Musicians of To-Day Part 21

[Footnote 226: _Revue d'histoire et de critique musicale_, August-September, 1901.]

[Footnote 227: "The _Schola Cantorum_ aims at creating a modern music truly worthy of the Church" (First number of the _Tribune de Saint-Gervais_, the monthly bulletin of the _Schola Cantorum_, January, 1895).]

[Footnote 228: The Schola had in mind here the vigorous work of the French Benedictines, which had been done in silence for the past fifty years; it was thinking, too, of the restoration of the Gregorian chant during 1850 and 1860 by Dom Gueranger, the first abbot of Solesmes, a work continued by Dom Jausions and Dom Pothier, the abbot of Saint-Wandrille, who published in 1883 the _Melodies Gregoriennes_, the _Liber Gradualis_, and the _Liber Antiphonarius_. This work was finally brought to a happy conclusion by Dom Schmitt, and Dom Mocqucreau, the prior of Solesmes, who in 1889 began his monumental work, the _Paleo-graphie Musicals_, of which nine volumes had appeared in 1906.

This great Benedictine school is an honour to France by the scientific work it has lately done in music. The school is at present exiled from France.]

They added to this, however, music _a la Palestrina_, and any music that conformed to its principles or was inspired by its example. Such archaic ideas would certainly never create a new kind of religious music, but at least they have helped to restore the old art; and they received their official consecration in the famous letter written by Pope Pius X on the Re-form of Sacred Music.

The achievement of an artistic ideal so restricted as this would not have sufficed, however, to a.s.sure the success of the _Schola Cantorum_, nor establish its authority with a public that was, whatever people may say, only lukewarm in its religion, and that would only interest itself in the religious art of other days as it would in a pa.s.sing fashion. But the spirit of curiosity and the meaning of modern life began to weigh little by little with the Schola's principles. After singing Palestrinian and Gregorian chants at the Church of Saint-Gervais during Holy Week, they played Carissimi, Schutz, and the Italian and German masters of the seventeenth century. Then came Bach's cantatas; and their performance, given by M. Bordes in the Salle d'Harcourt, attracted large audiences and started the cult of this master in Paris. Then they sang Rameau and Gluck; and, finally, all ancient music, sacred or secular, was approved. And so this little school, which had been consecrated to the cult of ancient religious music, and had made so modest a beginning,[229] developed into a School of Art capable of satisfying modern wants; and in 1900, when M. Vincent d'Indy became president of the _Schola_, it was decided to move the school into larger premises in the Rue Saint-Jacques.

The programme of this new school was explained by M. Vincent d'Indy in his Inauguration speech on 2 November, 1900, and showed how he based the foundations of musical teaching upon history.

"Art, in its journey across the ages, is a microcosm which has, like the world itself, successive stages of youth, maturity, and old age; but it never dies--it renews itself perpetually. It is not like a perfect circle; it is like a spiral, and in its growth is always mounting higher. I believe in making students follow the same path that art itself has followed, so that they shall undergo during their term of study the same transformations that music itself has undergone during the centuries. In this way they will come out much better armed for the difficulties of modern art, since they will have lived, so to speak, the life of art, and followed the natural and inevitable order of the forms that made up the different epochs of artistic development."

[Footnote 229: When Charles Bordes opened the first _Schola Cantorum_ in the Rue Stanislas he was without help or resources, and had exactly thirty-seven francs and fifty centimes in hand. I mention this detail to give an idea of the splendidly courageous and confident spirit that Charles Bordes possessed.]

M. d'Indy claims that this system may be applied as successfully to instrumentalists and singers as to future composers. "For it is as profitable for them to know," he says, "how to sing a liturgic monody properly, or to be able to play a Corelli sonata in a suitable style, as it is for composers to study the structure of a motet or a suite." M.

d'Indy, moreover, obliged all students, without distinction, to attend the lectures on vocal music; and, besides that, he inst.i.tuted a special cla.s.s to teach the conducting of orchestras--which was something quite new to France. His object, as he clearly said, was to give a new form to modern music by means of a knowledge of the music of the past.

On this subject he says:

"Where shall we find the quickening life that will give us fresh forms and formulas? The source is not really difficult to discover.

Do not let us seek it anywhere but in the decorative art of the plain-song singers, in the architectural art of the age of Palestrina, and in the expressive art of the great Italians of the seventeenth century. It is there, and _there alone_, that we shall find melodic craft, rhythmic cadences, and a harmonic magnificence that is really new--if our modern spirit can only learn how to absorb their nutritious essence. And so I prescribe for all pupils in the School the careful study of cla.s.sic forms, because _they alone_ are able to give the elements of a new life to our music, which will be founded on principles that are sane, solid, and trustworthy."[230]

[Footnote 230: _Tribune de Saint-Gervais_, November, 1900.]

