CHAPTER III
THE MODERN ITALIANS
Our fathers were passionately devoted to Rossini. They were not wrong. To a large extent I share their feelings. And yet Rossini's influence has been on the whole harmful to our composers, because they have yielded to it without discernment. What may be said on this subject is applicable also to the influence exercised by his juniors in glory, such as Bellini and Donizetti, and speaking generally is applicable to the long reign of musical Italianism in France.
I
The Italians cultivated the bel canto. Their cult of it certainly amounted to an abuse. But for them the abuse began at a far more advanced stage than in the case of a French composer. For Italians as for Frenchmen, the search after a fine vocal phrase is a fault in proportion as it is carried out to the detriment of truth and nobility of expression. But when a musican is an Italian and possesses genius, the right expression comes to him naturally in the form of bel canto. (I mean by right expression that which unites with pathetic accent grace or nobility of form). Such is the divine gift of these born singers. Tears, laughter, complaints, sighs, defeat and triumph, blessing and cursing, all these mean for them song, melodious song, and the spring of emotion flows into a phrase that carries the voice to perfection, and sustains and favours the expansion of its peculiar beauty.
