Musical Memories Part 7

While I listened to this beautiful work, I could not help thinking of the great oratorios which crowned Gounod's musical career so gloriously.

Liszt and Gounod differed entirely in their musical temperaments, yet in their oratorios they met on common ground. In both there was the same drawing away from the old forms of oratorio, the same search for realism in the expression of the text in music, the same respect for Latin prosody, and the same belief in simplicity of style. But while there is renunciation in the simplicity of Liszt, who threw aside worldly finery to wear the frock of a penitent, on the contrary Gounod appears to return to his original bent with an almost holy joy. This is easily explained. Liszt finished his life in a ca.s.sock, while Gounod began his in one. So, despite Liszt's superior refinement, and putting aside exceptional achievements, in this branch of art Gounod was the victor.

As there is an _odor di femina_ there is a _parfum d'eglise_, well known to Catholics. Gounod's oratorios are impregnated with this, while it is found in _Christus_ very, very feebly, if at all. The _Missa Solemnis_ must be examined to find it to any extent in Liszt's work.

All the necessary elements were combined at Heidelberg to produce a magnificent production of Faust and Dante. The orchestra of more than one hundred musicians was perfect. The period when the wind instruments in Germany were wanting both in correctness and quality of sound has pa.s.sed. But the orchestra conductors have to be taken into account. In our day these gentlemen are _virtuosi_. Their personalities are not subservient to the music, but the music to them. It is the springboard on which they perform and parade their all embracing personalities. They add their own inventions to the author's meaning. Sometimes they draw out the wind instruments so that the musicians have to cut a phrase at the end to catch their breath; again they affect a mad and unrestrained rapidity which allows time neither to play nor to hear the sounds. They hurry or r.e.t.a.r.d the movement for no reason besides their individual caprice or because the author did not indicate them. They perpetrate music of such a disorganized character that the musicians are utterly bewildered, and hesitate in their entrances on account of their inability to distinguish one measure from another.

The delightful _Purgatoire_ has become a deadly bore, and the enchanting _Mephistopheles_ has been riddled as by a hailstorm. Familiarity with such excesses made me particularly appreciative of the excellent performance that Wolfrum, the musical director, obtained in the vast _Christus_ concert.

Among the conductors was Richard Strauss who cannot be pa.s.sed over without a word. Certainly no one will hope to find moderation and serenity in this artist or be surprised if he gives his temperament free rein, and rides on to victory undisturbed by the ruins he leaves behind.

But he lacks neither intelligence nor elegance, and if he sometimes goes too fast he never overemphasizes slowness. When he is conducting, we need not fear the desert of Sahara where others sometimes lead us. Under his direction _Ta.s.so_ displayed all its wealth of resources and the jewel-like _Mephisto-Walzer_ shone more brightly than ever before.

I can speak but briefly of the numerous soloists. We neither judge nor compare such talents as those of Busoni, Friedheim, and Risler. We are satisfied with admiring them. However, if a prize must be awarded, I should give it to Risler for his masterly interpretation of the great _Sonata in B minor_. He made the most of it in every way, in all its power and in all its delicacy. When it is given in this way, it is one of the finest sonatas imaginable. But such a performance is rare, for it is beyond the average artist. The strength of an athlete, the lightness of a bird, capriciousness, charm, and a perfect understanding of style in general and of the style of this composer in particular are the qualifications needed to perform this work. It is far too difficult for most _virtuosi_, however talented they may be.

Among the women singers I shall only mention Madame Cahier from the Viennese Opera. She is a great artist with a wonderful voice and her interpretation of several _lieder_ made them wonderfully worth while.

Madame Cahier interpreted the part of Dalila at Vienna with Dalmores, so it can easily be appreciated how much pleasure I took in hearing her.

A final word about the Dante Symphony. I have read somewhere that Liszt used pages to produce an effect which Berlioz accomplished in the apparition of Mephistopheles in _Faust_ with three notes. This comparison is unjust. Berlioz's happy discovery is a work of genius and he alone could have invented it. But the sudden appearance of the Devil is one thing and the depiction of h.e.l.l quite another. Berlioz tried such a depiction at the end of the d.a.m.nation, and in spite of the strange vocabulary of the chorus, "Irimiru Karabrao, Sat raik Irkimour," and other pretty tricks, he succeeded no better than Liszt. As a matter of fact the opposite was the case.

