In 1780, six months after the _Iphigénie_ première, Gluck retired to Vienna to end his days in dignified and wealthy leisure. He had accomplished his task, fulfilled the wish of his heart. In his comfortable retreat he learned of the failure of Piccini’s _Iphigénie en Tauride_, while his own was given for the 151st time on April 2, 1782! He also enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that _Les Danaïdes_, the opera written by his disciple and pupil, Antonio Salieri, justified the truth of his theories by its success on the Paris stage in 1784. It was this pupil, who, consulting Gluck on the question of whether to write the rôle of Christ in the tenor in his cantata ‘The Last Judgment,’ received the answer, half in jest, half in earnest, ‘I’ll be able before long to let you know from the beyond how the Saviour speaks.’ A few days after, on Nov. 15, 1787, the master breathed his last, having suffered an apoplectic stroke. The inscription on his tomb, ‘Here rests a righteous German man, an ardent Christian, a faithful husband, Christoph Ritter Gluck, the great master of the sublime art of tone’ emphasizes the strongly moral side of his character. For all his shrewdness and solicitude for his own material welfare, his music is ample proof of his nobility of soul; its loftiness, purity, unaffected simplicity reflect the virtues for which men are universally respected. In its essence Gluck’s music may be considered the expression of the classic ideal, the ‘naturalism’ and ‘new humanism’ of Rousseau, which idealized the old Greek world and aimed to inculcate the Greek spirit; courage and keenness in quest of truth and devotion to the beautiful. The leading characteristics of his style have been aptly defined as the ‘realistic notation of the pathetic accent and passing movement, and the subordination of the purely musical element to dramatic expression.’ ‘I shall try,’ he wrote in the preface to _Alceste_, ‘to reduce music to its own function, that of seconding poetry by intensifying the expression of sentiments and the interest of situations without interrupting the action by needless ornament. I have accordingly taken great care not to interrupt the singer in the heat of the dialogue and make him wait for a tedious _ritornel_, nor do I allow him to stop on a sonorous vowel, in the middle of a phrase, in order to show the agility of a beautiful voice in a long cadenza. I also believed it my duty to try to secure, to the best of my power, a fine simplicity; therefore I have avoided a display of difficulties which destroy clarity. I have never laid stress on aught that was new, where it was not conditioned in a natural manner by situation and expression; and there is no rule which I have not been willing to sacrifice with good grace for the sake of the effect. These are my principles.’ The inscription, _Il préféra les Muses aux Sirènes_ (He chose the Muses rather than the Sirens), beneath an old French copper-plate of Gluck,