The bitterness of the art-feuds of that day, afterward shown in the Gluck-Piccini contest, was foreshadowed in that waged by Rameau against Lulli, and finally against the Italian newcomers, who sought to take possession of the French stage.  The matter became a natioual quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music of an Italian to that of a Frenchman—­an insult which was often settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as arbitrators.  The subject was keenly debated by journalists and pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly unknown outside of France.  Perhaps no more valuable testimony to the character of these operas can be adduced than that of Baron Grimm: 

“In his operas Rameau has overpowered all his predecessors by dint of harmony and quantity of notes.  Some of his choruses are very fine.  Lulli could only sustain his vocal psalmody by a simple bass; Rameau accompanied almost all his recitatives with the orchestra.  These accompaniments are generally in bad taste; they drown the voice rather than support it, and force the singers to scream and howl in a manner which no ear of any delicacy can tolerate.  We come away from an opera of Rameau’s intoxicated with harmony and stupefied with the noise of voice and instruments.  His taste is always Gothic, and, whether his subject is light or forcible, his style is equally heavy.  He was not destitute of ideas, but did not know what use to make of them.  In his recitatives the sound is continually in opposition to the sense, though they occasionally contain happy declamatory passages....  If he had formed himself in some of the schools of Italy, and thus acquired a notion of musical style and hahits of musical thought, he never would have said (as he did) that all poems were alike to him, and that he could set the ‘Gazette de France’ to music.”

From this it may be gathered that Rameau, though a scientific and learned musician, lacked imagination, good taste, and dramatic insight—­qualities which in the modern lyric school of France have been so preeminent.  It may be admitted, however, that he inspired a taste for sound musical science, and thus prepared the way for the great Gluck, who to all and more of Rameau’s musical knowledge united the grand genius which makes him one of the giants of his art.

Though Rameau enjoyed supremacy over the serious opera, a great excitement was created in Paris by the arrival of an Italian company, who in 1752 obtained permission to perform Italian burlettas and intermezzi at the opera-house.  The partisans of the French school took alarm, and the admirers of Lulli and Rameau forgot their bickerings to join forces against the foreign intruders.  The battle-field was strewed with floods of ink, and the literati pelted each other with ferocious lampoons.