Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music Part 10

"Well, Jean, what is it?"

"Sir, Monsieur Abbe would like to see you."

"Oh, really! All right, Jean; say I will come in a moment."

When I met the Abbe he began again on the same subject.

"Come, come, my dear boy, it is a word and a blow with you really and truly! Is there no middle course? Do let us consider the matter calmly.

You went off like a sky-rocket this morning!"

"My dear Abbe, there is not the slightest use in beginning it all over again. I stick to everything I have said. If I am to notice the objections of this person or that, I may just as well give up trying to do anything at all. Either I stay with a perfectly free hand, or else I go. Those are my conditions, as you know, and I will not alter them one jot."

"Oh dear! oh dear!" he said, "what a terrible fellow you are!" And then after a pause, "Well then, you had better stop!"

From that day forth he never mentioned the subject again, and left me absolute liberty of action. Little by little, my bitterest opponents became my warmest supporters, and the increasing sympathy of my hearers soon caused my modest salary to swell. I had begun with 1200 francs a year, which was not a large sum. The second year my pay was increased by 300 francs; the third I had 1800, and the fourth 2100 francs. But I must not antic.i.p.ate.

We lived, my mother and I, in the same house as the Abbe. Another priest, three years older than myself, who had been a schoolfellow of mine at the Lycee St. Louis, resided under the same roof--the Abbe Charles Gay. In the ordinary course of events, the disparity of our ages and his seniority in the school would have prevented any intimacy between us, even if we had happened to be acquainted with each other.

However, our common taste for music had brought us together at the Lycee. Charles Gay, who was then about fourteen, had very remarkable musical apt.i.tude, and used to take the second soprano parts in the choruses; he was also one of the most brilliant scholars at the college.

He concluded his studies, and I lost sight of him for three years. I met him again in the Foyer at the Opera one night, when "La Juive" was being played. I knew him at once, and accosted him.

"Hallo!" he said, "is that you? And what are you doing with yourself?"

"I have gone in for composing."

"Really!" he said. "So have I. Who are you working with?"

"With Reicha."

"Why, so am I. This is delightful; we must see a lot of each other!"

Thus it was that our schoolboy friendship was renewed, and still remains one of the strongest of my life.

I had the greatest admiration for my friend, who possessed musical powers of the very highest order, and whose talent, as I freely recognised, far surpa.s.sed my own. His compositions struck me as being full of genius, and I envied him the career I felt sure the future had in store for him. I often spent my evenings in his rooms, where there was always plenty of music going on. His sister was an excellent pianiste, and besides his own compositions (which we often used to try over, among his intimate friends), trios by Mozart and Beethoven were frequently given.

One day I received a note from my friend (who was out of town) asking me to come and see him, as he had something interesting to tell me. My first thought was that he was going to be married; but when I reached his house, he told me he was anxious to enter the Church. This explained all the folios and other big books I had for some time remarked lying about on his table. I was too young then to grasp the meaning of so sudden a change, and I regretted his decision to sacrifice such a smiling future to a life which seemed to me devoid of charm.

Meanwhile he made up his mind to pay a visit to Rome, and there begin his theological studies. I myself had just won the Grand Prix, which necessitated my going to Rome for two years. So it fell out that I met my friend again, he having arrived some three months before myself. When I came back from Germany, luck brought us together again by settling us under the same roof.

The Abbe Gay has now been a priest for more than thirty years, and is the Vicar-General of his intimate friend the Bishop of Poitiers.[12] Not his virtues only, but his talents as a speaker and a writer too, have brought him the reputation of being one of the most eminent ornaments the French clergy boasts.

Towards the third year of my duties as chapel-master, I myself felt a certain leaning towards an ecclesiastical career. Besides my musical studies, I had dabbled somewhat in philosophy and theology, and had even attended the theological lectures at the seminary at St. Sulpice all through one winter, wearing the dress of an ecclesiastical student.

But I had utterly mistaken my own nature and my proper vocation. I felt, after a time, that existence without my art was quite impossible for me, so, casting off the garb which suited me so ill, I went back into the world again. To this youthful phase of mine, however, I owe a friendship which I make it a point of honour to record in this chronicle of my life history.

