The Awakening: A Sketch of the Musical Movement in Paris Since 1870
It is not possible in a few pages to give an account of forty years of active and fruitful life without many omissions, and also without a certain dryness entailed by lists of names. But I have purposely abstained from trying to arouse interest by any artifices of writing and treatment, as I wish to let deeds speak for themselves.
I want to show, by this simple account, the splendid efforts made by musicians in France since 1870, and the growth of the faith and energy that has recreated French music. Such an awakening seems to me a fine thing to look upon, and very comforting. But few people in France realise it, outside a handful of musicians. It is to the public at large I dedicate these pages, so that they may know what a generation of artists with large hearts and strong determination have done for the honour of our race. The nation must not be allowed to forget what she owes to some of her sons.
But you must not accuse me of contradicting myself if in another work, which will appear at the same time as this one,203 I indulge in some sarcasm over the failings and absurdities of French music to-day. I think that for the last ten years French musicians have rather imprudently and prematurely proclaimed their victory, and that, in a general way, their works—apart from three or four—are not worth as much as their endeavours. But their endeavours are heroic; and I know nothing finer in the whole history of France. May they continue! But that is only possible by practising a virtue—modesty. The completion of a part is not the completion of the whole.
Paris and Music
The nature of Paris is so complex and unstable that one feels it is presumptuous to try to define it. It is a city so highly-strung, so ingrained with fickleness, and so changeable in its tastes, that a book that truly describes it at the moment it is written is no longer accurate by the time it is published. And then, there is not only one Paris; there are two or three Parises—fashionable Paris, middle-class Paris, intellectual Paris, vulgar Paris—all living side by side, but intermingling very little. If you do not know the little towns within the greatTown, you cannot know the strong and often inconsistent life of this great organism as a whole.
If one wishes to get an idea of the musical life of Paris, one must take into account the variety of its centres and the perpetual flow of its thought—a thought which never stops, but is always over-shooting the goal for which it seemed bound. This incessant change of opinion is scornfully called “fashion” by the foreigner. And there is, without doubt, in the artistic aristocracy of Paris, as in all great towns, a herd of idle people on the watch for new fashions—in art, as well as in dress—who wish to single out certain of them for no serious reason at all. But, in spite of their pretensions, they have only an infinitesimal share in the changes of artistic taste. The origin of these changes is in the Parisian brain itself—a brain that is quick and feverish, always working, greedy of knowledge, easily tired, grasping to-day the splendours of a work, seeing to-morrow its defects, building up reputations as rapidly as it pulls them down, and yet, in spite of all its apparent caprices, always logical and sincere. It has its momentary infatuations and dislikes, but no lasting prejudices; and, by its curiosity, its absolute liberty, and its very French habit of criticising everything, it is a marvellous barometer, sensitive to all the hidden currents of thought in the soul of the West, and often indicating, months in advance, the variations and disturbances of the artistic and political world.
And this barometer is registering what is happening just now in the world of music, where a movement has been making itself felt in France for several years, whose effect other nations—perhaps more musical nations—will not feel till later. For the nations that have the strongest artistic traditions are not necessarily those that are likely to develop a new art. To do that one must have a virgin soil and spirits untrammelled by a heritage from the past. In 1870 no one had a lighter heritage to bear than French musicians; for the past had been forgotten, and such a thing as real musical education did not exist.
The musical weakness of that time was a very curious thing, and has given many people the impression that France has never been a musical nation. Historically speaking, nothing could be more wrong. Certainly there are races more gifted in music than others; but often the seeming differences of race are really the differences of time; and a nation appears great or little in its art according to what period of its history we consider. England was a musical nation until the Revolution of 1688; France was the greatest musical nation in the sixteenth century; and the recent publications of M. Henry Expert have given us a glimpse of the originality and perfection of the Franco-Belgian art during the Renaissance. But without going back as far as that, we find that Paris was a very musical town at the time of the Restoration, at the time of the first performance of Beethoven’s symphonies at the Conservatoire, and the first great works of Berlioz, and the Italian Opera. In Berlioz’s Mémoires you can read about the enthusiasm, the tears, and the feeling, that the performances of Gluck’s and Spontini’s operas aroused; and in the same book one sees clearly that this musical warmth lasted until 1840, after which it died down little by little, and was succeeded by complete musical apathy in the second Empire—an apathy from which Berlioz suffered cruelly, so that one may even say he died crushed by the indifference of the public. At this time Meyerbeer was reigning at the Opera. This incredible weakening of musical feeling in France, from 1840 to 1870, is nowhere better shown than in its romantic and realistic writers, for whom music was an hermetically sealed door. All these artists were “visuels,” for whom music was only a noise. Hugo is supposed to have said that Germany’s inferiority was measured by its superiority in music.204 “The elder Dumas detested,” Berlioz says, “even bad music.”205 The journal of the Goncourts calmly reflects the almost universal scorn of literary men for music. In a conversation which took place in 1862 between Goncourt and Théophile Gautier, Goncourt said:
“We confessed to him our complete infirmity, our musical deafness—we who, at the most, only liked military music.”
“Well,” said Gautier, “what you tell me pleases me very much. I am like you; I prefer silence to music. I have only just succeeded, after having lived part of my life with a singer, in being able to tell good music from bad; but it is all the same to me.”206
And he added:
“But it is a very curious thing that all other writers of our time are like this. Balzac hated music. Hugo could not stand it. Even Lamartine, who himself is like a piano to be hired or sold, holds it in horror!”
It needed a complete upheaval of the nation—a political and moral upheaval—to change that frame of mind. Some indication of the change was making itself felt in the last years of the second Empire. Wagner, who suffered from the hostility or indifference of the public in 1860, at the time when Tannhäuser was performed at the Opera, had already found, however, a few understanding people in Paris who discerned his genius and sincerely admired him. The most interesting of the writers who first began to understand musical emotion is Charles Baudelaire. In 1861, Pasdeloup gave the first Concerts populaires de musique classique at the Cirque d’Hiver. The Berlioz Festival, organised by M. Reyer, on March 23rd, 1870, a year after Berlioz’s death, revealed to France the grandeur of its greatest musical genius, and was the beginning of a campaign of public reparation to his memory.
The disasters of the war in 1870 regenerated the nation’s artistic spirit. Music felt its effect immediately.207 On February 24th, 1871, the Société nationale de Musique was instituted to propagate the works of French composers; and in 1873 the Concerts de l’Association artistique were started under M. Colonne’s direction; and these concerts, besides making people acquainted with the classic composers of symphonies and the masters of the young French school, were especially devoted to the honouring of Berlioz, whose triumph reached its summit about 1880.208
At this time Wagner’s success, in its turn, began to make itself felt. For this M. Lamoureux, whose concerts began in 1882, was chiefly responsible. Wagner’s influence considerably helped forward the progress of French art, and aroused a love for music in people other than musicians; and, by his all-embracing personality and the vast domain of his work in art, not only engaged the interest of the musical world, but that of the theatrical world, and the world of poetry and the plastic arts. One may say that from 1885 Wagner’s work acted directly or indirectly on the whole of artistic thought, even on the religious and intellectual thought of the most distinguished people in Paris. And a curious historical witness of its world-wide influence and momentary supremacy over all other arts was the founding of the Revue Wagnérienne, where, united by the same artistic devotion, were found writers and poets such as Verlaine, Mallarmé, Swinburne, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Huysmans, Richepin, Catulle Mendès, Édouard Rod, Stuart Merrill, Ephraim Mikhaël, etc., and painters like Fantin-Latour, Jacques Blanche, Odilon Redon; and critics like Teodor de Wyzewa, H.S. Chamberlain, Hennequin, Camille Benoît, A. Ernst, de Fourcaud, Wilder, E. Schuré, Soubies, Malherbe, Gabriel Mourey, etc. These writers not only discussed musical subjects, but judged painting, literature, and philosophy, from a Wagnerian point of view. Hennequin compared the philosophic systems of Herbert Spencer and Wagner. Teodor de Wyzewa made a study of Wagnerian literature—not the literature that commentated and the paintings that illustrated Wagner’s works, but the literature and the painting that were inspired by Wagner’s principles—from Egyptian statuary to Degas’s paintings, from Homer’s writings to those of Villiers de l’Isle Adam! In a word, the whole universe was seen and judged by the thought of Bayreuth. And though this folly scarcely lasted more than three or four years—the length of the life of that little magazine—Wagner’s genius dominated nearly the whole of French art for ten or twelve years.209 An ardent musical propaganda by means of concerts was carried on among the public; and the young intellectuals of the day were won over. But the finest service that Wagnerism rendered to French art was that it interested the general public in music; although the tyranny its influence exercised became, in time, very stifling.
Then, in 1890, there were signs of a movement that was in revolt against its despotism. The great wind from the East began to drop, and veered to the North. Scandinavian and Russian influences were making themselves felt. An exaggerated infatuation for Grieg, though limited to a small number of people, was an indication of the change in public taste. In 1890, César Franck died in Paris. Belgian by birth and temperament, and French in feeling and by musical education, he had remained outside the Wagnerian movement in his own serene and fecund solitude. To his intellectual greatness and the charm his personal genius held for the little band of friends who knew and revered him he added the authority of his knowledge. Unconsciously he brought back to us the soul of Sebastian Bach, with its infinite richness and depth; and through this he found himself the head of a school (without having wished it) and the greatest teacher of contemporary French music. After his death, his name was the means of rallying together the younger school of musicians. In 1892, the Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais, under the direction of M. Charles Bordes, reinstated to honour and popularised Gregorian and Palestrinian music; and, following the initiative of their director, the Schola Cantorum was founded in 1894 for the revival of religious music. Ambition grew with success; and from the Schola sprang the École Supérieure de Musique, under the direction of Franck’s most famous pupil, M. Vincent d’Indy. This school, founded on a solid knowledge, not only of the classics, but of the primitives in music, took from its very beginning in 1900 a frankly national character, and was in some ways opposed to German art. At the same time, performances of Bach and seventeenth-and eighteenth-century music became more and more frequent; and more intimate relationship with the artists of other countries, repeated visits of the great Kapellmeister, foreign virtuosi and composers (especially Richard Strauss), and, lastly, of Russian composers, completed the education of the Parisian musical public, who, after repeated rebukes from the critics, became conscious of the awakening of a national personality, and of an impatient desire to free itself from German tutelage. By turns it gratefully and warmly received M. Bruneau’s Le Rêve (1891), M. d’Indy’s Fervaal (1898), M. Gustave Charpentier’s Louise (1900)—all of which seemed like works of liberation. But, as a matter of fact, these lyric dramas were by no means free from foreign influences, and especially from Wagnerian influences. M. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, in 1902, seemed to mark more truly the emancipation of French music. From this time on, French music felt that it had left school, and claimed to have founded a new art, which reflected the spirit of the race, and was freer and suppler than the Wagnerian art. These ideas, which were seized upon and enlarged by the press, brought about rather quickly a conviction in French artists of France’s superiority in music. Is that conviction justified? The future alone can tell us. But one may see by this brief outline of events how real is the evolution of the musical spirit in France since 1870, in spite of the apparent contradictions of fashion which appear on the surface of art. It is the spirit of France that is, after long oppression and by a patient but eager initiation, realising its power and wishing to dominate in its turn.
I wanted at first to trace the broad line of the movement which for the last thirty years has been affecting French music; and now I shall consider the musical institutions that have had their share in this movement. You will not be surprised if I ignore some of the most celebrated, which have lost their interest in it, in order that I may consider those that are the true authors of our regeneration.
Musical Institutions Before 1870
It is not by any means the oldest and most celebrated musical institutions which have taken the largest share in this evolution of music in the last thirty years.
The Académie des Beaux-Arts, where six chairs are reserved for the musical section, could have played a very important part in the musical organisation of France by the authority of its name, and by the many prizes that it gives for composition and criticism, especially by the Prix de Rome, which it awards every year. But it does not play its part well, partly because of the antiquated statutes that govern it, by which a handful of musicians are associated with a great number of painters, sculptors, and architects, who are ignorant of music and mock at the musicians, as they did in the time of Berlioz; and partly because it is the custom of the Academy that the little group of musicians shall be trained in a very conservative way. One of the names of these musicians is justly celebrated—that of M. Saint-Saëns; but there are others whose fame is of poorer quality, and others still who have no fame at all. And the whole forms a little group, which though it does not put any actual obstacles in the way of the progress of art, yet does not look upon it favourably, but remains rather apart in an indifferent or even hostile spirit.
The Conservatoire national de Musique et de Déclamation, which dates from the last years of the Ancien Régime and the Revolution, was designed by its patriotic and-democratic origin to serve the cause of national art and free progress.210
It was for a long time the corner-stone of the edifice of music in Paris. But although it has always numbered in its ranks many illustrious and devoted professors—among whom it recognised, a little late, the founder of the young French school, César Franck—and though the majority of artists who have made a name in French music have received its teaching, and the list of laureates of Rome who have come from its composition classes includes all the heads of the artistic movement to-day in all its diversity, and ranges from M. Massenet to M. Bruneau, and from M. Charpentier to M. Debussy—in spite of all this, it is no secret that, since 1870, the official action with regard to the movement amounts to almost nothing; though we must at least do it justice, and say that it has not hindered it.211
But if the spirit of this academy has often destroyed the effect of the excellent teaching there, by making success in academic competitions the chief aim of the professors and their pupils, yet a certain freedom has always reigned in the institution. And though this freedom is mainly the result of indifference, it has, however, permitted the more independent temperaments to develop in peace—from Berlioz to M. Ravel. One should be grateful for this. But such virtues are too negative to give the Conservatoire a high place in the musical history of the Third Republic; and it is only lately, under the direction of M. Gabriel Fauré, that it has endeavoured, not without difficulty, to get back its place at the head of French art, which it had lost, and which others had taken.
The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, founded in 1828 under the direction of Habeneck, has had its hour of glory in the musical history of Paris. It was through this society that Beethoven’s greatness was revealed to France.212 It was at the Conservatoire that the early important works of Berlioz were first given: La Fantastique, Harold, and Roméo et Juliette. It was there, nearer our own time, that Saint-Saëns’s Symphonie avec Orgue and César Franck’s Symphonie were played for the first time. But for a long time the Conservatoire seemed to take its name too literally, and to restrict its sphere to that of a museum for classical music.
In later years, however, the Société des Concerts, with M. Marty, began to consider new works. Its orchestra, composed of eminent instrumentalists, enjoys a classical fame; though it is now no longer alone in the excellence of its performances, and has perhaps lost a little the secret that it claimed to possess for the interpretation of great classical works. It excels in works of a neo-classic character, like those of M. Saint-Saëns, which are stronger in style and taste than in life and passion. The Conservatoire concerts have also a relative superiority over other concerts in Paris in the performance of choral works, which up to the present have been very second-rate. But these concerts are not easy of access for the general public, as the number of seats for sale is very limited. And so the society is representative of a little public whose taste is, broadly speaking, conservative and official; and the noise of the strife outside its doors only reaches its ears slowly, and with a deadened sound.
The influence of the Conservatoire is, in music especially, an influence of the past and of the Government. One may say much the same of the Opera. This ancient association, which bears the imposing name of Académie nationale de Musique and dates from 1669, is a sort of national institution which is more concerned with the history of official art than with living art. The satire with which Jean-Jacques describes, in his Nouvelle Héloïse, the stiff solemnity and mournful pomp of its performances has not lost much of its truth. What is lacking in the Opera to-day is the enthusiasm that accompanied its former musical struggles in the times of the “Encyclopédistes” and the “guerre des coins.” The great battles of art are now fought outside its doors; and it has become by degrees a showy salon, a little faded perhaps, where the public is more interested in itself than in the performance. In spite of the enormous sums that it swallows up every year (nearly four million francs),213 only one or two new pieces are produced in a year, and they are rarely works that are representative of the modern school. And though it has at last admitted Wagner’s dramas into its repertory, one can no longer consider these works, half a century old, to be in the vanguard of music. The most esteemed masters of the French school, such as Massenet, Reyer, Chausson, and Vincent d’Indy, had to seek refuge in the Théâtre de la Monnaie at Brussels before they could get their works received at the Opera in Paris. And the classical composers fare no better. Neither Fidelio nor Gluck’s tragedies—with the exception of Armide, which was put on under pressure of fashion—are represented; and when by chance they give Freischütz or Don Juan, one wonders if it would not have been better to let them rest in oblivion, rather than treat them sacrilegiously by adding, cutting, introducing ballets and new recitatives, and deforming their style so as to bring them “up to date.”214
In spite of the changes of taste and the campaign of the press, the Opera has remained to this day as it was in the time of Meyerbeer and Gounod and their disciples. But it would be foolish to pretend that it has not its public. The receipts show well enough that Faust is in greater favour than Siegfried or Tristan, not to speak of the more recent works of the new French school, which cannot be acclimatised there.
Without doubt, the enormous stage at the Opera does not lend itself well to modern musical dramas, which are intimate and concentrated, and would be lost in its immense space, which is more adapted for formal processions like the marches in the Prophète and Aïda. Besides this, there is the conventional acting of the majority of the singers, the dull lifelessness of the choruses, the defective acoustics, and the exaggerated utterance and gestures of the actors, demanded by the great dimensions of the place—all of which is a serious obstacle to the conception of a living and simple art. But the chief obstacle will always lie in the very nature of such a theatre—a theatre of luxury and vanity, created for a set of snobs, whose least interest is the music, who have not enough intellect to create a fashion, but who servilely follow every fashion after it is thirty years old. Such a theatre no longer counts in the history of French music; and its next directors will need a vast amount of ingenuity and energy to get a semblance of life into such a dead colossus.
