THE FOUNDER OF GERMAN OPERA.

WE

BY B. O. FLOWER.

E are beginning to realize the immense debt we owe to the genius and labor of the great Italian painters of the first century of modern times, but it remains for the civilization of the twentieth century to appreciate the inestimable worth to humanity of the splendid achievements wrought for a higher civilization by Germany's great masters in music. What a world of exalted pleasure is found in their immortal creations. How wonderful the imagery and lasting the ideals which they bring before the mind. How surely do they educate while they entertain. How deeply do they stir the emotional nature with feelings too profound for words. The general influence of the work of the German composers is uplifting. Philosophical insight and moral elevation pervade most of their creations. The sensuousness of the Italian music gives place to the sturdy qualities of the descendants of the Vikings. As we come to appreciate more fully the value of good music in elevating public taste and raising the standard of morals by stimulating the emotional nature on the higher plane of sensation, we shall learn to value the incalculable service rendered to civilization by these soul-builders who were masters of melody.

The life of Christoph Wilibald von Gluck, the founder of German opera, is a story of tireless work, of true German courage and determination, of indomitable perseverance and a rare aptitude for assimilating the good in his chosen art wherever found. He was born near Neumarkt in Bavaria, July 2, 1714. His father was a gamekeeper in the service of Prince Lobkowitz. It does not appear that the family possessed any special musical talent, but the future master was born in a part of Europe where music received more attention than in most states. The Bohemian princes were liberal patrons of music. At their beautiful chapels music

of a high order was constantly heard. Moreover, in various cities and towns were brotherhoods whose great aim was to promote Christian life and a deeper love of humanity by means of poetry and song. These brotherhoods wielded a great influence, and the music furnished by orchestras, by the musical societies, and in the numerous churches exerted a very positive effect upon young and old.

Christoph Gluck does not appear to have shown signs of possessing any great musical genius in childhood, and yet it is reasonable to infer that his father saw in him something that led him to give this son the best educational advantages within his power. Special attention was given to his musi cal talent. At the age of eighteen he had received an excellent education, chiefly obtained at the Jesuit college of Komotau, in Bohemia. He was at this time an excellent performer on the violoncello, violin, organ, and harpsichord. But though his father seemed impressed with the importance of giving his son the best educational advantages within his power, he also felt that it was wise to give all his children a taste of the arduous life he himself was leading. It was no unusual thing for Christoph and his brother Anton to be compelled to accompany their father in the bitter winter weather, barefooted and bearing the heavy loads required during the long tramps made by the hunters of that time.

This rugged life was valuable to the youth who should one day give to the world "Orpheus and Eurydice;" it accustomed him to a life of privation and hardship, a life which he would shortly undergo for a brief period, for after leaving the school at Komotau he was thrown upon his own resources. He desired to further perfect himself in music. He repaired to Prague, where he pursued his studies as he was able, and lived by singing and playing. Often he suffered from hunger. During the vacations he went to neighboring villages, where he sought food in return for his music. Either his playing was not highly appreciated or the villagers must have been very poor, as it is recorded that frequently his labors were rewarded by the gift of an egg. This season of hardship, which would have discouraged a less sturdy nature, nerved him to fresh endeavor. He would rise above

the level of a common musician and a street singer. He would become a master although it cost years of privation and unceasing labor. Such was the resolution of the young German, such the steadfast purpose which led him from step to step in his wonderful ascent.

In 1736 he was in Vienna, where he had gone to finish his musical education. Here fortune favored him, as was so frequently the case in his remarkable career. Prince Lobkowitz was in Vienna, and he not only remembered the son of his old gamekeeper, but took a laudable pride in the young man. He introduced him to Prince Melzi, an Italian of Milan, who was so favorably impressed by Gluck that he invited the young musician to accompany him to Italy and finish his studies in Milan, then one of the musical centres of Europe. The generous offer was gladly accepted, and in his new home the young German made remarkable progress under the conscientious instruction of a popular and widely known composer and musician, Sammartini. Enjoying the patronage of the influential prince and the favor of the most popular composer he soon so overcame the prejudice the Italians felt toward foreign musicians in general, that when he produced one of his operas it scored an immediate success. It is true, he carefully adhered to the popular canon of Italian musical art at that time, and it is doubtful if he had then come to appreciate the essential weakness and glaring defects of the old Italian opera. His deep philosophical spirit had not yet been stirred. His work at this period is valuable as showing how readily he had mastered the system he had been taught, how completely he had assimilated and how completely he reflected the ideals and conceptions which had been drilled into his plastic brain. Yet though his operas at this time were very successful in Italy, they cannot be regarded as worthier a better fate than the oblivion to which posterity had consigned them. They reflect the imitative