During the summer of 1846 I was ordered, with the Abbes Dumarsais and Gay, to take sea baths at Trouville. One day I had a narrow escape from drowning, and so quickly did the press get hold of the fact, that the news was published next morning even in the Paris papers. Luckily I had lost no time in writing to tell my brother I was safe, so he was able to calm my mother's fears by showing her my letter. The papers had calmly announced that "I had been brought home dead on a shutter!" Truly the flimsiest truth travels slower than the weightiest lie! We chanced during this sea-bathing trip to come across a worthy Abbe walking on the beach with a boy, who was his pupil. This boy, some twelve or thirteen years of age, was named Gaston de Beaucourt. His mother, the Comtesse de Beaucourt, owned a fine property some leagues from Trouville, between Pont l'Eveque and Lisieux. She invited us, in the most courteous and kindly way, to go and stay there before returning to Paris.

That charming and lovable boy, now a man of three-and-forty, and one of the best that ever lived, became my lifelong friend, to whose affection, sure and strong and tender, I owe not only the happiness our perfect mutual comprehension brings, but many a precious proof of the deepest and most unselfish devotion.

The Revolution of 1848 had just broken out when I resigned my post as chapel-master of the Missions Etrangeres. My duties during the four and a half years I held it had served me admirably in the development and improvement of my musical education; but they were not calculated to advance my career to any practical extent, for they kept me vegetating in a corner, as it were. There is only one road for a composer who desires to make a real name--the operatic stage. The stage is the one place where a musician can find constant opportunity and means of communicating with the public. It is a sort of daily and permanent exhibition where his works can be perpetually on view.

Religious and symphonic music no doubt rank higher, in the strictest sense, than dramatic composition; but opportunities for distinction in that highest sphere are very rare, and can only affect an occasional audience, not a regular and systematic one like the opera-going public.

Then, again, look at the huge variety of subject which lies before the dramatic author! What scope for fancy, for invention! what endless plots!

The stage tempted me irresistibly. I was nearly thirty, and eager to try my fortune on the fresh field I dreamt of. But I had no libretto, and I knew n.o.body whom I could ask to write me one. Then I had to find an impresario willing to employ me and trust me with a commission; and who was likely to do that, in face of the undoubted fact that my previous training had been mostly confined to sacred music, and that I knew nothing about the stage? Altogether I was in a fix.

But fortune led me to a man who soon shed light upon my path. This was the violinist Seghers, who then managed the concerts of the Societe Ste.

Cecile, in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. Some compositions of mine had been performed at these concerts, and very favourably received. Seghers was a friend of the Viardots. Madame Viardot was then at the zenith of her talent and reputation--this was in 1849, just when she had created the _role_ of Fides in Meyerbeer's "Le Prophete" with such tremendous success. Madame Viardot received me with the utmost kindness, and suggested my letting her hear some of my work. I complied, of course, with the greatest delight. We spent a long time at the piano, and after listening to me with the kindest attention, she said--

"But, Monsieur Gounod, why do you not write an opera?"

"Indeed, Madame," I replied, "I would gladly do so, but I have no libretto."

"But surely you know somebody who could write you one?"

"Oh yes, no doubt I do; but 'could' and 'would' are very different words! I know, or rather when I was a child I _used_ to know, Emile Augier; we trundled our hoops together in the Luxemburg. But since those days Augier has grown famous, and I have remained in my native obscurity. I hardly think my old playmate would care to join me in anything more risky than a hoop race!"

"Very well," said Madame Viardot, "go and see Augier, and tell him that if he will write the libretto I will sing the princ.i.p.al part in your opera."

My readers may fancy I did not wait to be told that twice. I tore off to Augier, who accepted my suggestion with enthusiastic delight.

"What! Madame Viardot!" he cried. "I should rather think so! I will set to work at once!"

Nestor Roqueplan was then impresario at the Opera. He was quite willing, on Madame Viardot's recommendation, to give up part of an evening's performance to my work, but he could not, he said, spare more. So we had to look for a subject which would combine three essential points--(1) brevity, (2) interest, (3) a central female figure. We pitched on the story of Sappho. The opera could not, in any case, be put into rehearsal till the following year; besides, Augier had to finish a big work he was then employed on. It was, I believe, his "Diane" for Mademoiselle Rachel.

