Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/85

without having been conscious of leaving the shore. The composer, carried away by the exaltation of the passion he is translating into music lets himself go and plies his tools joyfully on his material Sound. He strikes it preferably at the most sensitive spots, those that answer the call with most sharpness, power and fulness; I mean on those tonal notes, those perfect chords which weak or over-subtle musicians only dare approach with hesitation and equivocation, by roundabout ways, because the vagueness or generally blurred style of their utterance can only with difficulty support their sovran precision and clean cut effect. The great masters, on the other hand, in their strength, have always gloried in striking them, without petty precautions or beating about the bush—striking them again and again through long passages, in conformity with the robust decision and majestic gait of their thought. No one, not even the author of the Heroic Symphony and the Symphony in C Minor, has put more energy than Rameau into this familiar and superb handling of what might be called the fundamentals of the world of sound. Look at the reply of Pollux to Jupiter (Act II., Scene IV.): "Oh, let me penetrate e'en to the sombre shores,"—that affirmation of resolution and youthful heroism. Its musical substance consists (at least one may say so with almost complete accuracy) in a sequence of six perfect chords; this sequence's rhythm (itself repeated six times) by which the constituent notes of the chords sound again successively from the highest to the lowest, suffices to make it the most original, virile, proud and sturdy piece of music in the world. This remark with slight modifications might be extended to apply to many other passages, in particular