Masters of Contemporary Music

A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND
CRITICAL SKETCHES

CH. GOUNOD

Frontispiece.

Masters of French Music

BY

ARTHUR HERVEY





WITH ILLUSTRATIONS





LONDON
OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO.
45 ALBEMARLE STREET
1894

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

IS

BY SPECIAL PERMISSION

DEDICATED TO

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE PRINCESS OF WALES

PREFACE

THE reader who turns to these pages with the idea of finding therein alarge and exhaustive account of the composers mentioned, with atechnical analysis of their works, will, I fear, be disappointed. Myintention has been a far more modest one.

The dimensions of this volume would not have allowed me to devote thatamount of space to each composer that might be considered due to hismerits.

The object I have had in view has been to give an account of theirlives and to draw attention to the tendencies exhibited in their works.

The French can boast a splendid musical record, particularly as regardsthe opera. Paris was for many years the centre towards which foreignartists were wont to gravitate. It was here that Gluck laid the seeds ofhis musical reforms; that Cherubini and Spontini lived and brought outtheir best works; it was the influence of French taste that causedRossini to forsake the inartistic devices of his earlier Italian operasand write "Guillaume Tell," his masterpiece; it was for Paris thatMeyerbeer composed "Robert le Diable," "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète,"and "L'Africaine;" that Donizetti wrote the "Favorite," and Verdi, "DonCarlos." It was Paris that Wagner had in his mind when he composed his"Rienzi."

Then if we cast a glance at their native composers what treasures ofmelody, what grace, and what innate dramatic feeling do we not find inthe works of Méhul, Boïeldieu, Auber, Hérold, Adam, Halévy, and otherswhose operas during the first half of the present century were heard allover Europe.

Of a different type to the above we meet the Titanic figure of Berlioz,whose influence has been so great over the younger generatio