This fine and intelligent eclecticism was likely to develop a critical spirit, but was rather less adapted to form original personalities. In any case, however, it was excellent discipline in the formation of musical taste; and, in truth, the _ecole Superieure de musique_ of the Rue Saint-Jacques became a new Conservatoire, both more modern and more learned than the old Conservatoire, and freer, and yet less free, because more self-satisfied. The school developed very quickly. From having twenty-one pupils in 1896, it had three hundred and twenty in 1908. Eminent musicians and professors learned in the history and science of music taught there, and M. d'Indy himself took the Composition cla.s.ses.[231] And in its short career the _Schola_ may already be credited with the training of young composers, such as MM.

Roussel, Deodat de Severac, Gustave Bret, Labey, Samazeuilh, R. de Castera, Serieyx, Alquier, Coindreau, Estienne, Le Flem, and Groz; and to these may be added M. d'Indy's private pupils, Witkowski, and one of the foremost of modern composers, Alberic Magnard.

[Footnote 231: There are actually nine courses of Composition at the _Schola_--five for men and four for women. M. d'Indy takes eight of them, as well as a mixed cla.s.s for orchestra.]

Outside the influence that the School exercises by its teaching, its propaganda by means of concerts and publications is very active. From its foundation up to 1904 it had given two hundred performances in one hundred and thirty provincial towns; more than one hundred and fifty concerts in Paris, of which fifty were of orchestral and choral music, sixty of organ music, and forty of chamber-music. These concerts have been well attended by enthusiastic and appreciative audiences, and have been a school for public taste. One does not look for perfect execution there,[232] but for intelligent interpretations and a thirst for a fuller knowledge of the great works of the past. They have revived Monteverde's _Orfeo_ and his _Incoron.a.z.ione di Poppea_, which had been forgotten these three centuries; and it was following an interest created by repeated performances of Rameau at the _Schola_[233] that _Darda.n.u.s_ was performed at Dijon under M. d'Indy's direction, _Castor et Pollux_ at Montpellier under M. Charles Bordes' direction, and that in 1908 the Opera at Paris gave _Hippolyte et Aricie_. Branches of the _Schola_ have, been started at Lyons, Ma.r.s.eilles, Bordeaux, Avignon, Montpellier, Nancy, epinal, Montlucon, Saint-Chamond, and Saint-Jean-deLuz.[234] A publishing house has been a.s.sociated with the School at Paris; and from this we get Reviews, such as the _Tribune de Saint-Gervais_; publications of old music, such as the _Anthologie des maitres religieux primitifs des XVe, XVIe, et XVIIe siecles_, edited by Charles Bordes; the _Archives des maitres de l'orgue des XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe siecles_, edited by Alexandre Guilmant and Andre Pirro; the _Concerts spirituels de la Schola_, the new editions of _Orfeo_, and the _Incoron.a.z.ione di Poppea_, edited by M. Vincent d'Indy; and publications of modern music, such as the _Collection du chant populaire_, the _Repertoire moderne de musique vocale et d'orgue_, and, notably, the _edition mutuelle_, published by the composers themselves, whose property it is.

[Footnote 232: The orchestra is mainly composed of pupils; and, by a generous arrangement, the financial profits from rehearsals and performances are divided among the pupils who take part in them, and credited to their account. And so besides the exhibitioners the _Schola_ has a great number of pupils who are not well off, but who manage by these concerts to defray almost the entire expenses of their education there. "The concerts serve more especially as aesthetic exercises for the pupils, and as a means of according them teaching at small expense to themselves." I owe this information and all that precedes it to the kindness of M. J. de la Laurencie, the general secretary of the _Schola_, whom I should like to thank.]

[Footnote 233: The _Schola_ has even performed, in an open-air theatre, Ramcau's _La Guirlande_.]

[Footnote 234: One may add to this list the choral societies of Nantes and Besancon, which are bodies of the same order as the _Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais_. And we may also attribute to the influence of the _Schola_ an independent society, the _Societe J.S. Bach_, started in Paris by an old _Schola_ pupil, M. Gustave Bret, which, since 1905, has devoted itself to the performance of the great works of Bach. It is not one of the least merits of the _Schola_ that it has helped to form good amateur choirs of the same type as the choral societies of Germany.]

