new ideas, with the vigour of a fertile invention,
and correctness of study and experience.
"Nothing is so difficult to describe in words, as
music—even if the hand that holds the pen be
as neat, and the head as clear, as were Burney's;
but the above praise reminds us of "hot ice and
wondrous strange snow;"—and it may be not
uncharitably surmised, that if Keyser had
exhibited any real style of his own, we should not
have to inquire for some specimen of the music
of these hundred forgotten operas. A song for
Medusa, from the "Persee" of Lulli, electrified
our London concert-rooms, public and private,
within the last ten years, by its declamatory
grandeur, which offered scope to the singer living
who is grandest in declamation—Madame
Viardot.

In Keyser's day, however, the lines of
demarcation, so far as dramatic music was concerned,
betwixt Germany and Italy, were as yet but
indistinctly drawn. Most, if not all, of the operas
produced as, for instance, the "Costanza e
Fortezza" of Fux, the third performance of which at
Prague was conducted from the harpsichord by
no less august an amateur than the Emperor
Charles the Sixth of Austria—were written to
Italian text. There was one great original
German thinker, it is true, rising up and pouring
out noble thoughts and new combinations,
of a variety and value of which we have only
become duly sensible during late years—Sebastian
Bach—but, magnificent as his instrumental
works are, his dealings with the single voice are
so curiously ignorant, and, it may be said,
thoughtless (a rebuke strange as applied to the
King of organists)—as to excite surprise rather
than to establish a style. Superb as are the
choruses in Bach's sacred works—witness the
Thunder Chorus in his Passion-Music according
to St. Matthew—witness the "Crucifixus" to his
mass in B minor—witness the opening to his
"Magnificat"—startling as are certain of his
recitatives by their dramatic intensity—the
majority of his songs are tedious, over ornate, and
written on a totally wrong principle. The singer
was to exhibit in dialogue with some instrument
or instruments brought into a relief quite as high
as the vocal strain: and the air was too often
forced pell-mell into a union with words nothing
short of Mezentian. In truth, the good man
shifted his songs about, from work sacred to
work profane, with a callous indifference which
would now call down the bitterest German irony
(as controversy has been of late) were it found
in an Italian composer. It is notorious,
however, that Bach (no bigot, like many a meaner
creature among his successors) had a hankering
after Opera. By way of a holiday he would
go from Leipsic to Dresden "to hear the pretty
songs." As he tried his hand at everything, he
may be said to have made a move towards
Opera in that gruff, quaint Cantata "Pan and
Phœbus," which was the other day disinterred for
the first time in the splendid modern German
edition of his works. But the music of this, though
not without inklings of humour, is, as a whole,
dry, and without significance. Compare it, for
instance, with the dramatic efforts of one, far less
deeply learned, less favourably circumstanced—
so melodious, so impassioned—so close in the
expression of situation and sense by sound, and
(some slight flavour of Lulli allowed for) so
unmistakably English in their nationality—of our
Purcell.

The mighty musical spirit of Bach, however,
had no, immediate influence on the creation of
what may be generically called German opera:
nor indeed, was it felt in the branch of art in
which he was autocrat for a good half century
after his decease. The men of genius, with some
small exception, denationalised themselves.
Handel passed into Italy, there to lay hands on
whatever suited him;—thieving on a
magnificent scale from Clari, Colonna, Scarlatti,
Erba, and Heaven knows how many less
famous men. Nor was Gluck a whit more German
in style. After writing some scores of Italian
operas, according to the southern pattern, he
suddenly struck into his own path in his "Orfeo,"
a path not unmarked with concessions and
conventionalisms—though those who use him as a
party-cry will not have it so. His visit to our
despised London, where he was brought into
rivalry with Handel (his "Caduta dei Giganti"
having been written, as was "Judas Maccabeus,"
to celebrate the Culloden victory over the
Pretender), may have been the turning-point of
his career:—and the antipathy of the two men, if
antipathy there was (as the lovers of ill-natured
anecdote stir themselves to prove), may not
have hindered the dramatic composer—immature
in originality though mature in years—from
availing himself of the examples set him by the
oratorio writer then in the zenith of his fame.
The choruses in "Orfeo" and "Alceste," both
operas written to Italian text, and some of their
themes based on Italian melody, may owe
something to such specimens of Handel's
genius as "For Sion lamentation make," and
"Fallen is the foe." Both the two mighty men
gained their fame by pleasing other than German
publics. Neither found for years on
years due recognition at home. Handel, even to
this day, has it not. It was from Paris, rather
than Vienna, that Gluck's genius went forth to
leaven, to remodel, and to recommend the grace
of truth as superior to that of convention in
musical drama.

If we look into the long list of German
composers celebrated in their time, and now
forgotten, who preceded Mozart, we find but one
name connected with operas to be heard of at
the time present. It is true that John Adam
Hïller made a certain mark at Dresden by fourteen
operas written to German text, and possibly
containing "the pretty songs" which Father
Bach loved to indulge himself with;—but of
Hïller's music not a trace remains; and that it
had no peculiar nationality of style may be
divined from his favourite predilection, that
of hearing the Italian operas of Hasse, "II
Sassone," German by birth, southern in style,
and sung by a company of Italians, which
included artists no less famous than Carestini and