puzzling, which properly understood only emphasizes the peculiarity
of his artistic impulse. His compositions are of two well-marked
varieties which at first seem to have little in common. To begin
with, all those cast in the conventional symphonic mold--the three
symphonies, the eight concertos, three for violin and five for piano,
and most of the chamber-music--are severely, at times almost aridly,
classical in conception and execution. They are «absolute music» of
the most unequivocal sort. They depend for their effect on clear form,
well-calculated symmetry, traditional though interesting melodic and
harmonic treatment; their themes are of the family of Haydn and Mozart;
their structure is that perfected by Beethoven; their orchestration
is skillful but unobtrusive, a transparent medium rather than a rich
material garment. In a word, they are very pure examples in music of
a type of art--the French classic or pseudo-classic type--which gains
little from richness of material or variety of suggestion, which
depends for its appeal on clarity and symmetry of form and on clean
workmanship in style. But, in addition to these conventional works,
Saint-Saëns has produced a whole museum of exotics, in which his aim
is to delineate passions, peoples, and places. There are the four
Symphonic Poems, for example, the «Rouet d'Omphale,» «Phaéton,» the
«Danse Macabre,» and «La Jeunesse d'Hercule,» in which he assumes the
rôle of story-teller. In the «Nuit à Lisbonne,» the «Jota Aragonese,»
and the «Rapsodie d'Auvergne,» he makes a tour in southern Europe;
in the «Suite Algerienne» he portrays the deserts about Algiers, and
in his opus 89 he gives us a fantasy of odd rhythms and outlandish
tonalities supposed to introduce us to Africa. Nothing could seem, at
the first blush, more diametrically opposite to the pseudo-classic
works than these exotics, which among their academic brothers recall
the King of Bahonagar at Cambridge. Yet both kinds, after all, when one
looks more closely, are products of the widely questing intelligence,
whose interests are dramatic rather than personal. They have this in
common, that neither is of primarily emotional origin, that both are
expressions of a mind objective and alertly observant. The difference
between them is that in the one case this observation takes for object
the purely musical world of tones, and in the other nature's world
of persons, nations, races, and climates. But whether he is seeking
a piquant rhythm or a curious turn of harmony, or sketching his
impression of Spain or Egypt, Saint-Saëns is always the onlooker, the
man of the world, never the mystic who contemplates in his own heart
the forces that underlie the universe.
Strong testimony from the man himself to the truth of this view
is indirectly afforded by his essay on Liszt, an essay which is
furthermore noteworthy as containing in half a dozen sentences the
essential truths of that vexed question of programme-music. He is,
to begin with, as assertive as we should expect of the necessity, in
all music, of absolute beauty. «Is the music itself,» he says, «good
or bad? All is there. Whether or no it has a programme, it will not
be, for that, better or worse.» Thus far speaks the author of the
symphonies, the concertos, and the chamber-works. The composer of the
symphonic poems and the geographical pieces continues: «But how much
greater is the charm when to the purely musical pleasure is added
that of the imagination coursing without hesitation over a determined
path.... All the faculties of the soul are put in play at once, and
toward the same end. I can see well what art gains from this, I cannot
see what it loses.» Here speaks, recognizably enough, the Frenchman.
In that phrase about «the imagination coursing without hesitation over
a determined path» stands clearly revealed the dramatic point of view
characteristic of French art, which is always devoted to the spectacle
of life rather than to the elemental passions which underlie it. The
satisfactions Saint-Saëns finds in music are those of the formal
musical sense and of «the imagination coursing a determined path;»
of the emotional satisfaction which music gives so generously he has
nothing to say. To take another instance, how admirably logical and how
adequate to the composition, which for all its picturesque grace leaves
one cold, is the «programme» he appends to the «Rouet d'Omphale.» «The
subject of this symphonic poem,» he writes, «is feminine seduction,
the triumph of weakness over strength. The spinning-wheel is but a
pretext, chosen solely with a view to the rhythm and the general effect
of the piece. Those interested in the study of details will see at page
19, Hercules groaning under the bonds he cannot break, and at page
32 Omphale laughing at the vain efforts of the hero.» Both programme
and piece are the creations of a keen intelligence which records its
observations with accuracy and skill, but makes no personal revelation,
cares not to contemplate itself, and is moved by no deep and perhaps
vague, but nevertheless creative, emotion.
