JACQUES OFFENBACH
It is dangerous to prophesy. Not long ago I was speaking of Offenbach,
trying to do justice to his marvellous natural gifts and deploring his
squandering them. And I was imprudent enough to say that posterity would
never know him. Now posterity is proving that I was wrong, for Offenbach
is coming back into fashion. Our contemporaneous composers forget that
Mozart, Beethoven and Sebastian Bach knew how to laugh at times. They
distrust all gaiety and declare it unesthetic. As the good public cannot
resign itself to getting along without gaiety, it goes to operetta and
turns naturally to Offenbach who created it and furnished an
inexhaustible supply. My phrase is not exaggerated, for Offenbach hardly
dreamed of creating an art. He was endowed with a genius for the comic
and an abundance of melody, but he had no thought of doing anything
beyond providing material for the theatre he managed at the time. As a
matter of fact he was almost its only author.
He was unable to rid himself of his Germanic influences and so corrupted
the taste of an entire generation by his false prosody, which has been
incorrectly considered originality. In addition he was lacking in taste.
At the time they affected a dreadful mannerism of always stopping on the
next to the last note of a passage, whether or not it was associated
with a mute syllable. This mannerism had no purpose beyond indicating to
the audience the end of a passage and giving the claque the signal to
applaud. Offenbach did not belong to that heroic strain to which success
is the least of its cares. So he adopted this mannerism, and often his
ingeniously turned and charming couplets are ruined by this silly
absurdity now gone out of fashion.
Furthermore, he wrote badly, for his early education was neglected. If
the _Tales of Hoffman_ shows traces of a practised pen, it is because
Guiraud finished the score and went out of his way to remedy some of
the author's mistakes. Leaving aside the bad prosody and the minor
defects in taste, we have left a work which shows a wealth of invention,
melody, and sparkling fancy comparable to Grétry's.
Grétry was no more a great musician than Offenbach, for he also wrote
badly. The essential difference between the two was the care, not only
in his prosody but also in his declamation, which Grétry tried to
reproduce musically with all possible exactness. He overshot the mark in
this for he did not see that in singing the expression of a note is
modified by the harmonic scheme which accompanies it. It must be
recognized, in addition, that many times Grétry was carried away by his
melodic inventiveness and forgot his own principles so that he relegated
his care for declamation to second place.
What hurt Grétry was his unbounded conceit, with which Offenbach, to his
credit, was never afflicted. As an indication of this, he dared to write
in his advice to young musicians:
"Those who have genius will make opéra-comique like mine; those who have
talent will write opera like Gluck's; while those who have neither
genius nor talent, will write symphonies like Haydn's."
However, he tried to make an opera like Gluck's and in spite of his
great efforts and his interesting inventions, he could not equal the
work of his formidable rival.
* * * * *
Although he was not a great musician, Offenbach had a surprising natural
instinct and made here and there curious discoveries in harmony. In
speaking of these discoveries I must go slightly into the theory of
harmony and resign myself to being understood only by those of my
readers who are more or less musicians. In a slight work, _Daphnis et
Chloé_, Offenbach risked a dominant eleventh without either introduction
or conclusion--an extraordinary audacity at the time. A short course in
harmony is necessary for the understanding of this. We must start with
the fact that, theoretically, all dissonances must be introduced and
concluded, which we cannot explain here, but this leading up to and away
from have for their purpose softening the harshness of the dissonance
which was greatly feared in bygone times. Take if you please, the simple
key of C natural. _Do_ is the keynote, _sol_ is the dominant. Place on
this dominant two-thirds--_si-re_--and you have the perfect dominant
chord. Add a third _fa_ and you have the famous dominant seventh, a
dissonance which to-day seems actually agreeable. Not so long ago they
thought that they ought to prepare for the dissonance. In the Sixteenth
Century it was not regarded as admissible at all, for one hears the two
notes _si_ and _fa_ simultaneously and this seems intolerable to the
ear. They used to call it the _Diabolus in musica_.
Palestrina was the first to employ it in an anthem. Opinions differ on
this, and certain students of harmony pretend that the chord which
Palestrina used only has the appearance of the dominant seventh. I do
not concur in this view. But however the case may be, the glory of
unchaining the devil in music belongs to Montreverde. That was the
beginning of modern music.
Later, a new third was superimposed and they dared the chord
_sol-si-re-fa-la_. The inventor is unknown, but Beethoven seems to have
been the first to make any considerable use of it. He used the chord in
such a way that, in spite of its current use to-day, in his works it
appears like something new and strange. This chord imposes its
characteristics on the second _motif_ of the first part of the _Symphony
in C minor_. This is what gives such amazing charm to the long colloquy
between the flute, the oboe and the clarinets, which always surprises
and arouses the listener, in the _andante_ of the same symphony. Fétis
in his _Traité d'Harmonie_ inveighed against this delightful passage. He
admits that people like it, but, according to him, the author had no
right to write it and the listener has no right to admire it. Scholars
often have strange ideas.
Then Richard Wagner came along and the reign of the ninth dominant took
the place of the seventh. That is what gives _Tannhauser_, and
_Lohengrin_ their exciting character, which is dear to those who demand
in music above everything else the pleasure due to shocks to the nervous
system. Imitators have fallen foul of this easy procedure, and with a
laughable naïveté imagine that in this way they can easily equal Wagner.
And they have succeeded in making this valuable chord absolutely banal.
[Illustration: Jacques Offenbach]
By adding still another third we have the dominant eleventh. Offenbach
used this, but it has played but a small part since then. Beyond that we
cannot go, for a third more and we are back to the basic note, two
octaves away.
But innovations in harmony are rare in Offenbach's work. What makes him
interesting is his fertility in invention of melodies and few have
equaled him in this. He improvised constantly and with incredible
rapidity. His manuscripts give the impression of having been done with
the point of a needle. There is nothing useless anywhere in them. He
used abbreviations as much as he could and the simplicity of his harmony
helped him here. As a result he was able to produce his light works in
an exceedingly short time.
He had the luck to attach Madame Ugalde to his company. Her powers had
already begun to decline but she was still brilliant. While she was
giving a spectacular revival of _Orphée aux Enfers_, he wrote _Les
Bavards_ for her. He was inspired by the hope of an unusual
interpretation and he so surpassed himself that he produced a small
masterpiece. A revival of this work would certainly be successful if
that were possible, but the peculiar merits of the creatrix of the rôle
would be necessary and I do not see her like anywhere.
It is strange but true that Offenbach lost all his good qualities as
soon as he took himself seriously. But he was not the only case of this
in the history of music. Cramer and Clementi wrote studies and exercises
which are marvels of style, but their sonatas and concertos are tiresome
in their mediocrity. Offenbach's works which were given at the
Opéra-Comique--_Robinson Crusoé_, _Vert-Vert_, and _Fantasio_ are much
inferior to _La Chanson de Fortunio_, _La Belle Hélène_ and many other
justly famous operettas. There have been several unprofitable revivals
of _La Belle Hélène_. This is due to the fact that the rôle of Hélène
was designed for Mlle. Schneider. She was beautiful and talented and had
an admirable mezzo-soprano voice. The slight voice of the ordinary
singer of operetta is insufficient for the part. Furthermore, traditions
have sprung up. The comic element has been suppressed and the piece has
been denatured by this change. In Germany they conceived the idea of
playing this farce seriously with an archaic stage setting!
Jacques Offenbach will become a classic. While this may be unexpected,
what doesn't happen? Everything is possible--even the impossible.