It cost Rossini six months to compose _Guillaume Tell_, the time in which he might have written six of his earlier Italian operas. The result of earnest study and deep reflection, it shows both French and German influences; something of German depth and sincerity of expression, a good deal of French _esprit_ and dramatic truth, and the usual Italian grace are its composite elements. The ease and fluency of Rossini’s style persist unchanged, while he discards mere mannerisms and rises to heights of genuine dramatic intensity he had not before attained. The new and varied instrumental timbres he employed no doubt had a considerable share in forming modern French composers’ taste for delicate orchestral effects. _Tell_ marks a transitional stage in the history of opera. It is to be regretted that it does not also mark a transitional stage in the composer’s own creative activity, instead of its climax. There is interesting matter for speculation in what Rossini might have accomplished had he not decided to retire from the operatic field at the age of thirty-seven. After the success of _Guillaume Tell_ he retired for a time to Bologna to continue his work according to the terms of his Paris contract--he had been considering the subject of _Faust_ for an opera--and was filled with ambitious plans for the inauguration of a new epoch in French opera. When, in November, 1830, he returned to Paris his agreement had been repudiated by the government of Louis Philippe, and the interest in dramatic music had waned. In 1832 he wrote six movements of his brilliant _Stabat mater_ (completed in 1839, the year of his father’s death) and in 1836, after the triumph of Meyerbeer’s _Les Huguenots_, he determined to give over operatic composition altogether. His motive in so doing has always been more or less a mystery. It has been claimed that he was jealous of Meyerbeer’s success, but his personal relations with Meyerbeer were friendly. One of Rossini’s last compositions, in fact, was a pianoforte fantasia on motives of Meyerbeer’s _L’Africaine_, the final rehearsal of which he had attended. And after his death there was found among his manuscripts a requiem chant in memory of Meyerbeer, who had died four years before. Another and more probable theory is that the successive mutilation of what he regarded as his greatest work (it was seldom given in its complete form) checked his ardor for operatic composition. Again, as he himself remarked to a friend, ‘A new work if successful could not add to my reputation, while if it failed it might detract from it.’ And, finally, Rossini was by nature pleasure-loving and fond of the good things of life. He had amassed a considerable fortune, and it is quite possible that he felt himself unequal to submitting again to the strain he had undergone in composing _Tell_. He told Hiller quite frankly that when a man had composed thirty-seven operas he began to feel a little tired, and his determination to write no more