Great Musical Composers Part 15

FOOTNOTE:

[E] _See_ article on Gluck in "Great German Composers."

III.

Marie Antoinette, whom Mdme. du Barry and her clique looked on as Piccini's enemy, astonished both cabals by appointing Piccini her singing-master--an unprofitable honour, for he received no pay, and was obliged to give costly copies of his compositions to the royal family. He might have quoted from the Latin poet in regard to this favour from Marie Antoinette, whose faction in music, among other names, was known as the Greek party, "_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_."[F] Beaumarchais, the brilliant author of "Figaro," had found the same inconvenience when acting as court teacher to the daughters of Louis XV. The French kings were parsimonious except when lavishing money on their vices.

The action of the dauphiness, however, paved the way for a reconciliation between Piccini and Gluck. Berton, the manager of the opera, gave a luxurious banquet, and the musicians, side by side, pledged each other in libations of champagne. Gluck got confidential in his cups. "These French," he said, "are good enough people, but they make me laugh. They want us to write songs for them, and they can't sing." In fact, the quarrel was not between the musicians but their adherents. In his own heart Piccini knew his inferiority to Gluck.

De Vismes, Berton's successor, proposed that both should write operas on the same subject, "Iphigenia in Tauris," and gave him a libretto.

"The French public will have for the first time," he said, "the pleasure of hearing two operas on the same theme, with the same incidents, the same characters, but composed by two great masters of totally different schools."

"But," objected the alarmed Italian, "if Gluck's opera is played first, the public will be so delighted that they will not listen to mine."

"To avoid that catastrophe," said the director, "we will play yours first."

"But Gluck will not permit it."

"I give you my word of honour," said De Vismes, "that your opera shall be put in rehearsal and brought out as soon as it is finished."

Before Piccini had finished his opera, he heard that his rival was back from Germany with his "Iphigenia" completed, and that it was in rehearsal. The director excused himself on the plea of its being a royal command. Gluck's work was his masterpiece, and produced an unparalleled sensation among the Parisians. Even his enemies were silenced, and La Harpe said it was the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the world.

Piccini's work, when produced, was admired, but it stood no chance with the profound, serious, and wonderfully dramatic composition of his rival.

On the night of the first performance Mdlle. Laguerre, to whom Piccini had trusted the role of Iphigenia, could not stand straight from intoxication. "This is not 'Iphigenia in Tauris,'" said the witty Sophie Arnould, "but 'Iphigenia in champagne.'" She compensated afterwards, though, by singing the part with exquisite effect.

While the Gluck-Piccini battle was at its height, an amateur who was disgusted with the contest returned to the country and sang the praises of the birds and their gratuitous performances in the following epigram:--

"La n'est point d'art, d'ennui scientifique; Piccini, Gluck, n'ont point note les airs.

Nature seule en dicta la musique, Et Marmontel n'en a pas fait les vers."

The sentiment of this was probably applauded by the many who were wearied of the bitter recriminations, which degraded the art which they professed to serve.

During the period when Gluck and Piccini were composing for the French opera, its affairs nourished liberally under the sway of De Vismes.

Gluck, Piccini, and Rameau wrote serious operas, while Piccini, Sacchini, Anfossi, and Paisiello composed comic operas. The ballet flourished with unsurpa.s.sed splendour, and on the whole it may be said that never has the opera presented more magnificence at Paris than during the time France was on the eve of the Reign of Terror. The gay capital was thronged with great singers, the traditions of whose artistic ability compare favourably with those of a more recent period.

The witty and beautiful Sophie Arnould, who had a train of princes at her feet, was the princ.i.p.al exponent of Gluck's heroines, while Mdlle.

Laguerre was the mainstay of the Piccinists. The rival factions made the names of these charming and capricious women their war-cries not less than those of the composers. The public bowed and cringed before these idols of the stage. Gaetan Vestris, the first of the family, known as the "_Dieu de la Danse_" and who held that there were only three great men in Europe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Voltaire, and himself, dared to dictate even to Gluck. "Write me the music of a chaconne, Monsieur Gluck," said the G.o.d of dancing.

"A chaconne!" said the enraged composer. "Do you think the Greeks, whose manners we are endeavouring to depict, knew what a chaconne was?"

"Did they not?" replied Vestris, astonished at this news, and in a tone of compa.s.sion continued, "then they are much to be pitied."

Vestris did not obtain his ballet music from the obdurate German; but, when Piccini's rival "_Iphigenie en Tauride_" was produced, such beautiful dance measures were furnished by the Italian composer as gave Vestris the opportunity for one of his greatest triumphs.

