Musical Memories Part 9

and the curtain fell to the applause of the audience.

We owe much to Germany in music, for it has produced many great musicians. It can set off against our trinity of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, the no less glorious Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. But Germany seems to have lost all respect for the meaning of its own music and for its own glories. Instead of watching over the purity of the text of its masterpieces, it alters them at its pleasure and makes them all but unrecognizable. We abuse nuances but they were rare in earlier days. An orchestra conductor who performs symphonies by Haydn and Mozart, even by Beethoven, has the right to make additions. But it is intolerable that the scores should be printed with these nuances and bowings which are in no way due to the author and which are imposed by the editor.

Nevertheless, that is what happens, and it is impossible to tell where the authentic text ends and the interpolation begins. In addition, the interpolation may be the exact contrary of what the author intended.

This evil is at its worst in piano music. Our famous teachers, like Marmontel and Le Couppey, have published editions of the cla.s.sics which are full of their own directions. But the player is forewarned; it is the Marmontel or Le Couppey edition and makes no pretence of authenticity. In Germany, however, there are supposedly authentic editions, based on the originals, but which superimpose their own pernicious inventions on the author's text.

The touch of the piano used to be different from what it is to-day. The directions in Mozart's and Beethoven's works show that they used the execution of stringed instruments as their model. The touch was lighter and the fingers were raised so that the notes were separated slightly, and not run together except when indicated. The supposition is that this must have led to a dryness of tone. I remember to have heard in my childhood some old people whose playing was singularly hopping. Then, there came a reaction, and with it a pa.s.sion for slurring the notes.

When I was Stamaty's pupil, it was considered most difficult to "tie"

the notes; that required, however, only dexterity and suppleness. "When she learns to 'tie,' she will know how to play," said the mother of a young pianist. Nevertheless, the trick of perpetual _legato_ becomes exceedingly monotonous and takes away all character from the pianoforte cla.s.sics. But it is insisted on everywhere in the modern German editions. Throughout there are connections seemingly interminable in length, and indications of _legato_, _sempre legato_, which the author not only did not indicate, but in places where it is easy to see that he intended the exact opposite.

If this is the case, what shall be said of marking the fingering on all the notes--which often makes good playing impossible. Liszt taught hundreds of pupils according to the best principles, yet such erroneous principles have prevailed!

Disciples of the ivory keys are numerous in our day. Everybody wants to have a piano, and everybody plays it or thinks he does, which is not always the same thing, and few really understand what the term "to play the piano," so currently used, means.

The harpsichord reigned supreme before the appearance of the piano--an instrument which is beloved by some and execrated by others. To his utter amazement Reyer was considered an enemy of the pianoforte. The harpsichord has been revived of late so that it is needless to describe it. It lacks strength, and that was the reason it was dethroned in a period when strength was everything. On the other hand, it has distinction and elegance. As the player can not modify the intensity of the sound by a single pressure of the finger--in which it resembles the organ--like the organ, with its multiple keyboards and registers, the harpsichord has a wide variety of effects and affords the opportunity for several octaves to sound simultaneously. As a result, while music written for the harpsichord gains in strength and expression on the modern instrument, it often a.s.sumes a deceptive monotony for which the author is not responsible.

The players of the harpsichord were ignorant of muscular effects; there was nothing of the unchained lion about them. The delicate hands of a marquise lost none of their gracefulness as they skimmed over the keyboards, and the red or black keys emphasized their whiteness.

The introduction of the hammer in the place of the tiny nib permitted the modification of the quality of sound by differences in the pressure of the fingers, and also the production at will of such nuances as _forte_ and _piano_ without recourse to the different registers. This is the reason why the new instrument was first called the pianoforte. The word was long and c.u.mbersome and was cut in half. When it became necessary to _a.s.sault_ the note, they used the phrase "to hit the forte." The papers which gave accounts of young Mozart's concerts praised him for his ability to "hit."

Nevertheless one did not hit hard. These keyboards with their limited keys responded so easily that a child's fingers were sufficient. I first played on one of these instruments at the age of three. It was made by Zimmerman, whose son was Gounod's father-in-law.

Later, the weight of the keys was increased to get a greater volume of sound. Then, when long-haired _virtuosi_, playing by main strength, produced peals of thunder, they really "_toucha du piano_."

