ballets, which interrupt the thread of the finest musical tragedies! But
Mahomet elevates it once more by his great prophetic scene, which poor
Monsieur Voltaire begins with these words:
“Arabia’s time at last has come!
“He is interrupted by a chorus of triumphant Arabs (twelve-eight
time, _accelerando_). The tribes arrive in crowds; the horns and brass
reappear in the orchestra. General rejoicings ensue, all the voices
joining in by degrees, and Mahomet announces polygamy. In the midst of
all this triumph, the woman who has been of such faithful service to
Mahomet sings a magnificent air (in B major). ‘And I,’ says she, ‘am
I no longer loved?’ ‘We must part. Thou art but a woman, and I am a
Prophet; I may still have slaves but no equal.’ Just listen to this duet
(G sharp minor). What anguish! The woman understands the greatness her
hands have built up; she loves Mahomet well enough to sacrifice
herself to his glory; she worships him as a god, without criticising
him,--without murmuring. Poor woman! His first dupe and his first
victim!
“What a subject for the _finale_ (in B major) is her grief, brought out
in such sombre hues against the acclamations of the chorus, and mingling
with Mahomet’s tones as he throws his wife aside as a tool of no further
use, still showing her that he can never forget her! What fireworks of
triumph! what a rush of glad and rippling song go up from the two young
voices (first and second soprano) of Ayesha and Hafsa, supported by Ali
and his wife, by Omar and Abubekir! Weep!--rejoice!--Triumph and tears!
Such is life.”
Marianna could not control her tears, and Andrea was so deeply moved
that his eyes were moist. The Neapolitan cook was startled by the
magnetic influence of the ideas expressed by Gambara’s convulsive
accents.
The composer looked round, saw the group, and smiled.
“At last you understand me!” said he.
No conqueror, led in pomp to the Capitol under the purple beams of
glory, as the crown was placed on his head amid the acclamations of a
nation, ever wore such an expression. The composer’s face was radiant,
like that of a holy martyr. No one dispelled the error. A terrible smile
parted Marianna’s lips. The Count was appalled by the guilelessness of
this mania.
“Act III,” said the enchanted musician, reseating himself at the piano.
“(_Andantino, solo_.) Mahomet in his seraglio, surrounded by women, but
not happy. Quartette of Houris (A major). What pompous harmony, what
trills as of ecstatic nightingales! Modulation (into F sharp minor). The
theme is stated (on the dominant E and repeated in F major). Here every
delight is grouped and expressed to give effect to the contrast of the
gloomy _finale_ of the first act. After the dancing, Mahomet rises and
sings a grand _bravura_ air (in F minor), repelling the perfect and
devoted love of his first wife, but confessing himself conquered by
polygamy. Never has a musician had so fine a subject! The orchestra
and the chorus of female voices express the joys of the Houris, while
Mahomet reverts to the melancholy strain of the opening. Where is
Beethoven,” cried Gambara, “to appreciate this prodigious reaction of my
opera on itself? How completely it all rests on the bass.
“It is thus that Beethoven composed his E minor symphony. But his heroic
work is purely instrumental, whereas here, my heroic phrase is worked
out on a sextette of the finest human voices, and a chorus of the
faithful on guard at the door of the sacred dwelling. I have every
resource of melody and harmony at my command, an orchestra and voices.
Listen to the utterance of all these phases of human life, rich and
poor;--battle, triumph, and exhaustion!
“Ali arrives, the Koran prevails in every province (duet in D minor).
Mahomet places himself in the hands of his two fathers-in-law; he will
abdicate his rule and die in retirement to consolidate his work. A
magnificent sextette (B flat major). He takes leave of all (solo in F
natural). His two fathers-in-law, constituted his vicars or Khalifs,
appeal to the people. A great triumphal march, and a prayer by all the
Arabs kneeling before the sacred house, the Kasbah, from which a pigeon
is seen to fly away (the same key). This prayer, sung by sixty voices
and led by the women (in B flat), crowns the stupendous work expressive
of the life of nations and of man. Here you have every emotion, human
and divine.”
