surface: it is to
be found in the delightful and fascinating melodies, which are strewn so
thickly through it, as well as in the graceful bravura, which was so
characteristic of Rossini, and which when delivered by accomplished
artists is very captivating to a popular audience. As to its sacred form,
it is as far from the accepted style of church music as Berlioz's or
Verdi's requiems. Indeed, Rossini himself remarked to Hiller that he
wrote it in the "mezzo serio" style. In connection with this matter one
or two criticisms will be of interest. Rossini's biographer, Sutherland
Edwards, says: "The 'Stabat Mater' was composed, as Raphael's Virgins
were painted, for the Roman Catholic Church, which at once accepted it,
without ever suspecting that Rossini's music was not religious." The
remark, however, would be more pertinent were it not for the fact that
the Church itself has not always been a good critic of its own music, or
a good judge of what its music should be, as Liszt discovered when he
went to Rome full of his purposes of reform in the musical service.
Heine, in a letter to the "Allgemeine Zeitung" in 1842, replying to
certain German criticisms, went so far as to say,--

"The true character of Christian art does not reside in thinness and
paleness of the body, but in a certain effervescence of the soul, which
neither the musician nor the painter can appropriate to himself either
by baptism or study; and in this respect I find in the 'Stabat' of
Rossini a more truly Christian character than in the 'Paulus' ['St.
Paul'] of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,--an oratorio which the
adversaries of Rossini point to as a model of Christian style."

It will hardly be claimed, however, even by Heine's friends, that this
sweeping statement is either just to Mendelssohn or true of Rossini.
Perhaps they will also concede that Heine was not a very good judge of
Christianity in any of its aspects, musical or otherwise. The veteran
Moscheles in one of his letters criticizes the work very pertinently. He
says,--

"It is, as you may imagine, a model of 'singableness' (if I may say
so); but it is not sufficiently church music to my taste. His solitary
fugue is clumsy. The criticisms on the work are very various. Some
agree with me; but the majority delight in the captivating Italian
phrases, which I admire too, but which I cannot think are in the right
place."

He might have added, "Because they are the