Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Internet Archive.) Masters of Contemporary Music A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SKETCHES =Masters of Contemporary Music.= _WITH PORTRAITS, &C._ =MASTERS OF ENGLISH MUSIC.= By CHARLES WILLEBY, Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. =MASTERS OF GERMAN MUSIC.= By J. A. FULLER MAITLAND, Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. [_In the Press._ [Illustration: CH. GOUNOD _Frontispiece._] Masters of French Music BY ARTHUR HERVEY _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ LONDON OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO. 45 ALBEMARLE STREET 1894 THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS BY SPECIAL PERMISSION DEDICATED TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS OF WALES PREFACE _The reader who turns to these pages with the idea of finding therein a large and exhaustive account of the composers mentioned, with a technical analysis of their works, will, I fear, be disappointed. My intention has been a far more modest one._ _The dimensions of this volume would not have allowed me to devote that amount of space to each composer that might be considered due to his merits._ _The object I have had in view has been to give an account of their lives and to draw attention to the tendencies exhibited in their works._ _The French can boast a splendid musical record, particularly as regards the opera. Paris was for many years the centre towards which foreign artists were wont to gravitate. It was here that Gluck laid the seeds of his musical reforms; that Cherubini and Spontini lived and brought out their best works; it was the influence of French taste that caused Rossini to forsake the inartistic devices of his earlier Italian operas and write "Guillaume Tell," his masterpiece; it was for Paris that Meyerbeer composed "Robert le Diable," "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète," and "L'Africaine;" that Donizetti wrote the "Favorite," and Verdi, "Don Carlos." It was Paris that Wagner had in his mind when he composed his "Rienzi."_ _Then if we cast a glance at their native composers what treasures of melody, what grace, and what innate dramatic feeling do we not find in the works of Méhul, Boïeldieu, Auber, Hérold, Adam, Halévy, and others whose operas during the first half of the present century were heard all over Europe._ _Of a different type to the above we meet the Titanic figure of Berlioz, whose influence has been so great over the younger generation of composers and whose orchestral innovations have borne such fruit. In the present volume I am only dealing with living composers, otherwise there are four who occupy prominent places in the records of contemporary music whose names would have been included, Bizet, Lalo, César Franck, and Léo Delibes._