Andrea gazed at Gambara in blank amazement. Though at first he had been
struck by the terrible irony of the situation,--this man expressing the
feelings of Mahomet’s wife without discovering them in Marianna,--the
husband’s hallucination was as nothing compared with the composer’s.
There was no hint even of a poetical or musical idea in the hideous
cacophony with which he had deluged their ears; the first principles of
harmony, the most elementary rules of composition, were absolutely alien
to this chaotic structure. Instead of the scientifically compacted
music which Gambara described, his fingers produced sequences of fifths,
sevenths, and octaves, of major thirds, progressions of fourths with no
supporting bass,--a medley of discordant sounds struck out haphazard
in such a way as to be excruciating to the least sensitive ear. It is
difficult to give any idea of the grotesque performance. New words would
be needed to describe this impossible music.
Andrea, painfully affected by this worthy man’s madness, colored, and
stole a glance at Marianna; while she, turning pale and looking down,
could not restrain her tears. In the midst of this chaos of notes,
Gambara had every now and then given vent to his rapture in exclamations
of delight. He had closed his eyes in ecstasy; had smiled at his piano;
had looked at it with a frown; put out his tongue at it after the
fashion of the inspired performer,--in short, was quite intoxicated
with the poetry that filled his brain, and that he had vainly striven to
utter. The strange discords that clashed under his fingers had obviously
sounded in his ears like celestial harmonies.
A deaf man, seeing the inspired gaze of his blue eyes open on another
world, the rosy glow that tinged his cheeks, and, above all, the
heavenly serenity which ecstasy stamped on his proud and noble
countenance, would have supposed that he was looking on at the
improvisation of a really great artist. The illusion would have been
all the more natural because the performance of this mad music required
immense executive skill to achieve such fingering. Gambara must have
worked at it for years.
Nor were his hands alone employed; his feet were constantly at work
with complicated pedaling; his body swayed to and fro; the perspiration
poured down his face while he toiled to produce a great _crescendo_
with the feeble means the thankless instrument placed at his command.
He stamped, puffed, shouted; his fingers were as swift as the serpent’s
double tongue; and finally, at the last crash on the keys, he fell back
in his chair, resting his head on the top of it.
“_Per Bacco!_ I am quite stunned,” said the Count as he left the house.
“A child dancing on the keyboard would make better music.”
“Certainly mere chance could not more successfully avoid hitting two
notes in concord than that possessed creature has done during the past
hour,” said Giardini.
“How is it that the regular beauty of Marianna’s features is not
spoiled by incessantly hearing such a hideous medley?” said the Count to
himself. “Marianna will certainly grow ugly.”
“Signor, she must be saved from that,” cried Giardini.
“Yes,” said Andrea. “I have thought of that. Still, to be sure that
my plans are not based on error, I must confirm my doubts by another
experiment. I will return and examine the instruments he has invented.
To-morrow, after dinner, we will have a little supper. I will send in
some wine and little dishes.”
The cook bowed.
Andrea spent the following day in superintending the arrangement of the
rooms where he meant to install the artist in a humble home.
In the evening the Count made his appearance, and found the wine,
according to his instructions, set out with some care by Marianna and
Giardini. Gambara proudly exhibited the little drums, on which lay
the powder by means of which he made his observations on the pitch and
quality of the sounds emitted by his instruments.
“You see,” said he, “by what simple means I can prove the most important
propositions. Acoustics thus can show me the analogous effects of sound
on every object of its impact. All harmonies start from a common centre
and preserve the closest relations among themselves; or rather, harmony,
like light, is decomposable by our art as a ray is by a prism.”
He then displayed the instruments constructed in accordance with his
laws, explaining the changes he had introduced into their constitution.
And finally he announced that to conclude this preliminary inspection,
which could only satisfy a superficial curiosity, he would perform on an
instrument that contained all the elements of a complete orchestra, and
which he called a _Panharmonicon_.
“If it is the machine in that huge case, which brings down on us the
complaints of the neighborhood whenever you work at it, you will not
play on it long,” said Giardini. “The police will interfere. Remember
that!”
“If that poor idiot stays in the room,” said Gambara in a whisper to the
Count, “I cannot possibly play.”