CHAPTER XIII

BERLIOZ'S REQUIEM

The reading of the score of Berlioz's _Requiem_ makes it appear singularly old-fashioned, but this is true of most of the romantic dramas, which, like the _Requiem_, show up better in actual performance.

It is easy to rail at the vehemence of the Romanticists, but it is not so easy to equal the effect of _Hernani_, _Lucrece Borgia_ and the _Symphonie fantastique_ on the public. For with all their faults these works had a marvellous success. The truth is that their vehemence was sincere and not artificial. The Romanticists had faith in their works and there is nothing like faith to produce lasting results.

Reicha and Leuseur were, as we know, Berlioz's instructors. Leuseur was the author of numerous works and wrote a good deal of church music. Some of his religious works were really beautiful, but he had strange obsessions. Berlioz greatly admired his master and could not help showing, especially in his earlier works, traces of this admiration.

That is the reason for the syncopated and jerky pa.s.sages without rhyme or reason and which can only be explained by his unconscious imitation of Leuseur's faults. In imitating a model the resemblances occur in the faults and not in the excellences, for the latter are inimitable. So the excellences of the _Requiem_ are not due to Leuseur but to Berlioz. He had already thrown off the trammels of school and shown all the richness of his vigorous originality to which the value of his scores is due.

In his _Memoirs_ Berlioz related the tribulations of his _Requiem_. It was ordered by the government, laid aside for a time, and, finally, performed at the Invalides on the occasion of the capture of Constantine (in Algeria) and the funeral services of General Damremont. He was astonished at the lack of sympathy and even actual hostility that he encountered. It would have been more astonishing if he had experienced anything else.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hector Berlioz]

We must remember that at this time Berton, who sang _Quand on est toujours vertuex, on aime a voir lever l'aurore_, pa.s.sed for a great man. Beethoven's symphonies were a novelty, in Paris at least, and a scandal. Haydn's symphonies inspired a critic to write, "What a noise, what a noise!" Orchestras were merely collections of thirty or forty musicians.

We can imagine, therefore, the stupefaction and horror when a young man, just out of school, demanded fifty violins, twenty violas, twenty violoncellos, eighteen contraba.s.ses, four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, eight ba.s.soons, twelve horns, and a chorus of two hundred voices as a minimum. And that is not all. The _Tuba Mirum_ necessitates an addition of thirty-eight trumpets and trombones, divided into four orchestras and placed at the four cardinal points of the compa.s.s.

Besides, there have to be eight pairs of drums, played by ten drummers, four tam-tams, and ten cymbals.

The story of this array of drums is rather interesting. Reicha, Berlioz's first teacher, had the original idea of playing drum taps in chords of three or four beats. In order to try out this effect, he composed a choral piece, _L'Harmonie des Spheres_, which was published in connection with his _Traite d'Harmonie_. But Reicha's genius did not suffice for this task. He was a good musician, but no more than that.

His choral piece was insignificant and remained a dead letter. Berlioz took this lost effect and used it in his _Tuba Mirum_.

However, it must be confessed that this effect does not come up to expectations. In a church or a concert hall we hear a confused and terrifying mingling of sounds, and from time to time we note a change in the depth of tone but we are unable to distinguish the pitch of the chords.

I shall never forget the impression this _Tuba Mirum_ made on me when I first heard it at St. Eustache under Berlioz's own direction. It amounted to an absolute neglect of the author's directions. The beginning of the work is marked _moderato_, later, as the bra.s.s comes in, the movement is quickened and becomes _andante maestro_. Most of the time the _moderato_ was interpreted as an _allegro_, and the _andante maestro_ as a simple _moderato_. If the terrific fanfare did not become, as some one ventured to call it, a "Setting Out for the Hunt,"

it might well have been the accompaniment for a sovereign's entrance to his capital. In order to give this fanfare its grandiose character, the author did not take easy refuge in the wailings of a minor key, but he burst into the splendors of a major key. A certain grandeur of movement alone can preserve its gigantesque quality and impression of power.

Granting all his good intentions, in trying to give us a suggestion of the last judgment by his acc.u.mulation of bra.s.s, drums, cymbals, and tam-tams, Berlioz makes us think of Thor among the giants trying to empty the drinking-horn which was filled from the sea, and only succeeding in lowering it a little. Yet even that was an accomplishment.

