[1] F. W. Maitland and W. P. Baildon, _The Court Baron_ (Selden
Society, London, 1891), p. 17. Maitland wrongly translates _gaunt
plyee_ as "twisted" glove, adding "why it should be twisted I cannot
say." An earlier instance of the delivery of a folded glove as gage
is quoted from the 13th-century Anglo-Norman poem known as _The Song
of Dermott and the Earl_ (ed. G. H. Orpen, Oxford, 1892) in J. H.
Round's _Commune of London_, p. 153.
GLOVER, SIR JOHN HAWLEY (1829-1885), captain in the British navy,
entered the service in 1841 and passed his examination as lieutenant in
1849, but did not receive a commission till May 1851. He served on
various stations, and was wounded severely in an action with the Burmese
at Donabew (4th February 1853). But his reputation was not gained at sea
and as a naval officer, but on shore and as an administrative official
in the colonies. During his years of service as lieutenant in the navy
he had had considerable experience of the coast of Africa, and had taken
part in the expedition of Dr W. B. Baikie (1824-1864) up the Niger. On
the 21st of April 1863 he was appointed administrator of the government
of Lagos, and in that capacity, or as colonial secretary, he remained
there till 1872. During this period he had been much employed in
repelling the marauding incursions of the Ashantis. When the Ashanti war
broke out in 1873, Captain Glover undertook the hazardous and doubtful
task of organizing the native tribes, whom hatred of the Ashantis might
be expected to make favourable to the British authorities--to the extent
at least to which their fears would allow them to act. His services were
accepted, and in September of 1873 he landed at Cape Coast, and, after
forming a small trustworthy force of Hausa, marched to Accra. His
influence sufficed to gather a numerous native force, but neither he nor
anybody else could overcome their abject terror of the ferocious
Ashantis to the extent of making them fight. In January 1874 Captain
Glover was able to render some assistance in the taking of Kumasi, but
it was at the head of a Hausa force. His services were acknowledged by
the thanks of parliament and by his creation as G.C.M.G. In 1875 he was
appointed governor of Newfoundland and held the post till 1881, when he
was transferred to the Leeward Islands. He returned to Newfoundland in
1883, and died in London on the 30th September 1885.
Lady Glover's _Life_ of her husband appeared in 1897.
GLOVER, RICHARD (1712-1785), English poet, son of Richard Glover, a
Hamburg merchant, was born in London in 1712. He was educated at Cheam
in Surrey. While there he wrote in his sixteenth year a poem to the
memory of Sir Isaac Newton, which was prefixed by Dr Pemberton to his
_View of Newton's Philosophy_, published in 1728. In 1737 he published
an epic poem in praise of liberty, _Leonidas_, which was thought to have
a special reference to the politics of the time; and being warmly
commended by the prince of Wales and his court, it soon passed through
several editions. In 1739 Glover published a poem entitled _London, or
the Progress of Commerce_; and in the same year, with a view to exciting
the nation against the Spaniards, he wrote a spirited ballad, _Hosier's
Ghost_, very popular in its day. He was also the author of two
tragedies, _Boadicea_ (1753) and _Medea_ (1761), written in close
imitation of Greek models. The success of Glover's _Leonidas_ led him to
take considerable interest in politics, and in 1761 he entered
parliament as member for Weymouth. He died on the 25th of November 1785.
The _Athenaid_, an epic in thirty books, was published in 1787, and his
diary, entitled _Memoirs of a distinguished literary and political
Character from 1742 to 1757_, appeared in 1813. Glover was one of the
reputed authors of _Junius_; but his claims--which were advocated in an
_Inquiry concerning the author of the Letters of Junius_ (1815), by R.
Duppa--rest on very slight grounds.