And all this shows such a marvellous activity and gives evidence of such whole-hearted enthusiasm that I cannot bring myself to join issue with the critics who have lately attacked the _Schola_, though their attacks have been in some degree merited. Pettiness is to be found even in great artists, and imperfection in every human work; and defects reveal themselves most clearly after a victory has been won. The _Schola_ has not escaped the critical periods that accompany growth, through which every work must pa.s.s if it is to triumph and endure. Without doubt, the sudden illness and premature retirement of the founder of the work, M.

Charles Bordes, deprived the _Schola_ of one of its most active forces--a force that was perhaps necessary for the school's successful development. For this man had been the school's life and soul, and retired, worn out by the heavy labours which he had borne alone during ten years.[235]

[Footnote 235: M. Charles Bordes did not even then give up his labours altogether. Though obliged to retire to the south of France for his health's sake, he founded, in November, 1905, the _Schola_ of Montpellier. This _Schola_ has given about fifteen concerts a year, and has performed some of Bach's cantatas, scenes from Rameau's and Gluck's operas, Franck's oratorios, and Monteverde's _Orfeo_. In 1906 M. Bordes organised an open-air performance of Rameau's _Guirlande_. In January, 1908, he produced _Castor et Pollux_ at the Montpellier theatre. The man's activity was incredible, and nothing seemed to tire him. He was planning to start a dramatic training-school at Montpellier for the production of seventeenth and eighteenth century operas, when he died, in November, 1909, at the age of forty-four, and so deprived French art of one of its best and most unselfish servants.]

But M. d'Indy, like a courageous apostle, has continued the direction of the _Schola_ with a firm hand and unwearying care, despite his varied activities as composer, professor, and _Kapellmeister_; and he is one of the surest and most reliable guides for a young school of French music.

And if his mind is rather given to abstractions, and his moods are sometimes rather combative, and certain prejudices (which are not always musical ones) make him lean towards ideals of reason and immovable faith--and if at times his followers unconsciously distort his ideas, and try to dam the stream which flows from life itself, I am convinced it is only the pa.s.sing evidence of a reaction, perhaps a natural one, against the exaggerations they have encountered, and that the _Schola_ will always know how to avoid the rocks where revolutionaries of the past have run aground and become the conservatives of the morrow. I hope the _Schola_ will never grow into the kind of aristocratic school that builds walls about itself, but will always open wide its doors and welcome every new force in music, even to such as have ideals opposed to its own. Its future renown and the well-being of French art can only thus be maintained.

4. _The Chamber-Music Societies_

On parallel lines with the big symphony concerts and the new _conservatoires_, societies were formed to spread the knowledge of, and form a taste for, chamber-music. This music, so common in Germany, was almost unknown in Paris before 1870. There was nothing but the Maurin Quartette, which gave five or six concerts every winter in the Salle Pleyel, and played Beethoven's last quartettes there. But these performances only attracted a small number of artists;[236] and so far as the general public was concerned the _Societe des derniers quartuors de Beethoven_ had the reputation for devoting itself to a singular and incomprehensible kind of music that had been written by a deaf man.

[Footnote 236: The quality of the audience atoned, it is true, for its small numbers. Berlioz used to come to these concerts with his friends, Damcke and Stephen h.e.l.ler; and it was after one of these performances, when he had been very stirred by an _adagio_ in the E flat quartette, that he burst out with, "What a man! He could do everything, and the others nothing!"]

The true founder of chamber-music concerts in Paris was M. emile Lemoine, who started the society called _La Trompette_. He has given us a history of his work in the _Revue Musicale_ (15 October, 1903). He was an engineer at the ecole Poly-technique; and after he had left school he formed, about 1860, a quartette society of earnest amateurs, though they were not very skilled performers. This little society continued to meet regularly, and after perfecting itself little by little, finally opened its doors to the general public, which attended the concerts in gradually increasing numbers. Then _La Trompette_ came into being. It prospered from the day that M. Saint-Saens--who was at that time a young man--made its acquaintance. He was pleased with these gatherings, and became an intimate friend of Lemoine; and he interested himself in the society, and induced other celebrated artists to take an interest in it, too. Among its early friends were MM. Alphonse Duvernoy, Diemer, Pugno, Delsart, Breitner, Delaborde, Ch. de Beriot, Fissot, Marsick, Loeb, Remy, and Holmann. With such patronage, _La Trompette_ soon acquired fame in the musical world, and "it represented in cla.s.sical chamber-music the semi-official part played by the _Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire_ in cla.s.sical orchestral music. Rubinstein, Paderewski, Eugene d'Albert, Hans von Bulow, Arthur de Greef, Mme. Essipoff, and Mme. Menter, never missed getting a hearing there when their tours led them to Paris; and to figure on the programme of _La Trompette_ was like the consecration of an artist." Such a society naturally contributed a great deal to the spread of cla.s.sical chamber-music in Paris. M. Lemoine writes:

"Cla.s.sical music was so little known to the musical public that even the audiences of _La Trompette_, cultured as they were, did not at all understand Beethoven's last quartettes; and my friends jeered at my taste for enigmas. This only made me the more determined that they should hear one of these great works at each concert. And sometimes I would give the same work at two or three concerts running if I thought it had not been properly appreciated.