Lack of emotion, then, is the serious defect of this master. And in
a musician it is in truth serious. Emotion is the life blood of the
musical organism; without it all the members may be shapely, well
ordered, highly finished, but all will be cold and lifeless. So it is
with much of this clever craftsman's work. Too often there is graceful
melody, arresting harmony, ingenious rhythm, but none of the passion
needed to fuse and transfigure them. Impassioned vocal utterance,
the song element in music, is seldom heard from Saint-Saëns. In the
classic works he manipulates, in the exotic pieces he depicts; nowhere
does he speak. But to speak, to voice deep feeling directly, though
with the restraint necessary to plastic beauty, is the aim and the
justification of music. Complex as the art has become in our day, the
essence of it is still, as it ever must be, emotional expression; and
though modern composers sing broader songs than the first musicians,
and sing them on instruments rather than with the voice, they must
equally sing, and their song must proceed from their hearts if it is
to touch the hearts of others. Hence Saint-Saëns, when compared with
a man of passionate earnestness like César Franck, or Schumann, or
Wagner, inevitably seems superficial. Pieces like his B-minor Violin
Concerto, with its elaborate classical machinery, its well-planned
contrasts and brilliant effects, and the vast Symphony in C-minor, in
which the theme undergoes such wonderfully skillful manipulation, seem
so little the expression of a personal impulse that we catch ourselves
wondering why he wrote them. Elsewhere, to be sure, as in the Andante
of the 'Cello Sonata, his very virtuosity achieves such noble effects
that we forget the hand-made quality of the work. But it is seldom
indeed that, subordinating workmanship entirely, he gives us a genuine
song of feeling, such as the second theme of the Finale in this Sonata.
The lift and impetus of this beautiful theme emphasizes by contrast the
emotional emptiness of the ingenious web that surrounds it.
While, however, we may with propriety recognize the lack of personal
ardor in Saint-Saëns that reduces the song element in his music to a
minimum, it would be a sad mistake to exaggerate the limitation or to
forget that from another and perhaps an equally valid point of view he
is a great musician. However he may fall short as a melodist, he is a
past-master of rhythm and harmony, spheres in which feeling counts for
less, logic for more. His harmonic style is eminently lucid. To him a
chord is part of an organism, not a bit of color or a phase of feeling.
A series of chords has for him all the tendency, the direction, and
the self-fulfillment of a sentence of words; to omit or to change one
would be like striking out a predicate or an object--the sentence
would not parse. He uses most those chords which point in a definite
direction, which carry in themselves, so to speak, the indication for
their fulfillment--the dominant and secondary sevenths, and suspensions
of triads. He avoids the vague and the ambiguous. And although he is a
lover of novel harmonic effects, and an ingenious inventor of them, the
novelty is always a new form, not a new formlessness. His modulation,
too, is of an extreme clarity: he never falls into a new key, so to
speak, as Dvořák does; he proceeds thither.
But even more striking than the clearness of his harmony is the
trenchant perspicuity of his rhythm. The sense of rhythm is perhaps
the prime criterion of intellectuality in a composer. For just as
determinations of accent and measure, such as occur in the dances of
the most primeval savages, were undoubtedly the earliest means of
formulating the cries and wails of emotion which underlie all musical
expression, so throughout musical history rhythm has been the chief
formative or rationalizing agent, and a vivid sense of it has always
characterized the more intellectual musicians. The dreamers and the
sentimentalists are never fastidious of accent; it is the clear,
active minds who delight in precise meter. Quite inevitable to a man
of Saint-Saëns's temperament, then, is the instinct for strong,
various and subtle rhythms that his compositions reveal at every page.
