July 2,1714. Gluck was devoted to music from early childhood, but
received, in connection with the musical art, an excellent education at
the Jesuit College of Kommotau. Here he learned singing, the organ, the
violin and harpsichord, and had a mind to get his living by devoting
his musical talents to the Church. The Prague public recognized in him
a musician of fair talent, but he found but little encouragement to stay
at the Bohemian capital. So he decided to finish his musical education
at Vienna, where more distinguished masters could be had. Prince
Lobkowitz, who remembered his gamekeeper's son, introduced the young man
to the Italian Prince Melzi, who induced him to accompany him to Milan.
As the pupil of the Italian organist and composer, Sammartini, he made
rapid progress in operatic composition. He was successful in pleasing
Italian audiences, and in four years produced eight operas, for which
the world has forgiven him in forgetting them. Then Gluck must go to
London to see what impression he could make on English critics; for
London then, as now, was one of the great musical centres, where every
successful composer or singer must get his brevet.

Gluck's failure to please in London was, perhaps, an important epoch
in his career. With a mind singularly sensitive to new impressions, and
already struggling with fresh ideas in the laws of operatic composition,
Handel's great music must have had a powerful effect in stimulating
his unconscious progress. His last production in England, "Pyramus and
Thisbe," was a _pasticcio_ opera, in which he embodied the best bits out
of his previous works. The experiment was a glaring failure, as it ought
to have been; for it illustrated the Italian method, which was designed
for mere vocal display, carried to its logical absurdity.


II.