* * * * *

Modern peoples are not artistic. The Greeks were, and the Japanese were, before the European invasion. An artistic people is recognized by their ignorance of "objects of art," for in such an environment art is everywhere. An artistic people no more dreams of creating art than a great nobleman of consciously exhibiting a distinguished manner. Distinction lies in his slightest mannerism without his being conscious of the fact. So, among artistic peoples, the most ordinary and humble objects have style. And this style, furthermore, is in perfect harmony with the purpose of the object. It is absolutely appropriate for that purpose in its proportions, in the purity of its lines, the elegance of its form, its perfection of execution, and, above all, in its meaning. When an outcry is raised against the ugliness and tawdriness of certain objects in this country, the answer is, "But see how cheap they are!" But style and conscience in work cost nothing. Feeling for art is, however, inherent in human nature. The weapons of primitive peoples are beautiful. The prehistoric hatchets of the Stone Age are perfect in their contours. There is, therefore, no question of creating a feeling for art in the people, but of awakening it.

Music holds so important a place in the modern world, that we ought to begin with that. There is plenty of gay music, easy to understand, which is in harmony with the laws of art, and the people ought to hear it instead of the horrors which they cram into our ears under the pretence of satisfying our tastes. What pleases people most is sentimental music, but it need not be a silly sentimentality. Instead, they ought to give the people the charming airs which grow, as naturally as daisies on a lawn, in the vast field of opera-comique. That is not high art, it is true, but it is pretty music and it is high art compared with what is heard too often in the cafes. I am not ignorant of the fact that such establishments employ talented people. But along with the good, what frightful things one hears! And no one would listen to their instrumental repertoire anywhere else!

Every time anyone has tried to raise the standards and employ real singers and real virtuosi, the attendance has increased. But, very often, even at the theatres, the managers satisfy their own tastes under the pretence of satisfying that of the public. That is, of course, intensely human. We judge others by ourselves.

A famous manager once said to me, as he pointed to an empty house, "The public is amazing. Give them what they like, and they don't come!"

One day I was walking in a garden. There was a bandstand and musicians were playing some sort of music. The crowd was indifferent and passed by talking without paying the slightest attention. Suddenly there sounded the first notes of the delightful andante of Beethoven's Symphony in D—a flower of spring with a delicate perfume. At the first notes all walking and talking stopped. And the crowd stood motionless and in an almost religious silence as it listened to the marvel. When the piece was over, I went out of the garden, and near the entrance I heard one of the managers say,

"There, you see they don't like that kind of music.

And that kind of music was never played there again.



CHAPTER IX

ANARCHY IN MUSIC

Music is as old as human nature. We can get some idea of what it was at first from the music of savage tribes. There were a few notes and rudimentary melodies with blows struck in cadence as an accompaniment; or, sometimes, the same primitive rhythms without any accompaniment—and nothing else! Then melody was perfected and the rhythms became more complicated. Later came Greek music, of which we know little, and the music of the East and Far East.

Music, as we now understand the term, began with the attempts at harmony in the Middle Ages. These attempts were labored and difficult, and the uncertainty of their gropings, combined with the slowness of their development, excites our wonder. Centuries were necessary before the writing of music became exact, but, slowly, laws were elaborated. Thanks to them the works of the Sixteenth Century came into being, in all their admirable purity and learned polyphony. Hard and inflexible laws engendered an art analogous to primitive painting. Melody was almost entirely absent and was relegated to dance tunes and popular songs. But the dance tunes of the time, on which, perhaps, erudition was not used sufficiently, were written in the same polyphonic style and with the same rigid correctness as the madrigals and the church music.

We know that the popular songs found their way into the church music and that Palestrina's great reform consisted in banishing them. However, we should get but a feeble idea of the part they played, if we imagined that they naturally belonged there. Take a well known air, Au Claire de la Lune, for example, and make each note a whole note sung by the tenor, while the other voices dialogue back and forth in counterpoint, and see what is left of the song for the listener. The scandal of La Messe de l'Homme arme was entirely theoretical.

We simply do not know how they played these anthems, masses, and madrigals, in the absence of any indication of either the time or the emphasis. We find a few directions for expression, as in the first measures of Palestrina's Stabat Mater but such directions are extremely rare. They are simply the first signs of the dawn of the far-off day of music with expression. Certain learned and well-intentioned persons endeavor to compare this music with ours, and we surprise in some of the modern editions instances of molto expressivo which seem to be good guesses. This exclusively consonant music, in which the intervals of fourths were considered dissonant, while the diminishing fifth was the diabolus in musica, ought from its very nature to be antithetical to expression. Nothing in the Kyrie, in La Messe du Pape Marcel, gives the impression of a prayer, unless expressive accents, without any real justification, are introduced by main strength.

Expression came into existence with the chord of the dominant seventh from which all modern harmony developed. This invention is attributed to Monteverde. No matter what has been said, however, it occurs in Palestrina's Adoremus. Floods of ink have been poured out in discussing this question, some affirming, while others—and not the least, by any manner of means—denying the existence of the famous chord. No equivocation is possible. It is a simultaneously played chord held by four voices for a whole measure. What is certain is that Palestrina, by putting aside the rules, made a discovery, the significance of which he did not realize.

With the introduction of the seventh interval a new era began. It would be a grave error to believe that the rules were overturned, for, instead, new principles were added to old ones as new conditions demanded. They learned how to modulate, how to transpose from one key to the next key and finally to the keys farthest away. In his treatise on harmony Fetis studied this evolution in a masterly manner. Unfortunately his scholarship was not combined with deep musical feeling. For example, he saw faults in Mozart and Beethoven where there are only beauties, and beauties which even an ignorant listener—if he is naturally musical—will see without trouble. He did not understand the vast difference between the unlettered person who commits a solecism and Pascal, the inventor of a new syntax.

However that may be, Fetis gave us a comprehensive review in broad outlines of musical evolution down to what he justly called the "omnitonic system," which Richard Wagner has achieved since. "Beyond that," he said, "I can see nothing more."

He did not foresee the a-tonic system, but that is what we have come to. There is no longer any question of adding to the old rules new principles which are the natural expression of time and experience, but simply of casting aside all rules and every restraint.

"Everyone ought to make his own rules. Music is free and unlimited in its liberty of expression. There are no perfect chords, dissonant chords or false chords. All aggregations of notes are legitimate."

That is called, and they believe it, the development of taste.

He whose taste is developed by this system is not like the man who by tasting a wine can tell you its age and its vineyard, but he is rather like the fellow who with perfect indifference gulps down good or bad wine, brandy or whiskey, and prefers that which burns his gullet the most. The man who gets his work hung in the Salon is not the one who puts on his canvas delicate touches in harmonious tones, but he who juxtaposes vermillion and Veronese green. The man with a "developed taste" is not the one who knows how to get new and unexpected results by passing from one key to another, as the great Richard did in Die Meistersinger, but rather the man who abandons all keys and piles up dissonances which he neither introduces nor concludes and who, as a result, grunts his way through music as a pig through a flower garden.

Possibly they may go farther still. There seems to be no reason why they should linger on the way to untrammeled freedom or restrict themselves within a scale. The boundless empire of sound is at their disposal and let them profit by it. That is what dogs do when they bay at the moon, cats when they meow, and the birds when they sing. A German has written a book to prove that the birds sing false. Of course he is wrong for they do not sing false. If they did, their song would not sound agreeable to us. They sing outside of scales and it is delightful, but that is not man-made art.

Some Spanish singers give a similar impression, through singing interminable grace notes beyond notation. Their art is intermediate between the singing of the birds and of man. It is not a higher art.

In certain quarters they marvel at the progress made in the last thirty years. The architects of the Fifteenth Century must have reasoned in the same way. They did not appreciate that they were assassinating Gothic art, and that after some centuries we would have to revert to the art of the Greeks and Romans.



CHAPTER X

THE ORGAN

When hairy Pan joined reeds of different lengths and so invented the flute which bears his name, he was, in reality, creating the organ. It needed only to add to this flute a keyboard and bellows to make one of those pretty instruments the first painters used to put in the hands of angels. As it developed and gradually became the most grandiose of the instruments, the organ, with its depth of tone modified and increased tenfold by the resonance of the great cathedrals, took on its religious character.

