[157] Through a break in the clouds, revealing Celestial joy shining above the deeps.
[158] Tribune de Saint-Gervais November, 1900.
[159] Id., September, 1899.
[160] L'Étranger, "action musicale" in two acts. Poem and music by M. Vincent d'Indy. Played for the first time at Brussels in the Théâtre de la Monnaie, 7 January, 1903. The quotations from the drama, whose poetry is not as good as its music, are taken from the score.
[161] There is a certain likeness in the subject to Herr Richard Strauss's Feuersnot. There, too, the hero is a stranger who is persecuted, and treated as a sorcerer in the very town to which he has brought honour. But the dénouement is not the same; and the fundamental difference of temperament between the two artists is strongly marked. M. d'Indy finishes with the renouncement of a Christian, and Herr Richard Strauss by a proud and joyous affirmation of independence.
[162] Found by M. d'Indy in his own province, as he tells us in his Chansons populaires du Vivarais.
[163] In his criticisms his heart is not always in agreement with his mind. His mind denounces the Renaissance, but his instinct obliges him to appreciate the great Florentine painters of the Renaissance and the musicians of the sixteenth century. He only gets out of the difficulty by the most extraordinary compromises, by saying that Ghirlandajo and Filippo Lippi were Gothic, or by stating that the Renaissance in music did not begin till the seventeenth century! (Cours de Composition, pp. 214 and 216.)
[164] Act III, scene 3. The power of that evocation is so strong that it carries the poet along with it. It would seem that part of the action had only been conceived with a view to the final effect of the sudden colouring of the waves.
[165] Cours de Composition, and Tribune de Saint-Gervais.
[166] Cours de Composition.