die! Be thou contemned, be thou derided, be thou accursed! Despair and
die!!!”
* * * * *
My devotion to Gluck and Spontini at first somewhat blinded me to the
glories of Mozart. Not only had I a prejudice against Italian, both
language and singers, but in _Don Giovanni_ the composer has written a
passage that I call simply criminal. Doña Anna bewails her fate in a
passage of heart-rending beauty and sorrow, then, right in the middle,
after _Forse un giorno_ comes an impossible piece of buffoonery that I
would give my blood to wipe out.
This and other similar passages that I found in his compositions sent
my admiration for Mozart down below zero. I felt I could not trust
his dramatic instinct, and it was not until years later, when I found
the original score of the _Magic Flute_ instead of its travesty, the
_Mysteries of Isis_, and made acquaintance with the marvellous beauty
of his quartettes and quintettes, and some of his sonatas, that this
Angelic Doctor took his due place in my mind.
XI
HENRIETTE
I cannot go minutely into all the sorrowful details of the great drama
of my life, upon which the curtain rose about this time (1827).
An English company had come over to Paris to play Shakespeare, and
at their first performance--_Hamlet_--I saw in Ophelia the Henriette
Smithson who, five years later, became my wife. The impression made
upon my heart and mind by her marvellous genius was only equalled by
the agitation into which I was plunged by the poetry she so nobly
interpreted.
Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me down as with a
thunderbolt. His lightning spirit, descending upon me with transcendent
power from the starry heights, opened to me the highest heaven of Art,
lit up its deepest depths, and revealed the best and grandest and
truest that earth can shew.
I realised the paltry meanness of our French view of that mighty brain.
The scales fell from my eyes, I saw, felt, understood, lived; I arose
and walked!
But the shock was overwhelming, and it was long ere I recovered.
Intense, profound melancholy, combined with extreme nerve-exhaustion,
reduced me to a pitiable state of mind and body that only a great
physiologist could diagnose.
A martyr to insomnia, I lost all elasticity of brain, all
concentration, all taste for my best loved studies, and I wandered
aimlessly about the Paris streets and through the country round.[3]
By dint of overtiring my body, I managed, during this wretched time, to
get four spells of death-like sleep or torpor, and four only; one night
in a field near Ville-Juif, one day near Sceaux; a third in the snow
by the frozen Seine near Neuilly, and the last on a table in the Café
Cardinal, where I slept five hours, to the great fright of the waiters,
who dared not touch me lest I should be dead.
Returning one day from this dreary wandering in search of my lost soul,
I noticed Moore’s _Irish Melodies_ open on the table at
“When he who adores thee,”
and, catching up a pen, I wrote the music to that heart-rending
farewell straight off. It is the _Elégie_ at the end of my set of songs
called _Ireland_. This is the only time I can remember being able to
depict a sentiment while actively under its influence, and seldom have
I gone so direct to the heart of it.
It is a most difficult song both to sing and to accompany. To do it
justice the singer must create his own atmosphere, so must the pianist
and only the most sensitive and artistic souls should attempt it.
For this reason, during all the twenty odd years since it was written,
I have never asked anyone to try it; but one day Alizard picked it up
and began trying it without the piano. Even that upset me so terribly
that I had to beg him to stop. He understood. I know he would have
interpreted it perfectly, and it was more than I could bear. I did
begin to set it to an orchestral accompaniment, but I thought:
“No, this is not for the general public. I could not stand their calm
indifference,” and I burnt the score.
Yet some day it may chance, in England or Germany, to find a niche in
some wounded breast, some quivering soul--in France and Italy it is a
hopeless alien.
Coming away from _Hamlet_, I vowed that never more would I expose
myself to Shakespearian temptation, never more singe my scorched wings
in his flame.
Next morning _Romeo and Juliet_ was placarded. In terror lest the free
list of the Odéon should be suspended by the new management, I tore
round to the box-office and bought a stall. I was done for!
Ah! what a change from the dull grey skies and icy winds of Denmark to
the burning sun, the perfumed nights of Italy! From the melancholy, the
cruel irony, the tears, the mourning, the lowering destiny of Hamlet,
what a transition to the impetuous youthful love, the long-drawn
kisses, the vengeance, the despairing fatal conflict of love and death
in those hapless lovers!
By the third act, half suffocated by my emotion, with the grip of an
iron hand upon my heart, I cried to myself: “I am lost--am lost!”