Berlioz spoke scornfully of Mozart's _Tuba Mirum_ with its single trombone. "One trombone," he exclaimed, "when a hundred would be none too many!" Berlioz wanted to make us really hear the trumpets of the archangels. Mozart with the seven notes of his one trombone suggested the same idea and the suggestion is sufficient.

We must not forget, however, that here we are in the midst of a world of romanticism, in a world of color and picturesqueness, which could not content itself with so little. And we must remember this fact, if we would not be irritated by the oddities of _L'Hostias_, with its deep trombone notes which seem to come from the very depths of h.e.l.l. There is no use in trying to find out what these notes mean. Berlioz told us himself that he discovered these notes at a time when they were almost unknown and he wanted to use them. The contrast between these terrifying notes and the wailing of the flutes is especially curious. We find nothing a.n.a.logous to this anywhere else.

The delightful _Purgatoire_, where the author sees a chorus of souls in Purgatory, is much better. His Purgatory has no punishments nor any griefs save the awaiting, the long and painful awaiting, of eternal happiness. There is a processional in which the fugue and melody alternate in the most felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered. No one would dare to describe this work as profane, but whether it is religious or not is a question. As Boschot has said, what it expresses above all is terror in the presence of annihilation.

When the _Requiem_ was played at the Trocadero, the audience was greatly impressed and filed out slowly. They did not say, "What a masterpiece!"

but "What an orchestra leader!" Nowadays people go to see a conductor direct the orchestra just as they go to hear a tenor, and they arrogate to themselves the right to judge the conductors as they do the tenors.

But what a fine sport it is! The qualities of an orchestra conductor which the public appreciates are his elegance, his gestures, his precision, and the expressiveness of his mimicry, all of which are more often directed at the audience than at the orchestra. But all these things are of secondary consideration. What makes up an orchestra conductor's worth are the excellence of execution he obtains from the musicians and the perfect interpretation of the author's meaning--which the audience does not understand. If such an important detail as the author's meaning is obscured and slighted, if a work is disfigured by absurd movements and by an expression which is entirely different from what the author wanted, the public may be dazzled and an execrable conductor, provided his poses are good, may fascinate his audience and be praised to the skies.

Formerly the conductor never saluted his audience. The understanding was that the work and not the conductor was applauded. The Italians and Germans changed all that. Lamoureux was the first to introduce this exotic custom in France. The public was a little surprised at first, but they soon got used to it. In Italy the conductor comes on the stage with the artists to salute the audience. There is nothing more laughable than to see him, as the last note of an opera dies away, jump down from his stand and run like mad to reach the stage in time.

The excellence of the work of English choristers has been highly and justly praised. Perhaps it would be fairer not to praise them so unreservedly when we are so severe on our own. Justice often leaves something to be desired. At all events it must be admitted that Berlioz treated the voices in an unfortunate way. Like Beethoven, he made no distinction between a part for a voice and an instrument. While except for a few rare pa.s.sages it does not fall as low as the atrocities which disfigure the grandiose _Ma.s.s in D_, the vocal part of the _Requiem_ is awkwardly written. Singers are ill at ease in it, for the timbre and regularity of the voice resent such treatment. The tenor's part is so written that he is to be congratulated on getting through it without any accident, and nothing more can be expected of him.

What a pity it was that Berlioz did not fall in love with an Italian singer instead of an English tragedienne! Cupid might have wrought a miracle. The author of the _Requiem_ would have lost none of his good qualities, but he might have gained, what, for the lack of a better phrase, is called the fingering of the voice, the art of handling it intelligently and making it give without an effort the best effect of which it is capable. But Berlioz had a horror even of the Italian language, musical as that is. As he said in his _Memoirs_, this aversion hid from him the true worth of _Don Juan_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_. One wonders whether he knew that his idol, Gluck, wrote music for Italian texts not only in the case of his first works but also in _Orphee_ and _Alceste_. And whether he knew that the aria _"O malheureuse Iphigenie"_ was an Italian song badly translated into French. Perhaps he was ignorant of all this in his youth for Berlioz was a genius, not a scholar.