Andrea dismissed the cook, promising a handsome reward if he would keep
watch outside and hinder the neighbors or the police from interfering.
Giardini, who had not stinted himself while helping Gambara to wine, was
quite willing.
Gambara, without being drunk, was in the condition when every power of
the brain is over-wrought; when the walls of the room are transparent;
when the garret has no roof, and the soul soars in the empyrean of
spirits.
Marianna, with some little difficulty, removed the covers from an
instrument as large as a grand piano, but with an upper case added. This
strange-looking instrument, besides this second body and its keyboard,
supported the openings or bells of various wind instruments and the
closed funnels of a few organ pipes.
“Will you play me the prayer you say is so fine at the end of your
opera?” said the Count.
To the great surprise of both Marianna and the Count, Gambara began
with a succession of chords that proclaimed him a master; and their
astonishment gave way first to amazed admiration and then to perfect
rapture, effacing all thought of the place and the performer. The
effects of a real orchestra could not have been finer than the voices
of the wind instruments, which were like those of an organ and combined
wonderfully with the harmonies of the strings. But the unfinished
condition of the machine set limits to the composer’s execution, and his
idea seemed all the greater; for, often, the very perfection of a work
of art limits its suggestiveness to the recipient soul. Is not this
proved by the preference accorded to a sketch rather than a finished
picture when on their trial before those who interpret a work in their
own mind rather than accept it rounded off and complete?
The purest and serenest music that Andrea had ever listened to rose up
from under Gambara’s fingers like the vapor of incense from an altar.
The composer’s voice grew young again, and, far from marring the noble
melody, it elucidated it, supported it, guided it,--just as the feeble
and quavering voice of an accomplished reader, such as Andrieux, for
instance, can expand the meaning of some great scene by Corneille or
Racine by lending personal and poetical feeling.
This really angelic strain showed what treasures lay hidden in that
stupendous opera, which, however, would never find comprehension so
long as the musician persisted in trying to explain it in his present
demented state. His wife and the Count were equally divided between the
music and their surprise at this hundred-voiced instrument, inside which
a stranger might have fancied an invisible chorus of girls were hidden,
so closely did some of the tones resemble the human voice; and they
dared not express their ideas by a look or a word. Marianna’s face was
lighted up by a radiant beam of hope which revived the glories of her
youth. This renascence of beauty, co-existent with the luminous glow of
her husband’s genius, cast a shade of regret on the Count’s exquisite
pleasure in this mysterious hour.
“You are our good genius!” whispered Marianna. “I am tempted to believe
that you actually inspire him; for I, who never am away from him, have
never heard anything like this.”
“And Kadijah’s farewell!” cried Gambara, who sang the _cavatina_ which
he had described the day before as sublime, and which now brought tears
to the eyes of the lovers, so perfectly did it express the loftiest
devotion of love.
“Who can have taught you such strains?” cried the Count.
“The Spirit,” said Gambara. “When he appears, all is fire. I see the
melodies there before me; lovely, fresh in vivid hues like flowers. They
beam on me, they ring out,--and I listen. But it takes a long, long time
to reproduce them.”
“Some more!” said Marianna.
Gambara, who could not tire, played on without effort or antics. He
performed his overture with such skill, bringing out such rich and
original musical effects, that the Count was quite dazzled, and at last
believed in some magic like that commanded by Paganini and Liszt,--a
style of execution which changes every aspect of music as an art, by
giving it a poetic quality far above musical inventions.
“Well, Excellenza, and can you cure him?” asked Giardini, as Andrea came
out.
“I shall soon find out,” replied the Count. “This man’s intellect
has two windows; one is closed to the world, the other is open to the
heavens. The first is music, the second is poetry. Till now he has
insisted on sitting in front of the shuttered window; he must be got
to the other. It was you, Giardini, who first started me on the right
track, by telling me that your client’s mind was clearer after drinking
a few glasses of wine.”
“Yes,” cried the cook, “and I can see what your plan is.”