Knowing no English I could but grope mistily through the fog of a
translation, could only see Shakespeare as in a glass--darkly. The
poetic weft that winds its golden thread in network through those
marvellous creations was invisible to me then; yet, as it was, how much
I learnt!
An English critic has stated in the _Illustrated London News_ that, on
seeing Miss Smithson that night, I said:
“I will marry Juliet and will write my greatest symphony on the play.”
I did both, but I never said anything of the kind. I was in far too
much perturbation to entertain such ambitious dreams. Only through much
tribulation were both ends gained.
After seeing these two plays I had no more difficulty in keeping away
from the theatre. I shuddered at the bare idea of renewing such awful
suffering, and shrank as if from excruciating physical pain.
Months passed in this state of numb despair, my only lucid moments
being dreams of Shakespeare and of Miss Smithson--now the darling of
Paris--and dreary comparisons between her brilliant triumphs and my sad
obscurity.
As I gradually awoke to life again, a plan began to take shape in my
mind. She should hear of me; she should know that I also was an artist;
I would do what, so far, no French artist had ever done--give a concert
entirely of my own works. For this three things were needed--copies,
hall, and performers.
Therefore (this was early in the spring of 1828) I set to work, and,
writing sixteen hours out of twenty-four, I copied every single part
of the pieces I had chosen, which were the overtures to _Waverley_
and the _Francs-Juges_, an aria and trio from the latter, the scena
_Heroic Greek_, and the cantata on the _Death of Orpheus_, that the
Conservatoire committee had judged unplayable.
While copying furiously I saved furiously too, and added some hundreds
of francs to my store, wherewith to pay the chorus; for orchestra I
knew I might count on the friendly help of the staff of the Odéon, with
a sprinkling of assistants from the Opera and the Nouveautés.
My chief difficulty was the hall; it always is in Paris. For the only
suitable one--the Conservatoire--I must have a permit from M. de
Larochefoucauld and also the consent of Cherubini.
The first was easily obtained; not so the second.
At the first mention of my design Cherubini flew in a rage.
“Vant to gif a conchert?” he said, with his usual suavity.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Must ’ave permission of Fine Arts Director first.”
“I have it.”
“M. de Larossefoucauld, ’e consent?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“But me, I not consent. I vill oppose zat you get ze ’all.”
“But, monsieur, you can have no reasonable objection, since the hall is
not engaged for the next fortnight.”
“But I tell to you zat I vill not ’ave zat you gif zis conchert.
Everyone is avay and no profit vill be to you.”
“I expect none. I merely wish to become known.”
“Zere is no necessity zat you become known. And zen for expense you
vill want monee. Vhat ’ave you of monee?”
“Sufficient, monsieur.”
“A-a-ah! But vhat vill you make ’ear at zis conchert?”
“Two overtures, some excerpts from an opera and the _Death of Orpheus_.”
“Zat competition cantata? I vill not ’ave zat! She is bad--bad; she is
impossible to play.”
“You say so, monsieur; I judge differently. That a bad pianist could
not play it is no reason that a good orchestra should not.”
“Zen it is for insult of ze Académie zat you play zis?”
“No, monsieur; it is simply as an experiment. If, as is possible,
the Academy was right in saying my score could not be played, then
certainly the orchestra will not play it. If the Academy was wrong,
people will only say that I made good use of its judgment and have
corrected my score.”
“You can only ’ave your conchert on ze Sunday.”
“Very well, I will take Sunday.”
“But zose poor _employés_--ze doorkeepers--zey ’ave but ze Sunday for
repose zem. Vould you take zeir only rest-day? Zey vill die--zose poor
folks--zey vill die of fatigue.”
“On the contrary, monsieur. These poor folks are delighted at the
chance of earning a few extra francs, and they will not thank you for
depriving them of it.”
“I vill not ’ave it; I vill not! And I write to ze Director zat he
vizdraw permission.”
“Most hearty thanks, monsieur, but M. de Larochefoucauld never breaks
his word. I also shall write and retail our conversation exactly. Then
he will be able to weigh the arguments on both sides.”
I did so, and was afterwards told by one of his secretaries that my
dialogue-letter made the Director laugh till he cried. He was, above
all, touched at Cherubini’s tender consideration for those poor devils
of _employés_ whom I was going to kill with fatigue.
He replied, as any man blessed with commonsense would, repeating his
authorisation and adding:
“You will kindly show this letter to M. Cherubini, who has already
received the necessary _orders_.”