The organ is more than a single instrument. It is an orchestra, a collection of the pipes of Pan of every size, from those as small as a child's playthings to those as gigantic as the columns of a temple. Each one corresponds to what is termed an organ-stop. The number is unlimited.

The Romans made organs which must have been simple from the musical standpoint, though they were complicated in their mechanical construction. They were called hydraulic organs. The employment of water in a wind instrument has greatly perplexed the commentators. Cavaille-Coll studied the question and solved the problem by demonstrating that the water compressed the air. This system was ingenious but imperfect, since it was applicable only to the most primitive instruments. The keys, it seems, were very large, and were struck by blows of the fist.

Let us leave erudition for art and primitive for perfected instruments. By the time of Sebastian Bach and Rameau the organ had taken on its grandiose character. The stops had multiplied and the organist called them by means of registers which he drew out or pushed back at will. In order to give greater resources, the builder multiplied the keyboards. Pedals were introduced to help out the keyboards. At that time Germany alone had pedals worthy of the name and worth while in playing an interesting bass part. In France and elsewhere the rudimentary pedals were only used for certain fundamental notes or in prolonged tenutos. No one outside of Germany could play Sebastian Bach's compositions.

Playing on the old instruments was fatiguing and uncomfortable. The touch was heavy and, when one used both the pedals and the keyboards, a real display of strength was necessary. A similar display was necessary to draw out or push back the registers, some of which were beyond the player's reach. In short, an assistant was necessary, in fact several assistants in playing large organs like those at Harlem or Arnheim in Holland. It was almost impossible to modify the combinations of stops. All nuances, save the abrupt change from strong to soft and vice versa, were impossible.

It remained for Cavaille-Coll to change all this and open up new fields of usefulness for the organ. He introduced in France keyboards worthy of the name, and he gave to the higher notes, through his invention of harmonic stops, a brilliancy they had lacked. He invented wonderful combinations which allow the organist to change his combinations and to vary the tone, without the aid of an assistant and without leaving the keyboard. Even before his day a scheme had been devised of enclosing certain stops in a box protected by shutters which a pedal opened and closed at will; this permitted the finest shadings. By different processes the touch of the organ was made as delicate as that of the piano.

For some years the Swiss organ-makers have been inventing new facilities which make the organist a sort of magician. The manifold resources of the marvellous instrument are at his command, obedient to his slightest wish.

These resources are prodigious. The compass of the organ far surpasses that of all the instruments of the orchestra. The violin notes alone reach the same height, but with little carrying power. As for the lower tones, there is no competitor of the thirty-two-foot pipes, which go two octaves below the violoncello's low C. Between the pianissimo which almost reaches the limit where sound ceases and silence begins, down to a range of formidable and terrifying power, every degree of intensity can be obtained from this magical instrument. The variety of its timbre is broad. There are flute stops of various kinds; tonal stops that approximate the timbre of stringed instruments; stops for effecting changes in which each note, formed from several pipes, bring out simultaneously its fundamental and harmonic sounds; stops which serve to imitate the instruments of the orchestra, such as the trumpet, the clarinet, and the cremona (an obsolete instrument with a timbre peculiar to itself) and the bassoon. There are celestial voices of several kinds, produced by combinations of two simultaneous stops which are not tuned in perfect unison. Then we have the famous Vox Humana, a favorite with the public, which is alluring even though it is tremulous and nasal, and we have the innumerable combinations of all these different stops, with the gradations that may be obtained through indefinite commingling of the tones of this marvellous palette.

Add to all this the continual breathing of the monster's lungs which gives the sounds an incomparable and inimitable steadiness. Human beings were used for a long time to fill these lungs—blowers working away with hands and feet. We do much better now. The great organ in Albert Hall, London, is supplied with air by steam which assures the organist an inexhaustible supply. Other instruments use gas engines which are more manageable. Then, there is the hydraulic system, which is very powerful and easily used, for one has only to pull out a plug to set the bellows in motion.

These mechanical systems, however, are not entirely free from accidents. I discovered that fact when I was concluding the first part of the Adagio in Liszt's great Fantaisie in the beautiful Victoria Hall in Geneva. The pipe which brought in the water burst and the organ was mute. I have always thought, perhaps wrongly, that malice had something to do with the accident.

This Liszt Fantaisie is the most extraordinary piece for the organ there is. It lasts forty minutes and the interest is sustained throughout. Just as Mozart in his Fantaisie et Sonate in C minor foresaw the modern piano, so Liszt, writing this Fantaisie more than half a century ago, appears to have foreseen the instrument of a thousand resources which we have to-day.

Let us have the courage to admit, however, that these resources are only partly utilized as they can or should be. To draw from a great instrument all its possibilities, to begin with, one must understand it thoroughly, and that understanding cannot be gained over night. The organ, as we have seen, is a collection of an indefinite number of instruments. It places before the organist extraordinary means of expressing himself. No two of these instruments are precisely alike. The organ is only a theme with innumerable variations, determined by the place in which it is to be installed, by the amount of money at the builder's disposal, by his inventiveness, and, often, by his personal whims. As a result time is required for the organist to learn his instrument thoroughly. After this he is as free as the fish in the sea, and his only preoccupation is the music. Then, to play freely with the colors on his vast palette, there is but one way—he must plunge boldly into improvisation.

Now improvisation is the particular glory of the French school, but it has been injured seriously of late by the influence of the German school. Under the pretext that an improvisation is not so good as one of Sebastian Bach's or Mendelssohn's masterpieces, young organists have stopped improvising.

That point of view is harmful because it is absolutely false; it is simply the negation of eloquence. Consider what the legislative hall, the lecture room and the court would be like if nothing but set pieces were delivered. We are familiar with the fact that many an orator and lawyer, who is brilliant when he talks, becomes dry as dust when he tries to write. The same thing happens in music. Lefebure-Wely was a wonderful improviser (I can say this emphatically, for I heard him) but he left only a few unimportant compositions for the organ. I might also name some of my contemporaries who express themselves completely only through their improvisations. The organ is thought-provoking. As one touches the organ, the imagination is awakened, and the unforeseen rises from the depths of the unconscious. It is a world of its own, ever new, which will never be seen again, and which comes out of the darkness, as an enchanted island comes from the sea.

Instead of this fairyland, we too often see only some of Sebastian Bach's or Mendelssohn's pieces repeated continuously. The pieces themselves are very fine, but they belong to concerts and are entirely out of place in church services. Furthermore, they were written for old instruments and they apply either not at all, or badly, to the modern organ. Yet there are those who think this belief spells progress.

I am fully aware of what may be said against improvisation. There are players who improvise badly and their playing is uninteresting. But many preachers speak badly. That, however, has nothing to do with the real issue. A mediocre improvisation is always endurable, if the organist has grasped the idea that church music should harmonize with the service and aid meditation and prayer. If the organ music is played in this spirit and results in harmonious sounds rather than in precise music which is not worth writing out, it still is comparable with the old glass windows in which the individual figures can hardly be distinguished but which are, nevertheless, more charming than the finest modern windows. Such an improvisation may be better than a fugue by a great master, on the principle that nothing in art is good unless it is in its proper place.



During the twenty years I played the organ at the Madeleine, I improvised constantly, giving my fancy the widest range. That was one of the joys of life.

But there was a tradition that I was a severe, austere musician. The public was led to believe that I played nothing but fugues. So current was this belief that a young woman about to be married begged me to play no fugues at her wedding!

Another young woman asked me to play funeral marches. She wanted to cry at her wedding, and as she had no natural inclination to do so, she counted on the organ to bring tears to her eyes.

But this case was unique. Ordinarily, they were afraid of my severity—although this severity was tempered.

One day one of the parish vicars undertook to instruct me on this point. He told me that the Madeleine audiences were composed in the main of wealthy people who attended the Opera-Comique frequently, and formed musical tastes which ought to be respected.

"Monsieur l'abbe," I replied, "when I hear from the pulpit the language of opera-comique, I will play music appropriate to it, and not before!"