“If it is not too late to make the thunder of poetry audible to his
ears, in the midst of the harmonies of some noble music, we must put him
into a condition to receive it and appreciate it. Will you help me to
intoxicate Gambara, my good fellow? Will you be none the worse for it?”
“What do you mean, Excellenza?”
Andrea went off without answering him, laughing at the acumen still left
to this cracked wit.
On the following day he called for Marianna, who had spent the morning
in arranging her dress,--a simple but decent outfit, on which she had
spent all her little savings. The transformation would have destroyed
the illusions of a mere dangler; but Andrea’s caprice had become a
passion. Marianna, diverted of her picturesque poverty, and looking like
any ordinary woman of modest rank, inspired dreams of wedded life.
He handed her into a hackney coach, and told her of the plans he had in
his head; and she approved of everything, happy in finding her admirer
more lofty, more generous, more disinterested than she had dared to
hope. He took her to a little apartment, where he had allowed himself to
remind her of his good offices by some of the elegant trifles which have
a charm for the most virtuous women.
“I will never speak to you of love till you give up all hope of your
Paolo,” said the Count to Marianna, as he bid her good-bye at the Rue
Froid-Manteau. “You will be witness to the sincerity of my attempts.
If they succeed. I may find myself unequal to keeping up my part as a
friend; but in that case I shall go far away, Marianna. Though I have
firmness enough to work for your happiness, I shall not have so much as
will enable me to look on at it.”
“Do not say such things. Generosity, too, has its dangers,” said she,
swallowing down her tears. “But are you going now?”
“Yes,” said Andrea; “be happy, without any drawbacks.”
If Giardini might be believed, the new treatment was beneficial to both
husband and wife. Every evening after his wine, Gambara seemed less
self-centered, talked more, and with great lucidity; he even spoke
at last of reading the papers. Andrea could not help quaking at his
unexpectedly rapid success; but though his distress made him aware of
the strength of his passion, it did not make him waver in his virtuous
resolve.
One day he called to note the progress of this singular cure. Though the
state of the patient at first gave him satisfaction, his joy was dashed
by Marianna’s beauty, for an easy life had restored its brilliancy.
He called now every evening to enjoy calm and serious conversation, to
which he contributed lucid and well considered arguments controverting
Gambara’s singular theories. He took advantage of the remarkable acumen
of the composer’s mind as to every point not too directly bearing on his
manias, to obtain his assent to principles in various branches of
art, and apply them subsequently to music. All was well so long as the
patient’s brain was heated with the fumes of wine; but as soon as he had
recovered--or, rather, lost--his reason, he was a monomaniac once more.
However, Paolo was already more easily diverted by the impression
of outside things; his mind was more capable of addressing itself to
several points at a time.
Andrea, who took an artistic interest in his semi-medical treatment,
thought at last that the time had come for a great experiment. He would
give a dinner at his own house, to which he would invite Giardini
for the sake of keeping the tragedy and the parody side by side,
and afterwards take the party to the first performance of _Robert le
Diable_. He had seen it in rehearsal, and he judged it well fitted to
open his patient’s eyes.
By the end of the second course, Gambara was already tipsy, laughing
at himself with a very good grace; while Giardini confessed that his
culinary innovations were not worth a rush. Andrea had neglected nothing
that could contribute to this twofold miracle. The wines of Orvieto and
of Montefiascone, conveyed with the peculiar care needed in moving
them, Lachrymachristi and Giro,--all the heady liqueurs of _la cara
Patria_,--went to their brains with the intoxication alike of the grape
and of fond memory. At dessert the musician and the cook both abjured
every heresy; one was humming a _cavatina_ by Rossini, and the other
piling delicacies on his plate and washing them down with Maraschino
from Zara, to the prosperity of the French _cuisine_.
The Count took advantage of this happy frame of mind, and Gambara
allowed himself to be taken to the opera like a lamb.