FOOTNOTE:

[F] I fear the Greeks, though offering gifts.

IV.

The contest between Gluck and Piccini, or rather the cabals who adopted the two musicians as their figure-heads, was brought to an end by the death of the former. An attempt was made to set up Sacchini in his place, but it proved unavailing, as the new composer proved to be quite as much a follower of the prevailing Italian method as of the new school of Gluck. The French revolution swept away Piccini's property, and he retired to Italy. Bad fortune pursued him, however.

Queen Caroline of Naples conceived a dislike to him, and used her influence to injure his career, out of a fit of wounded vanity.

"Do you not think I resemble my sister, Marie Antoinette?" queried the somewhat ill-favoured queen. Piccini, embarra.s.sed but truthful, replied, "Your majesty, there may be a family likeness, but no resemblance." A fatality attended him even to Venice. In 1792 he was mobbed and his house burned, because the populace regarded him as a republican, for he had a French son-in-law. Some partial musical successes, however, consoled him, though they flattered his _amour propre_ more than they benefited his purse. On his return to Naples he was subjected to a species of imprisonment during four years, for royal displeasure in those days did not confine itself merely to lack of court favour. Reduced to great poverty, the composer who had been the favourite of the rich and great for so many years knew often the actual pangs of hunger, and eked out his subsistence by writing conventual psalms, as payment for the broken food doled out by the monks.

At last he was released, and the tenor, David, sent him funds to pay his journey to Paris. Napoleon, the first consul, received him cordially in the Luxembourg palace.

"Sit down," said he to Piccini, who remained standing, "a man of your greatness stands in no one's presence." His reception in Paris was, in fact, an ovation. The manager of the opera gave him a pension of twenty-four hundred francs, a government pension was also accorded, and he was appointed sixth inspector at the Conservatory. But the benefits of this pale gleam of wintry sunshine did not long remain. He died at Pa.s.sy in the year 1800, and was followed to the grave by a great throng of those who loved his beautiful music and admired his gentle life.

In the present day Gluck appears to have vanquished Piccini, because occasionally an opera of the former is performed, while Piccini's works are only known to the musical antiquarian. But even the marble temples of Gluck are moss-grown and neglected, and that great man is known to the present day rather as one whose influence profoundly coloured and changed the philosophy of opera, than through any immediate acquaintance with his productions. The connoisseurs of the eighteenth century found Piccini's melodies charming, but the works that endure as masterpieces are not those which contain the greatest number of beauties, but those of which the form is the most perfect.

Gluck had larger conceptions and more powerful genius than his Italian rival, but the latter's sweet spring of melody gave him the highest place which had so far been attained in the Italian operatic school.

"Piccini," says M. Genguene, his biographer, "was under the middle size, but well made, with considerable dignity of carriage. His countenance was very agreeable. His mind was acute, enlarged, and cultivated. Latin and Italian literature was familiar to him when he went to France, and afterwards he became almost as well acquainted with French literature. He spoke and wrote Italian with great purity, but among his countrymen he preferred the Neapolitan dialect, which he considered the most expressive, the most difficult, and the most figurative of all languages. He used it princ.i.p.ally in narration, with a gaiety, a truth, and a pantomimic expression after the manner of his country, which delighted all his friends, and made his stories intelligible even to those who knew Italian but slightly."

As a musician Piccini was noticeable, according to the judgment of his best critics, for the purity and simplicity of his style. He always wished to preserve the supremacy of the voice, and, though he well knew how to make his instrumentation rich and effective, he was a resolute opponent to the florid and complex accompaniments which were coming into vogue in his day. His recorded opinion on this subject may have some interest for the musicians of the present day:--

"Were the employment which Nature herself a.s.signs to the instruments of an orchestra preserved to them, a variety of effects and a series of infinitely diversified pictures would be produced. But they are all thrown in at once and used incessantly, and they thus overpower and indurate the ear, without presenting any picture to the mind, to which the ear is the pa.s.sage. I should be glad to know how they will arouse it when it is accustomed to this uproar, which will soon happen, and of what new witchcraft they will avail themselves.... It is well known what occurs to palates blunted by the use of spirituous liquors. In a few months everything may be learned which is necessary to produce these exaggerated effects, but it requires much time and study to be able to excite genuine emotion." Piccini followed strictly the canons of the Italian school; and, though far inferior in really great qualities to his rival Gluck, his compositions had in them so much of fluent grace and beauty as to place him at the head of his predecessors. Some curious critics have indeed gone so far as to charge that many of the finest arias of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini owe their paternity to this composer, an indictment not uncommon in music, for most of the great composers have rifled the sweets of their predecessors without scruple.

