der Scarlatti, by inventing the solo recitative, gave it new existence: he was followed by Pergolesi, Cimarosa, and Paisiello; and this may be called the learned age of music in Italy. The eighteenth century, illustrated by these great names at Naples, by Gasparini and Lotti at Rome, by Marcello and Galuppi at Venice, by Gluck in France, and by Hasse and Mozart in Germany, was destined to witness the mature splendor of the grand opera.

The comic opera naturally arose out of the serious opera, as tragedy, in the genealogy of the drama, precedes comedy. It was carried to rapid perfection in the Neapolitan school, by Pergolese, in the Serva Padrona: but Logrisini invented the finales, which are now considered as indispensable to these entertainments. At last, the immortal Piccini produced his La Buona Figluola, a work which will be always considered as a master-piece of genius and science. In the mean time, instrumental kept pace with vocal music: indeed, their union is indissoluble, and they mutually contribute to the advancement of each other.

Count ORLOFF incidentally notices the German school; in which the anthems of Grauss, Haydn, and Mozart, with the oratorios of Bach and Handel, equal the chefs d'œuvre of Durante and Jomelli. We extract some particulars relative to Haydn.

His father, though a poor and ignorant labouring man, taught him to touch the harp; and on a fête-day, the father, mother, and child, sang and played together. At the age of five, he attempted to make a little violin, the presage of his destinies, which were afterward so brilliant. A teacher of music, observing that he could already beat time correctly, did not hesitate to ask him of his parents, obtained him, and undertook to instruct him in music. He kept his word, and taught him not only the elements of that art, vocal and instrumental, but to read and write. About this time, Reiter, master of the imperial chapel, saw Haydn, heard him, and said to him, "You shall come home with me. I will take care of you." After this, he remained eight years a singing boy in the cathedral.

At the age of ten, he attempted with success the composition of pieces in six parts; and at this period (it would be incredible, if misdirected pride did not explain the inhumanity of the parent,) his father determined to emasculate him, in the hope of making a great fortune by him. A fever, which seized him on the very day destined for this operation, saved him: but at sixteen he lost his voice, was dismissed, and from that time devoted himself entirely to composition, which was now his only resource.

That which ruins a common man serves but to extricate a man of genius from difficulty; and poverty, which long oppressed Haydn, was perhaps the cause of his talents. Out of society, he

14

kept

kept close to his art; and, seated at an old harpsichord, he did not envy, as he himself said, the lot of monarchs. It was then that some of the finest sonatas of Emmanuel Bach fell into his hands: this was like a gleam of light to a person in the dark; he did not stir from the instrument till he had played them over from begining to end; and they were the occasion, as he also said, of his resolution to embrace the style which is indeed the best adapted to all the arts, expression combined with grace, sweetness with strength, and science with genius. At last, he became acquainted with Porpora, the first master of his time at Naples; and in the mutual commerce of their minds, he learned from that professor the mysteries of vocal melody, as he had learned from Bach's sonatas those of instrumental music. At eighteen, he composed his first quartetto, which was in vain censured by musical pedants; for this art, like all others, has its pedants. Haydn replied to them, when they reproached him with a violation of rules: " Nothing is forbidden in music but what hurts a nice ear."

The age of eighteen is indeed an early time of life; and it is fortunate if, at this epoch, an enthusiasm for art be not extinguished by a love of pleasure. Haydn made each of them serve the other, and wandered by night through the streets of Vienna, like a sublime Troubadour, singing.'

'Arrived at a riper age, Haydn composed for an ecclesiastic at Cadiz his more celebrated symphony of the seven words of Christ, intended to be performed in the cathedral during Passion-week, The Bishop ascended the pulpit, on the day when this almost divine composition was performed; and, after having said the first word, he paused, and then descended to prostrate himself before the altar, when the music filled up the interval; returning to the pulpit, he pronounced the next word; at the seventh, the whole auditory, strongly affected, and having already shed tears, burst out in sighs and groans. Never did a sermon of Massillon,

of Bourdaloue, or of Bossuet himself, excite more sorrow and emotion for the sufferings sustained by the Redeemer for the salvation of man.'

6

Offended, when he was in London, that the audience constantly slept during one of his symphonies, he added an andante to it, in the middle of which burst out the noise of drums, trumpets, and cymbals, which in an instant waked the heaviest among the sleepers.

Dr. Burney procured for Haydn the degree of Doctor of Music at Oxford. Haydn directed the orchestra on this occasion, and Burney cried out aloud, "Bravo, Haydn, thank you; you are a great man.” Handel, though for thirty years the delight of England, had never received such an honour. Retiring into a small house in the suburbs of Vienna, which he made a sort of sanctuary of music, Haydn composed his Oratorios of the Creation and the Seasons, which will be coëval with the immortality of his name. Although these two oratorios are the production of an advanced age, a fire pervades them which reminds us of all the vigor of youth.'

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It

It is not our intention to analyze the remainder of Count ORLOFF's work. The ninth chapter is devoted to the schools of England, Flanders, and Spain: but it is judiciously compiled from the great work of Burney. Among the Neapolitan composers, occurs a short notice of Salvator Rosa, as a

musician.