At all events I held a formal promise, and I awaited the event with mingled impatience and calm. Just as I was about to set to work, a crushing blow fell on me and mine. This was in April 1850. Augier had just finished the poem of "Sappho." My brother was taken ill on the 2nd; on the 3rd I signed my agreement with Roqueplan, whereby I undertook to hand him over the score of "Sappho" by September 30 at latest. This allowed me six months to compose and write a three-act opera, my maiden dramatic effort. On the night of the 6th of April my brother breathed his last. It was a fearful grief to my old mother and to all of us.

My brother left a widow, with a child of two years old, and the prospect of another. It was born seven months later, opening its baby eyes on this sad world on the very day when the Church joins us in mourning the memory of our beloved dead.

These sad circ.u.mstances induced many difficulties and complications which demanded close and immediate attention. The guardianship of the children, the carrying on of my brother's business as an architect (for his death left much work still unfinished), every possible consequence, in fact, of such a sudden and unforeseen disaster, forced me to devote my time for quite a month to safeguarding the interests and arranging for the future of my unhappy sister-in-law, whose grief had quite prostrated her, physically and mentally. Besides all this, my poor mother nearly lost her reason under the stunning blow which had fallen on her. Every circ.u.mstance, both personal and external, seemed combined to unfit me utterly for an undertaking for which the time at my disposal already seemed so insufficient.

Within about a month, however, I was able to think seriously of making the beginning which was growing so urgently necessary. Madame Viardot, who had been on tour in Germany, and whom I had informed of the sad trouble we were in, wrote at once to urge me to take my mother with me and settle down for a while at a country place of her own in the neighbourhood of La Brie, where, she said, I should have the quiet and calm I needed.

I took her advice, and my mother and I started for Madame Viardot's house, where we found her mother (Madame Garcia, widow of the famous singer), a sister of Monsieur Viardot's and a girl, his eldest child, who is now Madame Heritte, and a composer of considerable note. There, too, I met a most delightful man, Ivan Tourgueneff, the celebrated Russian author, a close and intimate friend of the Viardot family.

I set to work at once. Though--strange fact!--the feelings which had been so lately torn by painful emotion might naturally have been expected to find their first expression in sorrow-laden and pathetic strains, just the reverse took place. The first ideas that came to me were full of gaiety and brightness, and they filled all my brain, as if my inner nature, crushed down by grief and mourning, felt the need of some reaction, and longed to draw a breath of happier life after my long hours of anguish and days of tears and bitter mourning.

Thanks to the calmness of the atmosphere around me, my work progressed much faster than I had dared to hope. After her German tour, Madame Viardot's engagements took her to England, whence she returned in the beginning of September, and found my labour nearly completed. I hastened to play her my work, of which I anxiously desired her opinion. She was quite satisfied with it, and in the course of a few days she knew the score so well, that she was able to accompany the whole of it by heart.

This is about the most wonderful musical feat I ever witnessed, and gives some idea of the extraordinary powers of that splendid musician.

"Sappho" was performed for the first time on April 16, 1851, just before my thirty-second birthday. It was not a success, but, all the same, it earned me a good position in the opinion of contemporary artists. It does indeed betray a lack of theatrical instinct, a want of knowledge of stage effect, and of the resources of an orchestra, and some ignorance in handling it. But, on the other hand, the expression is true in feeling, the appreciation of the subject, from the lyrical point of view, is fairly exact, and the general style of treatment is distinctly dignified in tendency. The finale of the first act produced an effect which fairly astonished me. It was loudly and unanimously encored. I could hardly believe my ears, though they were tingling with the unaccustomed emotion, but the encore was repeated at every subsequent performance.

The effect of the second act was not so good as that of the first, in spite of the success of an air sung by Madame Viardot, and of the light duet, "Va m'attendre, mon maitre," sung by Bremond and Mdlle. Poinsot.

But the third act made a very good impression. The goatherd's song, "Broutez le thym, broutez mes chevres," was encored, and Sappho's final stanza, "O ma lyre immortelle," were loudly applauded.

The cowherd's song gave the tenor Aymes his first opportunity of appearing in public; he sang it beautifully, and thereby laid the foundation of his reputation. Gueymard and Marie took the parts of Phaon and Alcee.

My mother was present, of course, at the first performance of my opera.

As I pa.s.sed along one of the corridors on the way from the stage to the auditorium, where I was to meet her after the crowd had dispersed, I came upon my friend Berlioz, his eyes still wet with tears. I threw my arm round him, and said--