indeed was a rainbow based on the two extremes of modern music which
shed light and glory on the great art-cycle over which it arched....
His excellence consists in his unswerving earnestness of purpose, in
the individuality of his manner, in the vigor of his ideas, and in the
purity of his harmony."

"Such," says M. Miel, "was Cherubim; a colossal and incommensurable
genius, an existence full of days, of masterpieces, and of glory.
Among his rivals he found his most sincere appreciators. The Chevalier
Seyfried has recorded, in a notice on Beethoven, that that grand
musician regarded Cherubini as the first of his contemporary composers.
We will add nothing to this praise: the judgment of such a rival is, for
Cherubini, the voice itself of posterity."

Luigi Carlo Zanobe Salvadore Maria Cherubini was born at Florence on
September 14, 1700, the son of a harpsichord accompanyist at the Pergola
Theatre. Like so many other great composers, young Cherubini displayed
signs of a fertile and powerful genius at an early age, mastering the
difficulties of music as if by instinct. At the age of nine he was
placed under the charge of Felici, one of the best Tuscan professors of
the day; and four years afterward he composed his first work, a mass.
His creative instinct, thus awakened, remained active, and he produced
a series of compositions which awakened no little admiration, so that he
was pointed at in the streets of Florence as the young prodigy. When he
was about sixteen the attention of the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany was
directed to him, and through that prince's liberality he was enabled
to become a pupil of the most celebrated Italian master of the age,
Giuseppe Sarti, of whom he soon became the favorite pupil. Under the
direction of Sarti, the young composer produced a series of operas,
sonatas, and masses, and wrote much of the music which appeared under