The strict line of demarcation between opera seria and buffa did not exist in Paris. The effort to give more dramatic interest and freer scope to operatic music led to the portrayal of the deeper and noble emotions, and opera approached more and more nearly to serious comedy in plot, situations, and psychological intention. Merriment gradually ceased to be the predominating element, and became nothing more than a flavouring thrown in; it was replaced by that mixture of seriousness and playfulness which, in opposition to the former prohibition of any amalgamation of different styles, was now considered as the true expression of music.[ 36 ] A characteristic distinction between comic and serious opera in France was the adoption by the former of spoken dialogue instead of recitative.[ 37 ] Any attempt to imitate the free, declamatory recitative of the Italians would have been thought too daring, and was perhaps actually prohibited by the privileges of the Grand-Opéra. But in renouncing recitative, the dialogue gained the freedom of witty and sparkling conversation, without which the French cannot exist; and this note, once struck, soon regulated the whole character of GRÊTRY. operatic music, which, elevated as it may be, nevertheless starts from the idea of a conversation.
No one could be better fitted than Grétry for the development of such a style as this.[ 38 ] His was a pliant and amiable nature, but not a great one. He was excitable and susceptible to any emotion, but without depth; his wit was delicate and versatile, and he possessed the power of giving it the most striking and appropriate expression. He was determined that his music should always faithfully render some definite emotion, even to the minutest detail of the dramatic situation and characters. He held that a composer could only attain this end by working himself up into a pitch of intense excitement,[ 39 ] and living for the time in the drama that was under his hands.[ 40 ] The actual means which he employed was song, that is, melody. He learnt the art of tuneful song from the Italians,[ 41 ] and made its expressiveness depend upon intonation in delivery, which it is the composer's part to suggest and control.[ 42 ] He laid great stress upon true and strongly accentuated declamation,[ 43 ] which he had studied under good actors.[ 44 ] This lent a liveliness and piquancy to his musical style,[ 45 ] and rendered it essentially French.[ 46 ]
Grétry accomplished wonders for musical form, as far as grace and freshness, lively emotion and wit go, but his powers did not attain to anything truly great or important to art. The art of melodious expression was developed by him almost to the exclusion of other means, such as rich and well-chosen härmonies,[ 47 ] artistic accompaniments, and instrumental effects, all of which he treated as subordinate and unimportant.
He inveighs against the misuse of the instruments, especially of the wind instruments, which Gluck's example had introduced, even if he were not personally responsible for it;[ 48 ] but he recommends the moderate use of them for characterisation,[ 49 ] and prides himself on his very questionable invention in his "Andromaque" of assigning special instruments to the recitatives of each principal character—Andromache, for instance, having always three flutes.[ 50 ] A saying of Grétry's, that in opera song is the statue, and the orchestra the pedestal, and that Mozart sometimes put the pedestal on the stage, has often been repeated. Whether this is authentic or not, the fact remains that Grétry's neglect of the orchestra was not altogether of set purpose, but that this branch of artistic education was unknown to him and interested him as little as did the minute elaboration and hard study which are dear to all first-rate musicians. His idea that a musician of genius may spoil his inventive powers by too much study is truly comical; what he tells of his own studies shows how shallow they were, and his productions are all of a piece. On the other hand he lays great weight upon reflection, which does not properly concern music at all; but his simplicity, which almost amounted to barrenness, served to heighten his truly excellent qualities, and to make him the popular idol he was. It is quite conceivable that the encyclopedists, who were the champions of Italian music, should have seen in him the man who united beauty and melody with Italian truth and characteristic expression. Diderot wrote under GLUCK. Grétry's portrait the motto: "Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, ut magus";[ 51 ] Rousseau thanked him for having reopened his heart to emotion by his music;[ 52 ] Grimm, who had received him with approbation from the first,[ 53 ] declared during the heat of the struggle between Gluckists and Piccinnists that connoisseurs and others were all agreed that no composer had succeeded like Grétry in fitting Italian melody to the French language, and in satisfying the national taste for wit and delicacy.[ 54 ] Suard and Arnaud, Gluck's supporters, stood by Grétry,[ 55 ] as well as Marmontel, who was opposed to Gluck.[ 56 ] And with what enthusiasm the public received his operas! Many of them—to mention only "Zemire and Azor"—made their way throughout Europe, and had unquestionably much influence on the formation of musical taste.
While comic opera was thus flourishing more and more richly and abundantly, the grand opera was confined almost exclusively to Lully and Rameau; it might almost seem that it had reached its limits, and that the interest of the public was henceforth to be centred on comic opera.[ 57 ] But fresh trials awaited the grand opera. Doubtless the light breezes which sprang from the reformed comic opera were precursors of the coming storm; but the actual impulse to it was not given in Paris itself.
Christ. Wilh. Gluck (1714-1787), after doing good service to Italian opera in Italy and London, went to Vienna in 1748, and there wrote, partly for the Prince of Hildburg-hausen, partly and chiefly for the imperial court, a succession of Italian operas of no very striking originality. It was precisely the time when the traditional forms were becoming more and more conventional formulas, and when the vocal art was demanding the sacrifice of simplicity, nature, and truth to the whim of each virtuoso. The decadence of operatic music, which Metastasio bitterly laments (Vol. I., p. 163), inspired Gluck with the desire to lead it back to its first principles. He was a man of earnest thought and strong will. The tendency of German literature to give dignity and importance to poetry did not pass by him unnoticed, and he was a warm admirer of Klopstock, whose odes he set to music.[ 58 ] The efforts then being made to raise the German stage in Vienna had an influence on him, and his own first attempts at reformation were greeted with loud applause by Sonnenfels.
Gluck has professed his principles of dramatic composition in the well-known dedication to his "Alceste." He declares his opposition to the abuses introduced by the vanity of singers and the servility of composers, by which the most beautiful and stately drama becomes the most tiresome; he refused to interrupt the action at a wrong time by a ritornello, to sacrifice expression to a run or a cadenza, to neglect the second part of a song when the situation demands that peculiar stress shall be laid on it, in obedience to the custom which requires the fourfold repetition of the words of the first part, or to give an ending to the song against the sense of the text; his overtures were to be characteristic of the drama which was to follow, and to prepare the minds of the spectators for it. His fundamental law of operatic music was its due subordination to the words, so that every turn in the action should be suitably expressed, without any superfluous adornment, just as colour gives life and expression to a CALSABIGI'S LIBRETTI. sketch. He professed his highest aim to be simple beauty;[ 59 ] he condemned all difficulties which hinder clearness, all novelties which do not proceed from the necessities of the situation; he set aside all rule in order to obtain true effects.
There can hardly be a doubt as to the justice of these principles in general, and we are only concerned with the result of their adoption on musical progress.[ 60 ] Our remarks on a style of music which professes itself the handmaid of poetry, and is content with giving the fittest expression to verse, must be prefaced by some notice of the poets who supplied the verse.