CHAPTER XI

JOSEPH HAYDN AND THE "SEVEN WORDS"

Joseph Haydn, that great musician, the father of the symphony and of all modern music, has been neglected. We are too prone to forget that concerts are, in a sense, museums in which the older schools of music should be represented. Music is something besides a source of sensuous pleasure and keen emotion, and this resource, precious as it is, is only a chance corner in the wide realm of musical art. He who does not get absolute pleasure from a simple series of well-constructed chords, beautiful only in their arrangement, is not really fond of music. The same is true of the one who does not prefer the first prelude of the Wohltemperirte Klavier, played without gradations, just as the author wrote it for the harpsichord, to the same prelude embellished with an impassioned melody; or who does not prefer a popular melody of character or a Gregorian chant without any accompaniment to a series of dissonant and pretentious chords.

The directors of great concerts should love music themselves and should lead the public to appreciate it. They should not allow the masters to be forgotten, for their only fault was that they were not born in our times and they never dreamed of attempting to satisfy the tastes of an unborn generation. Above all, the directors should grant recognition to masters like Joseph Haydn who were in advance of their own times and who seem now and then to belong to our own.

The only examples of Joseph Haydn's immense work that the present generation knows are two or three symphonies, rarely and perfunctorily performed. This is the same as saying that we do not know him at all. No musician was ever more prolific or showed a greater wealth of imagination. When we examine this mine of jewels, we are astonished to find at every step a gem which we would have attributed to the invention of some modern or other. We are dazzled by their rays, and where we expect black-and-whites we find pastels grown dim with time.

Of Haydn's one hundred and eighteen symphonies, many are simple trifles written from day to day for Prince Esterhazy's little chapel, when the master was musical director there. But after Haydn was called to London by Salomon, a director of concerts, where he had a large orchestra at his disposal, his genius took magnificent flights. Then he wrote great symphonies and in them the clarinets for the first time unfolded the resources from which the modern orchestra has profited so abundantly. Originally the clarinet played a humble role, as the name indicates. Clarinetto is the diminutive of clarino, and the instrument was invented to replace the shrill tones that the trumpet lost as it gained in depth of tone.

Old editions of Haydn's symphonies show a picturesque arrangement, in that the disposition of the orchestra is shown on the printed page. Above, is a group made up of drums and the brass. In the center is a second group—the flutes, oboes and bassoons, while the stringed instruments are at the bottom of the page. When clarinets are used, they are a part of the first group. This pretty arrangement has, unfortunately, not been followed in the modern editions of these symphonies. In the works written in London the clarinet has utterly forgotten its origins. It has left the somewhat plebeian world of the brasses and has gained admittance to the more refined society of the woods. Haydn, in his first attempts, took advantage of the beautiful heavy tones, "chalumeau," and the flexibility and marvellous range of a beautiful instrument.

During his stay in London Haydn sketched an Orfeo which he never completed, as the theatre which ordered it failed before it was finished. Only fragments of the work remain, and, fortunately enough, these have been engraved in an orchestra score. These fragments are uneven in value. The dialogue, or recitative, which should bind them together was lost and so we are unable to judge them fairly. Among the fragments is a brilliant aria on Eurydice which is rather ridiculous, while another on Eurydice dying is charming. We also find music for mysterious English horns; it is written as for clarinets in B flat and reaches heights which are impossible for the instrument we now know as the English horn. There is also a beautiful bass part. This has been provided with Latin words and is sung in churches. This aria was assigned to a Creon who does not appear in the other fragments. One scene shows Eurydice running up and down the banks pursued by demons. Another depicts the death of Orpheus, killed by the Bacchantes. This score is a curiosity and nothing more, and a reading causes no regret that the work was not completed.

Like Gluck, Joseph Haydn had the rare advantage of developing constantly. He did not reach the height of his genius until an age when the finest faculties are, ordinarily, in a decline. He astounded the musical world with his Creation, in which he displayed a fertility of imagination and a magnificence of orchestral richness that the oratorio had never known before. Emboldened by his success he wrote the Seasons, a colossal work, the most varied and the most picturesque in the history of ancient or modern music. In this instance the oratorio is no longer entirely religious. It gives an audacious picture of nature with realistic touches which are astonishing even now. There is an artistic imitation of the different sounds in nature, as the rustling of the leaves, the songs of the birds in the woods and on the farm, and the shrill notes of the insects. Above all that is the translation into music of the profound emotions to which the different aspects of nature give birth, as the freshness of the forests, the stifling heat before a storm, the storm itself, and the wonderful sunset that follows. Then there is a huntsman's chorus which strikes an entirely different note. There are grape harvests, with the mad dances that follow them. There is the winter, with a poignant introduction which reminds us of pages in Schumann. But be reassured, the author does not leave us to the rigors of the cold. He takes us into a farmhouse where the women are spinning and where the peasants are drawn about the fire, listening to a funny tale and laughing immoderately with a gaiety which has never been surpassed.

But this gigantic work does not end without giving us a glimpse of Heaven, for with one grand upward burst of flight, Haydn reaches the realms where Handel and Beethoven preceded him. He equals them and ends his picture in a dazzling blaze of light.

This is the sort of work of which the public remains in ignorance and which it ought to know.

But all this is not what I started out to say. I wanted to write about a delicate, touching, reserved and precious work by the same author—The Seven Words of Christ on the Cross. This work has appeared in three forms—for an orchestra and chorus, for an orchestra alone, and for a quartet. When I was a young man, they used to say in Paris that this work was originally written for a quartet, then developed for an orchestra, and, finally, the voices were added.

Chance took me to Cadiz, once upon a time, and there I was given the true story of this beautiful piece of work. To my astonishment I learned that it had been first performed in the city of Cadiz. They even spoke of a competition in which Haydn won the prize, but there was never any such contest. The work was ordered from the author, but the question is who ordered it. Two religious circles, the Cathedral and the Cueva del Rosario, both lay claim to the initiative. I have gone over all the evidence in this dispute which is of little interest to us, for the only interest is the origin of the composition. There is not the slightest doubt that the Seven Words was written in the first place for an orchestra in 1785, and its destination, as we shall see, was settled by the author himself.

In his Memoires pour la Biographie et la Bibliographie de l'ile de Cadix, Don Francisco de Miton, Marquis de Meritos, relates that he corresponded with Haydn and ordered this composition which was to be performed at the Cathedral in Cadiz. According to his account Haydn said that "the composition was due more to what Senor Milton wrote than to his own invention, for it showed every motif so marvellously that on reading the instructions he seemed to read the music itself."

If the Marquis was not boasting, we must confess that the ingenuous Haydn was not so ingenuous as has been thought, and that he knew how to flatter his patrons.

In 1801 Breitkopf and Haertel published the work with the addition of the vocal parts at Leipzig. This edition had a preface by the author in which he said:

About fifteen years ago, a cure at Cadiz engaged me to write some passages of instrumental music on the Seven Words of Christ on the Cross. It was the custom at that time to play an oratorio at the Cathedral during Holy Week, and they took great pains to give as much solemnity as possible. The walls, the windows and the pillars of the church were hung in black, and only a single light in the centre shone in the sanctuary. The doors were closed at mid-day and the orchestra began to play. After the opening ceremonies the bishop entered the pulpit, pronounced one of the "Seven Words" and delivered a few words inspired by it. Then he descended, knelt before the altar, and remained there for some time. This pause was relieved by the music. The bishop ascended and descended six times more and each time, after his homily, music was played. My music was to be adapted to these ceremonies.

The problem of writing seven adagios to be performed consecutively, each one to last ten minutes, without wearying the audience, was not an easy one to solve, and I soon recognized the impossibility of making my music conform to the prescribed limits.

The work was written and printed without words. Later the opportunity of adding them was offered, so the oratorio which Breitkopf and Haertel publish to-day is a complete work and, so far as the vocal part is concerned, entirely new.

The kind reception which it has received among amateurs makes me hope that the entire public will welcome it with the same kindness.

Haydn feared to weary his hearers. Our modern bards have no such vain scruple.

Michel Haydn, Joseph's brother and the author of some highly esteemed religious compositions, has been generally credited with the addition of the vocal parts to the Seven Words. Joseph Haydn did not say that this was the case, but it would seem that if he did the work himself he would have said so in his preface.