To return to _Orphee_ and end as we began, I have to make a painful confession. If the works of Gluck in general and _Orphee_ in particular have had a happy influence on our musical taste, a pa.s.sage from this last work has been a noxious influence,--the famous chorus of the demons "_Quel est l'audacieux--qui dans ces sombres lieux--ose porter ses pas?_"

In the old days French opera was based on declamation and it was scrupulously respected even in the arias. There is a fine example of this excellent system in Lully's famous aria from _Medusa_ to prove what strength results from a close relation between the accent of the verse and the music. Gluck was one of the most fervent disciples of this system, but _Orphee_, as we know, was derived from _Orfeo_. The question was whether he could even think of suppressing this spectacular chorus with its amazing strength which was one of the princ.i.p.al reasons for the work's success. Unfortunately the music of the chorus was moulded on the Italian text, and each verse ended with the accent on the antepenult, which occurs frequently in German and Italian, but never in French. And they sing:

Quel est l'auDAcieux Qui dans ces SOMbres lieux Ose porTER ses pas Et devant LE trepas Ne fremit pas?

As French is not strongly accented such faults are tolerated. Gluck's theme impressed itself on the memory, so that he dealt a terrific blow to the purity of prosody. We gradually became so disinterested in this that by Auber's time scarcely any attention was paid to it. Finally, Offenbach appeared. He was a German by birth and his musical ideas naturally rhymed with German in direct contradiction to the French words to which they applied. This constant bungling pa.s.sed for originality.

Sometimes it would have been necessary to change the division of a measure to get a correct melody, as in the song:

Un p't.i.t bonhomme Pas plus haut qu'ca.

In such a case we might say that he did wrong for the mere pleasure of going astray. But popular taste was so corrupted that no one noticed it and everybody who wrote in the lighter vein fell into the same habits.

We owe a debt of grat.i.tude to Andre Messager for breaking away from this manner and setting musical phraseology aright. His return to the old traditions was not the least of the attractions of his delightful _Veronique_.

But we are wandering far from Gluck and _Orphee_, although not so far as we might think. In art, as in everything, extremes meet, and there are all kinds of tastes.

CHAPTER XVI

DELSARTE

Felix Duquesnal in one of his brilliant articles has written something about Delsarte, the singer, in connection with his controversy with Madame Carvalho. The cause of this controversy was the lessons she took from him. The name of Delsarte should never be forgotten, as I shall try to explain. Madame Carvalho did not refuse to pay Delsarte for her lessons, but she did not want to be called his pupil. Although she had attended the Conservatoire, she wanted to be known solely as a pupil of Duprez. As a matter of fact it was Duprez who knew how to make the "Little Miolan," the delightful warbler, into the great singer with her important place on the French stage.

But this was accomplished at a price. Madame Carvalho told me about it herself. Her medium register was weak and Duprez undertook to subst.i.tute chest tones and develop clearness as much as possible. "When I began to work," she said, "my mother was frightened. One would have thought that a calf was being killed in the house."

Ordinarily such a method would produce a harsh, shaky voice and all freshness would be lost. But in Madame Carvalho's case the opposite was true. The freshness and purity of her voice were beyond compare, while its smoothness and the harmony of the registers were perfect. It was a miracle the like of which we shall probably never see again.

But if Duprez made a wonderful voice at the risk of breaking it, I have always thought that Madame Carvalho owed her admirable diction, so distinguis.h.i.+ng a mark of her talent, to Delsarte. Delsarte was a disastrous and deadly teacher of singing. No voice could stand up under his methods, not even his own, although he attributed its loss to teaching at the Conservatoire. But he studied deeply the arts of speaking and gesture, and he was a past master in them.

I once attended a course he gave in these subjects. He stated highly illuminating truths and gave the psychological reasons for accents and the physiological reasons for the gestures. He determined the use of gestures in some sort of scientific way. Mystic fancies were mixed up in these questions.

It was extremely interesting to see him dissect one of Fontaine's fables or a pa.s.sage from Racine, and to hear him explain why the accent should be on such a word or on such a syllable and not on another, to bring out the sense. Although this course was so instructive, few took it, for Delsarte was almost unknown to people. His influence scarcely extended outside a narrow circle of admirers, but the quality made up for the quant.i.ty. This was the circle of the old _Debats_, which was formerly devoted exclusively to Romanticism, but at this time to the cla.s.sics--the set headed by Ingres in painting and Reber in music.

Theirs was a secluded and ascetic world in silent revolt against the abominations of the century. One had to hear the tone of devotion in which the members of this circle spoke of the ancients to appreciate their att.i.tude. Nothing in our day can give any idea of them. "They say," one of the devotees once told me, "that the ancients learned Beauty through a sort of revelation, and Beauty has steadily degenerated ever since."

Such false notions were, however, professed by the most sincere people who were deeply devoted to art. So this group, which had no influence on their own contemporaries, nevertheless, without knowing it or wis.h.i.+ng to do so, played a useful role.

