With this period Cherubini closed his career practically as an
operatic composer, though several dramatic works were produced
subsequently, and entered on his no less great sphere of
ecclesiastical composition. At Chimay for a while no one dared to
mention music in his presence. Drawing and painting flowers seemed to
be his sole pleasure. At last the president of the little music
society at Chimay ventured to ask him to write a mass for St.
Cecilia's feast-day. He curtly refused, but his hostess noticed that
he was agitated by the incident, as if his slumbering instincts had
started again into life. One day the Princess placed music paper on
his table, and Cherubini on returning from his walk instantly began to
compose, as if he had never ceased it. It is recorded that he traced
out in full score the "Kyrie" of his great mass in F during the
intermission of a single game of billiards. Only a portion of the mass
was completed in time for the festival, but, on Cherubini's return to
Paris in 1809, it was publicly given by an admirable orchestra, and
hailed with a great enthusiasm, that soon swept through Europe. It was
perceived that Cherubini had struck out for himself a new path in
church music. Fétis, the musical historian, records its reception as
follows:--"All expressed an unreserved admiration for this composition
of a new order, whereby Cherubini has placed himself above all
musicians who have as yet written in the concerted style of church
music. Superior to the masses of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and the
masters of the Neapolitan school, that of Cherubini is as remarkable
for originality of idea as for perfection in art." Picchiante, a
distinguished critic, sums up the impressions made by this great work
in the following eloquent and vigorous passage:--"All the musical
science of the good age of religious music, the sixteenth century of
the Christian era, was summed up in Palestrina, who flourished at that
time, and by its aid he put into form noble and sublime conceptions.
With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in vigorous
counterpoint and reduced to greater clearness and elegance without
instrumental aid, Palestrina knew how to awaken among his hearers
mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations, that seemed caused by the
objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in the human
imagination. With the same profound thoughtfulness of the old Catholic
music, enriched by the perfection which art has attained in two
centuries, and with all the means which a composer nowadays can make
use of, Cherubini perfected another conception, and this consisted in
utilising the style adapted to dramatic composition when narrating the
church text, by which means he was able to succeed in depicting man in
his various vicissitudes, now rising to the praises of Divinity, now
gazing on the Supreme Power, now suppliant and prostrate. So that,
while Palestrina's music places God before man, that of Cherubini
places man before God." Adolphe Adam puts the comparison more
epigrammatically in saying "If Palestrina had lived in our own times,
he would have been Cherubini." The masters of the old Roman school of
church music had received it as an emanation of pure sentiment, with
no tinge of human warmth and colour. Cherubini, on the contrary, aimed
to make his music express the dramatic passion of the words, and in
the realisation of this he brought to bear all the resources of a
musical science unequalled except perhaps by Beethoven. The noble
masses in F and D were also written in 1809, and stamped themselves on
public judgment as no less powerful works of genius and knowledge.
Some of Cherubini's friends in 1809 tried to reconcile the composer
with the Emperor, and in furtherance of this an opera was written
anonymously, "Pimmalione." Napoleon was delighted, and even affected
to tears. Instantly, however, that Cherubini's name was uttered, he
became dumb and cold. Nevertheless, as if ashamed of his injustice, he
sent Cherubini a large sum of money, and a commission to write the
music for his marriage ode. Several fine works followed in the next
two years, among them the Mass in D, regarded by some of his admirers
as his ecclesiastical masterpiece. Miel claims that in largeness of
design and complication of detail, sublimity of conception and
dramatic intensity, two works only of its class approach it,
Beethoven's Mass in D and Niedermeyer's Mass in D minor.
In 1811 Halévy, the future author of "La Juive," became Cherubini's
pupil, and a devoted friendship ever continued between the two. The
opera of "La Abencérages" was also produced, and it was pronounced
nowise inferior to "Médée" and "Les Deux Journées." Mendelssohn, many
years afterwards, writing to Moscheles in Paris, asked, "Has Onslow
written anything new? And old Cherubini? There's a matchless fellow! I
have got his 'Abencérages,' and can not sufficiently admire the
sparkling fire, the clear original phrasing, the extraordinary
delicacy and refinement with which it is written, or feel grateful
enough to the grand old man for it. Besides, it is all so free and
bold and spirited." The work would have had a greater immediate
success, had not Paris been in profound gloom from the disastrous
results of the Moscow campaign and the horrors of the French retreat,
where famine and disease finished the work of bayonet and cannon-ball.
The unsettled and disheartening times disturbed all the relations of
artists. There is but little record of Cherubini for several years. A
significant passage in a letter written in 1814, speaking of several
military marches written for a Prussian band, indicates the occupation
of Paris by the allies and Napoleon's banishment in Elba. The period
of "The Hundred Days" was spent by Cherubini in England; and the
world's wonder, the battle of Waterloo, was fought, and the Bourbons
were permanently restored, before he again set foot in Paris. The
restored dynasty delighted to honour the man whom Napoleon had
slighted, and gifts were showered on him alike by the Court and by the
leading academies of Europe. The walls of his studio were covered with
medals and diplomas; and his appointment as director of the King's
chapel (which, however, he refused unless shared with Lesueur, the old
incumbent) placed him above the daily demands of want. So, at the age
of fifty-five, this great composer for the first time ceased to be
anxious on the score of his livelihood. Thenceforward the life of
Cherubini was destined to flow with a placid current, its chief
incidents being the great works in church music, which he poured forth
year after year, to the admiration and delight of the artistic world.
These remarkable masses, by their dramatic power, greatness of design,
and wealth of instrumentation, excited as much discussion and interest
throughout Europe as the operas of other composers. That written in
1816, the C minor requiem mass, is pronounced by Berlioz to be the
greatest work of this description ever composed.