which came close to the familiar life of that remarkable period.  His great rival Cherubini, on the other hand, though no less truly dramatic in fitting musical expression to thought and passion, was so austere and rigid in his ideals, so dominated by musical form and an accurate science which would concede nothing to popular prejudice and ignorance, that he won his laurels, not by force of the natural flow of popular sympathy, but by the sheer might of his genius.  Cherubini’s severe works made them models and foundation stones for his successors in French music; but Mehul familiarized his audiences with strains dignified yet popular, full of massive effects and brilliant combinations.  The people felt the tramp of the Napoleonic armies in the vigor and movement of his measures.

Spontini embodied the same influences and characteristics in still larger degree, for his musical genius was organized on a more massive plan.  Deficient in pure graceful melody alike with Mehul, he delighted in great masses of tone and vivid orchestral coloring.  His music was full of the military fire of his age, and dealt for the most part with the peculiar tastes and passions engendered by a condition of chronic warfare.  Therefore dramatic movement in his operas was always of the heroic order, and never touched the more subtile and complex elements of life.  Spontini added to the majestic repose and ideality of the Gluck music-drama (to use a name now naturalized in art by Wagner) the keenest dramatic vigor.  Though he had a strong command of effects by his power of delineation and delicacy of detail, his prevalent tastes led him to encumber his music too often with overpowering military effects, alike tonal and scenic.  Riehl, a great German critic, says:  “He is more successful in the delineation of masses and groups than in the portrayal of emotional scenes; his rendering of the national struggle between the Spaniards and Mexicans in ‘Cortez’ is, for example, admirable.  He is likewise most successful in the management of large masses in the instrumentation.  In this respect he was, like Napoleon, a great tactician.”  In “La Vestale” Spontini attained his chef-d’oeuvre.  Schuelter in his “History of Music” gives it the following encomium:  “His portrayal of character and truthful delineation of passionate emotion in this opera are masterly indeed.  The subject of ‘La Vestale’ (which resembles that of ‘Norma,’ but how differently treated!) is tragic and sublime as well as intensely emotional.  Julia, the heroine, a prey to guilty passion; the severe but kindly high priestess; Licinius, the adventurous lover, and his faithful friend Cinna; pious vestals, cruel priests, bold warriors, and haughty Romans, are represented with statuesque relief and finish.  Both these works, ‘La Vestale’ (1802) and ‘Cortez’ (1809), ire among the finest that have been written for the stage; they are remarkable for naturalness and sublimeness, qualities lost sight of in the noisy instrumentation of his later works.”