few months. His cradle was his tomb.


III.

A well-known musical critic sums up his judgment of Halévy in these
words: "If in France a contemporary of Louis XIV., an admirer of Racine,
could return to us, and, full of the remembrance of his earthly career
under that renowned monarch, he should wish to find the nobly pathetic,
the elevated inspiration, the majestic arrangements of the olden times
upon a modern stage, we would not take him to the Theatre Français, but
to the Opera on the day in which one of Halévy's works was given."

Unlike Méhul and Spontini, with whom in point of style and method Halévy
must be associated, he was not in any direct sense a disciple of Gluck,
but inherited the influence of the latter through his great successor
Cherubini, of whom Halévy was the favorite pupil and the intimate
friend. Fromental Halévy, a scion of the Hebrew race, which has
furnished so many geniuses to the art world, left a deep impress on
his times, not simply by his genius and musical knowledge, which was
profound, varied, and accurate, but by the elevation and nobility which
lifted his mark up to a higher level than that which we accord to
mere musical gifts, be they ever so rich and fertile. The motive that
inspired his life is suggested in his devout saying that music is an
art that God has given us, in which the voices of all nations may unite
their prayers in one harmonious rhythm.

Halévy was a native of Paris, born May 27, 1799. He entered the
Conservatory at the age of eleven years, where he soon attracted the
particular attention of Cherubini. When he was twenty the Institute