One discerns it in his fondness for pizzicato effects and for the
percussion instruments, both of which emphasize the accent. And his
devotion to the piano, which he uses more in combination with other
instruments than almost any other composer, is doubtless due to the
fact that it compensates for its lack of sustained tone by a special
incisiveness of attack. Another significant peculiarity is the short
groups of repeated notes that occur so often in his writings as to be a
mannerism. They are found, for example, in the fourth of his Variations
on a Theme of Beethoven, opus 35, in the «scherzando» section of
«Africa,» at the opening of the Trio, opus 92, in the accompaniment
of the well-known air from «Samson et Dalila,» «Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta
voix,» and in the third of the Six Études, opus 52. The effect of this
device, which throws a strong emphasis on the first of the reiterated
notes, is a peculiar rhythmic salience. Again, on the principle that
minor irregularities in a regular plan bring out all the more clearly
the larger orderliness, Saint-Saëns loves to alternate groups of four
notes with groups of three, or three with two, and to displace his
accent entirely by syncopation, which, when properly handled, deepens
the ideal stress by setting the actual in competition with it.
In all these and countless other ways are revealed the accuracy and
virtuosity of intellect that distinguish this brilliant Frenchman.
Clearness of form is, on the whole, so much rarer in modern music than
wealth of meaning, that the art in our day has peculiar need of such
workers. Their office is to make us remember, in our welter of emotion,
the perennial delightfulness of order and control. They are the
apologists of reason, without which feeling, however noble, must become
futile, inarticulate. In their precise, well-constructed works we find
a relief from the dissipating effects of mere passion. We breathe there
a serene, if a somewhat rarefied, atmosphere. Of this classic lucidity
Saint-Saëns is a great master. However dry he may sometimes be, he is
never turgid; however superficial his thought, it is never vague; he
offers us his artistic sweets never in the form of syrup--he refines
and crystallizes them. If, then, we of a race emotionally profounder
and mentally more diffuse find his music sometimes empty for all its
skill, we must not for that reason underrate the service he does for
music by insisting on articulateness in feeling, logic in development,
and punctilious finesse in workmanship.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--Saint-Saëns's best orchestral works are
arranged not only for four hands, but for two players at two pianos, a
combination of which he is extremely fond. It is interesting to play
in this way the four symphonic poems, «La Rouet d'Omphale,» «Phaéton,»
the «Danse Macabre,» and «La Jeunesse d'Hercule.» The five Piano
Concertos are also excellent. The symphonies are rather dry. Of the
chamber-music, the 'Cello Sonata, op. 32, and the Violin Sonatas, op.
75 and 102, are particularly good. The piano music is less original,
being for the most part pseudo-classic in conception and style. Thus
the Suite, op. 90, is like a suite of Bach's with the sincerity taken
out. On the whole the Six Études, op. 52, and the Album of six pieces,
op. 72, are better worth study. The former contains two able fugues,
the latter an odd «Carillon» in 7-4 time and an attractive «Valse.»
There is charm in «Les Cloches du Soir,» op. 85, and also in a
well-known melody, without opus-number, called «Le Cygne.» Saint-Saëns
has little power as a song-writer; those who wish to realize this for
themselves, may purchase the Schirmer Album of fifteen of his songs.
To his numerous operas no reference is made in the present essay, the
subject of which is his contribution to pure music.