GLOVERSVILLE, a city of Fulton county, New York, U.S.A., at the
foot-hills of the Adirondacks, about 55 m. N.W. of Albany. Pop. (1890)
13,864; (1900) 18,349, of whom 2542 were foreign-born; (1910 census)
20,642. It is served by the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville railway
(connecting at Fonda, about 9 m. distant, with the New York Central),
and by electric lines connecting with Johnstown, Amsterdam and
Schenectady. The city has a public library (26,000 volumes in 1908), the
Nathan Littauer memorial hospital, a state armoury and a fine government
building. Gloversville is the principal glove-manufacturing centre in
the United States. In 1900 Fulton county produced more than 57%, and
Gloversville 38.8%, of all the leather gloves and mittens made in the
United States; in 1905 Gloversville produced 29.9% of the leather gloves
and mittens made in the United States, its products being valued at
$5,302,196. Gloversville has more than a score of tanneries and
leather-finishing factories, and manufactures fur goods. In 1905 the
city's total factory product was valued at $9,340,763. The extraordinary
localization of the glove-making industry in Gloversville, Johnstown and
other parts of Fulton county, is an incident of much interest in the
economic history of the United States. The industry seems to have had
its origin among a colony of Perthshire families, including many
glove-makers, who were settled in this region by Sir William Johnson
about 1760. For many years the entire product seems to have been
disposed of in the neighbourhood, but about 1809 the goods began to find
more distant markets, and by 1825 the industry was firmly established on
a prosperous basis, the trade being handed down from father to son. An
interesting phase of the development is that, in addition to the factory
work, a large amount of the industry is in the hands of "home workers"
both in the town and country districts. Gloversville, settled originally
about 1770, was known for some time as Stump City, its present name
being adopted in 1832. It was incorporated as a village in 1851 and was
chartered as a city in 1890.
GLOW-WORM, the popular name of the wingless female of the beetle
_Lampyris noctiluca_, whose power of emitting light has been familiar
for many centuries. The luminous organs of the glow-worm consist of
cells similar to those of the fat-body, grouped into paired masses in
the ventral region of the hinder abdominal segments. The light given out
by the wingless female insect is believed to serve as an attraction to
the flying male, whose luminous organs remain in a rudimentary
condition. The common glow-worm is a widespread European and Siberian
insect, generally distributed in England and ranging in Scotland
northwards to the Tay, but unknown in Ireland. Exotic species of
_Lampyris_ are similarly luminous, and light-giving organs are present
in many genera of the family _Lampyridae_ from various parts of the
world. Frequently--as in the south European _Luciola italica_--both
sexes of the beetle are provided with wings, and both male and female
emit light. These luminous, winged Lampyrids are generally known as
"fire-flies." In correspondence with their power of emitting light, the
insects are nocturnal in habit.
Elongate centipedes of the family _Geophilidae_, certain species of
which are luminous, are sometimes mistaken for the true glow-worm.
GLOXINIA, a charming decorative plant, botanically a species of
_Sinningia_ (_S. speciosa_), a member of the natural order Gesneraceae
and a native of Brazil. The species has given rise under cultivation to
numerous forms showing a wonderful variety of colour, and hybrid forms
have also been obtained between these and other species of _Sinningia_.
A good strain of seed will produce many superb and charmingly coloured
varieties, and if sown early in spring, in a temperature of 65 deg. at
night, they may be shifted on into 6-in. pots, and in these may be
flowered during the summer. The bulbs are kept at rest through the
winter in dry sand, in a temperature of 50 deg., and to yield a
succession should be started at intervals, say at the end of February
and the beginning of April. To prolong the blooming season, use weak
manure water when the flower-buds show themselves.
GLUCINUM, an alternative name for Beryllium (q.v.). When L. N. Vauquelin
in 1798 published in the _Annales de chimie_ an account of a new earth
obtained by him from beryl he refrained from giving the substance a
name, but in a note to his paper the editors suggested glucine, from
[Greek: glykys], sweet, in reference to the taste of its salts, whence
the name Glucinum or Glucinium (symbol Gl. or sometimes G). The name
beryllium was given to the metal by German chemists and was generally
used until recently, when the earlier name was adopted.
