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The judgment of Ambros, a severe critic, whose bias was against Rossini, shows what admiration was wrung from him by the last opera of the composer: "Of all that particularly characterizes Rossini's early operas nothing is discoverable in 'Tell; there is none of his usual mannerism; but, on the contrary, unusual richness of form and careful finish of detail, combined with grandeur of outline.
For these reasons an example of the method of arranging a frottola for voice and lute will give us some idea of the character of the music sung by Baccio Ugolino in the "Orfeo." The examples here offered are those given in the great history of Ambros.
The subject has been exhaustively and learnedly studied by Ambros, who has examined the frottola in all its varieties. This, he is certain, is one of the carnival songs which Heinrich Isaak was wont to write at the pleasure of Lorenzo.
The emotional-speech theory has been held in a vague way, indeed, by most of those theorists whose natural conservatism would have drawn them in the other direction, and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at mediation, first made by Ambros,<1> and now met in almost all musical literature.
Thus Boccaccio in his marvelous portraiture of the social life of his time has casually handed down to us invaluable facts about vocal and instrumental music. There is no question that Ambros is fully justified in his conclusion that the cantori a liuto were a well-marked class of musicians.
It should be added that the place in which Angelbert hid the sacred relics was so well known, that in the twelfth century Cardinal Bernard, Bishop of Parma, was allowed to see and venerate them, Vid. Puricelli's Ambros. Basil. Descriptio. c. 58 and c. 352, ap. Burman. Thesaur. Antiqu. Ital. t. 4, part 1. That St.
Doubtless Casella, who was born in 1300 and set to music Dante's sonnet "Amor che nella mente," was one of the cantori a liuto. Minuccio d'Arezzo, mentioned by Boccaccio, was another. Here again we must recur to the observations of Burney and the examinations of Ambros. The former records that in the Vatican there is a poem by Lemmo of Pistoja, with the note "Casella diede il suono."
Ambros, who was a very discerning and unbiassed critic, said: "Berlioz feels with inward delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable aptness.
Herbert Spencer is perfectly logical in saying "It may be shown that music is but an idealization of the natural language of emotion, and that, consequently, music must be good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this natural language."<1> But what, then, of music which, according to Ambros, is justified by its formal relations?
Charles Marie Widor has recently in 'Les Pêcheurs de Saint Jean' given a worthy success to his twenty-year-old 'Maître Ambros. Navier Leroux, a pupil of Massenet, has carried on his master's traditions, somewhat Wagnerised and generally speaking brought up to date, in 'Astarté' , 'La Reine Fiammette' , 'William Ratcliff' , and 'Théodora' . Remarkable promise has been shown by Paul Dukas in 'Ariane et Barbe-Bleue' ; by Camille d'Erlanger in 'Le Fils de l'Étoile' and 'Aphrodite' ; by Georges Marty in 'Daria' ; by Georges Hüe in 'Titania' , and by Gabriel Dupont in 'La Cabrera , while a characteristic note of tender sentiment was struck by Reynaldo Hahn in 'La Carmélite' .
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