Of course I posted off to the Conservatoire and handed in my letter;
Cherubini read it, turned pale, then yellow, and finally green, then
handed it back without a word.
This was my first Roland for the Oliver he gave me in turning me out of
the library. It was not to be my last.
XII
MY FIRST CONCERT
Having secured orchestra, hall, chorus and parts, I only wanted
soloists and a conductor. Bloc, of the Odéon, kindly accepted the
latter post, and Alexis Dupont, although very unwell, took under his
wing my _Orpheus_, which he had promised to sing before the jury of the
Institute, had it been passed.
But unluckily his hoarseness got so much worse that, when the day came,
he was unable to sing at all, so I was deprived of the wicked joy of
putting on the programme, “_Death of Orpheus_; lyric poem, judged
impossible of execution by the Académie des Beaux Arts, performed May
1828.”
A concert at which most of the executants helped for love and not for
money naturally came off poorly in rehearsals; still, at the final
rehearsal the overtures went fairly well, the _Francs-Juges_ calling
forth warm applause from the orchestra; the finale of the cantata
being even more successful.
In this, after the _Bacchanal_, I made the wind carry on the motif of
Orpheus’ love-song to a strange rushing undertone accompaniment by the
rest of the players, while the dying wail of a far-off voice cries:
“Eurydice! Eurydice! hapless Eurydice!”
The wild sadness of my music-picture affected the whole orchestra, and
they hailed it with wild enthusiasm. I am sorry now that I burnt it, it
was worth keeping for those last pages alone.
With the exception of the _Bacchanal_--the famous piece in which the
Conservatoire pianist got hung up--which was given with magnificent
verve, nothing else in the cantata went very well and, thanks to
Dupont’s illness, it was withdrawn. No doubt Cherubini preferred to say
that it was because the orchestra could not play it.
In this cantata I first noticed how impossible conductors, unused to
grand opera, find it to give way to the capricious and varied time of
the recitative. Bloc, only accustomed to songs interspersed with spoken
dialogue, was quite confused and, in some places, never got right at
all, which made a learned periwigged amateur, who was at rehearsal,
say, as he shook his head at me:
“Give me good old Italian cantatas! Now that’s the music that never
bothers a conductor. It plays itself, it runs alone.”
“Yes,” I said dryly, “just as old donkeys plod round and round their
treadmill.”
That is how I set about making friends.
Much against the grain I replaced _Orpheus_ by the _Resurrexit_ from my
mass, and finally the concert came off.
Duprez, with his sweet, weak voice, did well in the aria; the overtures
and _Resurrexit_ were also a success, but the trio with chorus was a
regular failure.
Not only was the trio miserably sung, but the chorus missed its entry
and never came in at all!
I need hardly say that, after paying expenses, including the chorus
that held its tongue in such a masterly manner, I was completely
cleaned out.
However, the concert was a most useful lesson to me.
Not only did I become known to artists and public, which (_pace_
Cherubini!) was a necessity, but, by doggedly facing the innumerable
difficulties of a composer, I gained most valuable experience.
Several of the papers praised me, and even Fétis--Fétis, who
afterwards[4] ... spoke of me, in a drawing-room, as a coming man.
But what of Miss Smithson?
Alas! I found out that, absorbed in her own engrossing work, of me and
my concert she never heard a whisper!
_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.
“_6th June 1828._--Are you parched with anxiety to know the
result of my concert? I have only waited in order to send you the
papers too. Triumphant success! After the applause at the general
rehearsals of Friday and Saturday I had no more misgivings.
“Our beloved _Pastoral_ was ruined by the chorus that only found
out it had not come in just as the whole thing finished. But oh,
the _Resurrexit_! and oh, the applause! As soon as one round
finished another began until, being unable to stand it all, I
doubled up on the kettle-drum and cried hard.
“Why were you not there, dear friend, faithful champion? I thought
of and longed for you.
“At that wild trombone and ophicleide solo in the _Francs-Juges_,
one of the first violins shouted:
“‘The rainbow is the bow of your
violin, the winds play your organ and the seasons beat time!’
“Whereupon the whole orchestra started applauding a thought of
which they could not possibly grasp the extent. The drummer by my
side seized my arm, ejaculating, ‘Superb--sublime,’ while I tore my
hair and longed to shriek:
“‘Monstrous! Gigantic! Horrible!’
