As a man Cherubini presented himself in many different aspects.
Extremely nervous, _brusque_, irritable, and absolutely independent, he
was apt to offend and repel. But under his stern reserve of character
there beat a warm heart and generous sympathies. This is shown by the
fact that, in spite of the unevenness of his temper, he was almost
worshiped by those around him. Auber, Halévy, Berton, Boïeldieu, Méhul,
Spontini, and Adam, who were so intimately associated with him, speak of
him with words of the warmest affection. Halévy, indeed, rarely alluded
to him without tears rushing to his eyes; and the slightest term of
disrespect excited his warmest indignation. It is recorded that, after
rebuking a pupil with sarcastic severity, his fine face would relax with
a smile so affectionate and genial that his whilom victim could feel
nothing but enthusiastic respect. Without one taint of envy in his
nature, conscious of his own extraordinary powers, he was quick to
recognize genius in others; and his hearty praise of the powers of
his rivals shows how sound and generous the heart was under his
irritability. His proneness to satire and power of epigram made him
enemies, but even these yielded to the suavity and fascination which
alternated with his bitter moods. His sympathies were peculiarly open
for young musicians. Mendelssohn and Liszt were stimulated by his warm
and encouraging praise when they first visited Paris; and even Berlioz,
whose turbulent conduct in the Conservatory had so embittered him at
various times, was heartily applauded when his first great mass was
produced. Arnold gives us the following pleasant picture of Cherubini:
"Cherubini in society was outwardly silent, modest, unassuming,
pleasing, obliging, and possessed of the finest manners. At the same
time, he who did not know that he was with Cherubini would think
him stern and reserved, so well did the composer know how to conceal
everything, if only to avoid ostentation. He truly shunned brag or
speaking of himself. Cherubini's voice was feeble, probably from
narrow-chestedness, and somewhat hoarse, but was otherwise soft and
agreeable. His French was Italianized.... His head was bent forward,
his nose was large and aquiline; his eyebrows were thick, black,
and somewhat bushy, overshadowing his eyes. His eyes were dark, and
glittered with an extraordinary brilliancy that animated in a wonderful
way the whole face. A thin lock of hair came over the center of his
forehead, and somehow gave to his countenance a peculiar softness."
The picture painted by Ingres, the great artist, now in the Luxembourg
gallery, represents the composer with Polyhymnia in the background
stretching out her hand over him. His face, framed in waving silvery
hair, is full of majesty and brightness, and the eye of piercing luster.
Cherubini was so gratified by this effort of the painter that he sent
him a beautiful canon set to wrords of his own. Thus his latter years
were spent in the society of the great artists and wits of Paris,
revered by all, and recognized, after Beethoven's death, as the musical
giant of Europe. Rossini, Meyerbeer, Weber, Schumann--in a word, the
representatives of the most diverse schools of composition--bowed
equally before this great name. Rossini, who was his antipodes in genius
and method, felt his loss bitterly, and after his death sent Cherubini's
portrait to his widow with these touching words: "Here, my dear madam,
is the portrait of a great man, who is as young in your heart as he is
in my mind."
Actively engaged as Director of the Conservatory, which he governed with
consummate ability, his old age was further employed in producing that
series of great masses which rank with the symphonies of Beethoven. His
creative instinct and the fire of his imagination remained unimpaired
to the time of his death. Mendelssohn in a letter to Moscheles speaks
of him as "that truly wonderful old man, whose genius seems bathed
in immortal youth." His opera of "Ali Baba," composed at seventy-six,
though inferior to his other dramatic works, is full of beautiful and
original music, and was immediately produced in several of the principal
capitals of Europe; and the second Requiem mass, written in his
eightieth year, is one of his masterpieces.
On the 12th of March, 1842, the old composer died, surrounded by his
affectionate family and friends. His fatal illness had been brought on
in part by grief for the death of his son-in-law, M. Tureas, to whom he
was most tenderly attached. His funeral was one of great military and
civic magnificence, and royalty itself could not have been honored
with more splendid obsequies. The congregation of men great in arms
and state, in music, painting, and literature, who did honor to the
occasion, has rarely been equaled. His own noble Requiem mass, composed
the year before his death, was given at the funeral services in the
church of St. Roch by the finest orchestra and voices in Europe. Similar
services were held throughout Europe, and everywhere the opera-houses
were draped in black. Perhaps the death of no musician ever called forth
such universal exhibitions of sorrow and reverence.
Cherubini's life extended from the early part of the reign of Louis XVI.
to that of Louis Philippe, and was contemporaneous with many of the
most remarkable events in modern history. The energy and passion which
convulsed society during his youth and early manhood undoubtedly had
much to do in stimulating that robust and virile quality in his mind
which gave such character to his compositions. The fecundity of his
intellect is shown in the fact that he produced four hundred and thirty
works, out of which only eighty have been published. In this catalogue
there are twenty-five operas and eleven masses.
As an operatic composer he laid the foundation of the modern French
school. Uniting the melody of the Italian with the science of the
German, his conceptions had a dramatic fire and passion which were,
however, free from anything appertaining to the sensational and
meretricious. His forms were indeed classically severe, and his style is
defined by Adolphe Adam as the resurrection of the old Italian school,
enriched by the discoveries of modern harmony. Though he was the creator
of French opera as we know it now, he was free from its vagaries
and extravagances. He set its model in the dramatic vigor and
picturesqueness, the clean-cut forms, and the noble instrumentation
which mark such masterpieces as "Faniska," "Alédée," "Les Deux
Journées," and "Lodoïska." The purity, classicism, and wealth of ideas
in these works have always caused them to be cited as standards of ideal
excellence. The reforms in opera of which Gluck was the protagonist, and
Wagner the extreme modern exponent, characterize the dramatic works
of Cherubini, though he keeps them within that artistic limit which a
proper regard for melodic beauty prescribes. In the power and propriety
of musical declamation his operas are conceded to be without a
superior. His overtures hold their place in classical music as ranking
with the best ever written, and show a richness of resource and
knowledge of form in treating the orchestra which his his contemporaries
admitted were only equaled by Beethoven.
Cherubini's place in ecclesiastical music is that by which he is best
known to the musical public of to-day; for his operas, owing to the
immense demands they make on the dramatic and vocal resources of the
artist, are but rarely presented in France, Germany, and England, and
never in America. They are only given where music is loved on account
of its noble traditions, and not for the mere sake of idle and luxurious
amusement. As a composer of masses, however, Cherubini's genius is
familiar to all who frequent the services of the Roman Church. His
relation to the music of Catholicism accords with that of Sebastian Bach
to the music of Protestantism. Haydn, Mozart, and even Beethoven,
are held by the best critics to be his inferiors in this form of
composition. His richness of melody, sense of dramatic color, and
great command of orchestral effects, gave him commanding power in the
interpretation of religious sentiments; while an ardent faith inspired
with passion, sweetness, and devotion what Place styles his "sublime
visions." Miel, one of his most competent critics, writes of him in this
eloquent strain: "If he represents the passion and death of Christ, the
heart feels itself wounded with the most sublime emotion; and when
he recounts the 'Last Judgment' the blood freezes with dread at the
redoubled and menacing calls of the exterminating angel. All those
admirable pictures that the Raphaels and Michael Angelos have painted
with colors and the brush, Cherubini brings forth with the voice and
orchestra." In brief, if Cherubini is the founder of a later school
of opera, and the model which his successors have always honored and
studied if they have not always followed, no less is he the chief of
a later, and by common consent the greatest, school of modern church
music.