ose, in
the individuality of his manner, in the vigor of his ideas, and in the
purity of his harmony."

"Such," says M. Miel, "was Cherubim; a colossal and incommensurable
genius, an existence full of days, of masterpieces, and of glory.
Among his rivals he found his most sincere appreciators. The Chevalier
Seyfried has recorded, in a notice on Beethoven, that that grand
musician regarded Cherubini as the first of his contemporary composers.
We will add nothing to this praise: the judgment of such a rival is, for
Cherubini, the voice itself of posterity."

Luigi Carlo Zanobe Salvadore Maria Cherubini was born at Florence on
September 14, 1700, the son of a harpsichord accompanyist at the Pergola
Theatre. Like so many other great composers, young Cherubini displayed
signs of a fertile and powerful genius at an early age, mastering the
difficulties of music as if by instinct. At the age of nine he was
placed under the charge of Felici, one of the best Tuscan professors of
the day; and four years afterward he composed his first work, a mass.
His creative instinct, thus awakened, remained active, and he produced
a series of compositions which awakened no little admiration, so that he
was pointed at in the streets of Florence as the young prodigy. When he
was about sixteen the attention of the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany was
directed to him, and through that prince's liberality he was enabled
to become a pupil of the most celebrated Italian master of the age,
Giuseppe Sarti, of whom he soon became the favorite pupil. Under the
direction of Sarti, the young composer produced a series of operas,
sonatas, and masses, and wrote much of the music which appeared under
the maestro's own name--a practice then common in the music and painting
schools of Italy. At the age of nineteen Cherubini was recognized as
one of the most learned and accomplished musicians of the age, and his
services were in active demand at the Italian theatres. In four years
he produced thirteen operas, the names and character of which it is not
necessary now to mention, as they are unknown except to the antiquary
whose zeal prompts him to defy the dust of the Italian theatrical
libraries. Halevy, whose admiration of his master led him to study these
early compositions, speaks of them as full of striking beauties, and,
though crude in many particulars, distinguished by those virile and
daring conceptions which from the outset stamped the originality of the