V
CÉSAR FRANCK
[Illustration: CÉSAR FRANCK]
V
CÉSAR FRANCK
When we turn from the brilliant Parisian we have been studying to that
obscure and saintly man, César Franck, the only French contemporary of
Saint-Saëns who is worthy to be ranked with him as a great composer,
we can hardly believe ourselves in the same country or epoch. It is as
if we were suddenly transported from modern Paris into some mediæval
monastery, to which the noise of the world never penetrates, where
nothing breaks the silence save the songs of worship and the deep
note of the organ. In the presence of this devout mystic the sounds
of cities and peoples fade away, and we are alone with the soul and
God. We have passed from the noonday glare of the intellect, in which
objects stand forth sharp and hard, into the soft cathedral twilight
of religious emotion; and putting aside our ordinary thoughts we
commune for a time with deeper intuitions. Or, again, it is like
closing a volume of Taine and taking up Maeterlinck. From the streets
and the drawing-room we pass into the cloister, where dwell no longer
men and things, but all the intangible presences of thought and
feeling. We close our eyes on the pageant of experience, to reopen
them in the dim inner light of introspection, where, if we may believe
the mystics, they will behold a truer reality. The temperament of
Franck is thus at the opposite pole from that prehensile Gallic
temperament so well exemplified in Saint-Saëns, and we should find the
juxtaposition of the two men as the greatest French composers of their
time highly perplexing did we not remember that, in spite of his almost
lifelong residence in Paris, César Franck was by birth and blood, like
Maeterlinck, with whom he has so much in common, a Belgian. Exactly how
much the peculiar characters of these men were inherited from their
race it is of course impossible to say; but any one who has seen the
placid faces of the Belgian peasants, with their calm, almost bovine
look of contentment, must recognize there a trait that needs only the
power of articulation to produce a natural religion of feeling, or
mysticism, like that of César Franck and Maeterlinck. It was the same
sort of self-sufficient serenity, the antithesis of Saint-Saëns's busy
worldliness, that determined the course of Franck's life, so obscure,
so uneventful, so dominated by high spiritual purpose.
César-Auguste Franck (it was an inapt name for so pacific a being)
was born in 1822, at Liége, Belgium. There he made his first musical
studies, but went to Paris at fifteen to study in the Conservatory.
Though without the precocity of «le petit Saint-Saëns,» he must have
been a solid musician at sixteen, for in a test that took place in
July, 1838, he transposed a piece at sight down a third, playing it
«avec un brio remarquable,» and was awarded the first grand prize of
honor at his graduation in 1842. Foregoing the career of a concert
pianist, which his father wished him to pursue, «repudiating with
horror and disgust,» as one of his biographers has it, «the brilliant
noise-making that people long mistook for music,» he turned for a
livelihood to that laborious work of teaching which he pursued all the
rest of his life with patient fidelity.
He seems to have been an almost ideal teacher, long-suffering with the
dull pupils, painstaking and generous with the able ones, provoking
enthusiasm in all by his contagious love for art and his receptivity
to ideas. In a degree that is rare even among the best teachers, he
combined endurance and vivacity. Giving, all his life, from eight to
ten lessons a day, many of them, even after he had made his reputation,
in girls' boarding-schools and _pensions_ of the usual wearisome sort,
he yet retained vitality to impart to the best minds of the present
generation of French composers. Though after teaching all day, often
not returning home until supper-time, he would in the evening give
correspondence lessons to pupils in the provinces, and though even the
Sundays were filled with his duties as organist and choirmaster, still
he often found time to assemble his favorite pupils, and to discuss
with them, as if with perfect equals, their exercises and his own
works. One of these pupils, M. Vincent d'Indy, has described how «père
Franck,» as they called him, would play them his choral compositions,
singing all the vocal parts in «a terrible voice;» and how he would sit
at the piano, fixing with troubled gaze some offending passage in an
exercise, murmuring anxiously, «Je n'aime pas ... Je n'aime pas,» until
perhaps it grew to seem permissible, and with his bright smile he could
cry a «J'aime!» Thanks to his earnest desire to appreciate whatever was
good, controlled as it was by a severely classical taste, he could make
his students good workmen and stern critics without paralyzing their
individual genius. He was thorough without being rigid, and respected
learners as much as he revered the masters. Naturally, the learners,
in their turn, felt for their «Pater seraphicus,» as they named him,
an almost filial affection. Emmanuel Chabrier, speaking over Franck's
grave, in Montrouge Cemetery, voiced the feelings of them all when
he said that this was not merely an admirable artist, but «the dear
regretted master, the most gentle, modest, and wise. He was the model,
he was the example.»