But it is quite another affair with the Opéra-Comique. This theatre has taken a very active part in the development of modern music. Without renouncing its classic traditions, or its delightful repertory of the old opéra-comiques, it has had understanding enough, under the judicious management of M. Albert Carré, to hold itself open for any interesting productions in dramatic music. It takes no side among the different schools; and the representatives of the old-fashioned light opera with their songs elbow the leaders of the advanced school. No association has done more important work, among musical dramas as well as musical comedies, during the last twenty years. In this theatre, which produced Carmen in 1875, Manon in 1884, and the Roi d’Ys in 1888, were played the principal dramas of M. Bruneau, as well as M. Charpentier’s Louise, M. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and M. Dukas’s Ariane et Barbebleue. It may seem astonishing that such works should have found a place at the Opéra-Comique and not at the Opera. But if two musical theatres of different kinds exist, one of which pretends to have the monopoly of great art, while the other with a simpler and more intimate character seeks only to please, it is always the latter that has a better chance of development and of making new discoveries; for the first is oppressed by traditions that become ever stiffer and more pedantic, while the other with its simplicity and lack of pretension is able to accommodate itself to any manner of life. How many artists have revolutionised their times while they were merely looked upon as people who amused! Frescobaldi and Philipp Emanuel Bach brought fresh life to art, but were scorned by the so-called representatives of fine art; Mozart’s opere buffe have more of truth and life in them than his opere serie; and there is as much dramatic power in an opéra-comique like Carmen as in all the repertory of grand Opera to-day. And so the Opéra-Comique theatre has become the home of the boldest experiments in musical drama. The most daring or the most violent ventures into musical realism, after the manner of Charpentier or Bruneau, and the subtle fantasies of a delicate art of dreams, like that of Debussy, have found a welcome there. It has also been open to various kinds of foreign art: Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, Verdi’s Falstaff, the works of Puccini, Mascagni, and the young Italian school, Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot, Rimsky-Korsakow’s Snégourotchka, have all been played. And they have even given the classic masterpieces of opera there: Fidelio, Orfeo, Alceste, the two Iphigénies; and taken more pains with them and mounted them with more pious zeal than they do at the Opera. The operas themselves are more at home there, too, for the size of the theatre is more like that of the eighteenth-century theatres. It is true that the stage rather lacks depth; but the ingenuity of the director and the admirable scenic artists he employs has succeeded in making one forget this defect, and accomplished marvels. No theatre in Paris has more artistic staging, and some of the scenery that has been designed lately is a masterpiece of its kind. The Opéra-Comique has also the advantage of excellent conductors, and one of them, M. Messager, who is now Director, has, by his clever interpretations, greatly contributed to the success of the works of the new school.
New Musical Institutions
1. The Société Nationale
Before 1870, French music had already in the Opera and the Opéra-Comique (without counting the various endeavours of the Théâtre Lyrique) an outlet which was nearly enough for the needs of her dramatic productions. Even when musical taste was most decadent, the works of Gounod, Ambroise Thomas, and Massé, had always upheld the name of French opéra-comique. But what was almost entirely lacking was an outlet for symphonic music and chamber-music. “Before 1870,” wrote M. Saint-Saëns in Harmonie et Mélodie, “a French composer who was foolish enough to venture on to the ground of instrumental music had no other means of getting his works performed than by himself arranging a concert for them.” Such was Berlioz’s case; for he had to gather together an orchestra and hire a room each time he wished to get a hearing for his great symphonies. The financial result was often disastrous: the performance of the Damnation de Faust in 1846 was, for example, a complete failure, and he had to give it up. The Conservatoire, which was formerly more hospitable, rather reluctantly performed a portion of L’Enfance du Christ; but it gave young composers no encouragement.
The first man who attempted to make the symphony popular, M. Saint-Saëns tells us in his Portraits et Souvenirs, was Seghers, a dissentient member of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, who during several years (1848-1854) was conductor of the Société de Sainte-Cécile, which had its quarters in a room in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. There he had performed Mendelssohn’s Symphonie Italienne, the overtures to Tannhäuser and Manfred, Berlioz’s Fuite en Égypte, and Gounod’s and Bizet’s early, works. But lack of money cut short his efforts.
Pasdeloup took up the work. After having been conductor for the Société des jeunes artistes du Conservatoire since 1851, in the Salle Herz, he founded, in 1861, at the Cirque d’Hiver, with the financial support of a rich moneylender, the first Concerts populaires de musique classique. Unhappily, says M. Saint-Saëns, Pasdeloup, even up to 1870, made an almost exclusive selection of German classical works. He raised an impenetrable barrier before the young French school, and the only French works he played were symphonies by Gounod and Gouvy, and the overtures of Les Francs-Juges and La Muette. It was impossible to set up a rival society against him; and an exclusive monopoly in music was, therefore, held by him. According to M. Saint-Saëns he was a mediocre musician, and had, in spite of his passion for music, “immense incapacity.” In Harmonie et Mélodie M. Saint-Saëns says: “The few chamber-music societies that existed were also closed to all new-comers; their programmes only contained the names of undisputed celebrities, the writers of classic symphonies. In those times one had really to be devoid of all common sense to write music.”
A new generation was growing up, however,—a generation that was serious and thoughtful, that was more attracted by pure music than by the theatre, that was filled with a burning desire to found a national art. To this generation M. Saint-Saëns and M. Vincent d’Indy belong. The war of 1870 strengthened these ideas about music, and, while the war was still raging, there sprang from them the Société Nationale de Musique.
One must speak of this society with respect, for it was the cradle and sanctuary of French art.[215] All that was great in French music from 1870 to 1900 found a home there. Without it, the greater part of the works that are the honour of our music would never have been played; perhaps they would not ever have been written. The Society possessed the rare merit of being able to anticipate public opinion by ten or eleven years, and in some ways it has formed the public mind and obliged it to honour those whom the Society had already recognised as great musicians.
The two founders of the Society were Romaine Bussine, professor of Singing at the Conservatoire, and M. Camille Saint-Saëns. And, following their initiative, César Franck, Ernest Guiraud, Massenet, Garcin, Gabriel Fauré, Henri Duparc, Théodore Dubois, and Taffanel, joined forces with them, and at a meeting on 25 February, 1871, agreed to found a musical society that should give hearings to the works of living French composers exclusively. The first meetings were interrupted by the doings of the Commune; but they began again in October, 1871. The Society’s early statutes were drawn up by Alexis de Castillon, a military officer and a talented composer, who, after having served in the war of 1870 at the head of the mobiles of Eure-et-Loire, was one of the founders of French chamber-music, and died prematurely in 1873, aged thirty-five. It was these statutes, signed by Saint-Saëns, Castillon, and Garcin, that gave the Society its title of Société Nationale de Musique, and its device, “Ars gallica.” This is what the statutes say about the aims of the Society:
“The aim of the Society is to aid the production and the popularisation of all serious musical works, whether published or unpublished, of French composers; to encourage and bring to light, so far as is in its power, all musical endeavour, whatever form it may take, on condition that there is evidence of high, artistic aspiration on the part of the author.... It is in brotherly love, with complete forgetfulness of self, and with the firm intention of aiding one another as far as they can, that the members of the Society will co-operate, each in his own sphere of action, for the study and performance of the works which they shall be called upon to select and to interpret.”
The first Committee was made up as follows: President, Bussine; Vice-President, Saint-Saëns; Secretary, Alexis de Castillon; Under-Secretary, Jules Garcin; Treasurer, Lenepveu. The members of the Committee were: César Franck, Théodore Dubois, E. Guiraud, Fissot, Bourgault-Ducoudray, Fauré, and Lalo.
The first concert was given on 25 November, 1871, in the Salle Pleyel; and it is worthy of note that the first work played was a trio of César Franck’s. Since then the Society has given three hundred and fifty performances of chamber-music or orchestral works. The best known French composers and virtuosi have taken part as executants, among others: César Franck, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Bizet, Vincent d’Indy, Fauré, Chabrier, Guiraud, Debussy, Lekeu, Lamoureux, Chevillard, Taffanel, Widor, Messager, Diémer, Sarasate, Risler, Cortot, Ysaye, etc. And among the compositions that have been played for the first time it is enough to mention the following:
César Franck: Nearly the whole of his works, including his Sonata, Trio, Quartette, Quintette, Symphonic Variations, Preludes and Fugues, Mass, Rédemption, Psyche, and a part of Les Béatitudes.
Saint-Saëns: Phaéton, Second Symphony, Sonatas,Persian Melodies, the Rapsodie d’Auvergne, and a quartette.
Vincent d’Indy: The trilogy of Wallenstein, the Poême des Montagues, the Symphonie sur un thème montagnard, and quartettes.
Chabrier: Part of Gwendoline.
Lalo: Fragments of the Roi d’Ys, Rhapsodies and Symphonies.
Bruneau: Penthésilée, La Belle au Bois Dormant.
Chausson: Viviane, Hélène, La Tempête, a quartette and a symphony.
Debussy: La Damoiselle élue, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a quartette, pieces for the pianoforte, and melodies.
Dukas: L’Apprenti Sorcier, and a sonata for the pianoforte.
Lekeu: Andromède.
Alberic Magnard: Symphonies and a quartette.
Ravel: Schéhérazade, Histoires Naturelles, etc.
Saint-Saëns was director with Bussine until 1886. But from 1881 the influence of Franck and his disciples became more and more felt; and Saint-Saëns began to lose interest in the efforts of the new school. In 1886 there was a division of opinion about a proposition of Vincent d’Indy’s to introduce the works of classical masters and foreign composers into the programmes. This proposition was adopted; but Saint-Saëns and Bussine sent in their resignations. Franck then became the true president, although he refused the title; and after his death, in 1890, Vincent d’Indy took his place. Under these two directors a quite important place was given to old and classical music by composers such as Palestrina, Vittoria, Josquin, Bach, Händel, Rameau, Gluck, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms. Foreign contemporary music only occupied a very limited place. Wagner’s name only appears once, in a transcription of the Venusberg for the pianoforte; and Richard Strauss’s name figures only against his Quartette. Grieg had his hour of popularity there about 1887, as well as the Russians—Moussorgski, Borodine, Rimsky-Korsakow, Liadow, and Glazounow—whom M. Debussy has perhaps helped to make known to us. At the present moment the Society seems more exclusively French than ever; and the influence of M. Vincent d’Indy and the school of Franck is predominant. That is only natural; the Société Nationale most truly earned its title to glory by discerning César Franck’s genius; for the Society was a little sanctuary where the great artist was honoured at a time when he was ignored or laughed at by the rest of the world. This character of a sanctuary was kept even after victory. In its general programme of 1903-1904, the Society reminded us with pride that it had remained faithful to the promises made in 1871; and it added that if, in order to permit its members to keep abreast of the general progress of art, it had little by little allowed classical masterpieces and modern foreign works of interest on its programmes, it had, however, always kept its guest-chamber open, and shaped many a future reputation there.
Nothing is truer. The Société Nationale is indeed a guest-chamber, where for the past thirty years a guest-chamber art and guest-chamber opinions have been formed; and from it some of the profoundest and most poetic French music has been derived, such as Franck’s and Debussy’s chamber-music. But its atmosphere is becoming daily more rarefied. That is a danger. It is to be feared that this art and thought may be absorbed by the decadent subtleties or pedantic scholasticism which is apt to accompany all coteries—in short, that its music will be salon-music rather than chamber-music. Even the Society itself seems to have felt this at times; and at different periods has sought contact with the general public, and put itself into direct communication with it. “It becomes more and more necessary,” wrote M. Saint-Saëns, “that French composers should find something intermediate between an intimate hearing of their music and a performance of it before the general public—something which would not be a speculative thing like a big concert, but which would be analogous to the artistic attraction of an exhibition of painting, and which would dare everything. It is a new aim for the Société Nationale.” But it does not seem that it has yet attained this goal, nor that it is near attaining it, despite some not quite happy attempts.
But at least the Société Nationale has gloriously achieved the task it set itself. In thirty years it has created in Paris a little centre of earnest composers of symphonies and chamber-music, and a cultured public that seems able to understand them.
2. The Grand Symphony Concerts
Although it was an urgent matter that young French composers should unite to withstand the general indifference of the public, it was more urgent still that that indifference should be attacked, and that music should be brought within reach of ordinary people. It was a matter of taking up and completing Pasdeloup’s work in a more artistic and more modern spirit.
A publisher of music, Georges Hartmann, feeling the forces that were drawing together in French art, gathered about him the greater part of the talented men of the young school—Franck, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Delibes, Lalo, A. de Castillon, Th. Dubois, Guiraud, Godard, Paladilhe, and Joncières—and undertook to produce their works in public. He rented the Odéon theatre, and got together an orchestra, the conductorship of which he entrusted to M. Édouard Colonne. And on 2 March, 1873, the Concert National was inaugurated in a musical matinée, where M. Saint-Saëns played his Concerto in G minor and Mme. Viardot sang Schubert’s Roi des Aulnes. In the first year six ordinary concerts were given, and, besides that, two sacred concerts with choirs, at which César Franck’s Rédemption and Massenet’s Marie-Magdeleine were performed. In 1874 the Odéon was abandoned for the Châtelet. This venture attracted some attention, and the concerts were patronised by the public; but the financial results were not great.216 Hartmann was discouraged and wished to give the whole thing up. But M. Édouard Colonne conceived the idea of turning his orchestra into a society, and of continuing the work under the name of Association Artistique. Among the artist-founders were MM. Bruneau, Benjamin Godard, and Paul Hillemacher. Its early days were full of struggle; but owing to the perseverance of the Association all obstacles were finally overcome. In 1903 a festival was held to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. During these thirty years it had given more than eight hundred concerts, and had performed the works of about three hundred composers, of which half were French. The four composers most frequently heard at the Châtelet were Saint-Saëns, Wagner, Beethoven, and Berlioz.217
Berlioz is almost the exclusive property of the Châtelet. Not only have they performed his works there more frequently than anywhere else,218 but they are better understood there than in other places. The Colonne orchestra and its conductor, gifted with great warmth of spirit,—though it is sometimes a little intemperate—are rather bothered by works of a classic nature and by those that show contemplative feeling; but they give wonderful expression to Berlioz’s tumultuous romanticism, his poetic enthusiasm, and the bright and delicate colouring of his paintings and his musical landscapes. Although Berlioz has his place at the Chevillard and Conservatoire concerts, it is to the Châtelet that his followers flock; and their enthusiasm has not been affected by the campaign that for several years has been directed against Berlioz by some French critics under the influence of the younger musical party—the followers of d’Indy and Debussy.
It is also at the Châtelet that the keenest musical passion has been preserved in the public, even to this day. Thanks to the size of the theatre, which is one of the largest in Paris, and to the great number of cheap seats, you may always find there a number of young students who make the most interested kind of public possible. And the music is something more than a pleasure to them—it is a necessity. There are some that make great sacrifices in order to have a seat at the Sunday concerts. And many of these young men and women live all the week on the thought of forgetting the world for a few hours in musical enjoyment. Such a public did not exist in France before 1870. It is to the honour of the Châtelet and the Pasdeloup concerts to have created it.
Édouard Colonne has done more than educate musical taste in France; for no one has worked harder than he to break down the barriers that separated the French public from the art of other lands; and, at the same time, he has himself helped to make French art known to foreigners. When he himself was conducting concerts all over Europe he entrusted the conductorship at the Châtelet to the great German Kapellmeister and to foreign composers—to Richard Strauss, Grieg, Tschaikowsky, Hans Richter, Hermann Levi, Mottl, Nikisch, Mengelberg, Siegfried Wagner, and many others. No other conductor has done so much for Parisian music during the last thirty years; and we must not forget it.219
The Lamoureux concerts have had from the beginning a very different character from the Colonne concerts. That difference lies partly in the personality of the two conductors, and partly in the fact that the Lamoureux concerts, although of later date than the Colonne concerts by less than ten years, represent a new generation in music. The progress of the musical public was singularly rapid: hardly had they explored the rich treasure-house of Berlioz’s music than they were making discoveries in the world of Wagner. And in that world they needed a new guide, who had intimate knowledge of Wagner’s art and of German art in general. Charles Lamoureux was that guide. In 1873 he conducted special performances of Bach and Händel, given by the Societé de l’Harmonie sacrée. After leaving the conductorship of the Opera, he inaugurated, on 21 October, 1881, at the Château-d’Eau theatre, the Société des Nouveaux Concerts. These concerts had at first very comprehensive programmes of every kind of music and every kind of school. At the first concert there were works of Beethoven, Händel, Gluck, Sacchini, Cimarosa, and Berlioz. In the first year Lamoureux had Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed, as well as a large part of Lohengrin, and numerous works of young French musicians. Various compositions of Lalo, Vincent d’Indy, and Chabrier, were performed there for the first time. But it was especially to the study of Wagner’s works that Lamoureux most gladly devoted himself. It was he who gave the first hearings of Wagner in their entirety in France, such as the first and second act of Tristan, in 1884-1885. The Wagnerian battle was still going on at that time, as the notice printed at the head of the programme of Tristan shows.
