But what renders all hope of improvement quite chimerical, and tempts one to believe that the musical feeling of the Italians is a mere necessary result of their organization,—­the opinion both of Gall and Spurzheim,—­is their love for all that is dancing, brilliant, glittering, and gay, to the utter neglect of the various passions by which the characters are animated, and the confusion of time and place—­in a word, of good sense itself.  Their music is always laughing:  and if by chance the composer in the course of the drama permits himself for one moment not to be absurd, he at once hastens back to his prescribed style, his melodious roulades and grupetti, his trills and contemptible frivolities, either for voice or orchestra; and these, succeeding so abruptly to something true to life, have an unreal effect, and give the opera seria all the appearance of a parody or caricature.

I could quote plenty of examples from famous works; but speaking generally of these artistic questions, is it not from Italy that we get those stereotyped conventional forms adopted by so many French composers, resisted by Cherubim and Spontini alone among the Italians, though rejected entirely by the Germans?  What well-organized person with any sense of musical expression could listen to a quartet in which four characters, animated by totally conflicting passions, should successively employ the same melodious phrase to express such different words as these:  “O, toi que j’adore!” “Quelle terreur me glace!” “Mon coeur bat de plaisir!” “La fureur me transporte!” To suppose that music is a language so vague that the natural inflections of fury will serve equally well for fear, joy, and love, only proves the absence of that sense which to others makes the varieties of expression in music as incontestable a reality as the existence of the sun....  I regard the course taken by Italian composers as the inevitable result of the instincts of the public, which react more or less on the composers themselves.

THE FAMOUS “SNUFF-BOX TREACHERY”

From the Autobiography

Now for another intrigue, still more cleverly contrived, the black depths of which I hardly dare fathom.  I incriminate no one; I simply give the naked facts, without the smallest commentary, but with scrupulous exactness.  General Bernard having himself informed me that my Requiem was to be performed on certain conditions, ...  I was about to begin my rehearsals when I was sent for by the Director of the Beaux-Arts.

“You know,” said he, “that Habeneck has been commissioned to conduct all the great official musical festivals?” ("Come, good!” thought I:  “here is another tile for my devoted head.”) “It is true that you are now in the habit of conducting the performance of your works yourself; but Habeneck is an old man” (another tile), “and I happen to know that he will be deeply hurt if he does not preside at your Requiem.  What terms are you on with him?”