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Nineteenth Century Musical Renaissance in France 13

only a masterpiece but in its day a revolutionary master-
piece; idealism, however ponderous, was a new thing in
rench music when Franck wrote his great works and his
harmonic lusciousness was a real advance on the rum-
tum-tum of Auber's tonic and dominant. If Faur6 wrote
some salon music it is still far too subtle and sensitive to be
appreciated in most modern salons ; Delibes' ballet music
is not only excellent in itself but inspired Tchaikowski's
masterpieces; and as for Massenet who, after all, among
our contemporary composers could write an opera com-
parable not with Manon but even with Werther, for grace,
ease, charm, polish and stagecraft ? The debt of French
music to Gounod and Saint-Saens is indeed incalculable.
As Prix de Rome scholar in 1839 Gounod became acquainted
with Mendelssohn's sister Fanny and through her with the
music of Bach and Beethoven and some at least of Goethe's
writings; and when he returned to France in 1845 he
returned imbued with a 'high seriousness' of aim which
would have satisfied even Matthew Arnold. His attempt to
introduce Palestrina at the Missions Etrangkres where he
was organist, the comparative sobriety and unquestioned
sincerity of his own church music were regarded as so much
lunacy by a public used to ecclesiastical music in which
they could catch more than echoes of their beloved Italian
opera. His own operas even-after Pauline Viardot had
persuaded him to try his hand at opera-were too sober and
classical in spirit-Sapho inspired by Gluck and Le Medecin
malgrd lui by Mozart-for a taste formed on Meyerbeer and
Donizetti. It was only in Faust (1859) that the public found
something they could relate to their other musical experi-
ences-the melodramatic story for one thing and a 'tune-
fulness' which vied with Donizetti and was yet wholly
French. Mireille, five years later, was even a precocious
hint of folk-opera.
Illustration from 'Mireille,' by Gounod. (Gramophone
records were used for this and the later illustrations.
Saint-Saens, seventeen years younger than Gounod, was
an entirely different character, lacking in Gounod's quick
and rather facile emotion but wonderfully gifted technically.
An infant prodigy of a pianist, he met Liszt while he was
still at the Conservatoire and their subsequent friendship
bore ample fruit in his later compositions. He started,
heroically enough, as his own account shows, with two
symphonies composed during the 1850's, redolent of
Mendelssohn, Weber and occasionally Schumann (still a
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