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Musical Memories by Camille Saint-Saëns
page 40 of 176 (22%)
color. Gallet drew the sketches for the desert in _Le Roi de Lahore_ and
the cloister in _Proserpine_.

When Madame Adam founded the _Nouvelle Revue_ she offered me the
position of musical critic, which I did not think I ought to accept. She
did not know where to turn. "Take Gallet," I advised her. "He is an
accomplished man of letters. He is not a musician in the sense that he
has studied music, but he has the soul of a musician, which is worth
much more." Madame Adam followed my advice and found it good.

At this period, under the guise of Wagnerism, the wildest theories and
the most extravagant assertions were current in musical criticism.
Gallet was naturally well poised and independent and he did not do as
the rest did. Instead he opposed them, but from unwillingness to give
needless offense he displayed marked tact and discretion in his
criticisms. This did him no good, however, for it aroused no sentiment
of gratitude, and without giving him credit for a literary style that
was rare among librettists, his contemporaries received each of his
works with a hostility entirely devoid of either justice or mercy.
Gallet felt this hostility keenly. He felt that he did not deserve it,
since he took so much care in his work and put so much courtesy into his
criticism. The blank verse he used in _Thaïs_ with admirable regard for
color and harmony, counting on the music to take the place of the rhyme,
was not appreciated. This verse was free from assonance and the
banalities which it draws into operatic works, but it kept the rhythm
and sonorous sound which is far removed from prose. That was the period
when there was nothing but praise for Alfred Ernst's gibberish, though
that was an insult alike to the French language and the masterpieces he
had the temerity to translate. Gallet used the same blank verse in
_Déjanire_, although its use here was more debatable, but he handled it
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