Masters of French Music

Masters of Contemporary Music
A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SKETCHES
Masters of Contemporary Music.
WITH PORTRAITS, &c.

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
THE reader who turns to these pages with the idea of finding therein a large and exhaustive account of the composers mentioned, with a technical analysis of their works, will, I fear, be disappointed. My intention has been a far more modest one.
The dimensions of this volume would not have allowed me to devote that amount of space to each composer that might be considered due to his merits.
The object I have had in view has been to give an account of their lives and to draw attention to the tendencies exhibited in their works.
The French can boast a splendid musical record, particularly as regards the opera. Paris was for many years the centre towards which foreign artists were wont to gravitate. It was here that Gluck laid the seeds of his musical reforms; that Cherubini and Spontini lived and brought out their best works; it was the influence of French taste that caused Rossini to forsake the inartistic devices of his earlier Italian operas and write Guillaume Tell, his masterpiece; it was for Paris that Meyerbeer composed Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots, Le Prophète, and L'Africaine; that Donizetti wrote the Favorite, and Verdi, Don Carlos. 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 of melody, what grace, and what innate dramatic feeling do we not find in the works of Méhul, Boïeldieu, Auber, Hérold, Adam, Halévy, and others whose operas during the first half of the present century were heard all over Europe.