CHAPTER VII
ROSSINI, DONIZETTI, AND BELLINI
While Weber was reconstructing opera in Germany and laying the
foundations upon which the vast structure of modern lyrical drama was
afterwards reared by the composers of our own day, reforms, or at any
rate innovations, were being introduced into Italian opera by a musician
scarcely less gifted even than the founder of the romantic school
himself. Rossini (1792-1868) owed but little of his fame to instruction
or study. As soon as he had been assured by his master that he knew
enough of the grammar of music to write an opera, he relinquished his
studies once for all, and started life as a composer. In this perhaps he
showed his wisdom, for his natural gifts were of such a nature as could
scarcely have been enhanced by erudition, and the mission which he so
amply fulfilled in freeing his national art from eighteenth-century
convention was certainly not one which depended upon a profound
knowledge of counterpoint. Nature had fortunately endowed him with
precisely the equipment necessary for the man who was to reform Italian
opera. The school of Paisiello, notwithstanding its many merits, had
several grievous weaknesses, of which the most prominent were
uniformity of melodic type, nerveless and conventional orchestration,
and intolerable prolixity. Rossini brought to his task a vein of melody
as inexhaustible in inspiration as it was novel in form, a natural
instinct for instrumental colour, and a firm conviction that brevity was
the soul of wit.
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