“The management of the Société des Nouveaux Concerts is desirous of avoiding any disturbance during the performance of the second act of Tristan, and urgently and respectfully begs that the audience will abstain from giving any mark of their approval or disapproval before the end of the act.”
The same year, in the Eden theatre, to which the concerts had been transferred, Lamoureux conducted, for the first time in Paris, the first act of the Walküre. In these concerts the tenor, Van Dyck, made his début; later, he was one of the leading performers at Bayreuth. In 1886-1887 Lamoureux rehearsed and conducted the only performance of Lohengrin at the Eden theatre. Disturbances in the streets prevented further performances. Lamoureux then established himself in the concert-room of the Cirque des Champs Élysées, where for eleven years he has given what are called the Concerts-Lamoureux. He continued to spread the knowledge of Wagner’s works, and has sometimes had the help of some of the most celebrated of the Bayreuth artists, among others, that of Mme. Materna and Lilli Lehmann. At the end of the season of 1897 Lamoureux wished to disband his orchestra in order to conduct concerts abroad. But the members of the orchestra decided to remain together under the name of the Association des Concerts-Lamoureux, with Lamoureux’s son-in-law, M. Camille Chevillard, as conductor. But Lamoureux was not long before he returned to the conductorship of the concerts, which had now returned to the Château-d’Eau theatre; and a few months before his death, in 1899, he conducted the first performance of Tristan at the Nouveau theatre. And so he had the happiness of being present at the complete triumph of the cause for which he had fought so stubbornly for nearly twenty years.220
Lamoureux’s performances of Wagner’s works have been among the best that have ever been given. He had a regard for the work as a whole and a care for its details, to which the Colonne orchestra did not quite attain. On the other hand, Lamoureux’s defect was the exuberant liveliness with which he interpreted compositions of a romantic nature. He did not fully understand these works; and although he knew much more about classic art than his rival, he rendered its letter rather than its spirit, and paid such sedulous attention to detail that music like Beethoven’s lost its intensity and its life. But both his talents and his defects fitted him to be an excellent interpreter of the young neo-Wagnerian school, the principal representatives of which in France were then M. Vincent d’Indy and M. Emmanuel Chabrier. Lamoureux had need, to a certain extent, to be himself directed either by the living traditions of Bayreuth, or by the thought of modern and living composers; and the greatest service he rendered to French music was his creation, thanks to his extreme care for material perfection, of an orchestra that was marvellously equipped for symphonic music.
This seeking for perfection has been carried on by his successor, M. Camille Chevillard, whose orchestra is even more refined still. One may say, I think, that it is to-day the best in Paris. M. Chevillard is more attracted by pure music than Lamoureux was; and he rightly finds that dramatic music has been occupying too large a place in Parisian concerts. In a letter published by the Mercure de France, in January, 1903, he reproaches the educators of public taste with having fostered a liking for opera, and with not having awakened a respect for pure music: “Any four bars from one of Mozart’s quartettes have,” he says, “a greater educational value than a showy scene from an opera.” No one in Paris conducts classic works better than he, especially the works that possess clean, plastic beauty; and in Germany itself it would be difficult to find anyone who would give a more delicate interpretation of some of Händel’s and Mozart’s symphonic works. His orchestra has kept, moreover, the superiority that it had already acquired in its repertory of Wagner’s works. But M. Chevillard has communicated a warmth and energy of rhythm to it that it did not possess before. His interpretations of Beethoven, even if they are somewhat superficial, are very full of life. Like Lamoureux, he has hardly caught the spirit of French romantic works—of Berlioz, and still less of Franck and his school; and he seems to have but lukewarm sympathy for the more recent developments of French music. But he understands well the German romantic composers, especially Schumann, for whom he has a marked liking; and he tried, though without great success, to introduce Liszt and Brahms into France, and was the first among us to attract real attention to Russian music, whose brilliant and delicate colouring he excels in rendering. And, like M. Colonne, he has brought the great German Kapellmeister among us—Weingartner, Nikisch, and Richard Strauss, the last mentioned having directed the first performance in Paris of his symphonic poems, Zarathustra, Don Quixote, and Heldenleben, at the Lamoureux concerts.
Nothing could have better completed the musical education of the public than this continuous defile, for the past ten years, of Kapellmeister and foreign virtuosi, and the comparisons that their different styles and interpretations afforded. Nothing has better helped forward the improvement of Parisian orchestras than the emulation brought about by the meetings between Parisian conductors and those of other countries. At present our own conductors are worthy rivals of the best in Germany. The string instruments are good; the wood has kept its old French superiority; and though the brass is still the weakest part of our orchestras, it has made great progress. One may still criticise the grouping of orchestras at concerts, for it is often defective; there is a disproportion between the different families of instruments and, in consequence, between their different sonorities, some of which are too thin and others too dull. But these defects are fairly common all over Europe to-day. Unhappily, more peculiar to France is the insufficiency or poor quality of the choirs, whose progress has been far from keeping pace with that of the orchestras. It is to this side of music that the directors of concerts must now bring their efforts to bear.
The Lamoureux Concerts have not had as stable a dwelling-place as the Châtelet Concerts. They have wandered about Paris from one room to another—from the Cirque d’Hiver to the Cirque d’Été, and from the Château-d’Eau to the Nouveau Théâtre. At the present moment they are in the Salle Gaveau, which is much too small for them. In spite of the progress of music and musical taste, Paris has not yet a concert-hall, as the smallest provincial towns in Germany have; and this shameful indifference, unworthy of the artistic renown of Paris, obliges the symphonic societies to take refuge in circuses or theatres, which they share with other kinds of performers, though the acoustics of these places are not intended for concerts. And so it happens that for six years the Chevillard Concerts have been given at the back of a music-hall, which has the same entrance, and which is only separated from the concert-room by a small passage, so that the roaring choruses of a danse du venire may mingle with an adagio of Beethoven’s or a scene from the Tetralogy. Worse than this, the smallness of the place into which these concerts have been crammed has been a serious obstacle in the way of making them popular. Nevertheless, in the promenade and galleries of the Nouveau Théâtre, in later years, arose what may be called a little war over concertos. It was rather a curious episode in the history of the musical taste of Paris, and merits a few words here. In every country, but especially in those countries that are least musical, a virtuoso profits by public favour, often to the detriment of the work he is performing; for what is most liked in music is the musician. The virtuoso—whose importance must not be underrated, and who is worthy of honour when he is a reverential and sympathetic interpreter of genius—has too often taken a lamentable part, especially in Latin countries, in the degrading of musical taste; for empty virtuosity makes a desert of art. The fashion of inept fantasias and acrobatic variations has, it is true, gone by; but of late years virtuosity has returned in an offensive way, and, sheltering itself under the solemn classical name of “concertos,” it usurped a place of rather exaggerated importance in symphony concerts, and especially in M. Chevillard’s concerts—a place which Lamoureux would never have given it. Then the younger and more enthusiastic part of the public began to revolt; and very soon, with perfect impartiality and quite indiscriminately, began to hiss famous and obscure virtuosi alike in their performance of any concerto, whether it was splendid or detestable. Nothing found favour with them—neither the playing of Paderewski, nor the music of Saint-Saëns and the great masters. The management of the concerts went its own way and tried in vain to put out the disturbers, and to forbid them entry to the concert-room; and the battle went on for a long time, and critics were drawn into it. But in spite of its ridiculous excesses, and the barbarism of the methods by which the parterre expressed its opinions, that quarrel is not without interest. It proved how a passion and enthusiasm for music had been roused in France; and the passion, though unjust in its expression, was more fruitful and of far greater worth than indifference.
3. The Schola Cantorum
The Lamoureux Concerts had served their purpose, and, in their turn, their heroic mission came to an end. They had forced Wagner on Paris; and Paris, as always, had overshot the mark, and could swear by no one but Wagner. French musicians were translating Gounod’s or Massenet’s ideas into Wagner’s style; Parisian critics repeated Wagner’s theories at random, whether they understood them or not—generally when they did not understand them. A reaction was inevitable directly Paris was well saturated with Wagner; and it came about in 1890, among a chosen few, some of whom had been, and were even still, under Wagner’s influence. It was at first only a mild reaction, and showed itself in a return to the classics of the past and to the great primitives in music.
There had been several attempts in this direction before, but none of them had succeeded in making any impression on the mass of the public. In 1843, Joseph Napoléon Ney, Prince of Moszkowa, founded in Paris a society for the performance of religious and classical vocal music. This society, which the Prince himself conducted in his own house, set itself to perform the vocal works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.221
In 1853, Louis Niedermeyer founded in Paris an École de musique religieuse et classique, which strove “to form singers, organists, choir-masters, and composers of music, by the study of the classic works of the great masters of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.” This school, subsidised by the State, was a nursery for some real musicians. It reckoned among its pupils some noted composers, conductors, organists, and historians; among others, M. Gabriel Fauré, M. André Messager, M. Eugène Gigout, and M. Henry Expert. M. Saint-Saëns was a professor there, and became its president. Nearly five hundred organists, choir-masters, and professors of music of the Conservatoire and other French colleges were trained there. But this school, serious in intention, and a refuge for the classic spirit in the midst of the prevailing bad taste, did not trouble itself about influencing the public, and, in fact, almost ignored it.
Lamoureux attempted in 1873 to perform the great choral works of Bach and Händel; and in 1878 the celebrated French organist, M. Alexandre Guilmant, ventured to give concerts at the Trocadéro for the organ and orchestra, which were devoted to religious music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the deplorable acoustics of the concert-room had a prejudicial effect on the works that were performed there; and the public did not respond very warmly to M. Guilmant’s efforts, and seemed from the first only to find an historical interest in the masterpieces, and to miss their depth and life altogether.
Then a pupil of Franck’s, M. Henry Expert, who began his admirable works on Musical History in 1882, laid the foundation of the Société J.S. Bach, in order to spread the knowledge of ancient music written between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. And he succeeded in interesting in his undertaking, not only the principal French musicians, such as César Franck, Saint-Saëns, and Gounod, but also foreigners, such as Hans von Bülow, Tschaikowsky, Grieg, Sgambati, and Gevaert. Unhappily this society never got farther than arranging what it wanted to do, and only sketched out the plans that were realised later by Charles Bordes.
The general public were not really interested in the art of the old musicians until the Association des Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais was founded in 1892 by Charles Bordes, the choirmaster of the church of Saint-Gervais. The immediate success and the noisy renown of the Society were due to other things besides the talent of its conductor, who combined with a lively artistic intelligence both common-sense and energy and a remarkable gift for organisation—it was due partly to the help of favourable circumstances, partly to the surfeit of Wagnerism, of which I have just spoken, and partly to the birth of a new religious art, which had sprung up since the death of César Franck round the memory of that great musician.
It is not my intention here to write an appreciation of César Franck’s genius, but it is not possible to understand the musical movement in Paris of the last fifteen years if one does not take into account the importance of his teaching. The organ class at the Conservatoire, where in 1872 Franck succeeded his old master Benoist, was for a long time, as M. Vincent d’Indy says, “the true centre for the study of Composition at the Conservatoire. Many of his fellow-workers could never bring themselves to look upon him as one of themselves, because he had the boldness to see in art something other than the means of earning a living. Indeed, César Franck was not of them; and they made him feel this.” But the young students made no mistake about the matter. “At this time,” M. d’Indy also tells us,222 “that is to say from 1872 to 1876, the three courses of Advanced Musical Composition were given by three professors who were not at all fitted for their work. One was Victor Massé, a composer of simple light operas and a man with no understanding of a symphony, who was very frequently ill and had to entrust his teaching to one of his pupils; another was Henri Reber, an oldish musician with narrow and dogmatic ideas; and the third was François Bazin, who was not capable of distinguishing in his pupil’s fugues a false answer from a true one, and whose highest title to glory is derived from a composition called Le Voyage en Chine. So it is not surprising that César Franck’s teaching, founded on that of Bach and Beethoven, but admitting, as well, imagination and all new and liberal ideas, did, at that time, draw to him all young minds that had lofty ambitions and that were really in love with their art. And so, quite unconsciously, the master attracted to himself all the sincere and artistic talent that was scattered about the different classes of the Conservatoire, as well as that of his outside pupils.”
Among those who received his direct teaching223 were Henri Duparc, Alexis de Castillon, Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Chausson, Pierre de Bréville, Augusta Holmes, Louis de Serres, Charles Bordes, Guy Ropartz, and Guillaume Lekeu. And if to these we add the pupils in the organ classes, who also came under his influence, we have, among others, Samuel Rousseau, Gabriel Pierné, Auguste Chapuis, Paul Vidal, and Georges Marty; and also the virtuosi who were for some time intimate with him, such as Armand Parent and Eugène Ysaye, to whom Franck dedicated his violin sonata. And if one thinks, too, of the artists who, though not his pupils, felt his power—artists such as Gabriel Fauré, Alexandre Guilmant, Emmanuel Chabrier, and Paul Dukas—one may see that nearly the whole musical generation of Paris of that time took its inspiration from César Franck. And it was largely with the intention of perpetuating his teaching that his pupils, Charles Bordes and Vincent d’Indy, and his friend, Alexandre Guilmant, founded in 1894, four years after his death, the Schola Cantorum, which has kept his memory alive ever since.
“Our revered father, Franck,” said Vincent d’Indy, in a speech, “is in some ways the grandfather of the Schola Cantorum; for it is his system of teaching that we apply and try to carry on here.”224
The influence of Franck was twofold: it was artistic and moral. On the one hand he was, if I may so put it, an admirable professor of musical architecture; he founded a school of symphony and chamber-music such as France had never had before, which in certain directions was newer and more daring than that of the German symphony writers. And, on the other hand, he exercised by his own character a memorable influence over all those who came into contact with him. His profound faith, that fine, indulgent, and calm faith, shone round him like a glory. The Catholic party, who were awakening to new life in France just then, tried, after his death, to identify his ideals with their own. But this was, as we have said elsewhere,225 to narrow Franck’s mind; for its great charm lay in its harmonious union of religion and liberty, which never limited its artistic sympathies to an exclusive ideal. The composer’s son, M. Georges César-Franck, has in vain protested against this monopoly of his father, and says:
“According to certain writers, who wish to reduce everything to a dead level and deduce all things from a single cause, César Franck was a mystic whose true domain was religious music. Nothing could be wider of the mark. The public is given to generalisations, and is too easily gulled. They will judge a composer on a single work, or a group of works, and class him once and for all.... In reality, my father was a man of all-round accomplishments. As a finished musician, he was master of every form of composition. He wrote both religious and secular music—melodies, dances, pastorales, oratorios, symphonic poems, symphonies, sonatas, trios, and operas. He did not confine his attention to any particular kind of work to the exclusion of other kinds; he was able to express himself in any way he chose.”226
But as what was really religious in him found itself in agreement with a current of thought that was rather powerful at that time, it was inevitable that this one side of his genius should be first brought to light, and that religious music should be the first to benefit by his work. And also one of the early manifestos227 of the Schola Cantorum dealt with the reform of sacred music by carrying it back to great ancient models; and its first decision was as follows: “Gregorian chant shall rest for all time the fountain-head and the base of the Church’s music, and shall constitute the only model by which it may be truly judged.”228
They added to this, however, music à la Palestrina, and any music that conformed to its principles or was inspired by its example. Such archaic ideas would certainly never create a new kind of religious music, but at least they have helped to restore the old art; and they received their official consecration in the famous letter written by Pope Pius X on the Re-form of Sacred Music.
The achievement of an artistic ideal so restricted as this would not have sufficed, however, to assure the success of the Schola Cantorum, nor establish its authority with a public that was, whatever people may say, only lukewarm in its religion, and that would only interest itself in the religious art of other days as it would in a passing fashion. But the spirit of curiosity and the meaning of modern life began to weigh little by little with the Schola’s principles. After singing Palestrinian and Gregorian chants at the Church of Saint-Gervais during Holy Week, they played Carissimi, Schütz, and the Italian and German masters of the seventeenth century. Then came Bach’s cantatas; and their performance, given by M. Bordes in the Salle d’Harcourt, attracted large audiences and started the cult of this master in Paris. Then they sang Rameau and Gluck; and, finally, all ancient music, sacred or secular, was approved. And so this little school, which had been consecrated to the cult of ancient religious music, and had made so modest a beginning,229 developed into a School of Art capable of satisfying modern wants; and in 1900, when M. Vincent d’Indy became president of the Schola, it was decided to move the school into larger premises in the Rue Saint-Jacques.
The programme of this new school was explained by M. Vincent d’Indy in his Inauguration speech on 2 November, 1900, and showed how he based the foundations of musical teaching upon history.
“Art, in its journey across the ages, is a microcosm which has, like the world itself, successive stages of youth, maturity, and old age; but it never dies—it renews itself perpetually. It is not like a perfect circle; it is like a spiral, and in its growth is always mounting higher. I believe in making students follow the same path that art itself has followed, so that they shall undergo during their term of study the same transformations that music itself has undergone during the centuries. In this way they will come out much better armed for the difficulties of modern art, since they will have lived, so to speak, the life of art, and followed the natural and inevitable order of the forms that made up the different epochs of artistic development.”