“All the opera people were present, and there was no end to
the congratulations. The most pleased were Habeneck, Dérivis,
Dupont, Mademoiselle Mori, Hérold, etc. Nothing was lacking to my
success--not even the criticisms of Panseron and Brugnières, who
say my style is new and bad, and that such writing is not to be
encouraged.
“My dear, dear fellow! in pity send me an opera. How can I write
without a book? For heaven’s sake finish something!”
“_June._--All day long I have been tearing about the country,
leagues upon leagues, and I still live. I feel so lonely! Send me
something to work at, some bone to gnaw! The country was lovely;
the people all looked happy. In the flooding light the trees
rustled softly; but, oh! I was alone--all alone in that wide plain.
Space, time, oblivion, pain and rage held me in their terrific
grasp. Struggle wildly as I might, life seemed to escape me; I held
but a few pitiful fragments in my trembling hands.
“Oh! the horror, at my age and with my temperament, to have these
harrowing delusions, and, with them, the miserable persecutions
of my family! My father has again stopped my allowance; my sister
writes to-day that he is immovable. Oh, for money! money! Money
_does_ bring happiness.
“Still ... my heart beats as if with joy, the blood courses through
my veins.
“Bah! I am all right. Joy, hang it! I will have joy!”
“_Sunday morning._
“DEAR FRIEND,--Do not worry over my aberrations--the
crisis is past. I cannot explain in a letter, which might go
astray; but I beg you will not breathe a word of my state of mind
to anyone, it might get round to my father and distress him. All
that I can do is suffer in silence until time changes my fate.
“Yesterday’s wild excursion did for me entirely. I can hardly
move.--_Adieu._”
In an artist’s life sometimes wild tempests succeed each other with
bewildering rapidity, and so it was with me about this time.
Hardly had I recovered from the successive shocks of Weber and
Shakespeare, when above my horizon burst the sun of glorious Beethoven
to melt for me that misty inmost veil of the holiest shrine in music,
as Shakespeare had lifted that of poetry.
To Habeneck, with all his shortcomings, is due the credit of
introducing the master he adored to Paris. In order to found the
Conservatoire concerts, now of world-wide fame, he had to face
opposition, abuse and irony, and to inspire with his own ardour a set
of men who, not being Beethoven enthusiasts, did not see the force of
slaving for poor pay at music that, to them, appeared simply eccentric.
Oh! the nonsense I have heard them airing on those miracles of
inspiration and learning--the symphonies!
Even Lesueur--honest, but devoted to antiquated dogmas--stood aside
with Cherubini, Päer, Kreutzer and Catel, until, one day, I swept him
off to hear the great C minor symphony.
I told him it was his duty to know and appreciate personally such a
notable fact as this revelation of a new and glorious style to us, the
children of the old classicism.
Conscientiously anxious to judge fairly, he would not have me by to
distract him, but shut himself up with strangers at the back of a box.
The symphony over, I hurried round to hear his verdict, and found him,
with flushed face, striding up and down a passage.
“Ouf!” he cried, “let me get out; I must have air! It’s incredible!
Marvellous! It has so upset and bewildered me, that when I wanted to
put on my hat I _couldn’t find my head_. Let me go by myself. I will
see you to-morrow.”
I felt triumphant, and took care to go round next day. We spoke of
nothing but the masterpiece we had heard; yet he seemed to reply to my
ravings rather constrainedly. Still I persevered, until, after dragging
out of him another acknowledgment of his heart-felt appreciation, he
ended, with a curious smile:
“Yes, it’s all very well; but such music ought not to be written.”
“No fear, dear master,” I retorted; “there will never be too much of
it!”
Poor human nature! Poor master! How much regret, envy,
narrow-mindedness; what a dread of the unknown and confession of
incapacity lay beneath your words! “Such music should not be written,”
because the speaker knows instinctively that he himself could never
write it.
Thus do all great men suffer from their contemporaries.
Haydn said much the same of Beethoven, whom he called a _great
pianist_.
Grétry of Mozart, who, he said, had put the statue in the orchestra and
the pedestal on the stage.
Handel, who said his cook was more of a musician than Gluck.
Rossini, who vowed that Weber’s music gave him a stomach-ache.
But the antipathy of the two latter to Gluck and Weber I believe to
be due to quite another reason--a natural inability in these two
comfortable portly gentlemen to understand the point of view of the two
men of heart and sensibility.