V.

Paisiello and Cimarosa, in their style and processes of work, seem to have more nearly caught the mantle of Piccini than any others, though they were contemporaries as well as successors. GIOVANNI PAISIELLO, born in 1741, was educated, like many other great musicians, at the Conservatory of San Onofrio. During his early life he produced a great number of pieces for the Italian theatres, and in 1776 accepted the invitation of Catherine to become the court composer at St.

Petersburg, where he remained nine years, and produced several of his best operas, chief among them, "Il Barbiere di Seviglia" (a different version of Beaumarchais's celebrated comedy from that afterwards used by Rossini).

The empress was devotedly attached to him, and showed her esteem in many signal ways. On one occasion, while Paisiello was accompanying her in a song, she observed that he shuddered with the bitter cold. On this Catherine took off her splendid ermine cloak, decorated with clasps of brilliants, and threw it over her tutor's shoulders. In a quarrel which Paisiello had with Marshal Beloseloky, the temporary favourite of the Russian Messalina, her favour was shown in a still more striking way. The marshal had given the musician a blow, on which Paisiello, a very large, athletic man, drubbed the Russian general most unmercifully. The latter demanded the immediate dismissal of the composer for having insulted a dignitary of the empire. Catherine's reply was similar to the one made by Francis the First of France in a parallel case about Leonardo da Vinci--

"I neither can nor will attend to your request; you forgot your dignity when you gave an unoffending man and a great artist a blow.

Are you surprised that he should have forgotten it too? As for rank, it is in my power to make fifty marshals, but not one Paisiello."

Some years after his return to Italy, he was engaged by Napoleon as chapel-master; for that despot ruled the art and literature of his times as autocratically as their politics. Though Paisiello did not wish to obey the mandate, to refuse was ruin. The French ruler had already shown his favour by giving him the preference over Cherubini in several important musical contests, for the latter had always displayed stern independence of courtly favour. On Paisiello's arrival in Paris, several lucrative appointments indicated the sincerity of Napoleon's intentions. The composer did not hesitate to stand on his rights as a musician on all occasions. When Napoleon complained of the inefficiency of the chapel service, he said, courageously, "I can't blame people for doing their duty carelessly, when they are not justly paid." The cunning Italian knew how to flatter, though, when occasion served. He once addressed his master as "Sire."

"'Sire,' what do you mean?" answered the first consul. "I am a general and nothing more."

"Well, General," continued the composer, "I have come to place myself at your majesty's orders."

"I must really beg you," rejoined Napoleon, "not to address me in this manner."

"Forgive me, General," said Paisiello. "But I cannot give up the habit I have contracted in addressing sovereigns, who, compared with you, are but pigmies. However, I will not forget your commands, and, if I have been unfortunate enough to offend, I must throw myself on your majesty's indulgence."

Paisiello received ten thousand francs for the ma.s.s written for Napoleon's coronation, and one thousand for all others. As he produced ma.s.ses with great rapidity, he could very well afford to neglect operatic writing during this period. His ma.s.ses were pasticcio work made up of pieces selected from his operas and other compositions.

This could be easily done, for music is arbitrary in its a.s.sociations.

Love songs of a pa.s.sionate and sentimental cast were quickly made religious by suitable words. Thus the same melody will depict equally well the rage of a baffled conspirator, the jealousy of an injured husband, the grief of lovers about to part, the despondency of a man bent on suicide, the devotion of the nun, or the rapt adoration of worship. A different text and a slight change in time effect the marvel, and hardly a composer has disdained to borrow from one work to enrich another. His only opera composed in Paris, "Proserpine," was not successful.

Failure of health obliged Paisiello to return to Naples, when he again entered the service of the king. Attached to the fortunes of the Bonaparte family, his prosperity fell with theirs. He had been crowned with honours by all the musical societies of the world, but his pensions and emoluments ceased with the fall of Joachim Murat from the Neapolitan throne. He died June 5, 1816, and the court, which neglected him living, gave him a magnificent funeral.

"Paisiello," says the Chevalier Le Sueur, "was not only a great musician, but possessed a large fund of general information. He was well versed in the dead languages, acquainted with all branches of literature, and on terms of friendship with the most distinguished persons of the age. His mind was n.o.ble and above all mean pa.s.sions; he neither knew envy nor the feeling of rivalry.... He composed," says the same writer, "seventy-eight operas, of which twenty-seven were serious, and fifty-one comic, eight _intermezzi_, and an immense number of cantatas, oratorios, ma.s.ses, etc.; seven symphonies for King Joseph of Spain, and many miscellaneous pieces for the court of Russia."