By Danton; in the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.
]
It was on horseback or while riding in his carriage during his daily
excursions to the Bois de Boulogne that Auber found his happiest
_motifs_. On returning home he set them to music and inserted them in
the opera upon which he was working, and then Scribe supplied the words.
In the principal scenes, however, Auber wrote to the verses of his
collaborator, and he would begin to work on his return from the theatre,
whither he went nearly every evening. In this way he would write on a
little table by the side of his piano up to four or five o’clock in the
morning. As often as not, he did not go to bed, but slept in his
arm-chair. Many of his scores bear traces of the ink which dropped from
his pen as he let it fall from his hand when overcome by slumber. The
manual of his old square piano bears numerous inkstains on the white
keys of the upper octave, which indicate the moment when Auber fell
asleep at his work. The musician never needed more than from three to
four hours of sleep daily, and throughout his life he took only one meal
in twenty-four hours, namely, dinner. On rising, he would drink a cup of
camomile, which he swallowed fasting. This was sufficient to sustain him
without undue fatigue to the digestive organs up to the time of his only
meal at six o’clock. He frequently invited to his table, frugal as it
was, young professional lady singers, for he was extremely susceptible
to the attractions of the fair sex, and remained a worshipper of beauty
even unto death. Venus was his goddess, and he ever adored her most
conscientiously.
Auber had eight domestics in his service, and never was man worse served
than he. One evening he invited to dinner several professional ladies,
as also the learned Mr. Weckerlin, librarian of the Conservatoire. The
dinner was good and well served. Music and song followed the repast. One
of the ladies being thirsty, the master rang for a glass of water. There
was no answer. The housekeeper, the old Sophie, whose face had been
familiar for half a century to all Auber’s friends, had gone to bed; the
cook had followed her example; the valet-de-chambre had gone out for a
walk with John, the English coachman, who remained more than thirty
years in the composer’s service: in short, all the servants had
disappeared. Auber did not fall into a passion: he never became angry at
anything. “As we cannot get anything here,” said he to his guests, “let
us go and take an ice at Tortoni’s.”
We have already referred to the numerous inkstains on the old piano,
made by the pen which fell from Auber’s hand as sleep overpowered him
during his long nocturnal labors, and we now propose to give some
details of this interesting and historic instrument, which remains an
object of curiosity to all the admirers of the master who visit the
instrumental museum at the Conservatoire, and of which we have been able
to take a photograph by the gracious permission of M. Pillaut, the
learned Conservator of the Museum.
This piano, oblong in form, very light and built of mahogany, was bought
by Auber on the 17th of February, 1812, in the showrooms of the
celebrated Erard. The manufacturer’s number is 8414. It is a
double-stringed instrument, and its compass is only five and a half
octaves. When, in 1842, Auber succeeded Cherubini as director of the
Conservatoire, he had this piano brought thither and placed it in his
study. It was upon this instrument, from which the master could never be
separated, and which had become his true friend and harmonious
confidant, an indefatigable and never-failing source of inspiration,
that Auber composed those charming and _spirituel_ comedies which, so
often performed and always with success, have remained models of French
comic opera in common with the works of Monsigny, Dalayrac, Grétry,
Boïeldieu, Hérold, and other great masters.
Besides the old piano which stood in his private room at the
Conservatoire, Auber had another at home, in his house in the Rue St.
Georges. This latter was an upright piano which I have often seen. Like
his oblong piano, it was stained with ink on the two upper octaves.
Auber never thought, like Ambroise Thomas and Charles Gounod, of having
made by the firm of Pleyel what is called a composer’s piano, which is
both an excellent instrument and a secretary.
[Illustration: