But it must be confessed that in turning over page after page of his scores, one discovers the fact that in deploying his wood-wind Gluck usually laid but modest demands upon them. Their duties were more commonly restricted to the lending of comparatively simple tone-color for heightening dramatic action, or for relieving the monotony of prolonged use of strings alone. Of weird and tragic effect is his concentration of all high wood-wind _unisono_. But many of his other orchestral characteristics bear the impress of conventionalism then in vogue, which soon becomes monotonous; and his manner of writing for the deeper instruments causes much of his orchestration to sound heavy. All things considered, the same must be said of Gluck as of his vancourier, Lulli, and of the great oratorio composers, Carissimi and Händel--neither he nor they were attracted by the kaleidoscopic potentiality of the orchestra when isolated from its kindred rivals, the opera and the oratorio. And although his name is to be revered for having opened up the resources of the orchestra, the attention he bestowed upon it was but a reflection of the greater glories that he offered up to the shrine of dramatic lustration. THE CONTEMPORARIES OF GLUCK. For two hundred years dramatic writing had now dominated musical art, therefore orchestration as well. The best fruits of these two centuries of experiments having culminated in the reforms of Gluck, his music dramas, with their continuity of action and dignity of subject-matter, were to be surpassed only by Mozart's splendid attainments, by reason of the latter's perfect melody, pure form and admirably adjusted orchestration. A final glance at the dramatic situation of Europe with the date of Beethoven's birth as a consistently convenient landmark will be necessary in order to comprehend the significance of Mozart's operatic constellation as it appeared on the horizon. For the decade beginning with 1770 was replete with big events, preordained, as it were, to do homage to the future master--Beethoven. Of the generation born between 1714 and 1756, further mention has yet to be made of the Frenchman, Grétry, of the Germans, J.A. Hiller and Dittersdorf, and of the conservators of declining Italian dogmas, Jomelli, Piccini, Sacchini, Paesiello, Cimarosa, Salieri. II.