Great Italian and French ComposersFerris, George T. (George Titus)
History
Great Italian and French Composers
Ferris, George T. (George Titus)
Musicians -- France; Musicians -- Italy
before God." Adolphe Adam puts the comparison more epigrammatically in
saying: "If Palestrina had lived in our own times, he would have been
Cherubini." The masters of the old Roman school of church music had
received it as an emanation of pure sentiment, with no tinge of human
warmth and color. Cherubini, on the contrary, aimed to make his music
express the dramatic passion of the words, and in the realization of
this he brought to bear all the resources of a musical science unequaled
except perhaps by Beethoven. The noble masses in F and D were also
written in 1809 and stamped themselves on public judgment as no less
powerful works of genius and knowledge.
Some of Cherubini's friends in 1809 tried to reconcile the composer
with the Emperor, and in furtherance of this an opera was written
anonymously, "Pimmalione." Napoleon was delighted, and even affected to
tears. Instantly, however, that Cherubini's name was uttered, he became
dumb and cold. Nevertheless, as if ashamed of his injustice, he sent
Cherubini a large sum of money, and a commission to write the music for
his marriage ode. Several fine works followed in the next two years,
among them the Mass in D, regarded by some of his admirers as his
ecclesiastical masterpiece. Miel claims that in largeness of design and
complication of detail, sublimity of conception and dramatic intensity,
two works only of its class approach it, Beethoven's Mass in D and
Niedermeyer's Mass in D minor.
In 1811 Halevy, the future author of "La Juive," became Cherubini's
pupil, and a devoted friendship ever continued between the two. The
opera of "Les Abencerages" was also produced, and it was pronounced
nowise inferior to "Medee" and "Les Deux Journees." Mendelssohn many
years afterward, writing to Moscheles in Paris, asked: "Has Onslow
written anything new? And old Cherubini? There's a matchless fellow!
I have got his 'Abencerages,' and can not sufficiently admire the
sparkling fire, the clear original phrasing, the extraordinary delicacy
and refinement with which it is written, or feel grateful enough to the
grand old man for it. Besides, it is all so free and bold and spirited."
The work would have had a greater immediate success, had not Paris been
in profound gloom from the disastrous results of the Moscow campaign and
the horrors of the French retreat, where famine and disease finished the
work of bayonet and cannon-ball.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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