["Armide".]

It must be understood that Lulli's recitative was not always dramatically co rrect. Sometimes it is merely grandiose in style, but it is much more animated, flexible, and capable of expression than that of his predecessors. Lulli was undoubtedly influenced in his solo writing by the works of Monteverde, which were performed in Paris under the direction of Cavalli. Lulli is said to have written some of the ballet music which had to be inserted in these works to please the Parisians. The love of ballet has never died out in France. It was a fight over it which killed Wagner's "TannhÄuser" in Paris in 1861. Lulli's early training naturally made him an eclectic, and when he set out to provide the Parisian public with grand operas to its taste, he chose from French ballet and Italian opera such features as he believed would be popular, and upon these as a foundation reared a new version of the Greek drama, thoroughly Gallic in its conception.

Courtier, man of the world, and self-seeker, Lulli knew how to plan an opera, with such musical materials as there were in his day, so that it should present some effect of contrast and shape. For one thing, he fairly rid himself of everything pertaining to the ecclesiastical style of composition. As I have said, he wrote arias, but their indistinctness is owing largely to the fact that the conventional form had not yet become fully established. It is, perhaps, in the general plan of his operas that Lulli shows the most important advance over his predecessors. He was certainly far ahead of Peri, Monteverde, Cavalli, Beaujoyeux, and Cambert in the manner in which he distributed his scenes so as to give variety of emotion, and in the effective way in which he arranged the succession of recitatives, arias, choruses, and ballets. The plan was, indeed, designed wholly with a view to stage effectiveness, and thereby led away from the dramatic directness of Peri; but on the other hand Lulli's music followed the development of his story with much sincerity. The breadth and force of the recitative in many places suggest that the public taste to which he catered was by no means to be despised.

Lulli was the founder of a school, but among his followers there was no man of genius, and only one of noticeable talent. This was Marin Marais (1656-1728), who showed a broader style than Lulli in arias, and who made some attempts at instrumental description in his accompaniments. But the other members of the school were mere imitators, and French opera became little more than an adherence to the traditions and conventions of Lulli. Its vitality seemed in a fair way to desert it completely, when a new master arose and put fresh life into it. This master was Jean Philippe Rameau, born at Dijon, Sept. 25, 1683, died at Paris, Sept. 12, 1764. He showed musical gifts when a child, and his parents gave him a musical education. He went to Milan in 1701 to study, but was dissatisfied with Italian music. After considerable travel he arrived in Paris in 1717, whence he was driven away by the rivalry of the organist, Marchand. He went into retirement in the provinces, and wrote his "TraitÉ de l'Harmonie." His theoretical works gave him reputation, and at the age of fifty he succeeded in having his "Hippolyte et Aricie" produced. The conservative followers of Lulli and the new admirers of Rameau now entered into a controversy which lasted till the success of an Italian opera buffa company in 1752 united the forces, under the title of Anti-buffonists, in defence of French opera. Rameau's principal works were: "Castor et Pollux" (1737), "Zoroastre" (1749), and "Les Surprises d'Amour" (1759).

Rameau's operas show certain decided improvements upon those of Lulli. He was a more sincere artist, with a self-sacrificing devotion to high ideals of which Lulli was quite incapable. The story of Rameau's early struggles and of his late recognition by force of sheer merit is far different from that of Lulli's courtier-like machinations. But Rameau recognized the value of Lulli's art forms and did not set out to overthrow them. He took them up and improved upon them by reason of his strong grasp of dramatic truth and his larger conception of musical organism. To put the matter in the plainest possible terms, Rameau was a much more truthfully dramatic composer than Lulli, and at the same time he was a better musician. His mastery of the science of harmony enabled him to build an instrumental background for his vocal parts far richer and more expressive than anything within the reach of Lulli. His instrumentation was much broader and more highly colored than his predecessor's, and his declamation is more musical, and hence more fruitful in melodic beauty. Rameau's works are full of evidence that he sought earnestly after dramatic expression in the grand style; and that he was not wholly able to escape affectation is due largely to the taste of the period in which he lived,—the period of Racine, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

His music, however, abounds in strong and varied rhythms and in a generally richer style. Previous to his time, for instance, the French composers accompanied the voices with strings in five parts, and flutes and oboes in two parts. Rameau insisted upon giving each instrument a special part, and he introduced the now familiar custom of writing solo passages for the different wood wind instruments. He also greatly improved the character of the choral writing in French opera. But Rameau was not highly skilled in writing for the voice. He recognized that fact himself when it was too late for him to remodel his style. And he had a foolish idea that a good composer could set any kind of a libretto to music. Many of his works failed to please the Parisians simply because their books were so weak. But on the whole, Rameau left his mark on the French opera. There can be no doubt that so great a composer as Gluck learned much from him, and he must at any rate be credited with a faithful preservation of those principles of the real grand opera style which entered the French school at its inception and which have never wholly departed from it. It was the influence of such works as his that prepared Paris to receive the sincere dramatic operas of Gluck, the next composer of importance in the line of development of French opera.