GLUCK,[1] CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD (1714-1787), operatic composer, German by
his nationality, French by his place in art, was born at Weidenwang,
near Neumarkt, in the upper Palatinate, on the 2nd of July 1714. He
belonged to the lower middle class, his father being gamekeeper to
Prince Lobkowitz; but the boy's education was not neglected on that
account. From his twelfth to his eighteenth year he frequented the
Jesuit school of Kommotau in the neighbourhood of Prince Lobkowitz's
estate in Bohemia, where he not only received a good general education,
but also had lessons in music. At the age of eighteen Gluck went to
Prague, where he continued his musical studies under Czernohorsky, and
maintained himself by the exercise of his art, sometimes in the very
humble capacity of fiddler at village fairs and dances. Through the
introductions of Prince Lobkowitz, however, he soon gained access to the
best families of the Austrian nobility; and when in 1736 he proceeded to
Vienna he was hospitably received at his protector's palace. Here he met
Prince Melzi, an ardent lover of music, whom he accompanied to Milan,
continuing his education under Giovanni Battista San Martini, a great
musical historian and contrapuntist, who was also famous in his own day
as a composer of church and chamber music. We soon find Gluck producing
operas at the rapid rate necessitated by the omnivorous taste of the
Italian public in those days. Nine of these works were produced at
various Italian theatres between 1741 and 1745. Although their artistic
value was small, they were so favourably received that in 1745 Gluck was
invited to London to compose for the Haymarket. The first opera produced
there was called _La Caduta dei giganti_; it was followed by a revised
version of one of his earlier operas. Gluck also appeared in London as a
performer on the musical glasses (see HARMONICA).
The success of his two operas, as well as that of a _pasticcio_ (i.e. a
collection of favourite arias set to a new libretto) entitled _Piramo e
Tisbe_, was anything but brilliant, and he accordingly left London. But
his stay in England was not without important consequences for his
subsequent career. Gluck at this time was rather less than an ordinary
producer of Italian opera. Handel's well-known saying that Gluck "knew
no more counterpoint than his cook" must be taken in connexion with the
less well-known fact that that cook was an excellent bass singer who
performed in many of Handel's own operas. But it indicates the musical
reason of Gluck's failure, while Gluck himself learnt the dramatic
reason through his surprise at finding that arias which in their
original setting had been much applauded lost all effect when adapted to
new words in the _pasticcio_. Irrelevant as Handel's criticism appears,
it was not without bearing on Gluck's difficulties. The use of
counterpoint has very little necessary connexion with contrapuntal
display; its real and final cause is a certain depth of harmonic
expression which Gluck attained only in his most dramatic moments, and
for want of which he, even in his finest works, sometimes moved very
lamely. And in later years his own mature view of the importance of
harmony, which he upheld in long arguments with Gretry, who believed
only in melody, shows that he knew that the dramatic expression of music
must strike below the surface. At this early period he was simply
producing Handelian opera in an amateurish style, suggesting an
unsuccessful imitation of Hasse; but the failure of his _pasticcio_ is
as significant to us as it was to him, since it shows that already the
effect of his music depended upon its characteristic treatment of
dramatic situations. This characterizing power was as yet not directly
evident, and it needed all the influence of the new instrumental
resources of the rising sonata-forms before music could pass out of what
we may call its architectural and decorative period and enter into
dramatic regions at all.
It is highly probable that the chamber music of his master, San Martini,
had already indicated to Gluck a new direction which was more or less
incompatible with the older art; and there is nothing discreditable
either to Gluck or to his contemporaries in the failure of his earlier
works. Had the young composer been successful in the ordinary _opera
seria_, there is reason to fear that the great dramatic reform,
initiated by him, might not have taken place. The critical temper of the
London public fortunately averted this calamity. It may also be assumed
that the musical atmosphere of the English capital, and especially the
great works of Handel, were not without beneficial influence upon the
young composer. But of still greater importance in this respect was a
short trip to Paris, where Gluck became for the first time acquainted
with the classic traditions and the declamatory style of the French
opera--a sphere of music in which his own greatest triumphs were to be
achieved. Of these great issues little trace, however, is to be found in
the works produced by Gluck during the fifteen years after his return
from England. In this period Gluck, in a long course of works by no
means free from the futile old traditions, gained technical experience
and important patronage, though his success was not uniform. His first
opera written for Vienna, _La Semiramide riconosciuta_, is again an
ordinary _opera seria_, and little more can be said of _Telemacco_,
although thirty years later Gluck was able to use most of its overture
and an energetic duet in one of his greatest works, _Armide_.