This vocal part, however, adds nothing to the value of the work. And it is of no great consequence who the author of the arrangement for the quartet was. At the time there were many amateurs who played on stringed instruments. They used to meet frequently and everything in music was arranged for quartets just as now everything is arranged for piano duets. Some of Beethoven's sonatas were arranged in this form. The piano killed the quartet, and it is a great pity, for the quartet is the purest form of instrumental music. It is the first form—the fountain of Hippocrene. Now instrumental music drinks from every cup and the result is that many times it seems drunk.

To return to the Seven Words. Their symphonic form is the only one worth considering. They are eloquent enough without the aid of voices, for their charm penetrates. Unlike the Creation and the Seasons they do not demand extraordinary means of execution, and nothing is easier than to give them.

The opera houses are closed on Good Friday, and it used to be the custom to give evening concerts, vaguely termed "Sacred Concerts," because their programmes were made up wholly or in part of religious music. This good custom has disappeared and with it the opportunity to give the public such delightful works as the Seven Words, and so many other things which harmonize with the character of the day.

At one of these Sacred Concerts, Pasdeloup presented on the same evening the Credo from Liszt's Missa Solemnis and the one from Cherubini's Messe du Sacre. Liszt's Credo was received with a storm of hisses, while Cherubini's was praised to the skies. I could not help thinking—I was somewhat unjust, for Cherubini's work has merit—of the people of Jerusalem who acclaimed Barrabas and demanded the crucifixion of Jesus.

To-day Liszt's Credo is received with wild applause—Victor Hugo did his part-while Cherubini's is never revived.



CHAPTER XII

THE LISZT CENTENARY AT HEIDELBERG (1912)

The Liszt centenary was celebrated everywhere with elaborate festivities, perhaps most notably at Budapest where the Missa Solemnis was sung in the great cathedral—that alone would have been sufficient glory for the composer. At Weimar, which, during his lifetime, Liszt made a sort of musical Mecca, they gave a performance of his deeply charming oratorio Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth. The festival at Heidelberg was of special interest as it was organized by the General Association of German Musicians which Liszt had founded fifty years before. Each year this society gives in a different city a festival which lasts several days. It admits foreign members and I was once a member as Berlioz's successor on Liszt's own invitation. Disagreements separated us, and I had had no relation with the society for a number of years when they asked me to take part in this festival. A refusal would have been misunderstood and I had to accept, although the idea of performing at my age alongside such virtuosi as Risler, Busoni, and Friedheim, in the height of their talent, was not encouraging.

The festival lasted four days and there were six concerts—four with the orchestra and a chorus. They gave the oratorio Christus, an enormous work which takes up all the time allowed for one concert; the Dante and Faust symphonies, and the symphonic poems Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne and Tasso, to mention only the most important works.

The oratorio Christus lacks the fine unity of the Saint Elisabeth. But the two works are alike in being divided into a series of separate episodes. While the different episodes in Saint Elisabeth solve the difficult problem of creating variety and retaining unity, the parts of Christus are somewhat unrelated. There is something for every taste. Certain parts are unqualifiedly admirable; others border on the theatrical; still others are nearly or entirely liturgical, while, finally, some are picturesque, although there are some almost confusing. Like Gounod, Liszt was sometimes deceived and attributed to ordinary and simple sequences of chords a profound significance which escaped the great majority of his hearers. There are some pages of this sort in Christus.

But there are beautiful and wonderful things in this vast work. If we regret that the author lingered too long in his imitation of the Pifferari of the Roman campagna, on the other hand, we are delighted by the symphonic interlude Les Bergers a la Creche. It is very simple, but in an inimitable simplicity of taste which is the secret of great artists alone. It is surprising that this interlude does not appear in the repertoire of all concerts.

The Dante symphony has not established itself in the repertoires as has the Faust symphony. It was performed for the first time in Paris at a concert I organized and managed at a time when Liszt's works were distrusted. Along with the Dante symphony we had the Andante (Gretchen) from the Faust symphony, the symphonic poem Fest Kloenge, a charming work which is never played now, and still other works. It would be hard to imagine all the opposition I had to overcome in giving that concert. There was the hostility of the public, the ill-will of the Theatre-Italien which rented me its famous hall but which sullenly opposed a proper announcement of the concert, the insubordination of the orchestra, the demands of the singers for more pay—they imagined that Liszt would pay the expenses—and, finally, complete—and expected failure. My only object was to lay a foundation for the future, nothing more. In spite of everything I managed to get a creditable performance of the Dante symphony and I had the pleasure of hearing it for the first time.

The first part (the Inferno) is wonderfully impressive with its Francesca da Rimini interlude, in which burn all the fires of Italian passion. The second part (Purgatory and Paradise) combines the most intense and poignant charm. It contains a fugue episode of unsurpassed beauty.

Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne is, perhaps, the best of the famous symphonic poems. The author was inspired by Victor Hugo's poetry and reproduced its spirit admirably. When will this typical work appear in the concert repertoires? When will orchestra conductors get tired of presenting the three or four Wagnerian works they repeat ad nauseum, when they can be heard at the Opera under better conditions, and Schubert's insignificant Unfinished Symphony.

* * * * *

The Christus oratorio was given at the first concert of the festival at Heidelberg. It lasted three hours and a half and is so long that I would not dare to advise concert managers to try such an adventure. The performance was sublime. It was given in a newly constructed square hall. Cavaille-Coll, who knew acoustics, used to advise the square hall for concerts but nobody would listen to him. Three hundred chorus singers, many from a distance, were supported by an orchestra that was large, but, in my opinion, insufficient to stand up against this mass of voices. Furthermore, the orchestra was placed below the level of the stage, as in a theatre, while the voices sounded freely above. Two harps, one on the east side of the stage and one on the west, saw each other from afar,—a pleasingly decorative device, but as annoying to the ear as pleasing to the eye. The chorus and the four soloists—their task was exceedingly arduous—triumphed completely over the difficulties of this immense work and all the varied and delicate nuances were rendered to perfection.

Liszt was far from professing the disdain for the limitations of the human voice that Wagner and Berlioz did. On the contrary he treated it as if it were a queen or a goddess, and it is to be regretted that his tastes did not lead him to work for the stage. Parts of Saint Elisabeth show that he would have succeeded and the fashion of having operas for the orchestra, accompanied by voices, which we enjoy to-day, might have been avoided. He discovered a method, peculiarly his own, of writing choruses. His manner has never been imitated, but it is ingenious and has many advantages. The only trouble about it is that the singers have to take care of details and shadings which is too often the least of their worries. The German societies, where the members sing for pleasure, and not for a salary, are careful to excess, if there can be excess in such matters, and it is their great good fortune to be the interpreters of choruses written in this manner.

It is impossible to give an analysis of this vast work here. We have already spoken of the charming interlude, Les Bergers a la Creche. This pastoral is followed by Marche des Rois Mages, a pretty piece, but a little overdeveloped for its intrinsic worth. The vocal parts, Beatitudes and Le Pater Noster, would be more suitable in a church than in a concert hall. Then come some most brilliant pages, La Tempete sur le lac de Thiberiade, and Le Mont des Oliviers, with its baritone solo, and finally, the Stabat Mater, where great beauties are combined with terrible length. But nothing in the whole work impressed me more than Christ's entrance to Jerusalem (orchestra, chorus, and soloist) for the reading alone gives no idea of it. Here the author reached the heights. That also describes the delightful effect of the children's chorus singing in the distance O Filii et Filiae, harmonised with perfect taste.

While I listened to this beautiful work, I could not help thinking of the great oratorios which crowned Gounod's musical career so gloriously. Liszt and Gounod differed entirely in their musical temperaments, yet in their oratorios they met on common ground. In both there was the same drawing away from the old forms of oratorio, the same search for realism in the expression of the text in music, the same respect for Latin prosody, and the same belief in simplicity of style. But while there is renunciation in the simplicity of Liszt, who threw aside worldly finery to wear the frock of a penitent, on the contrary Gounod appears to return to his original bent with an almost holy joy. This is easily explained. Liszt finished his life in a cassock, while Gounod began his in one. So, despite Liszt's superior refinement, and putting aside exceptional achievements, in this branch of art Gounod was the victor. As there is an odor di femina there is a parfum d'eglise, well known to Catholics. Gounod's oratorios are impregnated with this, while it is found in Christus very, very feebly, if at all. The Missa Solemnis must be examined to find it to any extent in Liszt's work.