For thirty-two years, that is to say, from 1858 until his death, Franck
was organist of the Église Ste. Clotilde, where his playing must have
been an endless inspiration to all who heard him, though his modesty
kept him personally inconspicuous. One likes to think of this quiet,
devout musician, animated by the purest religious enthusiasm, advancing
year by year in mastery of his art, producing without ostentation
works of a novel and radical beauty. Few of his listeners could have
conceived that one so benignant and courteous, but so easily forgotten,
was making himself a force that modern music could not forget. They,
who saw only the husk of the man, could not guess what treasures of
humanity and genius it concealed. M. d'Indy well describes the two
aspects. «Any one,» he says, «who had encountered this being in the
street, with his coat too large, his trousers too short, his grimacing
and preoccupied face framed in his somewhat gray whiskers, would not
have believed in the transformation that took place when, at the piano,
he explained and commented on some beautiful work of art, or when, at
the organ, he put forth his inspired improvisations. Then the music
enveloped him like an aureole; then one could not fail to be struck
by the conscious will expressed in the mouth and chin, by the almost
superhuman knowledge in his glance; then only would one observe the
nearly perfect likeness of his large forehead to that of Beethoven.»
And M. Derepas has the following paragraph in the same tenor: «It
was there, before the keyboards, his agile and powerful feet upon
the pedals, that it was necessary to see César Franck. His beautiful
head with its finely developed brow crowned with naturally curling
hair, his profound and contemplative expression, his features marked
without exaggeration, his full, well-cut mouth breathing health, ...
all wearing the aureole of genius and of faith--it was like a vision
of another age in strong contrast with the turbulences of the day.» If
one is sometimes sorry that Franck had to spend so much time teaching,
one cannot, in the face of such descriptions as these, regret the hours
he passed in the Église Ste. Clotilde. Its atmosphere was native to
his genius, which was not only religious, but even ecclesiastical. In
hearing his «musique cathédralesque,» as Saint-Saëns well called it,
one can almost see the pillars and arches, the pure candle-flames and
the bowed peasants at prayer.
It was in the spare moments of this full life that Franck found time
to write his extraordinary music. Every morning, winter and summer,
rising at six, he set aside two hours for what he expressively called
«his own work.» Then, after breakfast, came the day's teaching, in
the course of which he would jot down ideas that occurred to him,
recording perhaps eight measures, and turning again to the pupil. In
the evenings, when there were not correspondence-lessons to write,
or rehearsals, he often got out his manuscripts once more; and his
short summer vacations were given entirely to composition. All the
more remarkable is this indomitability when we remember that he lacked
not only the stimulus of public success, but for a long while even
the impetus of having definitely succeeded in his own eyes, so new
were his ideas and so difficult the technique they required. Very few
composers have matured so late. Though he wrote in his youth some
trios, and later a Mass, his first really individual work, «Ruth,»
was written when he was nearly fifty; «Les Éolides,» his earliest
orchestral composition, was produced in 1877, when he was fifty-five;
«Les Beatitudes,» in some respects his masterpiece, was not finished
until 1880, though begun more than ten years before; and all his
most characteristic work in pure music, as, for example, the Prelude,
Choral, and Fugue and the Prelude, Aria, and Finale for piano, the
three wonderful Chorals for organ, the Violin Sonata, the Quartet, the
Quintet, and the Symphony, date from the last decade of his life. In a
day when every harmony-student itches to give the world a symphony, it
is hard to admire too much the artistic self-respect that kept Franck a
nonentity for years, to make him at last a master.
Meanwhile, of course, he had to endure neglect. Probably most of his
acquaintances shared the impression put into words by a Paris publisher
to whom M. Servières offered an essay about him. «Oh, monsieur,» cried
this gentleman, «I remember César Franck perfectly. A man who was
always in a hurry, always soberly dressed in black, and who wore his
trousers too short!... Organist at Sainte Clotilde. It seems that he
was a great musician, little known to the public.» Rather harder to
explain is the lack of appreciation which in 1880 led those in power at
the Conservatory, where Franck was already organ professor, to give the
chair of composition then left vacant, not to him, but to Léo Delibes,
the writer of ballet-music. But perhaps the most pathetic result of the
general indifference to Franck was that his masterpiece could never
be given a complete performance during his lifetime. «Les Beatitudes»
was first given entire in 1893, three years after his death. When he
received the Legion of Honor in 1886, he said sorrowfully to a friend,
«Yes, my friend, they honor me--as a Professor.» That is the one
repining word of his that is recorded.