M. d’Indy claims that this system may be applied as successfully to instrumentalists and singers as to future composers. “For it is as profitable for them to know,” he says, “how to sing a liturgic monody properly, or to be able to play a Corelli sonata in a suitable style, as it is for composers to study the structure of a motet or a suite.” M. d’Indy, moreover, obliged all students, without distinction, to attend the lectures on vocal music; and, besides that, he instituted a special class to teach the conducting of orchestras—which was something quite new to France. His object, as he clearly said, was to give a new form to modern music by means of a knowledge of the music of the past.
On this subject he says:
“Where shall we find the quickening life that will give us fresh forms and formulas? The source is not really difficult to discover. Do not let us seek it anywhere but in the decorative art of the plain-song singers, in the architectural art of the age of Palestrina, and in the expressive art of the great Italians of the seventeenth century. It is there, and there alone, that we shall find melodic craft, rhythmic cadences, and a harmonic magnificence that is really new—if our modern spirit can only learn how to absorb their nutritious essence. And so I prescribe for all pupils in the School the careful study of classic forms, because they alone are able to give the elements of a new life to our music, which will be founded on principles that are sane, solid, and trustworthy.”230
This fine and intelligent eclecticism was likely to develop a critical spirit, but was rather less adapted to form original personalities. In any case, however, it was excellent discipline in the formation of musical taste; and, in truth, the École Supérieure de musique of the Rue Saint-Jacques became a new Conservatoire, both more modern and more learned than the old Conservatoire, and freer, and yet less free, because more self-satisfied. The school developed very quickly. From having twenty-one pupils in 1896, it had three hundred and twenty in 1908. Eminent musicians and professors learned in the history and science of music taught there, and M. d’Indy himself took the Composition classes.231 And in its short career the Schola may already be credited with the training of young composers, such as MM. Roussel, Déodat de Séverac, Gustave Bret, Labey, Samazeuilh, R. de Castéra, Sérieyx, Alquier, Coindreau, Estienne, Le Flem, and Groz; and to these may be added M. d’Indy’s private pupils, Witkowski, and one of the foremost of modern composers, Alberic Magnard.
Outside the influence that the School exercises by its teaching, its propaganda by means of concerts and publications is very active. From its foundation up to 1904 it had given two hundred performances in one hundred and thirty provincial towns; more than one hundred and fifty concerts in Paris, of which fifty were of orchestral and choral music, sixty of organ music, and forty of chamber-music. These concerts have been well attended by enthusiastic and appreciative audiences, and have been a school for public taste. One does not look for perfect execution there,232 but for intelligent interpretations and a thirst for a fuller knowledge of the great works of the past. They have revived Monteverde’s Orfeo and his Incoronazione di Poppea, which had been forgotten these three centuries; and it was following an interest created by repeated performances of Rameau at the Schola233 that Dardanus was performed at Dijon under M. d’Indy’s direction, Castor et Pollux at Montpellier under M. Charles Bordes’ direction, and that in 1908 the Opera at Paris gave Hippolyte et Aricie. Branches of the Schola have, been started at Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Avignon, Montpellier, Nancy, Épinal, Montluçon, Saint-Chamond, and Saint-Jean-deLuz.234 A publishing house has been associated with the School at Paris; and from this we get Reviews, such as the Tribune de Saint-Gervais; publications of old music, such as the Anthologie des maîtres religieux primitifs des XVe, XVIe, et XVIIe siècles, edited by Charles Bordes; the Archives des maîtres de l’orgue des XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe siècles, edited by Alexandre Guilmant and André Pirro; the Concerts spirituels de la Schola, the new editions of Orfeo, and the Incoronazione di Poppea, edited by M. Vincent d’Indy; and publications of modern music, such as the Collection du chant populaire, the Répertoire moderne de musique vocale et d’orgue, and, notably, the Édition mutuelle, published by the composers themselves, whose property it is.
And all this shows such a marvellous activity and gives evidence of such whole-hearted enthusiasm that I cannot bring myself to join issue with the critics who have lately attacked the Schola, though their attacks have been in some degree merited. Pettiness is to be found even in great artists, and imperfection in every human work; and defects reveal themselves most clearly after a victory has been won. The Schola has not escaped the critical periods that accompany growth, through which every work must pass if it is to triumph and endure. Without doubt, the sudden illness and premature retirement of the founder of the work, M. Charles Bordes, deprived the Schola of one of its most active forces—a force that was perhaps necessary for the school’s successful development. For this man had been the school’s life and soul, and retired, worn out by the heavy labours which he had borne alone during ten years.235
But M. d’Indy, like a courageous apostle, has continued the direction of the Schola with a firm hand and unwearying care, despite his varied activities as composer, professor, and Kapellmeister; and he is one of the surest and most reliable guides for a young school of French music. And if his mind is rather given to abstractions, and his moods are sometimes rather combative, and certain prejudices (which are not always musical ones) make him lean towards ideals of reason and immovable faith—and if at times his followers unconsciously distort his ideas, and try to dam the stream which flows from life itself, I am convinced it is only the passing evidence of a reaction, perhaps a natural one, against the exaggerations they have encountered, and that the Schola will always know how to avoid the rocks where revolutionaries of the past have run aground and become the conservatives of the morrow. I hope the Schola will never grow into the kind of aristocratic school that builds walls about itself, but will always open wide its doors and welcome every new force in music, even to such as have ideals opposed to its own. Its future renown and the well-being of French art can only thus be maintained.
4. The Chamber-Music Societies
On parallel lines with the big symphony concerts and the new conservatoires, societies were formed to spread the knowledge of, and form a taste for, chamber-music. This music, so common in Germany, was almost unknown in Paris before 1870. There was nothing but the Maurin Quartette, which gave five or six concerts every winter in the Salle Pleyel, and played Beethoven’s last quartettes there. But these performances only attracted a small number of artists;236 and so far as the general public was concerned the Société des derniers quartuors de Beethoven had the reputation for devoting itself to a singular and incomprehensible kind of music that had been written by a deaf man.
The true founder of chamber-music concerts in Paris was M. Émile Lemoine, who started the society called La Trompette. He has given us a history of his work in the Revue Musicale (15 October, 1903). He was an engineer at the École Poly-technique; and after he had left school he formed, about 1860, a quartette society of earnest amateurs, though they were not very skilled performers. This little society continued to meet regularly, and after perfecting itself little by little, finally opened its doors to the general public, which attended the concerts in gradually increasing numbers. Then La Trompette came into being. It prospered from the day that M. Saint-Saëns—who was at that time a young man—made its acquaintance. He was pleased with these gatherings, and became an intimate friend of Lemoine; and he interested himself in the society, and induced other celebrated artists to take an interest in it, too. Among its early friends were MM. Alphonse Duvernoy, Diémer, Pugno, Delsart, Breitner, Delaborde, Ch. de Bériot, Fissot, Marsick, Loëb, Rémy, and Holmann. With such patronage, La Trompette soon acquired fame in the musical world, and “it represented in classical chamber-music the semi-official part played by the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in classical orchestral music. Rubinstein, Paderewski, Eugène d’Albert, Hans von Bülow, Arthur de Greef, Mme. Essipoff, and Mme. Menter, never missed getting a hearing there when their tours led them to Paris; and to figure on the programme of La Trompette was like the consecration of an artist.” Such a society naturally contributed a great deal to the spread of classical chamber-music in Paris. M. Lemoine writes:
“Classical music was so little known to the musical public that even the audiences of La Trompette, cultured as they were, did not at all understand Beethoven’s last quartettes; and my friends jeered at my taste for enigmas. This only made me the more determined that they should hear one of these great works at each concert. And sometimes I would give the same work at two or three concerts running if I thought it had not been properly appreciated. In that case I used to say before the performance: ‘It seems to me that such-and-such a work has not been quite understood at the last hearing; and as it is a really marvellous work, I am sure that your feeling is that you do not know it sufficiently. So I have included it in to-day’s programme.’”237
These performances of sonatas, trios, and quartettes, were attentively listened to by an audience of five or six hundred persons, the greater part of them cultured people, students from the poly-technics and universities, who formed the kernel of a very discerning and enthusiastic public for chamber-music.
By degrees, following the example of Émile Lemoine, other quartette societies were formed; and at present they are so numerous that it would be difficult to name them all. And then there sprang up the same spirit of intelligent curiosity that had induced the French Kapellmeister of the symphony concert societies sometimes to introduce their German and Russian colleagues as conductors; and for this purpose the Nouvelle Société Philharmonique de Paris was founded, in 1901, on the initiative of Dr. Fränkel and under the direction of M. Emmanuel Rey, to give a hearing in Paris to the principal foreign quartette players. And the profit was as great in one case as in the other; and the friendly rivalry between French quartette players and those of other countries bore good fruit, and gave us a fuller understanding of the inner character of German music.
5. Musical Learning and the University
While this movement was going on in the artistic world, scholars were taking their share in it, and music was beginning to invade the University.
But the thing was brought about with some difficulty; for among these serious people music did not count as a serious study. Music was thought of as an agreeable art, a social accomplishment, and the idea of making it the subject of scientific teaching must have been received with some amusement. Even up to the present time, general histories of Art have refused to accord music a place, so little was thought of it; and other arts were indignant at being mentioned in the same breath with it. This is illustrated in the eternal dispute among M. Jourdain’s masters, when the fencing-master says:
“And from this we know what great consideration is due to us in a State; and how the science of Fencing is far above all useless sciences, such as dancing and music.”
The first lectures on Aesthetics and Musical History were not given in France until after the war of 1870.238 They were then given at the Conservatoire, and, until quite lately, were the only lectures on Music of any importance in Paris. Since 1878 they have been given in a very excellent way by M. Bourgault-Ducoudray; but, as is only natural in a school of music, their character is artistic rather than scientific, and takes the form of a sort of illustration of the practical work that is done at the Conservatoire. And as for Parisian musical criticism as a whole, it had, thirty years ago, an almost exclusively literary character, and was without technical precision or historical knowledge.
There again, on the territory of science, as on that of art, a new generation of musicians had sprung up since the war, a group of men versed in the history and aesthetics of music such as France had never known before. About 1890 the result of their labours began to appear. Henry Expert published his fine work, Maîtres Musiciens de la Renaissance, in which he revived a whole century of French music. Alexander Guilmant and André Pirro brought to daylight the works of our seventeenth and eighteenth century organists. Pierre Aubry studied mediaeval music. The admirable publications of the Benedictines of Solesmes awoke at the Schola and in the world outside it a taste for the study of religious music. Michel Brenet attacked all epochs of musical history, and produced, by his solid learning, some fine work. Julien Tiersot began the history of French folk-song, and rescued the music of the Revolution from oblivion. The publisher Durand set to work on his great editions of Rameau and Couperin. Towards 1893 the study of Music was introduced at the Sorbonne by some young professors, who made the subject the theses for their doctor’s degree.239
This movement with regard to musical study grew rapidly; and the first International Congress of Music, held in Paris at the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1900, gave historians of music an opportunity of realising their influence. In a few years, teaching about music was to be had everywhere. At first there were the free lectures of M. Lionel Dauriac and M. Georges Houdard at the Sorbonne, those of MM. Aubry, Gastoué, Pirro, and Vincent d’Indy at the Schola and the Institut Catholique; and then, at the beginning of 1902, there was the little Faculty of Music of the École des Hautes Études sociales, making a centre for the efforts of French scholars of music; and, in 1900, two official courses of lectures on Musical History and Aesthetics were given at the College de France and the Sorbonne.
The progress of musical criticism was just as rapid. Professors of faculties, old pupils of the École Normale Supérieure, or the École des Chartes, such as Henri Lichtenberger, Louis Laloy, and Pierre Aubrey, examined works of the past, and even of the present, by the exact methods of historical criticism. Choir-masters and organists of great erudition, such as Andre Pirro and Gastoué, and composers like Vincent d’Indy, Dukas, Debussy, and some others, analysed their art with the confidence that the intimate knowledge of its practice brings. A perfect efflorescence of works on music appeared. A galaxy of distinguished writers and a public were found to support two separate collections of Biographies of Musicians (which were issued at the same time by different publishers), as well as five or six good musical journals of a scientific character, some of which rivalled the best in Germany. And, finally, the French section of the Société Internationale de Musique, which was founded in 1899 in Berlin to establish communication between the scholars of all countries, found so favourable a ground with us that the number of its adherents in Paris alone is now over one hundred.
6. Music and the People
Thus music had almost come back to its own, as far as the higher kind of teaching and the intellectual world were concerned. It remained for a place to be found for it in other kinds of teaching; for there, and especially in secondary education, its advance was less sure. It remained for us to make it enter into the life of the nation and into the people’s education. This was a difficult task, for in France art has always had an aristocratic character; and it was a task in which neither the State nor musicians were very interested. The Republic still continued to regard music as something outside the people. There had even been opposition shown during the last thirty years towards any attempt at popular musical education. In the old days of the Pasdeloup concerts one could pay seventy-five centimes for the cheapest places, and have a seat for that; but at some of the symphony concerts to-day the cheapest seats are two and four francs. And so the people that sometimes came to the Pasdeloup concerts never come at all to the big concerts to-day.
And that is why one should applaud the enterprise of Victor Charpentier, who, in March, 1905, founded a Symphonic Society of amateurs called L’Orchestre, to give free hearings for the benefit of the people. And in that Paris, where forty years ago one would have had a good deal of trouble to get together two or three amateur quartettes, Victor Charpentier has been able to count on one hundred and fifty good performers,240 who under his direction, or that of Saint-Saëns or Gabriel Fauré, have already given seventeen free concerts, of which ten were given at the Trocadéro.241 It is to be hoped that the State will help forward such a generous work for the people in a rather more practical way than it has done up till now.242
Attempts have been made at different times to found a Théâtre Lyrique Populaire. But up to the present time none has succeeded. The first attempts were made in 1847. M. Carvalho’s old Théâtre-Lyrique was never a financial success, though quite distinguished performances of operas were given there, such as Gounod’s Faust and Gluck’s Orfeo, with Mme. Viardot as an interpreter and Berlioz as conductor; and the directors who followed Carvalho—Rety, Pasdeloup, etc.—did not succeed any better. In 1875 Vizentini took over the Gaîté, with a grant of two hundred thousand francs and excellent artists; but he had to give it up. Since then all sorts of other schemes have been tried by Viollet-le-Duc, Guimet, Lamoureux, Melchior de Vogüé and Julien Goujon, Gabriel Parisot, Colonne and Milliet, Deville, Lagoanère, Corneille,Gailhard, and Carré; but none of them achieved any success. At the moment, a new attempt is being made; and this time the thing seems to show every sign of being a success.
But whatever may be the educational value of the theatre and concerts, they are not complete enough in themselves for the people. To make their influence deep and enduring it must be combined with teaching. Music, no less than every other expression of thought, has no use for the illiterate.
So in this case there was everything to be done. There was no other popular teaching but that of the numerous Galin-Paris-Chevé schools. These schools have rendered great service, and are continuing to render it; but their simplified methods are not without drawbacks and gaps. Their purpose is to teach the people a musical language different from that of cultured people; and although it may not be as difficult as is supposed to go from a knowledge of the one to a knowledge of the other, it is always wrong to raise up a fresh barrier—however small it is—between the cultured people and the other people, who in our own country are already too widely separated.
And besides, it is not enough to know one’s letters; one must also have books to read. What books have the people had?—so far songs sung at the café concerts and the stupid repertoires of choral societies. The folk-song had practically disappeared, and was not yet ready for re-birth; for the populace, even more readily than the cultured people, are inclined to blush at anything which suggests “popularity.”243
It is nearly twenty-five years since M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, who was one of the people who fostered the growth of choral singing in France, pointed out, in an account of the teaching of singing, the usefulness of making children sing the old popular airs of the French provinces, and of getting the teachers to make collections of them. In 1895, as the result of a meeting organised by the Correspondance générale de l’Instruction primaire, delightful collections of folk-songs were distributed in the schools. The melodies were taken from old airs collected by M. Julien Tiersot, and M. Maurice Buchor had put some fresh and sparkling verses to them. “M. Buchor,” I wrote at the time, “will enjoy a pleasure not common to poets of our day: his songs will soar up into the open air, like the lark in his Chanson de labour. The populace may even recognise its own spirit in them, and one day take possession of them, as if they were of their own contriving.”244 This prediction has been almost completely realised, and M. Buchor’s songs are now the property of all the people of France.
