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Updated: May 15, 2025
He was an excellent musician, and the captivating melody of this genial little work is supplemented by excellent concerted writing and thoroughly sound orchestration. To this period belong the operas written by three composers who in other branches of music have won immortality, although their dramatic works have failed to win lasting favour.
Sir G. Macfarren has said of it: "No one musical work contains so many points of harmony and orchestration that are novel yet none of them have the air of experiment, but all seem to have been written with a certainty of their success."
The score is richer and more solid than that of any of his earlier works, and the orchestration shows no falling off in ingenuity and resource. Melodically 'Madama Butterfly' is perhaps not so fresh or abundant as 'La Bohème, but the composer's touch is firmer and surer in handling dramatic situations.
In defence of Bruneau's work it may be urged that his dreary and featureless orchestration, so wholly lacking in colour and relief, may convey to some minds the cool grey atmosphere of the quiet old Cathedral town, and that much of the harshness and discordance of his score is, at all events, in keeping with the iron tyranny of the Bishop.
"You see," he said, "he has invented a new system of orchestration; as a matter of fact, we worked it out together, but that's neither here nor there. In some respects it is not unlike Wagner; the vocal music is mostly recitative, but now and then there is nearly an air, and yet it isn't new, for it is how it would have been written about 1500.
The exquisite melody with which it overflows, combined with the inimitable art of the orchestration, make it one of the most important and attractive works of the modern French school. 'Étienne Marcel' and 'Proserpine' must be classed among Saint Saëns's failures, but 'Henry VIII. is a work of high interest, which, though produced so long ago as 1883, is still popular in Paris.
So says Dr. Beattie, the once famous poet, in one of his letters. The "Messiah" was commenced on August 22, 1741, finished on September 12th, and the orchestration filled up two days afterward the whole work thus being completed in twenty-three days. Handel was fifty-six years old at the time.
At rare moments he moves you strongly, very often he is trivial, but he generally pleases; and if some of the strokes of humour quoted in text-books of orchestration are so broad as to be indescribable in any respectable modern print, few of us understand what they really mean, and no one is a penny the worse.
It was not bad in all the ways he thought, however. His remark about the clumsy orchestration long ago returned to roost. For the rest, when he saw the opera performed he changed part of his mind, and wrote admitting that much which he did not like on paper seemed in place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much."
The composition at times is operatic in character, while the text calls for a mode of treatment solemn and religious, as in Passion-music. If set to some other text, this work would be well nigh faultless; the recitatives are singularly good, and there is a rich orchestration. It is reminiscent of Händel and prophetic of Wagner. The Hallelujah Chorus in particular is a magnificent piece of work.
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