Gluck settled permanently at Vienna in 1756, having two years previously
been appointed court chapel-master, with a salary of 2000 florins, by
the empress Maria Theresa. He had already received the order of
knighthood from the pope in consequence of the successful production of
two of his works in Rome. During the long interval from 1756 to 1762
Gluck seems to have matured his plans for the reform of the opera; and,
barring a ballet named _Don Giovanni_, and some _airs nouveaux_ to
French words with pianoforte accompaniment, no compositions of any
importance have to be recorded. Several later _pieces d'occasion_, such
as _Il Trionfo di Clelia_ (1763), are still written in the old manner,
though already in 1762 _Orfeo ed Euridice_ shows that the composer had
entered upon a new career. Gluck had for the first time deserted
Metastasio for Raniero Calzabigi, who, as Vernon Lee suggests, was in
all probability the immediate cause of the formation of Gluck's new
ideas, as he was a hot-headed dramatic theorist with a violent dislike
for Metastasio, who had hitherto dominated the whole sphere of operatic
libretto.
Quite apart from its significance in the history of dramatic music,
_Orpheus_ is a work which, by its intrinsic beauty, commands the highest
admiration. Orpheus's air, _Che faro_, is known to every one; but still
finer is the great scena in which the poet's song softens even the
_ombre sdegnose_ of Tartarus. The ascending passion of the entries of
the solo (_Deh! placatevi_; _Mille pene_; _Men tiranne_), interrupted by
the harsh but gradually softening exclamations of the Furies, is of the
highest dramatic effect. These melodies, moreover, as well as every
declamatory passage assigned to Orpheus, are made subservient to the
purposes of dramatic characterization; that is, they could not possibly
be assigned to any other person in the drama, any more than Hamlet's
monologue could be spoken by Polonius. It is in this power of musically
realizing a character--a power all but unknown in the serious opera of
his day--that Gluck's genius as a dramatic composer is chiefly shown.
After a short relapse into his earlier manner, Gluck followed up his
_Orpheus_ by a second classical music-drama (1767) named _Alceste_. In
his dedication of the score to the grand-duke of Tuscany, he fully
expressed his aims, as well as the reasons for his total breach with the
old traditions. "I shall try," he wrote, "to reduce music to its real
function, that of seconding poetry by intensifying the expression of
sentiments and the interest of situations without interrupting the
action by needless ornament. I have accordingly taken care not to
interrupt the singer in the heat of the dialogue, to wait for a tedious
_ritornel_, nor do I allow him to stop on a sonorous vowel, in the
middle of a phrase, in order to show the nimbleness of a beautiful voice
in a long _cadenza_." Such theories, and the stern consistency with
which they were carried out, were little to the taste of the
pleasure-loving Viennese; and the success of _Alceste_, as well as that
of _Paris and Helena_, which followed two years later, was not such as
Gluck had desired and expected. He therefore eagerly accepted the chance
of finding a home for his art in the centre of intellectual and more
especially dramatic life, Paris. Such a chance was opened to him through
the _bailli_ Le Blanc du Roullet, attache of the French embassy at
Vienna, and a musical amateur who entered into Gluck's ideas with
enthusiasm. A classic opera for the Paris stage was accordingly
projected, and the friends fixed upon Racine's _Iphigenie en Aulide_.
After some difficulties, overcome chiefly by the intervention of Gluck's
former pupil the dauphiness Marie Antoinette, the opera was at last
accepted and performed at the Academie de Musique, on the 19th of April
1774.
