taining it. They
have tried to place this conscientious artist in the list of seekers of
success, but such men are not ordinarily accustomed to work like this.

Since I have used the word artist, it is proper to stop for a moment.
Unlike Gluck and Berlioz, who were greater artists than musicians,
Meyerbeer was more a musician than an artist. As a result, he often used
the most refined and learned means to achieve a very ordinary artistic
result. But there is no reason why he should be brought to task for
results which they do not even remark in the works of so many others.

Meyerbeer was the undisputed leader in the operatic world when Robert
Schumann struck the first blow at his supremacy. Schumann was ignorant
of the stage, although he had made one unfortunate venture there. He did
not appreciate that there is more than one way to practise the art of
music. But he attacked Meyerbeer, violently, for his bad taste and
Italian tendencies, entirely forgetting that when Mozart, Beethoven, and
Weber did work for the stage they were strongly drawn towards Italian
art. Later, the Wagnerians wanted to oust Meyerbeer from the stage and
make a place for themselves, and they got credit for some of Schumann's
harsh criticisms,--this, too, despite the fact that at the beginning of
the skirmish Schumann and the Wagnerians got along about as well as
Ingres and Delacroix and their schools. But they united against the
common enemy and the French critics followed. The critics entirely
neglected Berlioz's opinion, for, after opposing Meyerbeer for a long
time, he admitted him among the gods and in his _Traite
d'Instrumentation_ awarded him the crown of immortality.

Parenthetically, if there is a surprising page in the history of music
it is the persistent affectation of classing Berlioz and Wagner
together. They had nothing in common save their great love of art and
their distrust of established forms. Berlioz abhorred enharmonic
modulations, dissonances resolved indefinitely one after another,
continuous melody and all current practices of futuristic music. He
carried this so far that he claimed that he understood nothing in the
prelude to _Tristan_, which was certainly a sincere claim since, almost
simultaneously, he hailed the overture of _Lohengrin_, which is
conceived in an entirely different manner, as a masterpiece. He did not
admit that the voice should be sacrificed and relegated to the rank of a
simple unit of the orchestra.