Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 654 pages of information about Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2).

Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 654 pages of information about Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2).

[318] Quoted in Martin’s Hist. de France, xvi. 158.

[319] Conf., viii. 197.  Grimm, Corr.  Lit., i. 27.

[320] Lettre sur la Musique Francaise, 178, etc., 187.

[321] P. 197.

[322] Corr.  Lit., i. 92.  His own piece was Le petit prophete de Boehmischbroda, the style of which will be seen in a subsequent footnote.

[323] He was burnt in effigy by the musicians of the Opera.  Grimm, Corr.  Lit., i. 113.

[324] This is Turgot’s opinion on the controversy (Letter to Caillard, Oeuv., ii. 827):—­“Tous avez donc vu Jean-Jacques; la musique est un excellent passe-port aupres de lui.  Quant a l’impossibilite de faire de la musique francaise, je ne puis y croire, et votre raison ne me parait pas bonne; car il n’est point vrai que l’essence de la langue francaise est d’etre sans accent.  Point de conversation animee sans beaucoup d’accent; mais l’accent est libre et determine seulement par l’affection de celui qui parle, sans etre fixe par des conventions sur certaines syllabes, quoique nous ayons aussi dans plusieurs mots des syllabes dominantes qui seules peuvent etre accentuees.”

[325] Musset-Pathay, i. 289.

[326] Preface to Dissertation sur la Musique Moderne, pp. 32, 33.

[327] I am indebted to Mr. James Sully, M.A., for furnishing me with notes on a technical subject with which I have too little acquaintance.

[328] Dissertation, p. 42.

[329] P. 52.

[330] Conf., vii. 18, 19.  Also Dissertation, pp. 74, 75.

CHAPTER IX.

VOLTAIRE AND D’ALEMBERT.

Everybody in the full tide of the eighteenth century had something to do with Voltaire, from serious personages like Frederick the Great and Turgot, down to the sorriest poetaster who sent his verses to be corrected or bepraised.  Rousseau’s debt to him in the days of his unformed youth we have already seen, as well as the courtesies with which they approached one another, when Richelieu employed the struggling musician to make some modifications in the great man’s unconsidered court-piece.  Neither of them then dreamed that their two names were destined to form the great literary antithesis of the century.  In the ten years that elapsed between their first interchange of letters and their first fit of coldness, it must have been tolerably clear to either of them, if either of them gave thought to the matter, that their dissidence was increasing and likely to increase.  Their methods were different, their training different, their points of view different, and above all these things, their temperaments were different by a whole heaven’s breadth.

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Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.