All the necessary elements were combined at Heidelberg to produce a magnificent production of Faust and Dante. The orchestra of more than one hundred musicians was perfect. The period when the wind instruments in Germany were wanting both in correctness and quality of sound has passed. But the orchestra conductors have to be taken into account. In our day these gentlemen are virtuosi. Their personalities are not subservient to the music, but the music to them. It is the springboard on which they perform and parade their all embracing personalities. They add their own inventions to the author's meaning. Sometimes they draw out the wind instruments so that the musicians have to cut a phrase at the end to catch their breath; again they affect a mad and unrestrained rapidity which allows time neither to play nor to hear the sounds. They hurry or retard the movement for no reason besides their individual caprice or because the author did not indicate them. They perpetrate music of such a disorganized character that the musicians are utterly bewildered, and hesitate in their entrances on account of their inability to distinguish one measure from another.

The delightful Purgatoire has become a deadly bore, and the enchanting Mephistopheles has been riddled as by a hailstorm. Familiarity with such excesses made me particularly appreciative of the excellent performance that Wolfrum, the musical director, obtained in the vast Christus concert.

Among the conductors was Richard Strauss who cannot be passed over without a word. Certainly no one will hope to find moderation and serenity in this artist or be surprised if he gives his temperament free rein, and rides on to victory undisturbed by the ruins he leaves behind. But he lacks neither intelligence nor elegance, and if he sometimes goes too fast he never overemphasizes slowness. When he is conducting, we need not fear the desert of Sahara where others sometimes lead us. Under his direction Tasso displayed all its wealth of resources and the jewel-like Mephisto-Walzer shone more brightly than ever before.

I can speak but briefly of the numerous soloists. We neither judge nor compare such talents as those of Busoni, Friedheim, and Risler. We are satisfied with admiring them. However, if a prize must be awarded, I should give it to Risler for his masterly interpretation of the great Sonata in B minor. He made the most of it in every way, in all its power and in all its delicacy. When it is given in this way, it is one of the finest sonatas imaginable. But such a performance is rare, for it is beyond the average artist. The strength of an athlete, the lightness of a bird, capriciousness, charm, and a perfect understanding of style in general and of the style of this composer in particular are the qualifications needed to perform this work. It is far too difficult for most virtuosi, however talented they may be.

Among the women singers I shall only mention Madame Cahier from the Viennese Opera. She is a great artist with a wonderful voice and her interpretation of several lieder made them wonderfully worth while. Madame Cahier interpreted the part of Dalila at Vienna with Dalmores, so it can easily be appreciated how much pleasure I took in hearing her.

A final word about the Dante Symphony. I have read somewhere that Liszt used pages to produce an effect which Berlioz accomplished in the apparition of Mephistopheles in Faust with three notes. This comparison is unjust. Berlioz's happy discovery is a work of genius and he alone could have invented it. But the sudden appearance of the Devil is one thing and the depiction of Hell quite another. Berlioz tried such a depiction at the end of the Damnation, and in spite of the strange vocabulary of the chorus, "Irimiru Karabrao, Sat raik Irkimour," and other pretty tricks, he succeeded no better than Liszt. As a matter of fact the opposite was the case.



CHAPTER XIII

BERLIOZ'S REQUIEM

The reading of the score of Berlioz's Requiem makes it appear singularly old-fashioned, but this is true of most of the romantic dramas, which, like the Requiem, show up better in actual performance. It is easy to rail at the vehemence of the Romanticists, but it is not so easy to equal the effect of Hernani, Lucrece Borgia and the Symphonie fantastique on the public. For with all their faults these works had a marvellous success. The truth is that their vehemence was sincere and not artificial. The Romanticists had faith in their works and there is nothing like faith to produce lasting results.

Reicha and Leuseur were, as we know, Berlioz's instructors. Leuseur was the author of numerous works and wrote a good deal of church music. Some of his religious works were really beautiful, but he had strange obsessions. Berlioz greatly admired his master and could not help showing, especially in his earlier works, traces of this admiration. That is the reason for the syncopated and jerky passages without rhyme or reason and which can only be explained by his unconscious imitation of Leuseur's faults. In imitating a model the resemblances occur in the faults and not in the excellences, for the latter are inimitable. So the excellences of the Requiem are not due to Leuseur but to Berlioz. He had already thrown off the trammels of school and shown all the richness of his vigorous originality to which the value of his scores is due.

In his Memoirs Berlioz related the tribulations of his Requiem. It was ordered by the government, laid aside for a time, and, finally, performed at the Invalides on the occasion of the capture of Constantine (in Algeria) and the funeral services of General Damremont. He was astonished at the lack of sympathy and even actual hostility that he encountered. It would have been more astonishing if he had experienced anything else.



We must remember that at this time Berton, who sang Quand on est toujours vertuex, on aime a voir lever l'aurore, passed for a great man. Beethoven's symphonies were a novelty, in Paris at least, and a scandal. Haydn's symphonies inspired a critic to write, "What a noise, what a noise!" Orchestras were merely collections of thirty or forty musicians.

We can imagine, therefore, the stupefaction and horror when a young man, just out of school, demanded fifty violins, twenty violas, twenty violoncellos, eighteen contrabasses, four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, eight bassoons, twelve horns, and a chorus of two hundred voices as a minimum. And that is not all. The Tuba Mirum necessitates an addition of thirty-eight trumpets and trombones, divided into four orchestras and placed at the four cardinal points of the compass. Besides, there have to be eight pairs of drums, played by ten drummers, four tam-tams, and ten cymbals.

The story of this array of drums is rather interesting. Reicha, Berlioz's first teacher, had the original idea of playing drum taps in chords of three or four beats. In order to try out this effect, he composed a choral piece, L'Harmonie des Spheres, which was published in connection with his Traite d'Harmonie. But Reicha's genius did not suffice for this task. He was a good musician, but no more than that. His choral piece was insignificant and remained a dead letter. Berlioz took this lost effect and used it in his Tuba Mirum.

However, it must be confessed that this effect does not come up to expectations. In a church or a concert hall we hear a confused and terrifying mingling of sounds, and from time to time we note a change in the depth of tone but we are unable to distinguish the pitch of the chords.

I shall never forget the impression this Tuba Mirum made on me when I first heard it at St. Eustache under Berlioz's own direction. It amounted to an absolute neglect of the author's directions. The beginning of the work is marked moderato, later, as the brass comes in, the movement is quickened and becomes andante maestro. Most of the time the moderato was interpreted as an allegro, and the andante maestro as a simple moderato. If the terrific fanfare did not become, as some one ventured to call it, a "Setting Out for the Hunt," it might well have been the accompaniment for a sovereign's entrance to his capital. In order to give this fanfare its grandiose character, the author did not take easy refuge in the wailings of a minor key, but he burst into the splendors of a major key. A certain grandeur of movement alone can preserve its gigantesque quality and impression of power.

Granting all his good intentions, in trying to give us a suggestion of the last judgment by his accumulation of brass, drums, cymbals, and tam-tams, Berlioz makes us think of Thor among the giants trying to empty the drinking-horn which was filled from the sea, and only succeeding in lowering it a little. Yet even that was an accomplishment.

Berlioz spoke scornfully of Mozart's Tuba Mirum with its single trombone. "One trombone," he exclaimed, "when a hundred would be none too many!" Berlioz wanted to make us really hear the trumpets of the archangels. Mozart with the seven notes of his one trombone suggested the same idea and the suggestion is sufficient.

We must not forget, however, that here we are in the midst of a world of romanticism, in a world of color and picturesqueness, which could not content itself with so little. And we must remember this fact, if we would not be irritated by the oddities of L'Hostias, with its deep trombone notes which seem to come from the very depths of Hell. There is no use in trying to find out what these notes mean. Berlioz told us himself that he discovered these notes at a time when they were almost unknown and he wanted to use them. The contrast between these terrifying notes and the wailing of the flutes is especially curious. We find nothing analogous to this anywhere else.

The delightful Purgatoire, where the author sees a chorus of souls in Purgatory, is much better. His Purgatory has no punishments nor any griefs save the awaiting, the long and painful awaiting, of eternal happiness. There is a processional in which the fugue and melody alternate in the most felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered. No one would dare to describe this work as profane, but whether it is religious or not is a question. As Boschot has said, what it expresses above all is terror in the presence of annihilation.

