cini and Zacchini, had suited
the circumstances of a state of society sunk in luxury and nourished
with classical exhibitions, this could not satisfy a society shaken to
the very foundations of its faith and organization. The whole of the
dramatic music of the eighteenth century must naturally have appeared
cold and languid to men whose minds were profoundly moved with troubles
and wars; and even at the present day the word languor best expresses
that which no longer touches us in the operas of the last century,
without even excepting those of Mozart himself. What we require for the
pictures of dramatic music is larger frames, including more figures,
more passionate and moving song, more sharply marked rhythms, greater
fullness in the vocal masses, and more sonorous brilliancy in the
instrumentation. All these qualities are to be found in 'Lodoi'ska'
and 'Les Deux Journees'; and Cherubini may not only be regarded as the
founder of the modern French opera, but also as that musician who, after
Mozart, has exerted the greatest general influence on the tendency of
the art. An Italian by birth and the excellence of his education, which
was conducted by Sarti, the great teacher of composition; a German by
his musical sympathies as well as by the variety and profundity of his
knowledge; and a Frenchman by the school and principles to which we
owe his finest dramatic works, Cherubini strikes me as being the most
accomplished musician, if not the greatest genius, of the nineteenth
century."

Again the English composer Macfarren observes: "Cherubini's position
is unique in the history of his art; actively before the world as
a composer for threescore years and ten, his career spans over more
vicissitudes in the progress of music than that of any other man.
Beginning to write in the same year with Cimarosa, and even earlier than
Mozart, and being the contemporary of Verdi and Wagner, he witnessed
almost the origin of the two modern classical schools of France and
Germany, their rise to perfection, and, if not their decline, the
arrival of a time when criticism would usurp the place of creation, and
when to propound new rules for art claims higher consideration than
to act according to its ever unalterable principles. His artistic life
indeed was a rainbow based on the two extremes of modern music which
shed light and glory on the great art-cycle over which it arched....
His excellence consists in his unswerving earnestness of purp