But after them, and especially after Mozart, the old
line of composers may be observed to have split up into two lines, the
one doing the old ear-tickling business, the other trying to express
dramatic movement, and their thought and feeling, in the old medium.
The first of these lines has not been broken to this day: Rossini
came, and, after Rossini, Donizetti, Auber, Bellini, Meyerbeer, and
the rest; and ear-tickler follows ear-tickler unto this day. The
second line in its turn quickly split into those who, not content with
the form, sought to alter it, and those who, quite content with it,
went gaily on, turning out opera after opera, dealing with modern
subjects in the old-fashioned way. Of these last Gounod must be
reckoned the chief; and he began, not where Mozart left off, but with
the Mozartean method of the "Don Giovanni" period. Now, it is of the
very essence of the Italian opera of the Gluck-cum-Mozart model that
it enables a composer to represent moments. The drama does not unfold
gradually, as it does in the music-play, with its continuous flow of
music marking the subtlest changes. It unfolds in jerks, each number
advancing it a stage; so that Gluck never got any appearance of
continuity whatever, while Mozart got it only by the consummate tact
with which he arranged his pictures, and by the exciting pace at which
he passes them before us.
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