nce of the
German, his conceptions had a dramatic fire and passion which were,
however, free from anything appertaining to the sensational and
meretricious. His forms were indeed classically severe, and his style is
defined by Adolphe Adam as the resurrection of the old Italian school,
enriched by the discoveries of modern harmony. Though he was the creator
of French opera as we know it now, he was free from its vagaries
and extravagances. He set its model in the dramatic vigor and
picturesqueness, the clean-cut forms, and the noble instrumentation
which mark such masterpieces as "Faniska," "Aledee," "Les Deux
Journees," and "Lodoiska." The purity, classicism, and wealth of ideas
in these works have always caused them to be cited as standards of ideal
excellence. The reforms in opera of which Gluck was the protagonist, and
Wagner the extreme modern exponent, characterize the dramatic works
of Cherubini, though he keeps them within that artistic limit which a
proper regard for melodic beauty prescribes. In the power and propriety
of musical declamation his operas are conceded to be without a
superior. His overtures hold their place in classical music as ranking
with the best ever written, and show a richness of resource and
knowledge of form in treating the orchestra which his his contemporaries
admitted were only equaled by Beethoven.

Cherubini's place in ecclesiastical music is that by which he is best
known to the musical public of to-day; for his operas, owing to the
immense demands they make on the dramatic and vocal resources of the
artist, are but rarely presented in France, Germany, and England, and
never in America. They are only given where music is loved on account
of its noble traditions, and not for the mere sake of idle and luxurious
amusement. As a composer of masses, however, Cherubini's genius is
familiar to all who frequent the services of the Roman Church. His
relation to the music of Catholicism accords with that of Sebastian Bach
to the music of Protestantism. Haydn, Mozart, and even Beethoven,
are held by the best critics to be his inferiors in this form of
composition. His richness of melody, sense of dramatic color, and
great command of orchestral effects, gave him commanding power in the
interpretation of religious sentiments; while an ardent faith inspired
with passion, sweetness, and devotion what Place styles his "sublime
visions." Miel, one of his most competent critics, writes of him in thi