The great importance of the new work was at once perceived by the
musical amateurs of the French capital, and a hot controversy on the
merits of _Iphigenie_ ensued, in which some of the leading literary men
of France took part. Amongst the opponents of Gluck were not only the
admirers of Italian vocalization and sweetness, but also the adherents
of the earlier French school, who refused to see in the new composer the
legitimate successor of Lulli and Rameau. Marmontel, Laharpe and
D'Alembert were his opponents, the Abbe Arnaud and others his
enthusiastic friends. Rousseau took a peculiar position in the struggle.
In his early writings he is a violent partisan of Italian music, but
when Gluck himself appeared as the French champion Rousseau acknowledged
the great composer's genius; although he did not always understand it,
as for example when he suggested that in _Alceste_, "Divinites du Styx,"
perhaps the most majestic of all Gluck's arias, ought to have been set
as a rondo. Nevertheless in a letter to Dr Burney, written shortly
before his death, Rousseau gives a close and appreciative analysis of
_Alceste_, the first Italian version of which Gluck had submitted to him
for suggestions; and when, on the first performance of the piece not
being received favourably by the Parisian audience, the composer
exclaimed, "_Alceste est tombee_," Rousseau is said to have comforted
him with the flattering _bonmot_, "_Oui, mais elle est tombee du ciel_."
The contest received a still more personal character when Piccinni, a
celebrated and by no means incapable composer, came to Paris as the
champion of the Italian party at the invitation of Madame du Barry, who
held a rival court to that of the young princess (see OPERA). As a
dramatic controversy it suggests a parallel with the Wagnerian and
anti-Wagnerian warfare of a later age; but there is no such radical
difference between Gluck's and Piccinni's musical methods as the
comparison would suggest. Gluck was by far the better musician, but his
deficiencies in musical technique were of a kind which contemporaries
could perceive as easily as they could perceive Piccinni's. Both
composers were remarkable inventors of melody, and both had the gift of
making incorrect music sound agreeable. Gluck's indisputable dramatic
power might be plausibly dismissed as irrelevant by upholders of music
for music's sake, even if Piccinni himself had not chosen, as he did, to
assimilate every feature in Gluck's style that he could understand. The
rivalry between the two composers was soon developed into a quarrel by
the skilful engineering of Gluck's enemies. In 1777 Piccinni was given a
libretto by Marmontel on the subject of _Roland_, to Gluck's intense
disgust, as he had already begun an opera on that subject himself. This,
and the failure of an attempt to show his command of a lighter style by
furbishing up some earlier works at the instigation of Marie Antoinette,
inspired Gluck to produce his _Armide_, which appeared four months
before Piccinni's _Roland_ was ready, and raised a storm of controversy,
admiration and abuse. Gluck did not anticipate Wagner more clearly in
his dramatic reforms than in his caustic temper; and, as in Gluck's own
estimation the difference between _Armide_ and _Alceste_ is that "_l'un
(Alceste) doit faire pleurer et l'autre faire eprouver une voluptueuse
sensation_," it was extremely annoying for him to be told by Laharpe
that he had made Armide a sorceress instead of an enchantress, and that
her part was "_une criaillerie monotone et fatiguante_." He replied to
Laharpe in a long public letter worthy of Wagner in its venomous sarcasm
and its tremendous value as an advertisement for its recipient.
Gluck's next work was _Iphigenie en Tauride_, the success of which
finally disposed of Piccinni, who produced a work on the same subject at
the same time and who is said to have acknowledged Gluck's superiority.
Gluck's next work was _Echo et Narcisse_, the comparative failure of
which greatly disappointed him; and during the composition of another
opera, _Les Danaides_, an attack of apoplexy compelled him to give up
work. He left Paris for Vienna, where he lived for several years in
dignified leisure, disturbed only by his declining health. He died on
the 15th of November 1787. (F. H.; D. F. T.)
The great interest of the dramatic aspect of Gluck's reforms is apt to
overshadow his merit as a musician, and yet in some ways to idealize it.
