OCR Text |
Show CONCLUSION. 521 Grey delineate the dramatic action, and convey an idea of the locality of the scene. Such productions as these do honour to the art, and have procured for their authors deserved celebrity. Music has its Sophocles, its Euripides, its Maenanders, and its Molieres. The style of the above-named composers is so pure, sweet, and expressive, that though a considerable length of time should elapse without having heard their works performed, their airs are recollected with ease and delight ; so difficult is it to efface the impression they have once made : than this, no greater proof of musical excellence can be given. If the pictures of Correggio, Tiziano, Raphael, and Dominichino had been executed to interest the eye only, would these masters have been considered almost as divinities in their art ? The man of genius ever addresses himself to the heart ; and to attain this end, he copies and adores nature-she is his tutelar deity--she cannot deceive him, and even her apparent wanderings are admirable. Madame de Stael, speaking of Italian music, says, upon the subject of the comic operas of Cimarosa and his contemporaries , " La gaite m e m e que la musique bouffe sait si bien exciter, n' est point une galte vulgaire qui ne dise rien a 1'imagination. Au fond de la joie qu' elle donne, il y a des sensations po^tiques, une reverie agre-able, que les plaisanteries parlees ne sauraient mspirer *." This music is the language of elegant nature, in her gayest humour. That comic spirit which prevails throughout the best Italian operas of this class is the same as that which is to be found in Moliere and Goldoni ; not that which *The sensation produced by listening to comic music Is no low enjoyment, incapable of affording pleasure to the fancy; there are certain poetic feelings at the bottom of the joy it excites ; a dreamy delight that spoken pleasantries can never inspire. |