But M. Buchor did not remain content to be a poet of popular song. During the last twelve years he has made, with untiring energy, a tour of all the Écoles Normales in France, returning several times to places where he found signs of good vocal ability. In each school he made the pupils sing his songs—in unison, or in two or three parts, sometimes massing the boys’ and girls’ schools of one town together. His ambition grew with his success; and to the folk-song melodies245 he began gradually to add pieces of classical music. And to impress the music better on the singers he changed the existing words, and tried to find others, which by their moral and poetic beauty more exactly translated the musical feeling.246
And at last he composed and grouped together twenty-four poems in his Poème de la Vie humaine247—fine odes and songs, written for classic airs and choruses, a vast repertory of the people’s joys and sorrows, fitting the momentous hours of family or public life. With a people that has ancient musical traditions, as Germany has, music is the vehicle for the words and impresses them in the heart; but in France’s case it is truer to say that the words have brought the music of Händel and Beethoven into the hearts of French school-children. The great thing is that the music has really got hold of them, and that now one may hear the provincial Écoles Normales performing choruses from Fidelio, The Messiah, Schumann’sFaust, or Bach cantatas.248 The honour of this remarkable achievement, which no one could have believed possible twenty years ago, belongs almost entirely to M. Maurice Buchor.249
M. Buchor’s endeavours have been the most extensive and the most fruitful, but he is not alone in individual effort. There was, twenty years ago, in the suburbs of Paris and in the provinces, a large number of well-meaning people who devoted themselves to the work of musical education with sincerity and splendid enthusiasm. But their good works were too isolated, and were swamped by the apathy of the people about them; though sometimes they kindled little fires of love and understanding in art, which only needed coaxing in order to burn brightly; and even their less happy efforts generally succeeded in lighting a few sparks, which were left smouldering in people’s hearts.250
At length, as a result of these individual efforts, the State began to show an interest in this educational movement, although it had for so long stood apart from it.251 It discovered, in its turn, the educational value of singing. A musical test was instituted at the examination for the Brevet supérieur252 which made the study of solfeggio a more serious matter in the Écoles Normales. In 1903 an endeavour was made to organise the teaching of music in the schools and colleges in a more rational way.253
In 1904, following the suggestions of M. Saint-Saëns and M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, class-singing was incorporated with other subjects in the programme of teaching,254 and a free school of choral singing was started in Paris under the honorary chairmanship of M. Henry Marcel, director of the Beaux-Arts, and under the direction of M. Radiguer. Quite lately a choral society for young school-girls has been formed, with the Vice-Provost as president and a membership of from six to seven hundred young girls, who since 1906 have given an annual concert under the direction of M. Gabriel Pierné. And lastly, at the end of 1907, an association of professors was started to undertake the teaching of music in the institutions of public instruction; its chairman was the Inspector-General, M. Gilles, and its honorary presidents were M. Liard and M. Saint-Saëns. Its object is to aid the progress of musical instruction by establishing a centre to promote friendly relations among professors of music; by centralising their interests and studies; by organising a circulating library of music and a periodical magazine in which questions relating to music may be discussed; by establishing communication between French professors and foreign professors; and by seeking to bring together professors of music and professors in other branches of public teaching.
All this is not much, and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than primary teaching.255 But we are scrambling out of an abyss of ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric state of musical prosperity. The great choral societies only date from the end of the eighteenth century. Germany in the time of Bach was poor—if not poorer—in means for performing choral works than France to-day. Bach’s only executants were his pupils at the Thomasschule at Leipzig, of which barely a score knew how to sing.256 And now these people gather together for the great Männergesangsfeste (choral festivals) and the Musikfeste (music festivals) of Imperial Germany.
Let us hope on and persevere. The main thing is that a start has been made; the thing that remains is to have patience and—persistence.
The Present Condition of French Music
We have seen how the musical education of France is going on in theatres, in concerts, in schools, by lectures and by books; and the Parisian’s rather restless desire for knowledge seems to be satisfied for the moment. The mind of Paris has made a journey—a hasty journey, it is true through the music of other countries and other times,257 and is now becoming introspective. After a mad enthusiasm over discoveries in strange lands, music and musical criticism have regained their self-possession and their jealous love of independence. A very decided reaction against foreign music has been shown since the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1900. This movement is not unconnected, consciously or unconsciously, with the nationalist train of thought, which was stirred up in France, and especially in Paris, somewhere about the same time. But it is also a natural development in the evolution of music. French music felt new vigour springing up within her, and was astonished at it; her days of preparation were over, and she aspired to fly alone; and, in accordance with the eternal rule of history, the first use she made of her newly-acquired strength was to defy her teachers. And this revolt against foreign influences was directed—one had expected it—against the strongest of the influences—the influence of German music as personified by Wagner. Two discussions in magazines, in 1903 and 1904, brought this state of mind curiously to light: one was an enquiry held by M. Jacques Morland in the Mercure de France (January, 1903) as to The Influence of German Music in France; and the other was that of M. Paul Landormy in the Revue Bleue (March and April,1904) as to The Present Condition of French Music. The first was like a shout of deliverance, and was not without exaggeration and a good deal of ingratitude; for it represented French musicians and critics throwing off Wagner’s influence because it had had its day; the second set forth the theories of the new French school, and declared the independence of that school.
For several years the leader of the young school, M. Claude Debussy, has, in his writings in the Revue Blanche and Gil Blas, attacked Wagnerian art. His personality is very French—capricious, poetic, and spirituelle, full of lively intelligence, heedless, independent, scattering new ideas, giving vent to paradoxical caprice, criticising the opinions of centuries with the teasing impertinence of a little street boy, attacking great heroes of music like Gluck, Wagner, and Beethoven, upholding only Bach, Mozart, and Weber, and loudly professing his preference for the old French masters of the eighteenth century. But in spite of this he is bringing back to French music its true nature and its forgotten ideals—its clearness, its elegant simplicity, its naturalness, and especially its grace and plastic beauty. He wishes music to free itself from all literary and philosophic pretensions, which have burdened German music in the nineteenth century (and perhaps have always done so); he wishes music to get away from the rhetoric which has been handed down to us through the centuries, from its heavy construction and precise orderliness, from its harmonic and rhythmic formulas, and the exercises of oratorical embroidery. He wishes that all about it shall be painting and poetry; that it shall explain its true feeling in a clear and direct way; and that melody, harmony, and rhythm shall develop broadly along the lines of inner laws, and not after the pretended laws of some intellectual arrangement. And he himself preaches by example in his Pelléas et Mélisande, and breaks with all the principles of the Bayreuth drama, and gives us the model of the new art of his dreams. And on all sides discerning and well-informed critics, such as M. Pierre Lalo of Le Temps, M. Louis Laloy of the Revue Musicale and the Mercure Musicale, and M. Marnold of Le Mercure de France, have championed his doctrines and his art. Even the Schola Cantorum, whose eclectic and archaic spirit is very different from that of Debussy, seemed at first to be drawn into the same current of thought; and this school which had so helped to propagate the foreign influences of the past, did not seem to be quite insensible to the nationalistic preoccupation of the last few years. So the Schola devoted itself more and more—as was moreover its right and duty—to the French music of the past, and filled its concert programmes with French works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—with Marc Antoine Charpentier, Du Mont, Leclair, Clérambault, Couperin, and the French primitive composers for the organ, the harpsichord, and the violin; and with the works of dramatic composers, especially of the great Rameau, who, after a period of complete oblivion, suddenly benefited by this excessive reaction, to the detriment of Gluck, whom the young critics, following M. Debussy’s example, severely abused.258 There was even a moment when the Schola took a decided share in the battle, and, through M. Charles Bordes, issued a manifesto—Credo, as they called it—about a new art founded on the ancient traditions of French music:
“We wish to have free speech in music—a sustained recitative, infinite variety, and, in short, complete liberty in musical utterance. We wish for the triumph of natural music, so that it shall be as free and full of movement as speech, and as plastic and rhythmic as a classical dance.”
It was open war against the metrical art of the last three centuries, in the name of national tradition (more or less freely interpreted), of folk-song, and of Gregorian chant. And “the constant and avowed purpose of all this campaign was the triumph of French music, and its cult.”259
This manifesto reflects in its own way the spirit of Debussy and his untrammelled musical impressionism; and though it shows a good deal of naïveté and some intolerance, there was in it a strength of youthful enthusiasm that accorded with the great hopes of the time, and foretold glorious days to come and a splendid harvest of music.
Not many years have passed since then; yet the sky is already a little clouded, the light not quite so bright. Hope has not failed; but it has not been fulfilled. France is waiting, and is getting a little impatient. But the impatience is unnecessary; for to found an art we must bring time to our aid; art must ripen tranquilly. Yet tranquillity is what is most lacking in Parisian art. The artists, instead of working steadily at their own tasks and uniting in a common aim, are given up to sterile disputes. The young French school hardly exists any longer, as it has now split up into two or three parties. To a fight against foreign art has succeeded a fight among themselves: it is the deep-rooted evil of the country, this vain expenditure of force. And most curious of all is the fact that the quarrel is not between the conservatives and the progressives in music, but between the two most advanced sections: the Schola on the one hand, who, should it gain the victory, would through its dogmas and traditions inevitably develop the airs of a little academy; and, on the other hand, the independent party, whose most important representative is M. Debussy. It is not for us to enter into the quarrel; we would only suggest to the parties in question that if any profit is to result from their misunderstanding, it will be derived by a third party—the party in favour of routine, the party that has never lost favour with the great theatre-going public,—a party that will soon make good the place it has lost if those who aim at defending art set about fighting one another. Victory has been proclaimed too soon; for whatever the optimistic representatives of the young school may say, victory has not yet been gained; and it will not be gained for some time yet—not until public taste is changed, not while the nation lacks musical education, nor until the cultured few are united to the people, through whom their thoughts shall be preserved. For not only—with a few rare and generous exceptions—do the more aristocratic sections of society ignore the education of the people, but they ignore the very existence of the people’s soul. Here and there, a composer—such as Bizet and M. Saint-Saëns, or M. d’Indy and his disciples—will build up symphonies and rhapsodies and very difficult pieces for the piano on the popular airs of Auvergne, Provence, or the Cevennes; but that is only a whim of theirs, a little ingenious pastime for clever artists, such as the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century indulged in when they decorated popular airs with polyphonic elaborations. In spite of the advance of the democratic spirit, musical art—or at least all that counts in musical art—has never been more aristocratic than it is to-day. Probably the phenomenon is not peculiar to music, and shows itself more or less in other arts; but in no other art is it so dangerous, for no other has roots less firmly fixed in the soil of France. And it is no consolation to tell oneself that this is according to the great French traditions, which have nearly always been aristocratic. Traditions, great and small, are menaced to-day; the axe is ready for them. Whoever wishes to live must adapt himself to the new conditions of life. The future of art is at stake. To continue as we are doing is not only to weaken music by condemning it to live in unhealthy conditions, but also to risk its disappearing sooner or later under the rising flood of popular misconceptions of music. Let us take warning by the fact that we have already had to defend music260 when it was attacked at some of the parliamentary assemblies; and let us remember the pitifulness of the defence. We must not let the day come when a famous speech will be repeated with a slight alteration—“The Republic has no need of musicians.”
It is the historian’s duty to point out the dangers of the present hour, and to remind the French musicians who have been satisfied with their first victory that the future is anything but sure, and that we must never disarm while we have a common enemy before us, an enemy especially dangerous in a democracy—mediocrity.
The road that stretches before us is long and difficult. But if we turn our heads and look back over the way we have come we may take heart. Which of us does not feel a little glow of pride at the thought of what has been done in the last thirty years? Here is a town where, before 1870, music had fallen to the most miserable depths, which to-day teems with concerts and schools of music—a town where one of the first symphonic schools in Europe has sprung from nothing, a town where an enthusiastic concert-going public has been formed, possessing among its members some great critics with broad interests and a fine, free spirit—all this is the pride of France. And we have, too, a little band of musicians; among them, in the first rank, that great painter of dreams, Claude Debussy; that master of constructive art, Dukas; that impassioned thinker, Albéric Magnard; that ironic poet, Ravel; and those delicate and finished writers, Albert Roussel and Déodat de Séverac; without mention of the younger musicians who are in the vanguard of their art. And all this poetic force, though not the most vigorous, is the most original in Europe to-day. Whatever gaps one may find in our musical organisation, still so new, whatever results this movement may lead to, it is impossible not to admire a people whom defeat has aroused, and a generation that has accomplished the magnificent work of reviving the nation’s music with such untiring perseverance and such steadfast faith. The names of Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, Charles Bordes, and Vincent d’Indy, will remain associated before all others with this work of national regeneration, where so much talent and so much devotion, from the leaders of orchestras and celebrated composers down to that obscure body of artists and music-lovers, have joined forces in the fight against indifference and routine. They have the right to be proud of their work. But for ourselves, let us waste no time in thinking about it. Our hopes are great. Let us justify them.
Footnotes
1 “And you, Russia, who have saved me....” (Berlioz, Mémoires, II, 353, Calmann-Lévy’s edition, 1897).
2 Mémoires, II, 149.
3 The literary work of Berlioz is rather uneven. Beside passages of exquisite beauty we find others that are ridiculous in their exaggerated sentiment, and there are some that even lack good taste. But he had a natural gift of style, and his writing is vigorous, and full of feeling, especially towards the latter half of his life. The Procession des Rogations is often quoted from the Mémoires; and some of his poetical text, particularly that in L’Enfance du Christ and in Les Troyens, is written in beautiful language and with a fine sense of rhythm. His Mémoires as a whole is one of the most delightful books ever written by an artist. Wagner was a greater poet, but as a prose writer Berlioz is infinitely superior. See Paul Morillot’s essay on Berlioz écrivain, 1903, Grenoble.
4 “Chance, that unknown god, who plays such a great part in my life” (Mémoires, II, 161).
5 “I was fair,” wrote Berlioz to Bülow (unpublished letters, 1858). “A shock of reddish hair,” he wrote in his Mémoires, I, 165. “Sandy-coloured hair,” said Reyer. For the colour of Berlioz’s hair I rely upon the evidence of Mme. Chapót, his niece.
6 Joseph d’Ortigue, Le Balcon de l’Opéra, 1833.
7 E. Legouvé, Soixante ans de souvenirs. Legouvé describes Berlioz here as he saw him for the first time.
8 “A passable baritone,” says Berlioz (Mémoires, I, 58). In 1830, in the streets of Paris, he sang “a bass part” (Mémoires, I, 156). During his first visit to Germany the Prince of Hechingen made him sing “the part of the violoncello” in one of his compositions (Mémoires, II, 32).
9 There are two good portraits of Berlioz. One is a photograph by Pierre Petit, taken in 1863, which he sent to Mme. Estelle Fornier. It shows him leaning on his elbow, with his head bent, and his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were tired. The other is the photograph which he had reproduced in the first edition of his Mémoires, and which shows him leaning back, his hands in his pockets, his head upright, with an expression of energy in his face, and a fixed and stern look in his eyes.
10 He would go on foot from Naples to Rome in a straight line over the mountains, and would walk at one stretch from Subiaco to Tivoli.
11 This brought on several attacks of bronchitis and frequent sore throats, as well as the internal affection from which he died.
12 “Music and love are the two wings of the soul,” he wrote in his Mémoires.
13 Mémoires, I, 11.
14 Julien Tiersot, Hector Berlioz et la société de son temps, 1903, Hachette.
15 See the Mémoires, I, 139.
16 “I do not know how to describe this terrible sickness.... My throbbing breast seems to be sinking into space; and my heart, drawing in some irresistible force, feels as though it would expand until it evaporated and dissolved away. My skin becomes hot and tender, and flushes from head to foot. I want to cry out to my friends (even those I do not care for) to help and comfort me, to save me from destruction, and keep in the life that is ebbing from me. I have no sensation of impending death in these attacks, and suicide seems impossible; I do not want to die—far from it, I want very much to live, to intensify life a thousandfold. It is an excessive appetite for happiness, which becomes unbearable when it lacks food; and it is only satisfied by intense delights, which give this great overflow of feeling an outlet. It is not a state of spleen, though that may follow later... spleen is rather the congealing of all these emotions—the block of ice. Even when I am calm I feel a little of this ‘isolement’ on Sundays in summer, when our towns are lifeless, and everyone is in the country; for I know that people are enjoying themselves away from me, and I feel their absence. The adagio of Beethoven’s symphonies, certain scenes from Gluck’s Alceste and Armide, an air from his Italian opera Telemacco, the Elysian fields of his Orfeo, will bring on rather bad attacks of this suffering; but these masterpieces bring with them also an antidote—they make one’s tears flow, and then the pain is eased. On the other hand, the adagio of some of Beethoven’s sonatas and Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride are full of melancholy, and therefore provoke spleen... it is then cold within, the sky is grey and overcast with clouds, the north wind moans dully....” (Mémoires, I, 246).
17 Mémoires, I, 98.
18 “Isn’t it really devilish,” he said to Legouvé, “tragic and silly at the same time? I should deserve to go to hell if I wasn’t there already.”
19 Mémoires, II, 335. See the touching passages he wrote on Henrietta Smithson’s death.
20 “One day, Henrietta, who was living alone at Montmartre, heard someone ring the bell, and went to open the door.
“‘Is Mme. Berlioz at home?’
“‘I am Mme. Berlioz.’
“‘You are mistaken; I asked for Mme. Berlioz.’
“‘And I tell you, I am Mme. Berlioz.’
“‘No, you are not. You are speaking of the old Mme. Berlioz, the one who was abandoned; I am speaking of the young and pretty and loved one. Well, that is myself!’
“And Recio went out and banged the door after her.
“Legouvé said to Berlioz, ‘Who told you this abominable thing? I suppose she who did it; and then she boasted about it into the bargain. Why didn’t you turn her out of the house?’ ‘How could I?’ said Berlioz in broken tones, ‘I love her’” (Soixante ans de souvenirs).
