German musicians.

Why be astonished at it? Let us face the matter plainly. In music we
have not, so to speak, any masters of French style. All our greatest
composers are foreigners. The founder of the first school of French
opera, Lulli, was Florentine; the founder of the second school, Gluck,
was German; the two founders of the third school were Rossini, an
Italian, and Meyerbeer, a German; the creators of _opéra-comique_ were
Duni, an Italian, and Gretry, a Belgian; Franck, who revolutionised our
modern school of opera, was also Belgian. These men brought with them a
style peculiar to their race; or else they tried to found, as Gluck did,
an "international" style,[77] by which they effaced the more individual
characteristics of the French spirit. The most French of all these
styles is the _opéra-comique_, the work of two foreigners, but owing
much more to the _opéra-bouffe_ than is generally admitted, and, in any
case, representing France very insufficiently.

[Footnote 77: Gluck himself said this in a letter to the _Mercure de
France_, February, 1773.]

Some more rational minds have tried to rid themselves of this Italian
and German influence, but have mostly arrived at creating an
intermediate Germano-Italian style, of which the operas of Auber and
Ambroise Thomas are a type.

Before Berlioz's time there was really only one master of the first rank
who made a great effort to liberate French music: it was Rameau; and,
despite his genius, he was conquered by Italian art.[78]

By force of circumstance, therefore, French music found itself moulded