it is treated here as though it had only a negative interest.
Rameau's doctrine explains and justifies the accession of Harmony to the kingship of music. Incidentally this doctrine, as happens with all great reformers, is unfair to the past. Rameau despises plainsong and the polyphony of the sixteenth century, just as in his day people despised the Gothic, and we are far from sharing this exclusive spirit. We can enjoy the expressive beauty of the church Monody and the marvels of polyphonic force in such writers as Jeannequin, Lassus, Josquin des Prés, Palestrina, Vittoria. But in itself Rameau's thesis is the truth. The complete discovery of the world of harmony, harmony known at last in all its richness and made the foundation of composition, this was an immense step forward in musical art. Out of this progress arose the great and superb forms whose nature and proportions infinitely surpass the power and resources inherent in the preceding forms of music: I refer to Symphony and Opera. Modern form in no way excludes the ancient forms. On the contrary it embraces them, giving them their full share in expression.
Have I still been too technical, too abstruse in what I have said? Literature will provide an analogy that leaves nothing to be desired in clearness.
When one states that the written style of our great classics, Malherbe, Racine, Bossuet, Voltaire, is superior to the style, or rather styles, largely individual because not firmly set, of Montaigne, Rabelais, Amyot, is one not uttering a sure and ascertained truth? No one can seriously doubt it. Certainly one may regret, with Fénélon, the loss in classical French of certain qualities of simplicity that gave a great deal of charm to each literary genius of the sixteenth century. But by the
