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[ His admirable ballet music was slow in making its way in Paris; it was so confidently assumed that the French were the first masters in the world for ballet music, that a foreigner had to contend against much prejudice. La Harpe remarks that want of success in this respect was in Gluck's favour, for that his system, consistently carried out, would exclude ballet.]
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[ Interesting details of this visit are given by Frz. M. Rudhart, Gluck in Paris (Munich, 1864).]
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[ Burney, Reise, II., p. 253. Cf. Cramer's Magazin, 1783, p. 561.]
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[ Madame de Genlis, Mém., II., p. 248.]
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[ A number of pamphlets and newspaper articles of this and following years are collected in Mémoires pour servir ä l'Histoire de la révolution opérée dans la musique par M. le Chev. Gluck (ä Naples et ä Paris, 1781), partly translated by Siegmeyer: Ueber Gluck und seine Werke (Berlin, 1823). Here again the dispute is chiefly carried on by men of literary rather than musical knowledge (Madame de Genlis, Mém., II., p. 250). The first favourable notices were at once translated by Riedel and published with an enthusiastic preface, Ueber die Musik des Ritters Gluck ( Vienna 1775). This called forth Forkel's criticism (Musik. Krit. Bibl., I., p. 53). He was incapable of appreciating Gluck's true greatness, and as partial and philistine as other Berlin critics of that day; he was spiteful besides; but some of his remarks are true enough. The personal animosity which Forkel afterwards threw into his attacks is quite repulsive.]