l in making the music the full reflex of the dramatic action. While
Orestes sings in the opera, "My heart is calm," the orchestra continues
to paint the agitation of his thoughts. During the rehearsal the
musician failed to understand the exigency and ceased playing. The
composer cried out, in a rage: "Don't you see he is lying? Go on, go
on; he as just killed his mother." On one occasion, when he was praising
Rameau's chorus of "Castor and Pollux," an admirer of his flattered him
with the remark, "But what a difference between this chorus and that of
your 'Iphigenie'!" "Yet it is very well done," said Gluck; "one is only
a religious ceremony, the other is a real funeral." He was wont to say
that in composing he always tried to forget he was a musician.

Gluck, however, a few months subsequent to this, was so much humiliated
at the non-success of "Echo and Narcissus," that he left Paris in bitter
irritation, in spite of Marie Antoinette's pleadings that he should
remain at the French capital.

The composer was now advanced in years, and had become impatient and
fretful. He left Paris for Vienna in 1780, having amassed considerable
property. There, as an old, broken-down man, he listened to the young
Mozart's new symphonies and operas, and applauded them with great zeal;
for Gluck, though fiery and haughty in the extreme, was singularly
generous in recognizing the merits of others.

This was exhibited in Paris in his treatment of Mehul, the Belgian
composer, then a youth of sixteen, who had just arrived in the gay city.
It was on the eve of the first representation of "Iphigenia in Tauris,"
when the operatic battle was agitating the public. With all the ardor
of a novice and a devotee, the young musical student immediately threw
himself into the affray, and by the aid of a friend he succeeded in
gaining admittance to the theatre for the final rehearsal of Gluck's
opera. This so enchanted him that he resolved to be present at the
public performance. But, unluckily for the resolve, he had no money, and
no prospect of obtaining any; so, with a determination and a love for
art which deserve to be remembered, he decided to hide himself in one of
the boxes and there to wait for the time of representation.

"At the end of the rehearsal," writes George Hogarth in his "Memoirs
of the Drama," "he was discovered in his place of concealment by the
servants of the theatre, who proceeded to turn him out very roughly.
Gluck, who had