When the Requiem was played at the Trocadero, the audience was greatly impressed and filed out slowly. They did not say, "What a masterpiece!" but "What an orchestra leader!" Nowadays people go to see a conductor direct the orchestra just as they go to hear a tenor, and they arrogate to themselves the right to judge the conductors as they do the tenors. But what a fine sport it is! The qualities of an orchestra conductor which the public appreciates are his elegance, his gestures, his precision, and the expressiveness of his mimicry, all of which are more often directed at the audience than at the orchestra. But all these things are of secondary consideration. What makes up an orchestra conductor's worth are the excellence of execution he obtains from the musicians and the perfect interpretation of the author's meaning—which the audience does not understand. If such an important detail as the author's meaning is obscured and slighted, if a work is disfigured by absurd movements and by an expression which is entirely different from what the author wanted, the public may be dazzled and an execrable conductor, provided his poses are good, may fascinate his audience and be praised to the skies.

Formerly the conductor never saluted his audience. The understanding was that the work and not the conductor was applauded. The Italians and Germans changed all that. Lamoureux was the first to introduce this exotic custom in France. The public was a little surprised at first, but they soon got used to it. In Italy the conductor comes on the stage with the artists to salute the audience. There is nothing more laughable than to see him, as the last note of an opera dies away, jump down from his stand and run like mad to reach the stage in time.

The excellence of the work of English choristers has been highly and justly praised. Perhaps it would be fairer not to praise them so unreservedly when we are so severe on our own. Justice often leaves something to be desired. At all events it must be admitted that Berlioz treated the voices in an unfortunate way. Like Beethoven, he made no distinction between a part for a voice and an instrument. While except for a few rare passages it does not fall as low as the atrocities which disfigure the grandiose Mass in D, the vocal part of the Requiem is awkwardly written. Singers are ill at ease in it, for the timbre and regularity of the voice resent such treatment. The tenor's part is so written that he is to be congratulated on getting through it without any accident, and nothing more can be expected of him.

What a pity it was that Berlioz did not fall in love with an Italian singer instead of an English tragedienne! Cupid might have wrought a miracle. The author of the Requiem would have lost none of his good qualities, but he might have gained, what, for the lack of a better phrase, is called the fingering of the voice, the art of handling it intelligently and making it give without an effort the best effect of which it is capable. But Berlioz had a horror even of the Italian language, musical as that is. As he said in his Memoirs, this aversion hid from him the true worth of Don Juan and Le Nozze di Figaro. One wonders whether he knew that his idol, Gluck, wrote music for Italian texts not only in the case of his first works but also in Orphee and Alceste. And whether he knew that the aria "O malheureuse Iphigenie" was an Italian song badly translated into French. Perhaps he was ignorant of all this in his youth for Berlioz was a genius, not a scholar.

The word genius tells the whole story. Berlioz wrote badly. He maltreated voices and sometimes permitted himself the strangest freaks. Nevertheless he is one of the commanding figures of musical art. His great works remind us of the Alps with their forests, glaciers, sunlight, waterfalls and chasms. There are people who do not like the Alps. So much the worse for them.



CHAPTER XIV

PAULINE VIARDOT

Alfred de Musset covered Maria Malibran's tomb with immortal flowers and he also told us the story of Pauline Garcia's debut. There is also something about it in Theophile Gautier's writings. It is clear from both accounts that her first appearance was an extraordinary occasion. Natures such as hers reveal themselves at once to those who know and do not have to wait to arrive until they are in full bloom. Pauline was very young at the time, and soon afterwards she married M. Viardot, manager of the Theatre-Italien and one of the finest men of his day. She went abroad to develop her talent, but she returned in 1849 when Meyerbeer named her to create the role of Fides in Le Prophete.

Her voice was tremendously powerful, prodigious in its range, and it overcame all the difficulties in the art of singing. But this marvellous voice did not please everyone, for it was by no means smooth and velvety. Indeed, it was a little harsh and was likened to the taste of a bitter orange. But it was just the voice for a tragedy or an epic, for it was superhuman rather than human. Light things like Spanish songs and Chopin mazurkas, which she used to transpose so that she could sing them, were completely transformed by that voice and became the playthings of an Amazon or of a giantess. She lent an incomparable grandeur to tragic parts and to the severe dignity of the oratorio.

I never had the pleasure of hearing Madame Malibran, but Rossini told me about her. He preferred her sister. Madame Malibran, he said, had the advantage of beauty. In addition, she died young and left a memory of an artist in full possession of all her powers. She was not the equal of her sister as a musician and could not have survived the decline of her voice as the latter did.

Madame Viardot was not beautiful, indeed, she was far from it. The portrait by Ary Scheffer is the only one which shows this unequalled woman truthfully and gives some idea of her strange and powerful fascination. What made her even more captivating than her talent as a singer was her personality—one of the most amazing I have ever known. She spoke and wrote fluently Spanish, French, Italian, English and German. She was in touch with all the current literature of these countries and in correspondence with people all over Europe.

She did not remember when she learned music. In the Garcia family music was in the air they breathed. So she protested against the tradition which represented her father as a tyrant who whipped his daughters to make them sing. I have no idea how she learned the secrets of composition, but save for the management of the orchestra she knew them well. She wrote numerous lieder on Spanish and German texts and all of these show a faultless diction. But contrary to the custom of most composers who like nothing better than to show their compositions, she concealed hers as though they were indiscretions. It was exceedingly difficult to persuade her to let one hear them, although the least were highly creditable. Once she sang a Spanish popular song, a wild haunting thing, with which Rubinstein fell madly in love. It was several years before she would admit that she wrote it herself.



She wrote brilliant operettas in collaboration with Tourguenief, but they were never published and were performed only in private. One anecdote will show her versatility as a composer. She was a friend of Chopin and Liszt and her tastes were strongly futuristic. M. Viardot, on the contrary, was a reactionary in music. He even found Beethoven too advanced. One day they had a guest who was also a reactionary. Madame Viardot sang to them a wonderful work with recitative, aria and final allegro, which they praised to the skies. She had written it expressly for the occasion. I have read this work and even the cleverest would have been deceived.

But it must not be thought from this that her compositions were mere imitations. On the contrary they were extremely original. The only explanation why those that were published have remained unknown and why so many were unpublished is that this admirable artist had a horror of publicity. She spent half her life in teaching pupils and the world knew nothing about it.

During the Empire the Viardots used to give in their apartment on Thursday evenings really fine musical festivals which my surviving contemporaries still remember. From the salon in which the famous portrait by Ary Scheffer was hung and which was devoted to ordinary instrumental and vocal music, we went down a short staircase to a gallery filled with valuable paintings, and finally to an exquisite organ, one of Cavaille-Coll's masterpieces. In this temple dedicated to music we listened to arias from the oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn. She had sung them in London, but could not get a hearing for them in the concerts in Paris as they were averse to such vast compositions. I had the honor to be her regular accompanist both at the organ and the piano.

But this passionate lover of song was an all-round musician. She played the piano admirably, and when she was among friends she overcame the greatest difficulties. Before her Thursday audiences, however, she limited herself to chamber music, with a special preference for Henri Reber's duets for the piano and the violin. These delicate, artistic works are unknown to the amateurs of to-day. They seem to prefer to the pure juice of the grape in crystal glasses poisonous potions in cups of gold. They must have orgies, sumptuous ceilings, a deadly luxury. They do not understand the poet who sings, "O rus, quando te aspiciam!" They do not appreciate the great distinction of simplicity. Reber's muse is not for them.

Madame Viardot was as learned a musician as any one could be and she was among the first subscribers to the complete edition of Sebastian Bach's works. We know what an astounding revelation that work was. Each year brought ten religious cantatas, and each year brought us new surprises in the unexpected variety and impressiveness of the work. We thought we had known Sebastian Bach, but now we learned how really to know him. We found him a writer of unusual versatility and a great poet. His Wohltemperirte Klavier had given us only a hint of all this. The beauties of this famous work needed exposition for, in the absence of definite instructions, opinions differed. In the cantatas the meaning of the words serves as an indication and through the analogy between the forms of expression, it is easy to see pretty clearly what the author intended in his Klavier pieces.