'Full of nature and expression, the composer who succeeded to Curti, at this period of musical history, is Salvator Rosa. His master's name in the art of music is not known: but, with so creative a genius, he was able more than any other to draw from his own resources. Be that as it may, it was in the midst of the agitations of his life, and the double cares of painting and poetry, that he stole the time which he consecrated to music. Among others of his compositions, the music to which he set his own cantatas is mentioned; and both the poetry and the music are still highly esteemed. The melody is much superior to that of his age, and we listen to it with equal pleasure and surprize. His cantatas are fortunately to be found in a collection of old Italian music.'*

Piccini, born in 1728, ranks high in the Neapolitan school, and was indeed the most fertile and original of all composers. His genius overflowed, says Count O., every department of music, like a torrent. His first opera, le Donne dispettose, silenced a musical faction raised against him by his rival Logroscino; and il Curioso del proprio danno was played for four years successively. At Rome, he composed a grand opera, Allessandro nelle Indie, the overture of which was superior to any thing of the kind hitherto known; and then his celebrated and popular Buona Figliola. This piece produced an effect like that of enchantment. During the height of its popularity, Jomelli arrived at Rome, and the praises of the opera were rung in the ears of that great composer. At first, he refused to see it, from a distrust of the soundness of public judgment; which in music, as in every thing else, is so much influenced by fashion: but at last he went to the theatre when it was performed, and in the midst of it exclaimed to the by-standers: "Hear, gentlemen. This man is a creator in his art. He is a true genius!" - In the Olimpiade, he had to contend with three great masters, Pergolesi, Galuppi, and Jomelli, who had each set the same opera. Every connoisseur was on the watch, to observe how he would succeed in his contest with those masters in the duet ne' giorni tuoi felici, and the air se cerea se dice; and it was universally ac

* One or two exquisite airs are in the second volume of Dr. Burney's History of Music.

knowleged

knowleged that he surpassed them. Driven, however, by a disgraceful cabal from Rome, he returned to Naples, and afterward contributed to the reformation of French music; a task in which he had been already preceded by Gluck. The purity, the facility, and the grace of his Roland, the words of which were supplied by Marmontel, contributed powerfully to substitute a better taste for that which then prevailed in French music, and which Rousseau so eloquently laments in his Nouvelle Eloise.

In the midst of these triumphs, Sacchini, the fellow-pupil and co-patriot of Piccini, arrived at Paris, and became by his talents a sort of rival to him, as Gluck had been before him. Like all men endowed with real genius, Piccini envied neither the success nor the powers of these great composers: but, when they died, he wrote their éloges, and proposed public honours for them. About this time, he revised his Phaon, his Clytemnestra, and his Adèle de Ponthieu but, not being able to get them performed, this injustice, with others which he felt still more, caused him the same disgust that drove him from Rome. He again returned to Naples, where the King gave him the most flattering reception. This monarch, an excellent judge of music, appreciated the talent which his capital had once more gained in Piccini. He commanded some compositions to be prepared as soon as possible for the theatre of St. Charles, and desired him to revive the Alessandro nelle Indie, which Piccini had composed seventeen years before. New and brilliant airs were added by the author to his exquisite composition, and its success the second time was much greater than ever.'

Piccini, however, had the imprudence to express at Naples his good wishes in favour of the French Revolution. Immediately the whole scene around him changed; he became the object of malice and suspicion; and he returned with his whole family to Paris.'

This celebrated musician experienced many other disappointments, and died at Passy a year and a half after his

return.

The Neapolitan school of music is at present in a languishing condition: the purity and elegance of the old masters are gone; and like the other arts, in the turbulence of political factions and the total want of repose which prevail in that part of Italy, music has found little encouragement or favor.

We are disposed to admit that Count ORLOFF's work may be useful, but not that it was desiderated. In the French Historical Dictionary of Music, in the Histoire de la Musique of Kalkbrenner, (published in 1802,) and in the elegant work of Dr. Burney, all may be found relative to the antient and

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modern

modern composers that it is desirable for a professor or an amateur of this agreeable art to know. Some names, indeed, have risen into distinction since those publications; among whom is Rossini, the great idol of modern music: but not a word is to be seen in the Count's pages respecting this most learned, most impassioned, and sweetest of composers.

In our xcvth and xcviith volumes, we took notice of Count ORLOFF'S "Memoirs relative to Naples," and we have now before us still another production of his industrious and comprehensive pen, on the science of Painting, which we hope to report in the course of this Appendix.

ART. IV. Traduction abrégée, &c.; i. e. An abridged Translation of the History of Painting in Italy, by the Abbé Lanzi; or, History of the principal Painters of the Italian Schools, with Notes, and 80 Engravings of the best Masters, selected from the private Collections of Paris and London. 8vo. Paris. 1823. Imported by Treuttel and Co. Price 17. 10s.

THIS

HIS is an excellent abridgment of a voluminous writer, and may be recommended as an useful manual to connoisseurs and artists. We owe to the labors and taste of M. FRANCILLON, an artist and a collector, this pleasing contribution to a popular knowlege of painting, and of the great masters of Italy. It is not a dry catalogue, but abounds with many judicious and discriminating criticisms, which the translator has thrown into his annotations. Lanzi, indeed, had the threefold object in his long work of writing the history of the art, of pointing out the means of advancing its cultivation,

and of laying down rules for distinguishing the manner and style of the different masters. M. FRANCILLON, in his abridgment, confines himself to the last of these objects, that of marking the characteristics which belong to the great painters, and the means of discriminating original pictures from copies or imitations.

As every person,' he observes, has his peculiar hand-writing, which is recognized with more or less facility, so each painter has a pencil which may be distinguished from that of another. The touch of one is broad and compact; - that of another is dry or fine it is free, light, rapid in this, in another it is studied, elaborate, and executed with the most laborious anxiety. It is necessary, then, to acquire this part of the art, to study with care the drawing of each master, his own sketches, and the engravings of his works.'

:

Every artist pursues in general the principles of colouring which he imbibes from his master, but applies them with greater or less skill, and in a manner peculiar to himself. The amateur, who

has