DELSARTE
Felix Duquesnal in one of his brilliant articles has written something
about Delsarte, the singer, in connection with his controversy with
Madame Carvalho. The cause of this controversy was the lessons she took
from him. The name of Delsarte should never be forgotten, as I shall try
to explain. Madame Carvalho did not refuse to pay Delsarte for her
lessons, but she did not want to be called his pupil. Although she had
attended the Conservatoire, she wanted to be known solely as a pupil of
Duprez. As a matter of fact it was Duprez who knew how to make the
"Little Miolan," the delightful warbler, into the great singer with her
important place on the French stage.
But this was accomplished at a price. Madame Carvalho told me about it
herself. Her medium register was weak and Duprez undertook to
substitute chest tones and develop clearness as much as possible. "When
I began to work," she said, "my mother was frightened. One would have
thought that a calf was being killed in the house."
Ordinarily such a method would produce a harsh, shaky voice and all
freshness would be lost. But in Madame Carvalho's case the opposite was
true. The freshness and purity of her voice were beyond compare, while
its smoothness and the harmony of the registers were perfect. It was a
miracle the like of which we shall probably never see again.
But if Duprez made a wonderful voice at the risk of breaking it, I have
always thought that Madame Carvalho owed her admirable diction, so
distinguishing a mark of her talent, to Delsarte. Delsarte was a
disastrous and deadly teacher of singing. No voice could stand up under
his methods, not even his own, although he attributed its loss to
teaching at the Conservatoire. But he studied deeply the arts of
speaking and gesture, and he was a past master in them.
I once attended a course he gave in these subjects. He stated highly
illuminating truths and gave the psychological reasons for accents and
the physiological reasons for the gestures. He determined the use of
gestures in some sort of scientific way. Mystic fancies were mixed up in
these questions.
It was extremely interesting to see him dissect one of Fontaine's fables
or a passage from Racine, and to hear him explain why the accent should
be on such a word or on such a syllable and not on another, to bring out
the sense. Although this course was so instructive, few took it, for
Delsarte was almost unknown to people. His influence scarcely extended
outside a narrow circle of admirers, but the quality made up for the
quantity. This was the circle of the old _Debats_, which was formerly
devoted exclusively to Romanticism, but at this time to the
classics--the set headed by Ingres in painting and Reber in music.
Theirs was a secluded and ascetic world in silent revolt against the
abominations of the century. One had to hear the tone of devotion in
which the members of this circle spoke of the ancients to appreciate
their attitude. Nothing in our day can give any idea of them. "They
say," one of the devotees once told me, "that the ancients learned
Beauty through a sort of revelation, and Beauty has steadily degenerated
ever since."
Such false notions were, however, professed by the most sincere people
who were deeply devoted to art. So this group, which had no influence on
their own contemporaries, nevertheless, without knowing it or wishing to
do so, played a useful rôle.
As we know, the public was divided into two camps. On one side were the
partisans of Melody, opéra-comique, the Italians, and, with some effort,
of grand opera. Opposed to them were the partisans of music in the grand
style--Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Sebastian Bach, although he was
little known and is less well known now.
No one gave a thought to our old French school, to the composers from
Lulli to Gluck, who produced so many excellent works. Reber showed
Delsarte the way and the latter, naturally an antiquarian, threw
himself into this unexplored field with surprising vigor. Only Lulli's
name was known, while Campra, Mondonville and the others were entirely
forgotten. Even Gluck himself had been forgotten. First editions of his
orchestral scores, which it is impossible to find to-day, sold for a few
francs at the second-hand book shops. Rameau was never mentioned.
Delsarte, handsome, eloquent, and fascinating, wielded an almost
imperial sway over his little coterie of artists. Thanks to him the lamp
of our old French school was kept dimly burning until the day when
inherent justice permitted it to be revived. In this restricted world no
evening was complete without Delsarte. He would come in with some story
of frightful throat trouble to justify his chronic lack of voice, and,
then, without any voice at all but by a kind of magic, would put
shudders into the tones of Orpheus or Eurydice. I often played his
accompaniments and he always demanded _pianissimo_.
"But," I would say, "the author has indicated _forte_."
"That is true," he would answer, "but in those days the harpsichord had
little depth of tone."
It would have been easy to answer that the accompaniment was written for
the orchestra and not for the harpsichord.
Delsarte's execution, on account of the insufficiency of his vocal
powers, was often entirely different from what the author intended.
Furthermore, he was absolutely ignorant of the correct way to interpret
the appogiatures and other marks which are not used to-day. As a result
his interpretation of the older works was inexact. But that did not
matter, for even if masterpieces are presented badly, there is always
something left. Besides, both the singer and his hearers had Faith. He
had a way of pronouncing "Gluck" which aroused expectation even before
one heard a note.
From time to time Delsarte gave a concert. He would come on the stage
and say that he had a bad throat, but that he would try to give
_Iphigenia's Dream_ or something of that sort. His courage would prove
to be greater than his strength and he would have to stop. He would
then fall back on old-time songs or La Fontaine's fables in which he
excelled. A skilfully studied mimicry, which seemed entirely natural,
underlay his reading. A red handkerchief, which he knew how to draw from
his pocket at just the proper moment, always excited applause.
One day he conceived the idea of giving one of Bossuet's sermons at his
concert. Religious authority was very powerful at the time and forbade
it. Yet there would have been no sacrilege, and I regretted keenly that
I could not hear this magnificent prose delivered so wonderfully. Now
that religious authority has lost its secular support, we see things in
an entirely different way. Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints walk the
stage, speak in prose or verse, and sing. It would seem that no one is
shocked for there is no protest. For my own part I must frankly confess
that such pseudo-religious exhibitions are disagreeable. They disturb me
greatly and I can see no use in them.
* * * * *
In order to foster admiration for the old masters, Delsarte conceived
the idea of publishing a collection of pieces taken from their works
right and left, and, as a result, he created his _Archives du Chant_. He
had special type made and the publication was a marvel of beautiful
typography, correctness and good taste. At the beginning of each part
was a cleverly harmonised passage of church music. The support of a
publisher was necessary for the success of such a work, but Delsarte was
his own publisher and he met with no success at all. Similar but
inferior publications have been markedly successful.
Delsarte aimed at purity of text, but his successors have been forced to
modernize the works to make them accessible for the public. This fact is
painful. In literature the texts are studied and the endeavor is to
reproduce the writer's thought as closely as possible. In music it is
entirely different. With each new edition a professor is commissioned to
supervise the work and he adds something of his own invention.
Delsarte, a singer without a voice, an imperfect musician, a doubtful
scholar, guided by an intuition which approached genius, in spite of his
numerous faults played an important rôle in the evolution of French
music in the Nineteenth Century. He was no ordinary man. The impression
he gave to all who knew him was of a visionary, an apostle. When one
heard him speak with his fiery enthusiasm about these works of the past
which the world had forgotten, one could but believe that such oblivion
was unjust and desire to know these relics of another age.
Without the shadow of a doubt I owed to his leadership the necessary
courage to make a profound study of the works of the old school, for
they are unattractive at first. Berlioz berated all this music. He had
seen Gluck's works on the stage in his youth, but he could see nothing
in them that was not "superannuated and childish." With all respect to
Berlioz's memory, it deserved a kinder judgment than that. When one
reaches the depths of this music, although it may be at the price of
some effort, he is well repaid for his pains. There is real feeling,
grandeur and even something of the picturesque in these works--as much
as could be with the means at their disposal.
It is only right that we should pay tribute to Delsarte's memory. He
was a pioneer who, during his whole life, proclaimed the value of
immortal works, which the world despised. That is no slight merit.