[317] Diderot to Grimm; D’Epinay, ii. 397.  Diderot’s Oeuv., xix. 446.  See also 449 and 210.

CHAPTER VIII.

MUSIC.

Simplification has already been used by us as the key-word to Rousseau’s aims and influence.  The scheme of musical notation with which he came to try his fortune in Paris in 1741, his published vindication of it, and his musical compositions afterwards all fall under this term.  Each of them was a plea for the extrication of the simple from the cumbrousness of elaborated pedantry, and for a return to nature from the unmeaning devices of false art.  And all tended alike in the popular direction, towards the extension of enjoyment among the common people, and the glorification of their simple lives and moods, in the art designed for the great.

The Village Soothsayer was one of the group of works which marked a revolution in the history of French music, by putting an end to the tyrannical tradition of Lulli and Rameau, and preparing the way through a middle stage of freshness, simplicity, naturalism, up to the noble severity of Gluck (1714-1787).  This great composer, though a Bohemian by birth, found his first appreciation in a public that had been trained by the Italian pastoral operas, of which Rousseau’s was one of the earliest produced in France.  Gretri, the Fleming (1741-1813), who had a hearty admiration for Jean Jacques, and out of a sentiment of piety lived for a time in his Hermitage, came in point of musical excellence between the group of Rousseau, Philidor, Duni, and the rest, and Gluck.  “I have not produced exaltation in people’s heads by tragical superlative,” Gretri said, “but I have revealed the accent of truth, which I have impressed deeper in men’s hearts."[318] These words express sufficiently the kind of influence which Rousseau also had.  Crude as the music sounds to us who are accustomed to more sumptuous schools, we can still hear in it the note which would strike a generation weary of Rameau.  It was the expression in one way of the same mood which in another way revolted against paint, false hair, and preposterous costume as of savages grown opulent.  Such music seems without passion or subtlety or depth or magnificence.  Thus it had hardly any higher than a negative merit, but it was the necessary preparation for the acceptance of a more positive style, that should replace both the elaborate false art of the older French composers and the too colourless realism of the pastoral comic opera, by the austere loveliness and elevation of Orfeo and Alceste.