satisfy him, and he is determined for the finish further to augment his effect, what resource is left him? Sheer brutality. He has recourse to it in the last part, in four time, where the voice of the unhappy Fides is strained over the insignificant and violent conclusion of a mediocre sonata by Spohr. Thus having produced in succession style, virtuosity and brutality, he may be supposed to have left no single hearer in the room unsatisfied.[1]
Speaking generally, you have only to make the experiment of putting side by side, from no matter what score of Meyerbeer, three passages taken from different acts. (Naturally the experiment will not be instructive unless you are well acquainted with the masters, and have acquired by these studies certain habits of mind). You will recognise that to assemble in one work such heterogeneous manners of writing required a blender who had little scruple about style, and that the work which juxtaposes them belongs truly to the realm of musical curios.
Let us take our three passages from the Huguenots—say for example, the women's chorus "Fresh beauties"—a page of Donizetti with a more flowery accompaniment; the nocturnal scene between Valentine and Marcel, manufactured Mozart, and the duet in the fourth act, in which there is something of everything. "Sir! The duet from the Huguenots?" I fancy some old concert-goer exclaiming; "What, do you not spare even that illustrious page, to which you yourself seemed but now to be paying homage?" I do not take back what I said; one would have to
- ↑ Very characteristic too in the duet of Berthe and Fides is the juxtaposition of the phrase, "God will guide me" (Handel) with that which immediately follows, "My eyes can only weep," a plaintive melody of Bellini.