21 From this woman’s nature came his love of revenge, “a thing needless, and yet necessary,” he said to his friend Hiller, who, after having made him write the Symphonie fantastique to spite Henrietta Smithson, next made him write the wretched fantasia Euphonia to spite Camille Moke, now Mme. Pleyel. One would feel obliged to draw more attention to the way he often adorned or perverted the truth if one did not feel it arose from his irrepressible and glowing imagination far more than from any intention to mislead; for I believe his real nature to have been a-very straightforward one. I will quote the story of his friend Crispino, a young countryman from Tivoli, as a characteristic example. Berlioz says in his Mémoires (I, 229): “One day when Crispino was lacking in respect I made-him a present of two shirts, a pair of trousers, and three good kicks behind.” In a note he added, “This is a lie, and is the result of an artist’s tendency to aim at effect. I never kicked Crispino.” But Berlioz took care afterwards to omit this note. One attaches as little importance to his other small boasts as to this one. The errors in the Mémoires have been greatly exaggerated; and besides, Berlioz is the first to warn his readers that he only wrote what pleased him, and in his preface says that he is not writing his Confessions. Can one blame him for that?
22 Mémoires, II, 158. The heartaches expressed in this chapter will be felt by every artist.
23 Mémoires, II, 349.
24 Berlioz has already touchingly replied to any reproaches that might be made in the words that follow the story I have quoted. “‘Coward!’ some young enthusiast will say, ‘you ought to have written it; you should have been bold.’ Ah, young man, you who call me coward did not have to look upon what I did; had you done so you, too, would have had no choice. My wife was there, half dead, only able to moan; she had to have three nurses, and a doctor every day to visit her; and I was sure of the disastrous result of any musical adventure. No, I was not a coward; I know I was only human. I like to believe that I honoured art in proving that she had left me enough reason to distinguish between courage and cruelty” (Mémoires, II, 350).
25 In a note in the Mémoires, Berlioz publishes a letter of Mendelssohn’s which protests his “good friendship,” and he writes these bitter words: “I have just seen in a volume of Mendelssohn’s Letters what his friendship for me consisted of. He says to his mother, in what is plainly a description of myself, ‘—— is a perfect caricature, without a spark of talent... there are times when I should like to swallow him up’” (Mémoires, II, 48). Berlioz did not add that Mendelssohn also said: “They pretend that Berlioz seeks lofty ideals in art. I don’t think so at all. What he wants is to get himself married.” The injustice of these insulting words will disgust all those who remember that when Berlioz married Henrietta Smithson she brought as dowry nothing but debts; and that he had only three hundred francs himself, which a friend had lent him.
26 Liszt repudiated him later.
27 Written in an article on the Ouverture de Waverley (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik).
28 Wagner, who had criticised Berlioz since 1840, and who published a detailed study of his works in his Oper und Drama in 1851, wrote to Liszt in 1855: “I own that it would interest me very much to make the acquaintance of Berlioz’s symphonies, and I should like to see the scores. If you have them, will you lend them to me?”
29 See Berlioz’s letter, cited by J. Tiersot, Hector Berlioz et la société de son temps, p. 275.
30 Roméo, Faust, La Nonne sanglante.
31 I shall content myself here with noting a fact, which I shall deal with more fully in another essay at the end of this book: it is the decline of musical taste in France—and, I rather think, in all Europe—since 1835 or 1840. Berlioz says in his Mémoires: “Since the first performance of Roméo et Juliette the indifference of the French public for all that concerns art and literature has grown incredibly” (Mémoires, II, 263). Compare the shouts of excitement and the tears that were drawn from the dilettanti of 1830 (Mémoires, I, 81), at the performances of Italian operas or Gluck’s works, with the coldness of the public between 1840 and 1870. A mantle of ice covered art then. How much Berlioz must have suffered. In Germany the great romantic age was dead. Only Wagner remained to give life to music; and he drained all that was left in Europe of love and enthusiasm for music. Berlioz died truly of asphyxia.
32 Here is an official list of the towns where Benvenuto has been played since 1879 (I am indebted for this information to M. Victor Chapót, Berlioz’s grandnephew). They are, in alphabetical order: Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, Dresden, Frankfort-On-Main, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Hamburg, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Mannheim, Metz, Munich, Prague, Schwerin, Stettin, Strasburg, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Weimar.
33 Mémoires, II, 420.
34 “I do not know how Berlioz has managed to be cut off like this. He has neither friends nor followers; neither the warm sun of popularity nor the pleasant shade of friendship” (Liszt to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 16 May, 1861).
35 In a letter to Bennet he says, “I am weary, I am weary....” How often does this piteous cry sound in his letters towards the end of his life. “I feel I am going to die.... I am weary unto death” (21 August, 1868—six months before his death).
36 Letter to Asger Hammerick, 1865.
37 Letters to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 22 July, 21 September, 1862; and August, 1864.
38 Mémoires, II, 335. He shocked Mendelssohn, and even Wagner, by his irreligion. (See Berlioz’s letter to Wagner, 10 September, 1855.)
39 Les Grotesques de la Musique, pp. 295-6.
40 Letter to the Abbé Girod. See Hippeau, Berlioz intime, p. 434.
41 Letter to Bennet. He did not believe in patriotism. “Patriotism? Fetichism! Cretinism!” (Mémoires, II, 261).
42 Letter to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 22 July, 1862.
43 Mémoires, II, 391.
44 Letters to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 22 January, 1859; 30 August, 1864; 13 July, 1866; and to A. Morel, 21 August, 1864.
45 “... Qui viderit illas
De lacrymis factas sentiet esse meis,”
wrote Berlioz, as an inscription for his Tristes in 1854.
46 “One instantly recognises a companion in misfortune; and I found I was a happier man than Berlioz” (Wagner to Liszt, 5 July, 1855).
47 Mémoires, II, 396.
48 Mémoires, II, 415.
49 “Yes, it is to that escape from the world that Parsifal owes its birth and growth. What man can, during a whole lifetime, gaze into the depths of this world with a calm reason and a cheerful heart? When he sees murder and rapine organised and legalised by a system of lies, impostures, and hypocrisy, will he not avert his eyes and shudder with disgust?” (Wagner, Representations of the Sacred Drama of Parsifal at Bayreuth, in 1882.)
50 The scene was described to me by his friend, Malwida von Meysenbug, the calm and fearless author of Mémoires d’une Idéaliste.
51 “I have only blank walls before my windows. On the side of the street a pug dog has been barking for an hour, a parrot screaming, and a parroqueet imitating the chirp of sparrows. On the side of the yard the washerwomen are singing, and another parroqueet cries incessantly, ‘Shoulder arrms!’ How long the day is!”
“The maddening noise of carriages shakes the silence of the night. Paris wet and muddy! Parisian Paris! Now everything is quiet... she is sleeping the sleep of the unjust” (Written to Ferrand, Lettres intimes, pp. 269 and 302).
52 He used to say that nothing would remain of his work; that he had deceived himself; and that he would have liked to burn his scores.
53 Blaze de Bury met him one autumn evening, on the quay, just before his death, as he was returning from the Institute. “His face was pale, his figure wasted and bent, and his expression dejected and nervous; one might have taken him for a walking shadow. Even his eyes, those large round hazel eyes, had extinguished their fire. For a second he clasped my hand in his own thin, lifeless one, and repeated, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, Aeschylus’s words: ‘Oh, this life of man! When he is happy a shadow is enough to disturb him; and when he is unhappy his trouble may be wiped away, as with a wet sponge, and all is forgotten’” (Musiciens d’hier et d’aujourd’hui).
54 A travers chants, pp. 8-9.
55 In truth, this genius was smouldering since his childhood; it was there from the beginning; and the proof of it lies in the fact that he used for his Ouverture des Francs-Juges and for the Symphonie fantastique airs and phrases of quintets which he had written when twelve years old (see Mémoires, I, 16-18).
56 The Huit scènes de Faust are taken from Goethe’s tragedy, translated by Gérard de Nerval, and they include: (1) Chants de la fête de Pâques; (2) Paysans sous les tilleuls; (3) Concert des Sylphes; (4 and 5) Taverne d’Auerbach, with the two songs of the Rat and the Flea; (6) Chanson du roi de Thulé; (7) Romance de Marguerite, “D’amour, l’ardente flamme,” and Choeur de soldats; (8) Sérénade de Méphistophélès—that is to say, the most celebrated and characteristic pages of the Damnation (see M. Prudhomme’s essays on Le Cycle de Berlioz).
57 One could hardly find a better manifestation of the soul of a youthful musical genius than that in certain letters written at this time; in particular the letter written to Ferrand on 28 June, 1828, with its feverish postscript. What a life of rich and overflowing vigour! It is a joy to read it; one drinks at the source of life itself.
58 Mémoires, I, 70.
59 Ibid. To make amends for this he published, in 1829, a biographical notice of Beethoven, in which his appreciation of him is remarkably in advance of his age. He wrote there: “The Choral Symphony is the culminating point of Beethoven’s genius,” and he speaks of the Fourth Symphony in C sharp minor with great discernment.
60 Beethoven died in 1827, the year when Berlioz was writing his first important work, the Ouverture des Francs-Juges.
61 He left Henrietta Smithson in 1842; she died in 1854.
62 Written by Berlioz himself, in irony, in a letter of 1855.
63 Mémoires, I, 307.
64 About this time he wrote to Liszt regarding L’Enfance du Christ: “I think I have hit upon something good in Herod’s scena and air with the soothsayers; it is full of character, and will, I hope, please you. There are, perhaps, more graceful and pleasing things, but with the exception of the Bethlehem duet, I do not think they have the same quality of originality” (17 December, 1854).
65 In 1830, old Rouget de Lisle called Berlioz, “a volcano in eruption” (Mémoires, I, 158).
66 M. Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in his Portraits et Souvenirs, 1900: “Whoever reads Berlioz’s scores before hearing them played can have no real idea of their effect. The instruments appear to be arranged in defiance of all common sense; and it would seem, to use professional slang, that cela ne dut pas sonner, but cela sonne wonderfully. If we find here and there obscurities of style, they do not appear in the orchestra; light streams into it and plays there as in the facets of a diamond.”
67 See the excellent essay of H. Lavoix, in his Histoire de l’Instrumentation. It should be noticed that Berlioz’s observations in his Traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (1844) have not been lost upon Richard Strauss, who has just published a German edition of the work, and some of whose most famous orchestral effects are realisations of Berlioz’s ideas.
68 One may judge of this instinct by one fact: he wrote the overtures of Les Francs-Juges and Waverley without really knowing if it were possible to play them. “I was so ignorant,” he says, “of the mechanism of certain instruments, that after having written the solo in D flat for the trombone in the Introduction of Les Francs-Juges, I feared it would be terribly difficult to play. So I went, very anxious, to one of the trombonists of the Opera orchestra. He looked at the passage and reassured me. ‘The key of D flat is,’ he said, ‘one of the pleasantest for that instrument; and you can count on a splendid effect for that passage’” (Mémoires, I, 63).
69 Mémoires, I, 64.
70 “Berlioz displayed, in calculating the properties of mechanism, a really astounding scientific knowledge. If the inventors of our modern industrial machinery are to be considered benefactors of humanity to-day, Berlioz deserves to be considered as the true saviour of the musical world; for, thanks to him, musicians can produce surprising effects in music by the varied use of simple mechanical means.... Berlioz lies hopelessly buried beneath the ruins of his own contrivances” (Oper und Drama, 1851).
71 Letter from Berlioz to Ferrand.
72 “The chief characteristics of my music are passionate expression, inward warmth, rhythmic in pulses, and unforeseen effects. When I speak of passionate expression, I mean an expression that desperately strives to reproduce the inward feeling of its subject, even when the theme is contrary to passion, and deals with gentle emotions or the deepest calm. It is this kind of expression that may be found in L’Enfance du Christ, and, above all, in the scene of Le Ciel in the Damnation de Faust and in the Sanctus of the Requiem” (Mémoires, II, 361).
73 “So you are in the midst of melting glaciers in your Niebelungen! To be writing in the presence of Nature herself must be splendid. It is an enjoyment which I am denied. Beautiful landscapes, lofty peaks, or great stretches of sea, absorb me instead of evoking ideas in me. I feel, but I cannot express what I feel. I can only paint the moon when I see its reflection in the bottom of a well” (Berlioz to Wagner, 10 September, 1855).
74 Musikführer, 29 November, 1903.
75 Mémoires, II, 361.
76 M. Jean Marnold has remarked this genius for monody in Berlioz in his article on Hector Berlioz, musicien (Mercure de France, 15 January, and 1 February, 1905).
77 Gluck himself said this in a letter to the Mercure de France, February, 1773.
78 I am not speaking of the Franco-Flemish masters at the end of the sixteenth century: of Jannequin, Costeley, Claude le Jeune, or Mauduit, recently discovered by M. Henry Expert, who are possessed of so original a flavour, and have yet remained almost entirely unknown from their own time to ours. Religious wars bruised France’s musical traditions and denied some of the grandeur of her art.
[79] It is amusing to find Wagner comparing Berlioz with Auber, as the type of a true French musician—Auber and his mixed Italian and German opera. That shows how Wagner, like most Germans, was incapable of grasping the real originality of French music, and how he saw only its externals. The best way to find out the musical characteristics of a nation is to study its folk-songs. If only someone would devote himself to the study of French folk-song (and there is no lack of material), people would realise perhaps how much it differs from German folk-song, and how the temperament of the French race shows itself there as being sweeter and freer, more vigorous and more expressive.
80 Mémoires, I, 221.
81 “Music to-day, in the vigour of her youth, is emancipated and free and can do what she pleases. Many old rules have no longer any vogue; they were made by unreflecting minds, or by lovers of routine for other lovers of routine. New needs of the mind, of the heart, and of the sense of hearing, make necessary new endeavours and, in some cases, the breaking of ancient laws. Many forms have become too hackneyed to be still adopted. The same thing may be entirely good or entirely bad, according to the use one makes of it, or the reasons one has for making use of it. Sound and sonority are secondary to thought, and thought is secondary to feeling and passion.” (These opinions were given with reference to Wagner’s concerts in Paris, in 1860, and are taken from A travers chants, p. 312.)
Compare Beethoven’s words: “There is no rule that one may not break for the advancement of beauty.”
82 Is it necessary to recall the épître dédicatoire of Alceste in 1769, and Gluck’s declaration that he “sought to bring music to its true function—that of helping poetry to strengthen the expression of the emotions and the interest of a situation... and to make it what fine colouring and the happy arrangement of light and shade are to a skilful drawing”?
83 This revolutionary theory was already Mozart’s: “Music should reign supreme and make one forget everything else.... In an opera it is absolutely necessary that Poetry should be Music’s obedient daughter” (Letter to his father, 13 October, 1781). Despairing probably at being unable to obtain this obedience, Mozart thought seriously of breaking up the form of opera, and of putting in its place, in 1778, a sort of melodrama (of which Rousseau had given an example in 1773), which he called “duodrama,” where music and poetry were loosely associated, yet not dependent on each other, but went side by side on two parallel roads (Letter of 12 November, 1778).
84 Tribune de Saint Gervais, November, 1903.
85 Mémoires, II, 365.
86 “This composition contains a dose of sublimity much too strong for the ordinary public; and Berlioz, with the splendid insolence of genius, advises the conductor, in a note, to turn the page and pass it over” (Georges de Massougnes, Berlioz). This fine study by Georges de Massougnes appeared in 1870, and is very much in advance of its time.
87 “Oh, how I love, honour, and reverence Schumann for having written this article alone” (Hugo Wolf, 1884).
88 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. See Hector Berlioz und Robert Schumann. Berlioz was constantly righting for this freedom of rhythm—for “those harmonies of rhythm,” as he said. He wished to form a Rhythm class at the Conservatoire (Mémoires, II, 241), but such a thing was not understood in France. Without being as backward as Italy on this point, France is still resisting the emancipation of rhythm (Mémoires, II, 196). But during the last ten years great progress in music has been made in France.
89 Ibid. “A rare peculiarity,” adds Schumann, “which distinguishes nearly all his melodies.” Schumann understands why Berlioz often gives as an accompaniment to his melodies a simple bass, or chords of the augmented and diminished fifth—ignoring the intermediate parts.
90 “What will then remain of actual art? Perhaps Berlioz will be its sole representative. Not having studied the pianoforte, he had an instinctive aversion to counterpoint. He is in this respect the opposite of Wagner, who was the embodiment of counterpoint, and drew the utmost he could from its laws” (Saint-Saëns).
91 Jacques Passy notes that with Berlioz the most frequent phrases consist of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, or twenty bars. With Wagner, phrases of eight bars are rare, those of four more common, those of two still more so, while those of one bar are most frequent of all (Berlioz et Wagner, article published in Le Correspondant, 10 June, 1888).
92 One must make mention here of the poorness and awkwardness of Berlioz’s harmony—which is incontestable—since some critics and composers have been able to see (Am I saying something ridiculous?—Wagner would say it for me) nothing but “faults of orthography” in his genius. To these terrible grammarians—who, two hundred years ago, criticised Molière on account of his “jargon”—I shall reply by quoting Schumann.