One fine day the annual volume was found to contain a cantata in several parts written for a contralto solo accompanied by stringed instruments, oboes and an organ obligato. The organ was there and the organist as well. So we assembled the instruments, Stockhausen, the baritone, was made the leader of the little orchestra, and Madame Viardot sang the cantata. I suspect that the author had never heard his work sung in any such manner. I cherish the memory of that day as one of the most precious in my musical career. My mother and M. Viardot were the only listeners to this exceptional exhibition. We did not dare to repeat it before hearers who were not ready for it. What would now be a great success would have fallen flat at that time. And nothing is more irritating than to see an audience cold before a beautiful work. It is far better to keep to one's self treasures which will be unappreciated.

One thing will always stand in the way of the vogue of Sebastian Bach's vocal works—the difficulty of translation. When they are rendered into French, they lose all their charm and oftentimes become ridiculous.

* * * * *

One of the most amazing characteristics of Madame Viardot's talent was her astonishing facility in assimilating all styles of music. She was trained in the old Italian music and she revealed its beauties as no one else has ever done. As for myself, I saw only its faults. Then she sang Schumann and Gluck and even Glinka whom she sang in Russian. Nothing was foreign to her; she was at home everywhere.

She was a great friend of Chopin and she remembered his playing almost exactly and could give the most valuable directions about the way he interpreted his works. I learned from her that the great pianist's (great musician's, rather) execution was much simpler than has been generally supposed. It was as far removed from any manifestation of bad taste as it was from cold correctness. She told me the secret of the true tempo rubato without which Chopin's music is disfigured. It in no way resembles the dislocations by which it is so often caricatured.

I have spoken of her great talent as a pianist. We saw this one evening at a concert given by Madame Schumann. After Madame Viardot had sung some of Schumann's lieder with the great pianist playing the accompaniments, the two great artists played the illustrious author's duet for two pianos, which fairly bristles with difficulties, with equal virtuosity.

When Madame Viardot's voice began to break, she was advised to devote herself to the piano. If she had, she would have found a new career and a second reputation. But she did not want to make the change, and for several years she presented the sorry spectacle of genius contending with adversity. Her voice was broken, stubborn, uneven, and intermittent. An entire generation knew her only in a guise unworthy of her.

Her immoderate love of music was the cause of the early modification of her voice. She wanted to sing everything she liked and she sang Valentine in Les Huguenots, Donna Anna in Don Juan, besides other roles she should never have undertaken if she wanted to preserve her voice. She came to realize this at the end of her life. "Don't do as I did," she once told a pupil. "I wanted to sing everything, and I ruined my voice."

Happy are the fiery natures which burn themselves out and glory in the sword that wears away the scabbard.



CHAPTER XV

ORPHEE

We know, or, rather we used to know—for we are beginning to forget that there is an admirable edition of Gluck's principal works. This edition was due to the interest of an unusual woman, Mlle. Fanny Pelletan, who devoted a part of her fortune to this real monument and to fulfill a wish Berlioz expressed in one of his works. Mlle. Pelletan was an unusually intelligent woman and an accomplished musician, but she needed some one to help her in this large and formidable task. She was unassuming and distrusted her own powers, so that she secured as a collaborator a German musician, named Damcke, who had lived in Paris a long time and who was highly esteemed. He gave her the moral support she needed and some bad advice as well, which she felt obliged to follow. This collaboration accounts for the change of the contralto parts to counter-tenors. It also accounts for the fact that in every instance the parts for the clarinets are indicated in C, in this way attributing to the author a formal intention he never had. Gluck wrote the parts for the clarinets without bothering whether the player—to whom he left a freedom of choice and the work of transposition—would use his instrument in C, B, or A. This method was not peculiar to Gluck. Other composers used it as well, and traces of it are found even in Auber's works.

After Damcke's death Mlle. Pelletan got me to help her in this work. I wanted to change the method, but the edition would have lost its unity and she would not consent. It was time that Damcke's collaboration ended. He belonged to the tribe of German professors who have since become legion. Due to their baneful influence, in a short time, when the old editions have disappeared, the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, even of Chopin, will be all but unrecognizable. The works of Sebastian Bach and Handel will be the only ones in existence in their pristine purity of form, thanks to the admirable editions of the Bach und Haendel Gesselschaft. When Mlle. Pelletan brought me into the work, the two Iphigenie had been published; Alceste was about to be, and Armide was ready. In Armide Damcke had been entirely carried away by his zeal for "improvements"—a zeal that can do so much harm. It was time this was stopped. Not only had he corrected imaginary faults here and there, but he had also inserted things of his own invention. He had even gone so far as to re-orchestrate the ballet music, in the naive belief that he was bringing out the author's real meaning better than he had done himself. It took an enormous amount of time to undo this mischief, for I distrusted somewhat my own lights and Mlle. Pelletan had too high an opinion of Damcke's work and did not dare to override his judgment.

That excellent woman did not live to see the end of her work. She began the preparation of Orphee, but she died almost at once. So I was left to finish the score alone without that valuable experience and masterly insight by which she solved the most difficult problems. And there were real enigmas to be solved at every step. The old engraved scores of Gluck's works reproduced his manuscripts faithfully enough, but they bore evidence of carelessness and amazing inaccuracy. They are mere sketches instead of complete scores. Many details are vague and vagueness is not permissible in a serious edition. It follows that the different editions of Gluck's works published in the Nineteenth Century, however sumptuous or careful they may be, are worthless. The Pelletan edition alone can be consulted with confidence, because we were the only ones to have all extant and authentic documents in the library at the Opera to set us right. We had scores copied for actual performances on the stage and portions of orchestral parts of incalculable value. In addition, we had no aim or preoccupation in elaborating this material other than to reconstitute as closely as possible the thought of the author.

* * * * *

Switzerland is a country where artistic productions are not unusual. Every year we have reports of some grandiose performance in which the people take part themselves. They come from every direction to help, even from a considerable distance, thanks to the many means of communication in that delightful land. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that a theatre has been built in the pretty town of Mezieres, near Lusanne, for the performance of the works of a young poet, named Morax. These works are dramas with choruses, and the surrounding country furnishes the singers. The work given in 1911 was Allenor—the music by Gustave Doret—and it was a great success.

Gustave Doret is a real artist and he never for a moment thought of keeping the Theatre du Jorat for his own exclusive use. He dreamt of giving Gluck's works in their original form, for they are always altered and changed according to the fancies or incompetency of the performers or directors. They formed a large and influential committee and a substantial guarantee fund was subscribed. Then they gave a brilliant banquet at which the Princess of Brancovan was present. And Paderewski, one of the most enthusiastic promotors of the enterprise, delivered an eloquent address. No one should be surprised at either his zeal or his eloquence. Paderewski is not only a pianist; he is a man of great intellect as well,—a great artist who permits himself the luxury of playing the piano marvellously.

As he knew that I had spent several years in studying Gluck's works under the microscope, so to speak, Gustave Doret did me the honor to ask my advice. His choice for the opening work was Orphee, which requires only three principals, Orpheus, Eurydice, and Love. It has become the custom to add a fourth, a Happy Spirit, but this spirit is one of Carvalho's inventions and has no reason for existence.

There are, however, two Orphee. The first is Orfeo which was written in Italian, on Calzabigi's text, and was first presented at Venice in 1761. The role of Orpheus in this score was written for a contralto and was designed for the eunuch Quadagni. The Venetian engravers of that day were either incompetent or, perhaps, there were none, for the scores of Gluck's Alceste in Italian and Haydn's Seasons were printed from type. However that may be the score of Orfeo was engraved in Paris. The composer Philidor corrected the proofs. He little thought that Orfeo would ever get so far as Paris, so he appropriated the romanza in the first act and introduced it with but slight modifications into his opera-comique Le Sorcier. Later on Marie Antoinette called Gluck to Paris and thus afforded him the opportunity for the complete development of his genius. After he had written Iphigenie en Aulide, performed in 1774, especially for the Opera, he had the idea of adapting Orfeo for the French stage. To tell the truth he must have thought of it before, for Orphee appeared at the Opera only three months after Iphigenie and it had been entirely rewritten in collaboration with Moline. The contralto part had been changed to tenor and so the principal role was given to Legros.