One is tempted to regard him as condoning for technical musical
deficiencies by sheer dramatic power, whereas unprejudiced study of his
work shows that where his dramatic power asserts itself there is no lack
of musical technique. Indeed only a great musician could so reform opera
as to give it scope for dramatic power at all. Where Gluck differs from
the greatest musicians is in his absolute dependence on literature for
his inspiration. Where his librettist failed him (as in his last
complete work, _Echo et Narcisse_), he could hardly write tolerably good
music; and, even in the finest works of his French period, the less
emotional situations are sometimes set to music which has little
interest except as a document in the history of the art. This must not
be taken to mean merely that Gluck could not, like Mozart and nearly all
the great song-writers, set good music to a bad text. Such inability
would prove Gluck's superior literary taste without casting a slur on
his musicianship. But it points to a certain weakness as a musician that
Gluck could not be inspired except by the more thrilling portions of his
libretti. When he was inspired there was no question that he was the
first and greatest writer of dramatic music before Mozart. To begin
with, he could invent sublime melodies; and his power of producing great
musical effects by the simplest means was nothing short of Handelian.
Moreover, in his peculiar sphere he deserves the title generally
accorded to Haydn of "father of modern orchestration." It is misleading
to say that he was the first to use the timbre of instruments with a
sense of emotional effect, for Bach and Handel well knew how to give a
whole aria or whole chorus peculiar tone by means of a definite scheme
of instrumentation. But Gluck did not treat instruments as part of a
decorative design, any more than he so treated musical forms. Just as
his sense of musical form is that of Philipp Emmanuel Bach and of
Mozart, so is his treatment of instrumental tone-colour a thing that
changes with every shade of feeling in the dramatic situation, and not
in accordance with any purely decorative scheme. To accompany an aria
with strings, oboes and flutes, was, for example, a perfectly ordinary
procedure; nor was there anything unusual in making the wind instruments
play in unison with the strings for the first part of the aria, and
writing a passage for one or more of them in the middle section. But it
was an unheard-of thing to make this passage consist of long
_appoggiaturas_ once every two bars in rising sequence on the first
oboe, answered by deep _pizzicato_ bass notes, while Agamemnon in
despair cries: "_J'entends retentir dans mon sein le cri plaintif de la
nature_." Some of Gluck's most forcible effects are of great subtlety,
as, for instance, in _Iphigenie en Tauride_, where Orestes tries to
reassure himself by saying: "_Le calme rentre dans mon coeur_," while
the intensely agitated accompaniment of the strings belies him. Again,
the sense of orchestral climax shown in the oracle scene in _Alceste_
was a thing inconceivable in older music, and unsurpassed in artistic
and dramatic spirit by any modern composer. Its influence in Mozart's
_Idomeneo_ is obvious at a first glance.
The capacity for broad melody always implies a true sense of form,
whether that be developed by skill or not; and thus Gluck, in rejecting
the convenient formalities of older styles of opera, was not, like some
reformers, without something better to substitute for them. Moreover he,
in consultation with his librettist, achieved great skill in holding
together entire scenes, or even entire acts, by dramatically apposite
repetitions of short arias and choruses. And thus in large portions of
his finest works the music, in spite of frequent full closes, seems to
move _pari passu_ with the drama in a manner which for naturalness and
continuity is surpassed only by the finales of Mozart and the entire
operas of Wagner. This is perhaps most noticeable in the second act of
_Orfeo_. In its original Italian version both scenes, that in Hades and
that in Elysium, are indivisible wholes, and the division into single
movements, though technically obvious, is aesthetically only a natural
means of articulating the structure. The unity of the scene in Hades
extends, in the original version, even to the key-system. This was
damaged when Gluck had to transpose the part of Orpheus from an alto to
a tenor in the French version. And here, we have one of many instances
in which the improvements his French experience enabled him to make in
his great Italian works were not altogether unmixed. Little harm,
however, was done to _Orfeo_ which has not been easily remedied by
transposing Orpheus's part back again; and in a suitable compromise
