As has been already intimated, the triumphs of Rameau were followed by a second interim that lasted for nearly twenty years. But in the case of this second interim, France was not destined to remain so comparatively unproductive as during the first. For the same period that heralds the crowning point of Rameau's fame ushers in the beginnings of French comic opera, for which date Mozart's birth is again a convenient reminder. As a result of partisanship for the Italian "bouffons," the philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), wrote both the words and music of a little French pastoral in the style of the prevailing Italian _intermezzi_, and thereby excited the interest more especially of the younger composers. Duni, Philidor, and Monsigny, who were born in approximately the same quarter century as Rousseau, were particularly happy in their efforts to evolve from this germ a lighter and more popular style, and are therefore to be regarded as the founders of _opéra comique_, which, in the next generation, was to be moulded into plasmic form by Grétry. And no style could have been more beneficial for extricating orchestral writing out of the stiff and prosaic confines within which serious opera was prone to restrict it. On the other hand, Italian orchestration was leaning more and more toward pernicious conventionalism and tawdry superficiality. Here again the early _opéra comique_ appeared as a felicitous counterbalance, and infused into the orchestra that sparkle and piquancy for which French instrumentation has ever since been famed. True, none of these minor composers contributed signally to the advancement of orchestration, but each helped in little ways, and their instrumentation was more correct and finished than that of their prominent successor, Grétry. Their orchestras were still somewhat massive, but showed progress in vigor and sonority, variety and lightness of instrumentation. And so when Gluck arrived in Paris there existed already four distinct schools for orchestral writing--the rising classic purity of his own native land; the Neapolitan traditions, fast deteriorating into triviality; the legacies of Lulli, revivified and improved upon by Rameau; and the virginal essays at phosphorescent scoring in lighter vein. (Summary on page 68.) CHAPTER VI. GLUCK AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. I.