At the first introductory notes Gambara’s intoxication appeared to clear
away and make way for the feverish excitement which sometimes brought
his judgment and his imagination into perfect harmony; for it was their
habitual disagreement, no doubt, that caused his madness. The ruling
idea of that great musical drama appeared to him, no doubt, in its noble
simplicity, like a lightning flash, illuminating the utter darkness in
which he lived. To his unsealed eyes this music revealed the immense
horizons of a world in which he found himself for the first time, though
recognizing it as that he had seen in his dreams. He fancied himself
transported into the scenery of his native land, where that beautiful
Italian landscape begins at what Napoleon so cleverly described as the
_glacis_ of the Alps. Carried back by memory to the time when his
young and eager brain was as yet untroubled by the ecstasy of his too
exuberant imagination he listened with religious awe and would not utter
a single word. The Count respected the internal travail of his soul.
Till half-past twelve Gambara sat so perfectly motionless that the
frequenters of the opera house took him, no doubt, for what he was--a
man drunk.
On their return, Andrea began to attack Meyerbeer’s work, in order
to wake up Gambara, who sat sunk in the half-torpid state common in
drunkards.
“What is there in that incoherent score to reduce you to a condition of
somnambulism?” asked Andrea, when they got out at his house. “The story
of _Robert le Diable_, to be sure, is not devoid of interest, and Holtei
has worked it out with great skill in a drama that is very well written
and full of strong and pathetic situations; but the French librettist
has contrived to extract from it the most ridiculous farrago of
nonsense. The absurdities of the libretti of Vesari and Schikander are
not to compare with those of the words of Robert le Diable; it is a
dramatic nightmare, which oppresses the hearer without deeply moving
him.
“And Meyerbeer has given the devil a too prominent part. Bertram and
Alice represent the contest between right and wrong, the spirits of
good and evil. This antagonism offered a splendid opportunity to the
composer. The sweetest melodies, in juxtaposition with harsh and crude
strains, was the natural outcome of the form of the story; but in the
German composer’s score the demons sing better than the saints. The
heavenly airs belie their origin, and when the composer abandons the
infernal motives he returns to them as soon as possible, fatigued with
the effort of keeping aloof from them. Melody, the golden thread that
ought never to be lost throughout so vast a plan, often vanishes from
Meyerbeer’s work. Feeling counts for nothing, the heart has no part
in it. Hence we never come upon those happy inventions, those artless
scenes, which captivate all our sympathies and leave a blissful
impression on the soul.
“Harmony reigns supreme, instead of being the foundation from which
the melodic groups of the musical picture stand forth. These discordant
combinations, far from moving the listener, arouse in him a feeling
analogous to that which he would experience on seeing a rope-dancer
hanging to a thread and swaying between life and death. Never does a
soothing strain come in to mitigate the fatiguing suspense. It really is
as though the composer had had no other object in view than to produce
a baroque effect without troubling himself about musical truth or unity,
or about the capabilities of human voices which are swamped by this
flood of instrumental noise.”
“Silence, my friend!” cried Gambara. “I am still under the spell of
that glorious chorus of hell, made still more terrible by the long
trumpets,--a new method of instrumentation. The broken _cadenzas_ which
give such force to Robert’s scene, the _cavatina_ in the fourth act, the
_finale_ of the first, all hold me in the grip of a supernatural power.
No, not even Gluck’s declamation ever produced so prodigious an effect,
and I am amazed by such skill and learning.”
“Signor Maestro,” said Andrea, smiling, “allow me to contradict you.
Gluck, before he wrote, reflected long; he calculated the chances,
and he decided on a plan which might be subsequently modified by his
inspirations as to detail, but hindered him from ever losing his way.
Hence his power of emphasis, his declamatory style thrilling with
life and truth. I quite agree with you that Meyerbeer’s learning is
transcendent; but science is a defect when it evicts inspiration, and
it seems to me that we have in this opera the painful toil of a refined
craftsman who in his music has but picked up thousands of phrases out
of other operas, damned or forgotten, and appropriated them, while
extending, modifying, or condensing them. But he has fallen into the
error of all selectors of _centos_,--an abuse of good things. This
clever harvester of notes is lavish of discords, which, when too often
introduced, fatigue the ear till those great effects pall upon it which
a composer should husband with care to make the more effective use of
them when the situation requires it. These enharmonic passages recur
to satiety, and the abuse of the plagal cadence deprives it of its
religious solemnity.