Nephew,_ which is interesting in
connection with the mental activity of Paris in the eighteenth century.
Music was the field of as much passionate controversy as theology and
philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did not lead to livelier
disputes, or more violent cabals, than the conflict between the
partisans of French music and the partisans of Italian music. The
horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not surpass that of a Lullist
for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist for a Piccinist.[298] Lulli
and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had undisputed possession of
Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a company of Italian singers. The
great quarrel at once broke out as to the true method and destination of
musical composition. Is music an independent art, appealing directly to
a special sense, or is it to be made an instrument for expressing
affections of the mind in a certain deeper way? The Italians asked only
for delicious harmonies and exquisite melodies. The French insisted that
these should be subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were
content with delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one
declared that Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the
ears; the other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude
to a Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to
Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more
melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than the
purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old battle,
which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with greater
violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the Neapolitan
ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than before.
Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every side.

Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions in
all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to form
citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire confusion,
and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even dinner-parties
breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the intimacies of a lifetime
came to cruel end. _Rameau's Nephew_ was composed in the midst of the
first part of this long campaign of a quarter of a century, and its
seems to have been revised by its author in the midst of the second
great episode. Diderot declares against the school of Rameau