Garcia the Centenarian And His Times Part 1

Garcia the Centenarian And His Times.

by M. Sterling Mackinlay.

PREFACE.

In presenting this Memoir of Don Manuel Garcia, I wish to thank those friends and pupils of the Maestro who have a.s.sisted me with reminiscences, photographs, and other material. But especially I would thank Mrs Alec Tweedie for the kind way in which she read through the MS., when it was still in a rough state, and made many invaluable suggestions with regard to its arrangement and improvement generally.

M. S. M.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE MUSICAL CLUB, LEICESTER SQUARE, _March 1908_.

FIRST PERIOD

PREPARATION

(1805-1830)

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

MANUEL GARCIA, the Centenarian.

How much do those words imply!--words which it is impossible to pen without a feeling of awe.

Garcia, a member of that family of Spanish musicians whose combined brilliancy has probably never been equalled in the annals of the musical world. The father and founder of the family, renowned as one of the finest tenors of his day; as a prolific composer, and as a singing teacher of distinguished ability, as well as conductor and impressario; in fact, a fine vocalist and an equally fine musician, which in those days was something of a _rara avis_.

The eldest daughter, Maria Malibran, a contralto whose brief career was one series of triumphs, while her gifts as a composer were shared by her sister, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, whose singing drew forth the praise and admiration of all, and whose retirement from the stage and concert platform brought with it fresh honours in the field of teaching, wherein she showed herself a worthy exponent of the high ideals of the Garcias.

And what of Manuel himself? The subject of our Memoir has a triple claim that his name should be inscribed on the roll of fame. As professor of singing, he is acknowledged to have been the greatest of his time. In the musical firmament he has been the centre of a solar system of his own,--a sun round which revolved a group of planets, whose names are familiar to all: Jenny Lind, Maria Malibran, Mathilde Marchesi, Henriette Nissen, Charles Santley, Antoinette Sterling, Julius Stockhausen, Pauline Viardot, and Johanna Wagner--these are but a few of them.

Many, too, out of the number have themselves thrown off fresh satellites, such as Calve, Eames, Henschel, Melba, Scheidemantel, van Rooy. One and all have owed a debt of eternal grat.i.tude to Manuel Garcia and his system.

Again, as a scientific investigator he has given us the Laryngoscope, which Huxley placed among the most important inventions of the medical world. Indeed, it is no figure of speech, but a statement of demonstrable fact, that millions have been benefited by his work.

Thirdly, as a centenarian, he is without question the most remarkable of modern times.

Of the men who have attained to that rare age, those who possess any claim upon our interests beyond their mere weight of years are but a comparative handful.

Of musicians one alone has approached him in longevity, Giacomo Ba.s.sevi Cervetto, who died on January 14, 1783, within a few days of his 101st birthday, but with little distinction beyond this fact. As to the rest who go to make up the tale of the world's centenarians of recent years, it has been generally a case of the survival of the unfittest--

"In second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

How different Manuel Garcia when he celebrated his 100th birthday: in the early morning, received by the King at Buckingham Palace; at noon, entering the rooms of the Royal Medical Society with short, quick steps, walking unaided to the dais, mounting it with agility and then sitting for an hour, smiling and upright, while receiving honours and congratulations from all parts of the globe. Which of those who were present will ever forget how he attended the banquet that same evening, in such full possession of his faculties and bodily strength as to make his own reply to the hundreds a.s.sembled to celebrate the occasion? Could anything have been finer than this sight of Grand Old Age?

Now the fame of each individual member of the Garcia family would seem to demand that, in addition to the story of the Maestro's own career, considerable details should be given regarding that of his father and sisters. Surely the three last have claims to our attention beyond the mere fact of being in the one case a parent who exercised a very important influence upon Manuel Garcia's character and choice of career in early days, and who was, moreover, the fountainhead from which flowed the stream of musical talent that in the children broadened out into so grand a river,--in the other case, the sisters, who were bound not only by ties of kinship but by a debt of grat.i.tude for the part which their brother played in their vocal training.

This brings us to the first point, Senor Garcia's position as a teacher.

There is a trite proverb to the effect that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It is so in the present case. One can state the fact that he has been a great master, one can lay down a general outline of his teaching and applaud the soundness of his methods, but after all the outer world will in such matters be apt to judge by results alone. Or let us put it in another way. His knowledge is like the foundations of a house: experts may examine it closely and admire good points, but to a great extent the successes of his pupils are the bricks by which alone a wide reputation is built up.

For this reason I propose to sketch briefly the career of the more famous among those who studied under the old Spaniard, and in doing so I trust that the above circ.u.mstances will be considered sufficient excuse for the digressions which will be made at various points.

We now come to a second consideration.

The discovery of the laryngoscope, owing to its far-reaching results, is of such importance that the chapter dealing with it is bound to contain matter which will naturally appeal to the special rather than to the general reader. The desire that the many may not suffer for the sake of the few to a greater extent than is absolutely necessary has prompted me to quote but briefly from the text of the important technical papers which he presented to the Royal Society in 1854 and to the International Medical Congress in 1881.

In the former of these he sets forth a detailed account of the results which he himself obtained in connection with the human voice from the use of the instrument; in the latter he has told the story of the invention and given a full description of the laryngoscope.

