
French stage as do those of Verdi to the Italian stage; though the
former composer is conceded by critics to be a greater purist in musical
form, if he rarely equals the Italian composer in the splendid bursts
of musical passion with which the latter redeems so much that is
meretricious and false, and the charming melody which Verdi shares with
his countrymen.