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For Scriabine, the awakening of that aërial palpitant sensibility was such. It devoured him like a fire. One shudders as well as marvels at the destiny of one who came to feel life as it is felt in those last quivering poems "Guirlandes," "Flammes sombres," he entitles them, or in the mysterious Tenth Sonata, that glows with the feverish light of the dream, or in those last haunted preludes.
The programme was so characteristically French that I give it: "Amphitrite vivante. Tous les soirs au couche du soleil elle laisse son palais royal de coraux et d'algues, et sort des vagues sombres pour jouir de son amour ideal. Legere et vaporeuse comme un ange, elle caresse les ondes, et observe d'un doux regard son ideal, et replonge au fond de l'ocean.
Oh! pauvres, que j'entends raler, forcats augustes, Tous ces tresors, chez vous sacres, chez nous sont injustes; Ce diamant qui met a la mitre un eclair, Cette emeraude me semble errer toute la mer, Ces resplendissements sombres de pierreries, C'est votre sang ... ... Brodes d'or, cousus d'or, chausses d'or, coiffes d'or, Nous avons des saints Jeans et des saintes Maries, Que nous emmaillottons dans des verroteries, Nous depensons Golconde a vetir le neant, ... Pretres, votre richesse est un crime flagrant.
If the works of Gluck in general and Orphée in particular have had a happy influence on our musical taste, a passage from this last work has been a noxious influence, the famous chorus of the demons "Quel est l'audacieux qui dans ces sombres lieux ose porter ses pas?" In the old days French opera was based on declamation and it was scrupulously respected even in the arias.
And they sing: Quel est l'auDAcieux Qui dans ces SOMbres lieux Ose porTER ses pas Et devant LE trepas Ne frémit pas? As French is not strongly accented such faults are tolerated. Gluck's theme impressed itself on the memory, so that he dealt a terrific blow to the purity of prosody. We gradually became so disinterested in this that by Auber's time scarcely any attention was paid to it.
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