ything of his. That loud, shallow talker
Count Stendhal, or, to give him his real name, Marie Henry Beyle, heard
it at Milan in 1816, when it was first produced. He had at first some
difficulty in deciding whether Soliva showed himself in that opera a
plagiarist of Mozart or a genius. Finally he came to the conclusion
that--

there is in it a warmth, a dramatic life, and a strength in
all its effects, which are decidedly not in the style of
Mozart. But Soliva, who is a young man and full of the
warmest admiration for Mozart, has imbibed certain tints of
his colouring.
The rest is too outrageously ridiculous to be quoted. Whatever Beyle's
purely literary merits and his achievements in fiction may be, I quite
agree with Berlioz, who remarks, a propos of this gentleman's Vie de
Rossini, that he writes "les plus irritantes stupidites sur la musique,
dont il croyait avoir le secret." To which cutting dictum may be added
a no less cutting one of M. Lavoix fils, who, although calling Beyle
an "ecrivain d'esprit," applies to him the appellation of "fanfaron
d'ignorance en musique." I would go a step farther than either of these
writers. Beyle is an ignorant braggart, not only in music, but in art
generally, and such esprit as his art criticisms exhibit would be even
more common than it unfortunately now is, if he were oftener equalled
in conceit and arrogance. The pillorying of a humbug is so laudable an
object that the reader will excuse the digression, which, moreover, may
show what miserable instruments a poor biographer has sometimes to
make use of. Another informant, unknown to fame, but apparently more
trustworthy, furnishes us with an account of Soliva in Warsaw. The
writer in question disapproves of the Italian master's drill-method in
teaching singing, and says that as a composer his power of invention
was inferior to his power of construction; and, further, that he was
acquainted with the scores of the best musicians of all times, and an
expert in accompanying on the pianoforte. As Elsner, Zywny, and the
pianist and composer Javurek have already been introduced to the reader,
I shall advert only to one other of the older Warsaw musicians--namely,
Charles Kurpinski, the most talented and influential native composer
then living in Poland. To him and Elsner is chiefly due the progress
which Polish music made in the first thirty years of this century.
Kurpinski came to Warsaw in 1810, was appointed second