As we know, the public was divided into two camps. On one side were the partisans of Melody, opera-comique, the Italians, and, with some effort, of grand opera. Opposed to them were the partisans of music in the grand style--Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Sebastian Bach, although he was little known and is less well known now.

No one gave a thought to our old French school, to the composers from Lulli to Gluck, who produced so many excellent works. Reber showed Delsarte the way and the latter, naturally an antiquarian, threw himself into this unexplored field with surprising vigor. Only Lulli's name was known, while Campra, Mondonville and the others were entirely forgotten. Even Gluck himself had been forgotten. First editions of his orchestral scores, which it is impossible to find to-day, sold for a few francs at the second-hand book shops. Rameau was never mentioned.

Delsarte, handsome, eloquent, and fascinating, wielded an almost imperial sway over his little coterie of artists. Thanks to him the lamp of our old French school was kept dimly burning until the day when inherent justice permitted it to be revived. In this restricted world no evening was complete without Delsarte. He would come in with some story of frightful throat trouble to justify his chronic lack of voice, and, then, without any voice at all but by a kind of magic, would put shudders into the tones of Orpheus or Eurydice. I often played his accompaniments and he always demanded _pianissimo_.

"But," I would say, "the author has indicated _forte_."

"That is true," he would answer, "but in those days the harpsichord had little depth of tone."

It would have been easy to answer that the accompaniment was written for the orchestra and not for the harpsichord.

Delsarte's execution, on account of the insufficiency of his vocal powers, was often entirely different from what the author intended.

Furthermore, he was absolutely ignorant of the correct way to interpret the appogiatures and other marks which are not used to-day. As a result his interpretation of the older works was inexact. But that did not matter, for even if masterpieces are presented badly, there is always something left. Besides, both the singer and his hearers had Faith. He had a way of p.r.o.nouncing "Gluck" which aroused expectation even before one heard a note.

From time to time Delsarte gave a concert. He would come on the stage and say that he had a bad throat, but that he would try to give _Iphigenia's Dream_ or something of that sort. His courage would prove to be greater than his strength and he would have to stop. He would then fall back on old-time songs or La Fontaine's fables in which he excelled. A skilfully studied mimicry, which seemed entirely natural, underlay his reading. A red handkerchief, which he knew how to draw from his pocket at just the proper moment, always excited applause.

One day he conceived the idea of giving one of Bossuet's sermons at his concert. Religious authority was very powerful at the time and forbade it. Yet there would have been no sacrilege, and I regretted keenly that I could not hear this magnificent prose delivered so wonderfully. Now that religious authority has lost its secular support, we see things in an entirely different way. Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints walk the stage, speak in prose or verse, and sing. It would seem that no one is shocked for there is no protest. For my own part I must frankly confess that such pseudo-religious exhibitions are disagreeable. They disturb me greatly and I can see no use in them.

In order to foster admiration for the old masters, Delsarte conceived the idea of publis.h.i.+ng a collection of pieces taken from their works right and left, and, as a result, he created his _Archives du Chant_. He had special type made and the publication was a marvel of beautiful typography, correctness and good taste. At the beginning of each part was a cleverly harmonised pa.s.sage of church music. The support of a publisher was necessary for the success of such a work, but Delsarte was his own publisher and he met with no success at all. Similar but inferior publications have been markedly successful.

Delsarte aimed at purity of text, but his successors have been forced to modernize the works to make them accessible for the public. This fact is painful. In literature the texts are studied and the endeavor is to reproduce the writer's thought as closely as possible. In music it is entirely different. With each new edition a professor is commissioned to supervise the work and he adds something of his own invention.

Delsarte, a singer without a voice, an imperfect musician, a doubtful scholar, guided by an intuition which approached genius, in spite of his numerous faults played an important role in the evolution of French music in the Nineteenth Century. He was no ordinary man. The impression he gave to all who knew him was of a visionary, an apostle. When one heard him speak with his fiery enthusiasm about these works of the past which the world had forgotten, one could but believe that such oblivion was unjust and desire to know these relics of another age.

Without the shadow of a doubt I owed to his leaders.h.i.+p the necessary courage to make a profound study of the works of the old school, for they are unattractive at first. Berlioz berated all this music. He had seen Gluck's works on the stage in his youth, but he could see nothing in them that was not "superannuated and childish." With all respect to Berlioz's memory, it deserved a kinder judgment than that. When one reaches the depths of this music, although it may be at the price of some effort, he is well repaid for his pains. There is real feeling, grandeur and even something of the picturesque in these works--as much as could be with the means at their disposal.

It is only right that we should pay tribute to Delsarte's memory. He was a pioneer who, during his whole life, proclaimed the value of immortal works, which the world despised. That is no slight merit.