“Berlioz’s harmonies, in spite of the diversity of their effect, obtained from very scanty material, are distinguished by a sort of simplicity, and even by a solidity and conciseness, which one only meets with in Beethoven.... One may find here and there harmonies that are commonplace and trivial, and others that are incorrect—at least according to the old rules. In some places his harmonies have a fine effect, and in others their result is vague and indeterminate, or it sounds badly, or is too elaborate and far-fetched. Yet with Berlioz all this somehow takes on a certain distinction. If one attempted to correct it, or even slightly to modify it—for a skilled musician it would be child’s play—the music would become dull” (Article on the Symphonie fantastique).
But let us leave that “grammatical discussion” as well as what Wagner wrote on “the childish question as to whether it is permitted or not to introduce ‘neologisms’ in matters of harmony and melody” (Wagner to Berlioz, 22 February, 1860). As Schumann has said, “Look out for fifths, and then leave us in peace.”
93 Mémoires, I, 155.
94 These words are taken from Berlioz’s directions on the score of his arrangement of the Marseillaise for full orchestra and double choir.
95 “From Beethoven,” says Berlioz, “dates the advent in art of colossal forms” (Mémoires, II, 112). But Berlioz forgot one of Beethoven’s models—Händel. One must also take into account the musicians of the French revolution: Mehul, Gossec, Cherubini, and Lesueur, whose works, though they may not equal their intentions, are not without grandeur, and often disclose the intuition of a new and noble and popular art.
[96] Letter to Morel, 1855. Berlioz thus describes the Tibiomnes and the Judex of his Te Deum. Compare Heine’s judgment: “Berlioz’s music makes me think of gigantic kinds of extinct animals, of fabulous empires.... Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the wonders of Nineveh, the daring buildings of Mizraim.”
97 Mémoires, I, 17.
98 Letter to an unknown person, written probably about 1855, in the collection of Siegfried Ochs, and published in the Geschichte der französischen Musik of Alfred Bruneau, 1904. That letter contains a rather curious analytical catalogue of Berlioz’s works, drawn up by himself. He notes there his predilection for compositions of a “colossal nature,” such as the Requiem, the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, and the Te Deum, or those of “an immense style,” such as the Impériale.
99 Mémoires, II, 364. See also the letter quoted above.
100 Mémoires, II, 363. See also II, 163, and the description of the great festival of 1844, with its 1,022 performers.
101 Hermann Kretzschmar, Führer durch den Konzertsaal.
102 Mémoires, I, 312.
103 Letter to some young Hungarians, 14 February, 1861. See the Mémoires, II, 212, for the incredible emotion which the Marche de Rakoczy roused in the audience at Budapest, and, above all, for the astonishing scene at the end:—
“I saw a man enter unexpectedly. He was miserably clad, but his face shone with a strange rapture. When he saw me, he threw himself upon me and embraced me with fervour; his eyes filled with tears, and he was hardly able to get out the words, ‘Ah, monsieur, monsieur! moi Hongrois... pauvre diable... pas parler Français... un poco Italiano. Pardonnez mon extase.... Ah! ai compris votre canon.... Oui, oui, la grande-bataille.... Allemands chiens!’ And then striking his breast violently: ‘Dans le coeur, moi... je vous porte.... Ah! Français... révolutionnaire... savoir faire la musique des révolutions!’”
104 Written 5 May, 1841.
105 Berlioz never ceased to inveigh against the Revolution of 1848—which should have had his sympathies. Instead of finding material, like Wagner, in the excitement of that time for impassioned compositions, he worked at L’Enfance du Christ. He affected absolute indifference—he who was so little made for indifference. He approved the State’s action, and despised its visionary hopes.
106 “My musical career would finish very pleasingly if only I could live for a hundred and forty years” (Mémoires, II, 390).
107 This solitude struck Wagner. “Berlioz’s loneliness is not only one of external circumstances; its origin is in his temperament. Though he is a Frenchman, with quick sympathies and interests like those of his fellow-citizens, yet he is none the less alone. He sees no one before him who will hold out a helping hand, there is no one by his side on whom he may lean” (Article written 5 May, 1841). As one reads these words, one feels it was Wagner’s lack of sympathy and not his intelligence that prevented him from understanding Berlioz. In his heart I do not doubt that he knew well who was his great rival. But he never said anything about it—unless perhaps one counts an odd document, certainly not intended for publication, where he (even he) compares him to Beethoven and to Bonaparte (Manuscript in the collection of Alfred Bovet, published by Mottl in German magazines, and by M. Georges de Massougnes in the Revue d’art dramatique, 1 January, 1902).
108 F. Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner.
109 The quotations from Wagner are taken from his letters to Roeckel, Uhlig, and Liszt, between 1851 and 1856.
110 Of applause
I still hear the noise; and, strangely enough,
In my childish shyness it seemed like mire
About to spot me; I feared
Its touch, and secretly shunned it,
Affecting obstinacy.
These verses were read by M. Saint-Saëns at a concert given on 10 June, 1896, in the Salle Pleyel, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his début, which he made in 1846. It was in this same Salle Pleyel that he gave his first concert.
111 C. Saint-Saëns, Harmonie et Mélodie, 1885.
112 C. Saint-Saëns, Rimes familières, 1890.
You will know the lying eyes, the insincerity
Of pressures of the hand,
The mask of friendship that hides jealousy.
The tame to-morrows
Of these days of triumph, when the vulgar herd Crowns you with honour; Judging rare genius to be Equal in merit to the wit of clowns.
113 Letter written to M. Levin, the correspondent of the Boersen-Courier of Berlin, 9 September, 1901.
114 C. Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod et le Don Juan de Mozart, 1894.
115 But ten years old, slightly built and pale,
Yet full of simple confidence and joy (Rimes familières).
116 Charles Gounod, Mémoires d’un Artiste, 1896.
117 Quoted from Saint-Saëns by Edmond Hippeau in Henry VIII et L’Opéra français, 1883. M. Saint-Saëns speaks elsewhere of “these works, well written, but heavy and unattractive, and reflecting in a tiresome way the narrow and pedantic spirit of certain little towns in Germany” (Harmonie et Mélodie).
118 Charles Gounod, “Ascanio” de Saint-Saëns, 1890.
119 Id., ibid.
120 C. Saint-Saëns, Problèmes et Mystères, 1894.
121 Harmonie et Mélodie.
122 C. Saint-Saëns, Portraits et Souvenirs, 1900.
123 I know that a vain dream of virtue
Has always cast a shadow on your soul (Rimes familières).
124 C. Saint-Saëns, Note sur les décors de théâtre dans l’antiquité romaine, 1880, where he discusses the mural paintings of Pompeii.
125 Lecture on the Phenomena of Mirages, given to the Astronomical Society of France in 1905.
126 C. Saint-Saëns, La Crampe des Écrivains, a comedy in one act, 1892.
127 Harmonie et Mélodie.
128 Charles Gounod, Mémoires d’un Artiste.
129 Les Heures; Mors; Modestie (Rimes familières).
130 “Thanks to Berlioz, all my generation has been shaped, and well shaped” (Portraits et Souvenirs).
131 “I like Liszt’s music so much, because he does not bother about other people’s opinions; he says what he wants to say; and the only thing that he troubles about is to say it as well as he possibly can” (Quoted by Hippeau).
132 The quotations are taken from Harmonie et Mélodie and Portraits et Souvenirs.
133 In Harmonie et Mélodie M. Saint-Saëns tells us that he organised and directed a concert in the Théâtre-Italien where only Liszt’s compositions were played. But all his efforts to make the French musical public appreciate Liszt were a failure.
134 The admiration was mutual. M. Saint-Saëns even said that without Liszt he could not have written Samson et Dalila. “Not only did Liszt have Samson et Dalila performed at Weimar, but without him that work would never have come into being. My suggestions on the subject had met with such hostility that I had given up the idea of writing it; and all that existed were some illegible notes.... Then at Weimar one day I spoke to Liszt about it, and he said to me, quite trustingly and without having heard a note, ‘Finish your work; I will have it performed here.’ The events of 1870 delayed its performance for several years.” (Revue Musicale, 8 November, 1901).
135 Portraits et Souvenirs.
136 Harmonie et Mélodie.
137 C. Saint-Saëns, Portraits et Souvenirs.
138 Portraits et Souvenirs.
139 Revue d’Art dramatique, 5 February, 1899.
140 Vincent d’Indy: Cours de Composition musicale, Book I, drawn up from notes taken in Composition classes at the Schola Cantorum, 1897-1898, p. 16 (Durand, 1902). See also the inaugural speech given at the school, and published by the Tribune de Saint-Gervais, November, 1900.
141 Vincent d’Indy, Cours de Composition musicale, p. 132.
142 Id., ibid., p. 13.
143 Id., ibid., p. 25. In the thirteenth century, Philippe de Vitry, Bishop of Meaux, called triple time “perfect,” because “it hath its name from the Trinity, that is to say, from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in whom is divine perfection.”
144 Id., ibid., pp. 66, 83, and passim.
145 Id., ibid.
146 “Make war against Particularism, that unwholesome fruit of the Protestant heresy!” (Speech to the Schola, taken from the Tribune de Saint-Gervais, November, 1900.)
147 At least Judaism has the honour of giving its name to a whole period of art, the “Judaic period.” “The modern style is the last phase of the Judaic school....” etc.
148 In the Cours de Composition musicale M. d’Indy speaks of “the admirable initial T in the Rouleau mortuaire of Saint-Vital (twelfth century), which represents Satan vomiting two Jews... an expressive and symbolic work of art, if ever there was one.” I should not mention this but for the fact that there are only two illustrations in the whole book.
149 Cours de Composition musicale, p. 160.
150 L’Oratorio moderne (Tribune de Saint-Gervais, March, 1899).
151 Ibid. As much as to say he was a Catholic without knowing it. And that is what a friend of the Schola, M. Edgar Tinel, declares: “Bach is a truly Christian artist and, without doubt, a Protestant by mistake, since in his immortal Credo he confesses his faith in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” (Tribune de Saint-Gervais, August-September, 1902). M. Edgar Tinel was, as you know, one of the principal masters of Belgian oratorio.
152 Revue musicale, November, 1902.
153 “The only documents extant on ancient music are either criticisms or appreciations, and not musical texts” (Cours de Composition).
154 “The influence of the Renaissance, with its pretension and vanity, caused a check in all the arts—the effect of which we are still feeling” (Traité de Composition, p. 89. See also the passage quoted before on Pride).
155 Tribune de Saint-Gervais, November, 1900.
156 I speak of the passages where he expresses himself freely, and is not interpreting a dramatic situation necessary to his subject, as in that fine symphonic part of the Rédemption, where he describes the triumph of Christ. But even there we find traces of sadness and suffering.
157 Through a break in the clouds, revealing Celestial joy shining above the deeps.
158 Tribune de Saint-Gervais November, 1900.
159 Id., September, 1899.
160 L’Étranger, “action musicale” in two acts. Poem and music by M. Vincent d’Indy. Played for the first time at Brussels in the Théâtre de la Monnaie, 7 January, 1903. The quotations from the drama, whose poetry is not as good as its music, are taken from the score.
161 There is a certain likeness in the subject to Herr Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot. There, too, the hero is a stranger who is persecuted, and treated as a sorcerer in the very town to which he has brought honour. But the dénouement is not the same; and the fundamental difference of temperament between the two artists is strongly marked. M. d’Indy finishes with the renouncement of a Christian, and Herr Richard Strauss by a proud and joyous affirmation of independence.
162 Found by M. d’Indy in his own province, as he tells us in his Chansons populaires du Vivarais.
163 In his criticisms his heart is not always in agreement with his mind. His mind denounces the Renaissance, but his instinct obliges him to appreciate the great Florentine painters of the Renaissance and the musicians of the sixteenth century. He only gets out of the difficulty by the most extraordinary compromises, by saying that Ghirlandajo and Filippo Lippi were Gothic, or by stating that the Renaissance in music did not begin till the seventeenth century! (Cours de Composition, pp. 214 and 216.)
164 Act III, scene 3. The power of that evocation is so strong that it carries the poet along with it. It would seem that part of the action had only been conceived with a view to the final effect of the sudden colouring of the waves.
165 Cours de Composition, and Tribune de Saint-Gervais.
166 Cours de Composition.
167 This essay was written in 1899.
168 Nietzsche.
169 Beyond Good and Evil, 1886. I hope I may be excused for introducing Nietzsche here, but his thoughts seem constantly to be reflected in Strauss, and to throw much light on the soul of modern Germany.
170 This article was written in 1899. Since then the Sinfonia Domestica, has been produced, and will be noticed in the essay French and German Music.
171 Composed in 1889, and performed for the first time at Eisenach in 1890.
171aRichard Strauss, eine Charakterskizze, 1896, Prague.
171bR. Strauss, Essai critique et biologique, 1898, Brussels.
171cDer Musikführer: Tod und Verklärung, Frankfort.
172 Some people have tried to see Alexander Ritter’s thoughts in Friedhold, as they have seen Strauss’s thoughts in Guntram.
173 Composed in 1894-95, and played for the first time at Cologne in 1895.
174 Composed in 1895-96, and performed for the first time at Frankfort-On-Main in November, 1896.
175 Nietzsche.
176 Nietzsche, Zarathustra.
177 Arthur Hahn, Der Musikführer: Don Quixote, Frankfort.
178 At the head of each variation Strauss has marked on the score the chapter of “Don Quixote” that he is interpreting.
179 Finished in December, 1898. Performed for the first time at Frankfort-On-Main on 3 March, 1899. Published by Leuckart, Leipzig.
180 The composition of the orchestra in Strauss’s later works is as follows: In Zarathustra: one piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, one English horn, one clarinet in E flat, two clarinets in B, one bass-clarinet in B, three bassoons, one double-bassoon, six horns in F, four trumpets in C, three trombones, three bass-tuba, kettledrums, big drum, cymbals, triangle, chime of bells, bell in E, organ, two harps, and strings. In Heldenleben: eight horns instead of six, five trumpets instead of four (two in E flat, three in B); and, in addition, military drums.
181 In Guntram one could even believe that he had made up his mind to use a phrase in Tristan, as if he could not find anything better to express passionate desire.
182 “The German spirit, which but a little while back had the will to dominate Europe, the force to govern Europe, has finally made up its mind to abandon it.”—Nietzsche.
183 A large number of works on Hugo Wolf have been published in Germany since his death. The chief is the great biography of Herr Ernst Decsey—Hugo Wolf (Berlin, 1903-4). I have found this book of great service; it is a work full of knowledge and sympathy. I have also consulted Herr Paul Müller’s excellent little pamphlet, Hugo Wolf (Moderne essays, Berlin, 1904), and the collections of Wolf’s letters, in particular his letters to Oskar Grohe, Emil Kaufmann, and Hugo Faisst.
184 Joseph Schalk was one of the founders of the Wagner-Verein at Vienna, and devoted his life to propagating the cult of Bruckner (who called him his “Herr Generalissimus “), and to fighting for Wolf.
185 Letter of H. von Bülow to Detlev von Liliencron.
186 Wolf’s letters to Strasser are of great value in giving us an insight into his artist’s eager and unhappy soul.
187 Wolf was living there with a friend. He had not a lodging of his own until 1896, and that was due to the generosity of his friends.
188 The writing of an opera was Wolf’s great dream and intention for many years.
189 Detlev von Liliencron offered him an American subject. “But in spite of my admiration for Buffalo Bill and his unwashed crew,” said Wolf sarcastically, “I prefer my native soil and people who appreciate the advantages of soap.”
190 All that is begun must end,
All around will sometime perish.
191 Once we were also men
Happy or sad like you;
Now life is taken from us,
We are only of earth, as you see.
Chiunque nasce a morte arriva Nel fuggir del tempo, e’l sole
Niuna cosa lascia viva.... Come voi, uomini fummo, Lieti e tristi, come siete; E or siam, come vedete, Terra al sol, di vita priva.
(Poems of Michelangelo, CXXXVI.)
192 This article was written in 1899, on the occasion of Lorenzo Perosi’s coming to Paris to direct his oratorio La Résurrection.
193 This essay was written in 1905.
194 Man lies in greatest misery; Man lies in greatest pain; I would I were in Heaven!
195 I come from God, and shall to God return.
196 Thou wilt rise again, thou wilt rise again, O my dust, after a little rest.
197 What is born must pass away; What has passed away must rise again.
198 O Man! O Man! Have care! Have care!
What says dark midnight?
199 May I be allowed to say that I am trying to write this study from a purely historical point of view, by eliminating all personal feeling—which would be of no value here. As a matter of fact, I am not a Debussyite; my sympathies are with quite another kind of art. But I feel impelled to give homage to a great artist, whose work I am able to judge with some impartiality.
200 That is for musicians. But I am convinced that with the mass of the public the other reasons have more weight—as is always the case.
201 We must also note that during the first half of the seventeenth century people of taste objected to the very theatrical declamation of French opera. “Our singers believe,” wrote Mersenne, in 1636, “that the exclamations and emphasis used by the Italians in singing savour too much of tragedies and comedies, and so they do not wish to employ them.”
202 No other critic has, I think, discerned so shrewdly Debussy’s art and genius. Some of his analyses are models of clever intuition. The thought of the critic seems to be one with that of the musician.
203 Jean-Christophe à Paris, 1904.
204 One must at least do Hugo the justice of saying that he always spoke of Beethoven with admiration, although he did not know him. But he rather exalts him in order to take away from the importance of a poet—the only one in the nineteenth century—whose fame was shading his own; and when he wrote in his William Shakespeare that “the great man of Germany is Beethoven” it was understood by all to mean “the great man of Germany is not Goethe.”
