It is impossible for me, sir, not to agree to the very judicious observations you have recently made on my operas in your Journal de Littérature, October 5; and I find nothing, absolutely nothing, to say in reply. / Hitherto I had the simplicity to believe that in music, as in other arts, all the passions were within its sphere, and that it ought not to please less in expressing rage and fury and the cry of grief than in depicting the sights of love –/ Neither serpent nor monster is so odious/ As not to please when counterfeited by art. / I thought this axiom true in music as well as in poetry. I was convinced that singing imbued with the colouring of the sentiments to be expressed ought to be modified in accordance with them and assume as many different accents as the poetry had different tints; in short, ought all to tend to one single aim, that of expression, and the union between the singing and the words be so close that the poem should not appear to be less composed for the music than the music for the poem. / These were not only errors: it seemed to me that the French language was not much accentuated and had no determined quantity like the Italian tongue. I was also struck with another discrepancy between the singers of the two nations; if I found in the one voices more soft and flexible, the others seemed to me to put more force and energy into their action; thence I concluded that Italian singing would not suit the French. << less