between the two versions _Orfeo_ remains Gluck's most perfect and
inspired work. The emotional power of the music is such that the
inevitable spoiling of the story by a happy ending has not the aspect of
mere conventionality which it had in cases where the music produced no
more than the normal effect upon 18th-century audiences. Moreover
Gluck's genius was of too high an order for him to be less successful in
portraying a sufficiently intense happiness than in portraying grief. He
failed only in what may be called the business capacities of artistic
technique; and there is less "business" in _Orfeo_ than in almost any
other music-drama. It was Gluck's first great inspiration, and his
theories had not had time to take action in paper warfare. _Alceste_
contains his grandest music and is also very free from weak pages; but
in its original Italian version the third act did not give Gluck scope
for an adequate climax. This difficulty so accentuated itself in the
French version that after continual retouchings a part for Hercules was,
in Gluck's absence, added by Gossec; and three pages of Gluck's music,
dealing with the supreme crisis where Alceste is rescued from Hades
(either by Apollo or by Hercules) were no longer required in performance
and have been lost. The Italian version is so different from the French
that it cannot help us to restore this passage, in which Gluck's music
now stops short just at the point where we realize the full height of
his power. The comparison between the Italian and French _Alceste_ is
one of the most interesting that can be made in the study of a
musician's development. It would have been far easier for Gluck to write
a new opera if he had not been so justly attached to his second Italian
masterpiece. So radical are the differences that in retranslating the
French libretto into Italian for performance with the French music not
one line of Calzabigi's original text can be retained.
In _Iphigenie en Aulide_ and _Iphigenie en Tauride_, Gluck shows signs
that the controversies aroused by his methods began to interfere with
his musical spontaneity. He had not, in _Orfeo_, gone out of his way to
avoid rondos, or we should have had no "_Che faro senza Euridice_." We
read with a respectful smile Gluck's assurance to the bailli Le Blanc du
Roullet that "you would not believe _Armide_ to be by the same composer"
as _Alceste_. But there is no question that _Armide_ is a very great
work, full of melody, colour and dramatic point; and that Gluck has
availed himself of every suggestion that his libretto afforded for
orchestral and emotional effects of an entirely different type from any
that he had attempted before. And it is hardly relevant to blame him for
his inability to write erotic music. In the first place, the libretto is
not erotic, though the subject would no doubt become so if treated by a
modern poet. In the second place a conflict of passions (as, for
instance, where Armide summons the demons of Hate to exorcise love from
her heart, and her courage fails her as soon as they begin) has never,
even in _Alceste_, been treated with more dramatic musical force. The
work as a whole is unequal, partly because there is a little too much
action in it to suit Gluck's methods; but it shows, as does no other
opera until Mozart's _Don Giovanni_, a sense of the _development_ of
characters, as distinguished from the mere presentation of them as
already fixed.
In _Iphigenie en Aulide_ and _Iphigenie en Tauride_, the very subtlety
of the finest features indicates a certain self-consciousness which,
when inspiration is lacking, becomes mannerism. Moreover, in both cases
the libretti, though skilfully managed, tell a rather more complicated
story than those which Gluck had hitherto so successfully treated; and,
where inspiration fails, the musical technique becomes curiously
amateurish without any corresponding naivete. Still these works are
immortal, and their finest passages are equal to anything in _Alceste_
and _Orfeo_. _Echo et Narcisse_ we must, like Gluck's contemporaries,
regard as a failure. As in _Orfeo_, the pathetic story is ruined by a
violent happy ending, but here this artistic disaster takes place before
the pathos has had time to assert itself. Gluck had no opportunities in
this work for any higher qualities, musical or dramatic, than
prettiness; and with him beauty, without visible emotion, was indeed
skin-deep. It is a pity that the plan of the great Pelletan-Damcke
critical _edition de luxe_ of Gluck's French operas forbids the
inclusion of his Italian _Paride e Elena_, his third opera to
Calzabigi's libretto, which was never given in a French version; for
there can be no question that, whatever he owed to France, the period
of his greatness began with his collaboration with Calzabigi.
(D. F. T.)