205 Written in a letter to his sister, Nanci, on 3 April, 1850.
206 We remark, nevertheless, that that did not prevent Gautier from being a musical critic.
207 I wish to make known from the beginning that I am only noticing here the greater musical doings of the nation, and making no mention of works which have not had an important influence on this movement.
208 In the meanwhile France saw the brilliant rise and extinction of a great artist—the most spontaneous of all her musicians—Georges Bizet, who died in 1875, aged thirty-seven. “Bizet was the last genius to discover a new beauty,” said Nietzsche; “Bizet discovered new lands—the Southern lands of music,” Carmen (1875) and L’Arlésienne (1872) are masterpieces of the lyrical Latin drama. Their style is luminous, concise, and well-defined; the figures are outlined with incisive precision. The music is full of light and movement, and is a great contrast to Wagner’s philosophical symphonies, and its popular subject only serves to strengthen its aristocratic distinction. By its nature and its clear perception of the spirit of the race it was well in advance of its time. What a place Bizet might have taken in our art if he had only lived twenty years longer!
209 Its influence is shown, in varying degrees, in works such as M. Reyer’s Sigurd (1884), Chabrier’s Gwendoline (1886), and M. Vincent d’Indy’s Le Chant de la Cloche (1886).
210 One knows that the Conservatoire originated in L’École gratuite de musique de la garde nationale parisienne, founded in 1792 by Sarrette, and directed by Gossec. It was then a civic and military school, but, according to Chénier, was changed into the Institut national de musique on 8 November, 1793, and into the Conservatoire on 3 August, 1795. This Republican Conservatoire made it its business to keep in contact with the spirit of the country, and was directly opposed to the Opera, which was of monarchical origin. See M. Constant Pierre’s work Le Conservatoire national de musique (1900), and M. Julien Tiersot’s very interesting book Les Fêtes et les Chants de la Révolution française (1908).
211 You must remember that I am speaking here of official action only; for there have always been masters among the Conservatoire teaching staff who have united a fine musical culture with a broad-minded and liberal spirit. But the influence of these independent minds is, generally speaking, small; for they have not the disposing of academic successes; and when, by exception, they have a wide influence, like that of César Franck, it is the result of personal work outside the Conservatoire—work that is, as often as not, opposed to Conservatoire principles.
212 It is to be noted that since 1807 the Conservatoire pupils have made Beethoven’s symphonies familiar to Parisians. The Symphony in C minor was performed by them in 1808; the Heroic in 1811. It was in connection with one of these performances that the Tablettes de Polymnie gave a curious appreciation of Beethoven, which is quoted by M. Constant Pierre: “This composer is often grotesque and uncouth, and sometimes flies majestically like an eagle and sometimes crawls along stony paths. It is as though one had shut up doves and crocodiles together.”
213 This is according to M. Rivet’s report on the Beaux-Arts in 1906. The Opera employs 1370 people, and its expenses are about 3,988,000 francs. The annual grant of the State comes to about 800,000 francs.
214 On the occasion of the revival of Don Juan in 1902, the Revue Musicale counted up the pages that had been added to the original score. They came to two hundred and twenty-eight.
215 The facts which follow are taken from the archives of the Société Nationale de Musique, and have been given me by M. Pierre de Bréville, the Society’s secretary.
216 It must be remembered that the prices of the seats were much cheaper than they are to-day; the best were only three francs.
217 There were about 340 performances of Saint-Saëns’ works, 380 of Wagner’s, 390 of Beethoven’s, and 470 of Berlioz’s. I owe these details to the kind information of M. Charles Malherbe and M. Léon Petitjean, the secretary of the Colonne concerts.
218 The Damnation de Faust alone was given in its entirety a hundred and fifty times in thirty years.
219 It is known that M. Colonne has now a helper in M. Gabriel Pierné, who will succeed him when he retires.
220 My statements may be verified by the account published in the Revue Éolienne of January, 1902, by M. Léon Bourgeois, secretary of the Committee of the Association des Concerts-Lamoureux.
221 It published, in eleven volumes, the ancient works that it performed. Before this experiment there had been the Concerts historiques de Fétis, preceded by lectures, which were inaugurated in 1832, and failed; and these were followed by Amédée Méréaux’s Concerts historiques in 1842-1844.
222 The following information was given by M. Vincent d’Indy at a lecture held on 20 February, 1903, at the École des Hautes Études sociales—a lecture which later became a chapter in M. d’Indy’s book, César Franck (1906).
223 A complete list may be found in M. d’Indy’s book.
224Tribune de Saint-Gervais, November, 1900.
225 See the Essay on Vincent d’Indy.
226 Revue d’histoire et de critique musicale, August-September, 1901.
227 “The Schola Cantorum aims at creating a modern music truly worthy of the Church” (First number of the Tribune de Saint-Gervais, the monthly bulletin of the Schola Cantorum, January, 1895).
228 The Schola had in mind here the vigorous work of the French Benedictines, which had been done in silence for the past fifty years; it was thinking, too, of the restoration of the Gregorian chant during 1850 and 1860 by Dom Guéranger, the first abbot of Solesmes, a work continued by Dom Jausions and Dom Pothier, the abbot of Saint-Wandrille, who published in 1883 the Mélodies Grégoriennes, the Liber Gradualis, and the Liber Antiphonarius. This work was finally brought to a happy conclusion by Dom Schmitt, and Dom Mocqucreau, the prior of Solesmes, who in 1889 began his monumental work, the Paléo-graphie Musicals, of which nine volumes had appeared in 1906. This great Benedictine school is an honour to France by the scientific work it has lately done in music. The school is at present exiled from France.
229 When Charles Bordes opened the first Schola Cantorum in the Rue Stanislas he was without help or resources, and had exactly thirty-seven francs and fifty centimes in hand. I mention this detail to give an idea of the splendidly courageous and confident spirit that Charles Bordes possessed.
230 Tribune de Saint-Gervais, November, 1900.
231 There are actually nine courses of Composition at the Schola—five for men and four for women. M. d’Indy takes eight of them, as well as a mixed class for orchestra.
232 The orchestra is mainly composed of pupils; and, by a generous arrangement, the financial profits from rehearsals and performances are divided among the pupils who take part in them, and credited to their account. And so besides the exhibitioners the Schola has a great number of pupils who are not well off, but who manage by these concerts to defray almost the entire expenses of their education there. “The concerts serve more especially as aesthetic exercises for the pupils, and as a means of according them teaching at small expense to themselves.” I owe this information and all that precedes it to the kindness of M. J. de la Laurencie, the general secretary of the Schola, whom I should like to thank.
233 The Schola has even performed, in an open-air theatre, Ramcau’s La Guirlande.
234 One may add to this list the choral societies of Nantes and Besançon, which are bodies of the same order as the Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais. And we may also attribute to the influence of the Schola an independent society, the Société J.S. Bach, started in Paris by an old Schola pupil, M. Gustave Bret, which, since 1905, has devoted itself to the performance of the great works of Bach. It is not one of the least merits of the Schola that it has helped to form good amateur choirs of the same type as the choral societies of Germany.
235 M. Charles Bordes did not even then give up his labours altogether. Though obliged to retire to the south of France for his health’s sake, he founded, in November, 1905, the Schola of Montpellier. This Schola has given about fifteen concerts a year, and has performed some of Bach’s cantatas, scenes from Rameau’s and Gluck’s operas, Franck’s oratorios, and Monteverde’s Orfeo. In 1906 M. Bordes organised an open-air performance of Rameau’s Guirlande. In January, 1908, he produced Castor et Pollux at the Montpellier theatre. The man’s activity was incredible, and nothing seemed to tire him. He was planning to start a dramatic training-school at Montpellier for the production of seventeenth and eighteenth century operas, when he died, in November, 1909, at the age of forty-four, and so deprived French art of one of its best and most unselfish servants.
236 The quality of the audience atoned, it is true, for its small numbers. Berlioz used to come to these concerts with his friends, Damcke and Stephen Heller; and it was after one of these performances, when he had been very stirred by an adagio in the E flat quartette, that he burst out with, “What a man! He could do everything, and the others nothing!”
237 The name, La Trompette, was also the pretext for embellishing chamber-music, by introducing the trumpet among the other instruments. To this end M. Saint-Saëns wrote his fine septette for piano, trumpet, two violins, viola, violoncello, and double bass; and M. Vincent d’Indy his romantic suite in D for trumpet, two flutes, and string instruments.
238 On 12 September, 1871, at the suggestion of Ambroise Thomas. The first lecturer was Barbereau, who, however, only lectured for a year. He was succeeded by Gautier, Professor of Harmony and Accompaniment, who in turn was replaced, in 1878, by M. Bourgault-Ducoudray.
239 The first three theses on Music accepted at the Sorbonne were those of M. Jules Combarieu on The Relationship of Poetry and Music, of M. Romain Holland on The Beginnings of Opera before Lully and Scarlatti, and of M. Maurice Emmanuel on Greek Orchestics. There followed, several years afterwards, M. Louis Laloy’s Aristoxenus of Tarento and Greek Music and M. Jules Écorcheville’s Musical Aesthetics, from Lully to Rameau and French Instrumental Music of the Seventeenth Century, M. André Pirro’s Aesthetics of Johann Sebastian Bach, and M. Charles Lalo’s Sketch of Scientific Musical Aesthetics.
240 There are ninety violins, fifteen violas, and fifteen violoncellos. Unfortunately it is much more difficult to get recruits for the wood wind and brass.
241 They have performed classical music of composers like Bach, Händel, Gluck, Rameau, and Beethoven; and modern music of composers like Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Dukas, etc. This Society has just installed itself in the ancient chapel of the Dominicans of the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, who have given them the use of it.
242 Of late years there has been a veritable outburst of concerts at popular prices—some of them in imitation of the German Restaurationskonzerte, such as the Concerts-Rouge, the Concerts-Touche, etc., where classical and modern symphony music may be heard. These concerts are increasing fast, and have great success among a public that is almost exclusively bourgeois, but they are yet a long way behind the popular performances of Händel in London, where places may be had for sixpence and threepence.
I do not attach very much importance to the courageous, though not always very intelligent movement of the Universités Populaires, where since 1886 a collection of amateurs, of fashionable people and artists, meet to make themselves heard, and pretend to initiate the people into what are sometimes the most complicated and aristocratic works of a classic or decadent art. While honouring this propaganda—whose ardour has now abated somewhat—one must say that it has shown more good-will than common-sense. The people do not need amusing, still less should they be bored; what they need is to learn something about music. This is not always easy; for it is not noisy deeds we want, but patience and self-sacrifice. Good intentions are not enough. One knows the final failure of the Conservatoire populaire de Mimi Pinson, started by Gustave Charpentier, for giving musical education to the work-girls of Paris.
243 M. Maurice Buchor relates an anecdote which typifies what I mean. “I begged the conductor of a good men’s choral society,” he says, “to have one of Händel’s choruses sung. But he seemed to hesitate. I had made the suggestion tentatively, and then tried to enlarge on the sincerity and breadth of its musical idea. ‘Ah, very good,’ he said, ‘if you really want to hear it, it is easily done; but I was afraid that perhaps it was rather too popular.’” (Poème de la Vie Humaine: Introduction to the Second Series, 1905.) One may add to this the words of a professor of singing in a primary school for Higher Education in Paris: “Folk-music—well, it is very good for the provinces.” (Quoted by Buchor in the Introduction to the Second Series of the Poème, 1902.)
244 Taken from the Supplement à la Correspondance générale de l’Instruction primaire, 15 December, 1894.
245 Three series of these Chants populaires pour les Écoles have already been published.
246 I reserve my opinion, from an artist’s point of view, on this plagiarising of the words of songs. On principle I condemn it absolutely. But, in this case, it is Hobson’s choice. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari. If our contemporary musicians really wished the people to sing, they would have written songs for them; but they seem to have no desire to achieve honour that way. So there is nothing else to be done but to have recourse to the musicians of other days; and even there the choice is very limited. For France formerly, like the France of to-day, had very few musicians who had any understanding of a great popular art. Berlioz came nearest to understanding the meaning of it; and he is not yet public property, so his airs cannot be used. It is curious, and rather sad, that out of eighty pieces chosen by M. Buchor only nine of them are French; and this is reckoning the Italians, Lully and Cherubini, as Frenchmen. M. Buchor has had to go to German classical musicians almost entirely, and, generally speaking, his choice has been a happy one. With a sure instinct he has given the preference to popular geniuses like Händel and Beethoven. We may ask why he did not keep their words; but we must remember that at any rate they had to be translated; and though it may seem rash to change the subject of a musical masterpiece, it is certain that M. Buchor’s clever adaptations have resulted in driving the fine thoughts of Händel and Schubert and Mozart and Beethoven into the memories of the French people, and making them part of their lives. Had they heard the same music at a concert they would probably not have been very much moved. And that makes M. Buchor in the right. Let the French people enrich themselves with the musical treasures of Germany until the time comes when they are able to create a music of their own! This is a kind of peaceful conquest to which our art is accustomed. “Now then, Frenchmen,” as Du Bellay used to say, “walk boldly up to that fine old Roman city, and decorate (as you have done more than once) your temples and altars with its spoils.” Besides, let us remember that the German masters of the eighteenth century, whose words M. Buchor has plagiarised, did not hesitate to plagiarise themselves; and in turning the Berceuse of the Oratorio de Noël into a Sainte famille humaine, M. Buchor has respected the musical ideas of Bach much more than Bach himself did when he turned it into a Dialogue between Hercules and Pleasure.
247 The Poème has been published in four parts:—I. De la naissance au mariage (“From Birth to Marriage”); II. La Cité (“The City”); III. De l’age viril jusqu’à la mort (“From Manhood to Death”); IV. L’Idéal (“Ideals”). 1900-1906.
248 The last chorus of Fidelio has been recently sung by one hundred and seventy school-children at Douai; a grand chorus from The Messiah by the Écoles Normales of Angoulême and Valence; and the great choral scene and the last part of Schumann’s Faust by the two Écoles Normales of Limoges. At Valence, performances are given every year in the theatre there before an audience of between eight hundred and a thousand teachers.
Outside the schools, especially in the North, a certain number of teachers of both sexes have formed choral societies among work-girls and co-operative societies, such as La Fraternelle at Saint Quentin.
In a general way one may say that M. Maurice Buchor’s campaign has especially succeeded in departments like that of Aisne and Drôme, where the ground has been prepared by the Academy Inspector. Unhappily in many districts the movement receives a lively opposition from music-teachers, who do not approve of this mnemotechnical way of learning poetry with music, without any instruction in solfeggio or musical science. And it is quite evident that this method would have its defects if it were a question of training musicians. But it is really a matter of training people who have some music in them; and so the musicians must not be too fastidious. I hope that great musicians will one day spring from this good ground—musicians more human than those of our own time, musicians whose music will be rooted in their hearts and in their country.
249 We must not forget M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, who was his forerunner with his Chants de Fontenoy, collections of songs for the Écoles Normales.
250 Mention must especially be made of little groups of young students, pupils of the Universities or the larger schools, who are devoting themselves at present to the moral and musical instruction of the people. Such an effort, made more than a year ago at Vaugirard, resulted in the Manécanterie des petits chanteurs de la Croix de bois, a small choir of the children of the people, who in the poor parishes go from one church to another singing Gregorian and Palestrinian music.
251 It is hardly necessary to recall the unfortunate statute of 15 March, 1850, which says: “Primary instruction may comprise singing.”
252 By the decree of 4 August, 1905. At the same time, a programme and pedagogic instructions were issued. The importance of musical dictation and the usefulness of the Galin methods for beginners were urged. Let us hope that the State will decide officially to support M. Buchor’s endeavours, and that it will gradually introduce into schools M. Jacques-Delacroze’s methods of rhythmic gymnastics, which have produced such astonishing results in Switzerland.
253 M. Chaumié’s suggestion. See the Revue Musicale, 15 July, 1903.
254 Revue Musicale, December 15, 1903, and 1 and 15 January, 1904.
255 “In this,” says M. Buchor, “as in many other things, the children of the people set an example to the children of the middle classes.” That is true; but one must not blame the middle-class children so much as those in authority, who, “in this, as in many other things,” have not fulfilled their duties.
256 The Passion according to St. Matthew was given first of all by two little choirs, consisting of from twelve to sixteen students, including the soloists.
257 It is hardly necessary to mention the curious attraction that some of our musicians are beginning to feel for the art of civilisations that are quite opposed to those of the West. Slowly and quietly the spirit of the Far East is insinuating itself into European music.
258 There is no need to say that Rameau’s genius justified all this enthusiasm; but one cannot help believing that it was aroused, not so much on account of his musical genius as on account of his supposed championship of the French music of the past against foreign art; though that art was well adapted to the laws of French opera, as we may see for ourselves in Gluck’s case.
259 La Tribune de Saint-Gervais, September, 1903.
260 At any rate, certain forms of music—the highest. See the discussions at the Chambre des Députés on the budget of the Beaux-Arts in February, 1906; and the speeches of MM. Théodore Denis, Beauquier, and Dujardin-Beaumetz, on Religious Music, the Niedermeyer School, and the civic value of the organ.