The word genius tells the whole story. Berlioz wrote badly. He maltreated voices and sometimes permitted himself the strangest freaks.

Nevertheless he is one of the commanding figures of musical art. His great works remind us of the Alps with their forests, glaciers, sunlight, waterfalls and chasms. There are people who do not like the Alps. So much the worse for them.

CHAPTER XIV

PAULINE VIARDOT

Alfred de Musset covered Maria Malibran's tomb with immortal flowers and he also told us the story of Pauline Garcia's debut. There is also something about it in Theophile Gautier's writings. It is clear from both accounts that her first appearance was an extraordinary occasion.

Natures such as hers reveal themselves at once to those who know and do not have to wait to arrive until they are in full bloom. Pauline was very young at the time, and soon afterwards she married M. Viardot, manager of the Theatre-Italien and one of the finest men of his day. She went abroad to develop her talent, but she returned in 1849 when Meyerbeer named her to create the role of Fides in _Le Prophete_.

Her voice was tremendously powerful, prodigious in its range, and it overcame all the difficulties in the art of singing. But this marvellous voice did not please everyone, for it was by no means smooth and velvety. Indeed, it was a little harsh and was likened to the taste of a bitter orange. But it was just the voice for a tragedy or an epic, for it was superhuman rather than human. Light things like Spanish songs and Chopin mazurkas, which she used to transpose so that she could sing them, were completely transformed by that voice and became the playthings of an Amazon or of a giantess. She lent an incomparable grandeur to tragic parts and to the severe dignity of the oratorio.

I never had the pleasure of hearing Madame Malibran, but Rossini told me about her. He preferred her sister. Madame Malibran, he said, had the advantage of beauty. In addition, she died young and left a memory of an artist in full possession of all her powers. She was not the equal of her sister as a musician and could not have survived the decline of her voice as the latter did.

Madame Viardot was not beautiful, indeed, she was far from it. The portrait by Ary Scheffer is the only one which shows this unequalled woman truthfully and gives some idea of her strange and powerful fascination. What made her even more captivating than her talent as a singer was her personality--one of the most amazing I have ever known.

She spoke and wrote fluently Spanish, French, Italian, English and German. She was in touch with all the current literature of these countries and in correspondence with people all over Europe.

She did not remember when she learned music. In the Garcia family music was in the air they breathed. So she protested against the tradition which represented her father as a tyrant who whipped his daughters to make them sing. I have no idea how she learned the secrets of composition, but save for the management of the orchestra she knew them well. She wrote numerous _lieder_ on Spanish and German texts and all of these show a faultless diction. But contrary to the custom of most composers who like nothing better than to show their compositions, she concealed hers as though they were indiscretions. It was exceedingly difficult to persuade her to let one hear them, although the least were highly creditable. Once she sang a Spanish popular song, a wild haunting thing, with which Rubinstein fell madly in love. It was several years before she would admit that she wrote it herself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mme. Pauline Viardot]

She wrote brilliant operettas in collaboration with Tourguenief, but they were never published and were performed only in private. One anecdote will show her versatility as a composer. She was a friend of Chopin and Liszt and her tastes were strongly futuristic. M. Viardot, on the contrary, was a reactionary in music. He even found Beethoven too advanced. One day they had a guest who was also a reactionary. Madame Viardot sang to them a wonderful work with recitative, aria and final allegro, which they praised to the skies. She had written it expressly for the occasion. I have read this work and even the cleverest would have been deceived.

But it must not be thought from this that her compositions were mere imitations. On the contrary they were extremely original. The only explanation why those that were published have remained unknown and why so many were unpublished is that this admirable artist had a horror of publicity. She spent half her life in teaching pupils and the world knew nothing about it.

During the Empire the Viardots used to give in their apartment on Thursday evenings really fine musical festivals which my surviving contemporaries still remember. From the salon in which the famous portrait by Ary Scheffer was hung and which was devoted to ordinary instrumental and vocal music, we went down a short staircase to a gallery filled with valuable paintings, and finally to an exquisite organ, one of Cavaille-Coll's masterpieces. In this temple dedicated to music we listened to arias from the oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn.

She had sung them in London, but could not get a hearing for them in the concerts in Paris as they were averse to such vast compositions. I had the honor to be her regular accompanist both at the organ and the piano.