Of the other notable French composers, Gounod is delightfully melodious, but is too sweet to be entirely wholesome, and Saint-Saëns (half German in instinct and manner) is a phenomenal master of instrumentation, and he is very ingenious, but one is seldom convinced that his compositions have grown from emotional germs. Massenet, Bizet, and others have written, or are writing, charming music, but it has little substantiality. Its charms are liable to effervesce, like the emotions of the Paris public. The French seem to reserve all of their earnestness for the more tangible arts, and for science, to all of which they have contributed their full share.
England's musical career has been unique. The people of that snug little island across the channel should be an enthusiastically happy race, for nature endowed their land with fertility and beauty, and centuries of skillful cultivation have enhanced these virtues until Albion's rural loveliness is to-day unequalled. They have exceptionally rich traditions, their prowess in arms and achievements in literature, science, pictorial art, and industry furnish abundant grounds for their national pride, but it is a pity that their blessings have not made them more demonstrative, for stoical complacency is not good soil in which to grow an emotional art. For this reason recorded English composition, which began so unprecedentedly well in the sixteenth century with the invention of the madrigal, has not fulfilled the promise implied by that event.
The English are a sturdy race, and their climate and out-of-door amusements have endowed their voices with uncommonly mellow and tuneful qualities. It is therefore quite natural that their musical activities should have been so largely centred in chorus singing, which they make peculiarly sonorous and artistically adequate.
This choral virtuosity is not a recent growth, for it attracted Händel in the eighteenth century. It was also recognized by Mendelssohn. This love for song has been materially fostered by the Established Church, whose elaborate services have furnished composers with both incitement and outlet. Most of England's choral works are dignified and smooth, but they lack intensity.