While it may be true that the author improved this work in the French version, it is not true in every case. There is some question whether the overture existed in the Italian score. It is generally believed that it did, but there are old copies of this version in existence and they begin the opera with the funeral chorus and show no overture at all. This overture, although the Mercure de France treats it as a "beautiful symphonic piece which serves as a good introduction to the work," in reality does not resemble the style of the rest at all. It in no way prepares for that admirable chorus at the beginning—unequaled of its kind—which Orpheus's broken hearted cry of "Eurydice! Eurydice!" makes so pathetic.

The first act of Orfeo ends in a tumultuous effect of the stringed instruments which was evidently intended to indicate a change of scene and the appearance of the stage settings of the infernal regions. This passage does not appear in the French Orphee and it is lacking in the engraved score, where it is replaced by a bravura aria of doubtful taste, accompanied by a single quartet. Whether the stage managers wanted an entr'acte or the tenor, Legros, demanded an effective aria, or for both these reasons, a reading of the manuscript indicates how absolutely the author's meaning was changed. There is no doubt that except for some such reason he would have changed this aria and put it in harmony with the rest of the work.

For a long time this aria was attributed to Bertoni, the composer, and Gluck was accused of plagiarizing it. As a matter of fact, and to the contrary, this aria came from an older Italian opera of Gluck's. Bertoni not only imitated it in one of his scores, but he had the hardihood to write an Orfeo on the text already followed by Gluck in which he plagiarized the work of his illustrious predecessor in a scandalous fashion.

This same aria, changed with real genius and performed with prodigious eclat by Madame Viardot, and re-orchestrated by myself, was one of the strongest reasons for the success of the famous performances at the Theatre-Lyrique. But it is well understood that it could not properly find a place in an edition where the sole end was artistic sincerity and purity of the text.

From this point of view it would seem that the best manner of giving Orphee would be to conform to the author's definitive version. A tenor would have to take the part of Orpheus, since we no longer have male contraltos, and to keep to this kind of a voice in Orphee we would have to have recourse to what is called, in theatrical terms, a travesti. There are obstacles to this, however. The pitch has changed since the Eighteenth Century; it has gone up and it is now impossible, or nearly so, to sing the role written for Legros. The contraltos of the Italian chorus have become the counter-tenors, who, for the same reason, find themselves struggling with too sharp notes.

In the Seventeenth Century the French pitch was even more flat, and it is a great pity, for it is almost impossible to perform our old music, on account of the insuperable obstacles. This is not the case in Germany, however, or in Italy, and that is the reason why the works of Sebastian Bach and Mozart can be sung. The same is true of Gluck's Italian works.

This was the reason that Doret gave the part of Orpheus to a contralto, just as is done at the Opera-Comique. The poetic character of the part of Orpheus lends itself excellently to such a feminine interpretation. But in resuming the key of the Italian score, it is necessary to go back, at least to a considerable degree, to the instrumentation. By a curious anomaly the beautiful recitative, accompanied by the murmur of brooks and the songs of the birds, is in C major in both scores. The author could not have changed them. On the contrary he modified his instrumentation greatly, simplified and perfected it.

We know that the authors, in utter defiance of mythology, wanted a happy ending and so brought Eurydice back to life a second time. Love accomplished this miracle and the work ended with the song "Love Triumphs," which is exceedingly joyful and in harmony with the situation. They did not want this ending, which was in Orfeo and which Gluck retained in Orphee, at the old Theatre-Lyrique and the Opera-Comique, and they replaced it with a chorus by Echo and Narcissus. This chorus is charming, but that does not excuse it. Joy was what the author wanted and this does not give joy at all. Gluck's finale is regarded as not sufficiently distinguished, but this is wrong. The real finale was sung at Mezieres and it was found that it was not at all common, but that its frank gaiety was in the best of taste.

Gluck had no scruples about grinding several grists from the same sack and drawing from his old works to help out his new ones. So the parasitical aria attributed to Bertoni was written by Gluck in the first place in 1764 for a soprano. He wove this into his opera Aristo in 1769. This is also true of the trio, Tendre Amour, which precedes the finale in the last act. A serious-minded analyst might be tempted to admire the profound psychology of the author in mingling doleful accents with expressions of joy, but he would have his labor for his pains. The trio was taken from the opera Elena e Paride, where Gluck expressed strongly wrought up emotions. Doret did not keep these two passages and one can't blame him. On the other hand, he retained, by making it an entr'acte, the Ballet des Furies. This was taken from a ballet, Don Giovanni o il convitato de pietra, which was performed at Vienna in 1761. This passage was used as the accompaniment to Don Juan's descent into Hell, surrounded by his band of demons.

Many of Gluck's compatriots came to Mezieres to see Orphee and they were loyal enough to recognize the superiority of the performance. Some even had the courage to say, "We murder Gluck in Germany."

I discovered that fact a long time ago. In my youth I was indignant when I saw Paris, where Gluck wrote his finest works, quite neglecting them, whereas Germany continued to promote them. In those days I was frequently called to the other side of the Rhine to play in concerts, and I watched for a chance to see one of these masterpieces which had been forgotten in France. So it was with the liveliest joy that one day I entered one of the leading German theaters where they were giving Armide. What a hollow mockery it was!

Madame Malten was Armide, and she was everything that could be wished in voice, talent, style, beauty and charm. She spoke French without an accent and was as remarkable as an actress as a singer, so she would without doubt have had great success at the Opera in Paris. She was Armide herself, an irresistible enchantress.

But the rest! Renaud was a raw boy, and his shaven chin brought out in sharp relief enormous black moustaches with long waxed ends. He had a voice, to be sure, but no style, and no understanding of the work he was trying to interpret.

Hidradot is an old sorcerer tempered in the fires of Hell. He enters, saying:

"I see hard by Death that threatens me, And already old age, that has chilled my blood, Is on me, bowing me beneath a crushing burden."

Imagine my surprise at seeing come on the stage a magnificent specimen of manhood, with a curled black beard, in all the glory of his youth and vigor superbly arrayed in a red cloak trimmed with gold!

The stage setting was also extraordinary. In the second act Renaud went to sleep at the back of the stage, forcing Armide to speak the whole of the beautiful scene which follows, one of the most important in the part, at a distance from the footlights and with her back to the audience.

As for the orchestra, sometimes it followed Gluck's text and sometimes it borrowed bits of orchestration which Meyerbeer had written for the Opera at Berlin. This orchestration is interesting, and I know it well for I have had it in hand. It is only fair to say that Gluck, from some inexplicable caprice, did not give the same care to the instrumentation of Armide that he did to Orphee, Alcesti, and the Iphigenies. The trombones do not appear at all and the drums and flutes only at rare intervals. Re-orchestration is not absolutely necessary and Meyerbeer's is no more reprehensible than those with which Mozart enriched Handel's Messe and La Fete d'Alexandre. What was inadmissible was not deciding frankly for one version or the other. It was like a badly patched coat which shows the old cloth in one place and the new in another.

Afterwards I saw Armide treated in another way.

Did you ever happen to cherish the memory of a delightful and picturesque city, where everything made a harmonious whole, where the beautiful walks were arched over by old trees—and later come back to it to find it embellished, the trees cut down, the walks replaced by enormous buildings which dwarfed into insignificance the ancient marvels which gave the city its charm?

This was the case with me when I saw Armide again in a city which I shall not name. The opera had been judged superannuated and had been "improved." A young composer had written a new score in which he inserted here and there such bits of Gluck as he thought worthy of being preserved. A costly and magnificently imbecile luxuriousness set off the whole piece. I may be pardoned the cruel adjective when I say that in the scene of Hate, so deeply inspired, and which takes place in a sort of cave, they relegated the chorus to the wings to make a place for dragons, fantastic birds beating their wings, and other deviltries. This, of course, deprived the chorus of all its power and distinction.

But the best was at the end of the second act. The forest with its trees, grass and rocks entirely disappeared in the flies taking Renaud and Armide with it and the spectator was left, for some unknown reason, looking at a background surrounded by mountains. Then, by a marvel of mechanism, there appeared to the sound of ultramodern music, Renaud sleeping on a bed of state, with Armide standing at the foot and stretching forth her hand with a gesture of authority, declaiming in a solemn tone,