Last of all, there is the question of his remarkable age. As a centenarian, he pa.s.sed through many great historical events, and witnessed a number of changes not only in the musical world, but in the general advance of civilisation. To mention but a few cases of the former: his childhood in Spain was pa.s.sed amid the scenes of the Napoleonic invasion, followed by those of the Peninsular War, while his boyhood in Naples caused him to witness the execution of the ex-king Murat, a few months after the despotic brother-in-law's final overthrow at Waterloo. His first visit to England was made when George III. was on the throne; his nineteenth year saw the death of Louis XVIII.; while his arrival in America to take part in the first season of Italian opera ever given there was at a time when New York was a town of 150,000 inhabitants, and the United States were preparing to celebrate the jubilee of the Declaration of Independence. In early manhood he joined the French Expedition against Algiers, and on his return found himself in the midst of the July Revolution, which resulted in the expulsion of Charles X. from the capital and the placing of Louis Philippe on the throne; while he spent his last months in Paris as a member of the National Guard during another revolution, that of 1848, which ended in the flight of Louis and the proclamation of the French Republic.

The first fifteen years of residence in London saw the English nation throw down the glove to Russia, enter on the Crimean War, and bring it to a successful close with the fall of Sebastopol, which was followed by such events as the Indian Mutiny; the accession of William I. to the throne of Prussia, with Prince Bismarck as his chief adviser; the capture of Pekin; the American Civil War; the death of the Prince Consort, and two years later the marriage of the heir to the throne of England to the beautiful Princess of the Royal House of Denmark.

He was in his sixty-first year when Lord Palmerston died; as for the Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris, they were looked on by him in his old age as things of but yesterday; while at various periods of his life he resided in Madrid, Naples, Paris, New York, Mexico, and London.

Again, in his work as a teacher, there came for lessons not merely the children of old pupils, but many even whose parents and grandparents had studied under him; while before his life was brought to a close England had been ruled by five successive sovereigns.

His father, whom we shall refer to in this Memoir as the elder Garcia, was born at Seville on January 22, 1775--over a hundred and thirty years ago. At the time of his birth Seville could not boast a single piano.

Such a thing seems hardly credible to us who live in the twentieth century, when it is the exception rather than the rule to come across a house that does not boast an instrument, which is at any rate sufficiently recognisable from its general contour for one to feel justified in saying, "Let it pa.s.s for a piano."

Whence the elder Garcia obtained his musical talent it is impossible to learn. Whatever the previous generations may have been, there is no record of their having made any mark among the musicians of their time.

Garcia is a fairly common Spanish name, and we find mention of several musicians of the eighteenth century, and even earlier, who bore that cognomen; none of these, however, can possibly have had any direct relationship to the family in which we are interested, and for an obvious reason. "Garcia" was only a _nom de guerre_ which had been taken by the founder of the family when he entered upon a musical career, his baptismal name having been Manuel Vicente del Popolo Rodriguez. The fame of the new name, however, soon eclipsed the old, and hence in due course it came to be adopted by him and his descendants as their regular surname.

In the spring of 1781 the "elder" Garcia, being now six years old, became a chorister in the cathedral of his native town. Here he quickly began to display an extraordinary talent and precocity, his first musical training being received at the hands of Antonio Ripa, and continued under Juan Almarcha, who succeeded Ripa as Maestro di Cappella at the cathedral. These two men were considered the first teachers in Seville, and under their able tuition his powers developed so rapidly, that even in his early teens he was already acquiring a reputation in his town not only as singer, but as composer and _chef d'orchestre_.

During the years which Garcia was thus spending in patient study, the neighbouring kingdom of France was approaching nearer and nearer to that vast upheaval which was to bring such fatal consequences. The populace had long been smouldering with discontent against the hated aristocrats, and at last in 1789 the country flamed up in that terrible revolution which culminated in that wonderful episode, the storming of the Bastille on July 14.

When this historical event took place the elder Garcia was in his fifteenth year. Two years later he made his _debut_ at the theatre of Cadiz in a "tonadilla" into which a number of his own compositions had been introduced. Not long after this he made his first appearance at Madrid in an oratorio, while his earliest opera was performed there under the t.i.tle of "Il Preso." Such was his success in the Spanish capital that he was quickly recognised as one of the greatest tenors his country had ever produced.

The following year, 1792, found France overtaken by a succession of catastrophes: the invasion by Austria and Prussia, the storming of the Tuileries, the September ma.s.sacre, and that tragic end of the French Monarchy, for the time being, with the execution of Louis XVI.

The last years of the eighteenth century were spent by the elder Garcia in building up an ever-increasing reputation throughout Spain; while during this period European history continued to raise fresh landmarks for future generations to bear in wondering memory, for when he was nineteen there came the execution of Robespierre, and the splendid victory of Lord Howe over the French fleet, followed in 1789 by another glorious naval achievement in the Battle of the Nile.

The first years of the new century brought with them the close of the elder Garcia's bachelor life with his romantic marriage to Joaquina Sitches. The story of the meeting and courtship is one of singular charm.

Joaquina, who was Spanish by birth, was gifted with a somewhat mystical temperament, and early declared her wish to pa.s.s her life in a convent.

Her parents raised no objection to her taking the veil, and she forthwith commenced her novitiate.

In due course the time arrived when, according to custom, she must go out into the world again for a while, in order to prove whether her desire for the religious life was genuine. Accordingly the beautiful young novice went much into society, making her appearance at b.a.l.l.s, parties, theatres, and the other gaieties of the capital.