This deliberately obstinate attitude of Lesueur towards Beethoven
opened my eyes to the utter worthlessness of his conservative tenets,
and from that moment I left the broad, smooth road wherein he had
guided my footsteps, for a hard and thorny way over hedges and ditches,
hills and valleys. But I could not hurt the old man by my apostasy, so
did my best to dissimulate my change of mind, and he only found it out
long after, on hearing a composition I had never shewn him.
It was just at this time that I set out on my treadmill round as critic
for the papers.
Ferrand, Cazalès and de Carné--well-known political names--agreed
to start a periodical to air their views, which they called _Révue
Européenne_, and Ferrand suggested that I should undertake the musical
correspondence.
“But I can’t write,” I objected; “my prose is simply detestable. And,
besides----”
“No, it is not,” said Ferrand; “have I not got your letters? You will
soon be knocked into shape. Besides, we shall revise what you write
before it is printed. Come along to de Carné and hear all about it.”
What a weapon this writing for the press would be wherewith to
defend truth and beauty in art! So, ignorant of the web of fate I
was throwing around my own shoulders, I smiled innocently and walked
straight into the meshes.
I was likely to be diffident of my writing powers, for, once before,
being furious at the attacks made upon Gluck by the Rossini faction, I
asked M. Michaud, of the _Quotidienne_, to let me reply. He consented,
and I said to myself, gaily:
“Now, you brutes, I have got you; I’ll smite you hip and thigh!”
But I smote no one and nothing.
My utter ignorance of journalism, of the ways of the world, of press
etiquette and my untamed musical passions, landed me in a regular bog.
My article went far beyond the bounds of newspaper warfare, and M.
Michaud’s hair stood on end.
“But, my dear fellow, you know, I cannot possibly publish a thing like
that. You are pulling people’s houses down about their ears. Take it
back and whittle it down a bit.”
But I was too lazy and too disgusted, so there it ended.
This laziness of mine does not apply to composition, which comes
naturally to me. Hour after hour I labour at a score, sometimes for
eight hours at a time; no work is too minute, no pains too great.
Prose, however, is always a burden. Sometimes I go back eight or ten
times to an article for the _Journal des Débats_; even a subject I
like takes me at least two days. And what blots, what scrawls, what
erasures! My first copy is a sight to behold.
Propped up by Ferrand, I wrote for the _Révue Européenne_ appreciative
articles on Beethoven, Gluck and Spontini that made a certain mark, and
thus began my apprenticeship to the difficult and dangerous work that
has taken such a fatal hold on my life.
Never since have I shaken myself free, and strangely diversified have
been its influences on my career both in France and abroad.
XIII
AN ACADEMY EXAMINATION
Torn by my Shakespearian love, which seemed intensified instead of
diverted by the influence of Beethoven; dreamy, unsociable, taciturn to
the verge of moroseness, untidy in dress, unbearable alike to myself
and my friends, I dragged on until June 1828 when, for the third time,
I tempted fate at the Institute and won a second prize.
This was a gold medal of small value, but it carried with it a free
pass to all the lyric theatres, and a fair prospect of the first prize
the following year.
The Prix de Rome was much better worth having. It insured three
thousand francs a year for five years, of which the two first must be
spent in Italy, and the third in Germany. The remaining two might be
passed in Paris, after which the winner was left to sink or swim at his
own sweet will.
This is how the affair was worked until 1865, when the Emperor revised
the statutes. I shall hardly be believed, but, since I won both prizes,
I only state what I know to be absolutely true.
The competition was open to any Frenchman under thirty, who must go
through the preliminary examination, which weeded out all but the most
promising half dozen.
The subject set is always a lyric scena, and by way of finding out
whether the candidates have melody, dramatic force, instrumentation,
and other knowledge necessary for writing such a scena, they are set
down to compose a _vocal fugue_! _Each fugue must be signed._
Next day the musical section of the Academy sits in judgment on
the fugues, and, since some of the signatures are those of the
Academicians’ pupils, this performance is not entirely free from the
charge of partiality.
The successful competitors then have dictated to them the classical
poem on which they are to work. It always begins this way:
“And now the rosy-fingered dawn;”
or,
“And now with lustre soft the horizon glows;”
or,
“And now fair Phœbus’ shining car draws near;”
or,
“And now with purple pomp the mountains decked.”
Armed with this inspiring effusion the young people are locked up in
their little cells with pens, paper, and piano until their work is done.