rather than the creative faculty. They give no hint of the great original thinker, the musical innovator, who was destined to inaugurate fundamental and almost revolutionary changes in his chosen field of composition, so great, indeed, as to become the foundation of a distinct national opera.

The creator was asleep in his brain. And doubtless it is well that it was so, for the prestige gained as a composer of popular Italian operas gave him a position in the musical world which he required in order to compel a tolerant hearing when he introduced his great reforms. During his stay in Italy he composed eight operas, all of which were successful.

In 1745 he accepted an invitation to visit London and produce some of his operas at the Haymarket theatre. This engagement, however, from which the young composer expected so much, proved a disastrous failure in so far as his work was concerned. Yet, as we so frequently see in life, his failure was in fact a blessing in disguise, as it awakened him to the fatal defects of the conventional Italian opera. The interrogation point had been raised. Henceforth there was to be no peace for the disquieted spirit until the questions which had been raised in his mind should be answered and new truths pertaining to the opera should be recognized. The sleeping god was about to awaken. The imitator was to disappear before the creator. The student was soon to give place to the philosopher. Handel's lack of appreciation of Gluck was not to be wondered at. The author of "The Messiah" did not possess the broad and hospitable spirit of his contemporary, Bach. He had long been engaged in a herculean struggle to maintain his supremacy in London, and Gluck's early efforts gave little promise of the magnificent achievements which should ere long place his name in the front rank of great German composers.

Gluck had a rare and happy faculty for recognizing the good in everything pertaining to his art, and he also knew how to assimilate the best in many schools and systems. Perhaps it was this rare power of absorbing and adapting the best which other thinkers had conceived, which, as much as his natural genius, led to his triumphant innovations. In England he was impressed with the strange power which the simple but beautiful English ballads exerted over the soul. In his conversation with the great French composer, Rameau, he gained much valuable information in regard to the points of excellence in the French operas, which he fully appreciated

when contrasting them with the popular Italian productions. Chief among their excellences was the prominence given to the dramatic rendering of the recitative. He had learned the full value of harmony from the German masters, while his Italian schooling had taught him the importance of melody. The weakness of Italian opera lay largely in a conspicuous lack of unity running through the production, which made it very defective as a work of art. The sentiment of the words and the character of the music did not harmonize, and the same disregard for the "perfect whole," or the requirements of drama and poetry as well as music, destroyed the effectiveness of the opera for a well-rounded artist who appreciated the demands of unity and proportion. In these operas the story was told chiefly by a number of songs threaded together with a view to accommodating certain voices and permitting vocal gymnastics rather than with the great central idea, for the proper development of which music, words, dramatic action, and proper scenery should be so combined as to make a harmonious and soul-satisfying whole.

From the time that Gluck left England with his confidence shaken in Italian opera we see the philosopher searching for the light. He groped in the wilderness, but every step was taken toward the light; and though for several years he made little real progress toward the great reform he was to inaugurate, he was nevertheless groping after the truth with that settled determination of his people which never halts this side of victory. On his return to Austria he was warmly welcomed, and the Empress Maria Theresa showed special appreciation of his work, even intrusting to him the musical studies of the future queen of France, Marie Antoinette.

In 1748 he produced "Semiramide Riconnosciuta" in Vienna. It proved a great success, and for a time Gluck was the hero of the hour. At this time he fell in love with one of the daughters of a wealthy merchant named Pergin. His affection was reciprocated, but the father had small regard for genius when genius was poor in purse. He refused to permit his daughter to marry the composer, and even his wife's entreaties failed to win his consent. The daughter,