Great Italian and French Composers | Page 9

en Tauride" was produced, such

beautiful dance measures were furnished by the Italian composer as
gave Vestris the opportunity for one of his greatest triumphs.
IV.
The contest between Gluck and Piccini, or rather the cabals who
adopted the two musicians as their figure-heads, was brought to an end
by the death of the former. An attempt was made to set up Sacchini in
his place, but it proved unavailing, as the new composer proved to be
quite as much a follower of the prevailing Italian method as of the new
school of Gluck. The French revolution swept away Piccini's property,
and he retired to Italy. Bad fortune pursued him, however. Queen
Caroline of Naples conceived a dislike to him and used her influence to
injure his career, out of a fit of wounded vanity.
"Do you not think I remember my sister, Marie Antoinette?" queried
the somewhat ill-favored queen. Piccini, embarrassed but truthful,
replied: "Your majesty, there maybe a family likeness, but no
resemblance." A fatality attended him even to Venice. In 1792 he was
mobbed and his house burned, because the populace regarded him as a
republican, for he had a French son-in-law. Some partial musical
successes, however, consoled him, though they flattered his amour
propre more than they benefited his purse. On his return to Naples he
was subjected to a species of imprisonment during four years, for royal
displeasure in those days did not confine itself merely to lack of court
favor. Reduced to great poverty, the composer who had been the
favorite of the rich and great for so many years knew often the actual
pangs of hunger, and eked out his subsistence by writing conventual
psalms, as payment for the broken food doled out by the monks.
At last he was released, and the tenor, David, sent him funds to pay his
journey to Paris. Napoleon, the first consul, received him cordially in
the Luxembourg palace.
"Sit down," said he to Piccini, who remained standing, "a man of your
greatness stands in no one's presence." His reception in Paris was, in
fact, an ovation. The manager of the opera gave him a pension of
twenty-four hundred francs, a government pension was also accorded,

and he was appointed sixth inspector at the Conservatory. But the
benefits of this pale gleam of wintry sunshine did not long remain. He
died at Passy in the year 1800, and was followed to the grave by a great
throng of those who loved his beautiful music and admired his gentle
life.
In the present day Gluck appears to have vanquished Piccini, because
occasionally an opera of the former is performed, while Piccini's works
are only known to the musical antiquarian. But even the marble temples
of Gluck are moss-grown and neglected, and that great man is known to
the present day rather as one whose influence profoundly colored and
changed the philosophy of opera, than through any immediate
acquaintance with his productions. The connoisseurs of the eighteenth
century found Piccini's melodies charming, but the works that endure
as masterpieces are not those which contain the greatest number of
beauties, but those of which the form is the most perfect. Gluck had
larger conceptions and more powerful genius than his Italian rival, but
the latter's sweet spring of melody gave him the highest place which
had so far been attained in the Italian operatic school.
"Piccini," says M. Genguèné, his biographer, "was under the middle
size, but well made, with considerable dignity of carriage. His
countenance was very agreeable. His mind was acute, enlarged, and
cultivated. Latin and Italian literature was familiar to him when he went
to France, and afterward he became almost as well acquainted with
French literature. He spoke and wrote Italian with great purity, but
among his countrymen he preferred the Neapolitan dialect, which he
considered the most expressive, the most difficult and the most
figurative of all languages. He used it principally in narration, with a
gayety, a truth, and a pantomimic expression after the manner of his
country, which delighted all his friends, and made his stories
intelligible even to those who knew Italian but slightly."
As a musician Piccini was noticeable, according to the judgment of his
best critics, for the purity and simplicity of his style. He always wished
to preserve the supremacy of the voice, and, though he well knew how
to make his instrumentation rich and effective, he was a resolute

opponent to the florid and complex accompaniments which were
coming into vogue in his day. His recorded opinion on this subject may
have some interest for the musicians of the present day: "Were the
employment which Nature herself assigns to the instruments of an
orchestra preserved to them, a variety of effects and a series of
infinitely diversified pictures would be produced.