Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/105

These affinities with the peoples of the West and South are manifested not only in the symphony. Jommelli's operas at Stuttgart (and at a later date Gluck's) were transformed and revivified by the influence of the French opera, which his master, Duke Karl Eugen, imposed upon him as a model. The Singspiel, the German comic opera, had its cradle in Paris, where Weiss saw and heard Favart's little works, and was by him transplanted into Germany. The new German Lied was inspired by French examples, as was expressly stated by Ramler and Schulz, the latter of whom continued to write Lieder with French words. Telemann's training was more French than German. He had made the acquaintance of French music firstly in Hanover, about 1698 or 1699, when he was at the Hildesheim gymnasium; secondly in 1705 at Soran, when he fed, he tells us, "on the works of Tully, Campra and other good masters" and "devoted himself almost entirely to their style, so that in two years he wrote as many as 200 French overtures"; and thirdly at Eisenach, the home of J. S. Bach, which (let us remember) was, about 1708–9, a centre of French music: Pantaleone Hebenstreit having "arranged the chapel of the Duke in the French manner," succeeding so well that, if we are to believe Telemann, "it surpassed the famous orchestra of the Paris Opera." A journey to Paris in 1737 finally turned the German Telemann into a French musician; and while his works remained on the repertoire of the oratorio singers of Paris, he himself, at Hamburg, was carrying on an enthusiastic propaganda in favour of French music. We see a characteristic peculiarity of the period in the tranquillity with which the