reover, it was
largely based upon an element which has as little genuineness in France
as a basis of judgment (and which must therefore be set down largely as
an affectation) as in America. Loud hallelujahs have been raised in
praise of Moussorgsky because, discarding conventional law, he
vitalized the music of the lyric poem and also the dramatic line, by
making it the emotional flowering of the spoken word. When it became
necessary for the precious inner brotherhood of Frenchmen who hold
burning incense sticks under each others' noses to acclaim "Pelleas et
Melisande" as a new and beautiful thing in dramatic music, it was
announced that Moussorgsky was like Debussy in that he had demonstrated
in his songs and his operas that vocal melody should and could be
written in accordance with the rhythm and accents of the words. We had
supposed that we had learned that lesson not only from Gluck and
Wagner, but from every true musical dramatist that ever lived! And when
the Frenchmen (and their feeble echoers in England and America) began
to cry out that the world make obeisance to Moussorgsky on that score,
there was no wonder that those whose eagerness to enjoy led them to
absorb too much information should ask how this marvellous psychical
assonance between word and tone was to be conveyed to their unfortunate
sense and feeling after the original Russian word had been
transmogrified into French or English. In New York the opera, which we
know to be saturated in some respects with Muscovitism, or Slavicism,
and which we have every reason to believe is also so saturated in its
musico-verbal essence, was sung in Italian. With the change some of the
character that ought to make it dear to the Russian heart must have
evaporated. It is even likely that vigorous English would have been a
better vehicle than the "soft, bastard Latin" for the forceful
utterances of the operatic people.

It is a pity that a suspicion of disingenuousness and affectation
should force itself upon one's thoughts in connection with the French
enthusiasm over Moussorgsky; but it cannot be avoided. So far as
Moussorgsky reflects anything in his art, it is realism or naturalism,
and the latter element is not dominant in French music now, and is not
likely to be so long as the present tendency toward sublimated
subjectivism prevails. Debussy acclaimed Moussorgsky enthusiastically a
dozen years ago, but for all that Moussorgsky and Debussy are antipodes
in ar