In that case I used to say before the performance: 'It seems to me that such-and-such a work has not been quite understood at the last hearing; and as it is a really marvellous work, I am sure that your feeling is that you do not know it sufficiently. So I have included it in to-day's programme.'"[237]

[Footnote 237: The name, _La Trompette_, was also the pretext for embellishing chamber-music, by introducing the trumpet among the other instruments. To this end M. Saint-Saens wrote his fine septette for piano, trumpet, two violins, viola, violoncello, and double ba.s.s; and M.

Vincent d'Indy his romantic suite in D for trumpet, two flutes, and string instruments.]

These performances of sonatas, trios, and quartettes, were attentively listened to by an audience of five or six hundred persons, the greater part of them cultured people, students from the poly-technics and universities, who formed the kernel of a very discerning and enthusiastic public for chamber-music.

By degrees, following the example of emile Lemoine, other quartette societies were formed; and at present they are so numerous that it would be difficult to name them all. And then there sprang up the same spirit of intelligent curiosity that had induced the French _Kapellmeister_ of the symphony concert societies sometimes to introduce their German and Russian colleagues as conductors; and for this purpose the _Nouvelle Societe Philharmonique de Paris_ was founded, in 1901, on the initiative of Dr. Frankel and under the direction of M. Emmanuel Rey, to give a hearing in Paris to the princ.i.p.al foreign quartette players. And the profit was as great in one case as in the other; and the friendly rivalry between French quartette players and those of other countries bore good fruit, and gave us a fuller understanding of the inner character of German music.

5. _Musical Learning and the University_

While this movement was going on in the artistic world, scholars were taking their share in it, and music was beginning to invade the University.

But the thing was brought about with some difficulty; for among these serious people music did not count as a serious study. Music was thought of as an agreeable art, a social accomplishment, and the idea of making it the subject of scientific teaching must have been received with some amus.e.m.e.nt. Even up to the present time, general histories of Art have refused to accord music a place, so little was thought of it; and other arts were indignant at being mentioned in the same breath with it. This is ill.u.s.trated in the eternal dispute among M. Jourdain's masters, when the fencing-master says:

"And from this we know what great consideration is due to us in a State; and how the science of Fencing is far above all useless sciences, such as dancing and music."

The first lectures on Aesthetics and Musical History were not given in France until after the war of 1870.[238] They were then given at the Conservatoire, and, until quite lately, were the only lectures on Music of any importance in Paris. Since 1878 they have been given in a very excellent way by M. Bourgault-Ducoudray; but, as is only natural in a school of music, their character is artistic rather than scientific, and takes the form of a sort of ill.u.s.tration of the practical work that is done at the Conservatoire. And as for Parisian musical criticism as a whole, it had, thirty years ago, an almost exclusively literary character, and was without technical precision or historical knowledge.

[Footnote 238: On 12 September, 1871, at the suggestion of Ambroise Thomas. The first lecturer was Barbereau, who, however, only lectured for a year. He was succeeded by Gautier, Professor of Harmony and Accompaniment, who in turn was replaced, in 1878, by M.

Bourgault-Ducoudray.]

There again, on the territory of science, as on that of art, a new generation of musicians had sprung up since the war, a group of men versed in the history and aesthetics of music such as France had never known before. About 1890 the result of their labours began to appear.

Henry Expert published his fine work, _Maitres Musiciens de la Renaissance_, in which he revived a whole century of French music.

Alexander Guilmant and Andre Pirro brought to daylight the works of our seventeenth and eighteenth century organists. Pierre Aubry studied mediaeval music. The admirable publications of the Benedictines of Solesmes awoke at the _Schola_ and in the world outside it a taste for the study of religious music. Michel Brenet attacked all epochs of musical history, and produced, by his solid learning, some fine work.

Julien Tiersot began the history of French folk-song, and rescued the music of the Revolution from oblivion. The publisher Durand set to work on his great editions of Rameau and Couperin. Towards 1893 the study of Music was introduced at the Sorbonne by some young professors, who made the subject the theses for their doctor's degree.[239]

[Footnote 239: The first three theses on Music accepted at the Sorbonne were those of M. Jules Combarieu on _The Relationship of Poetry and Music_, of M. Romain Holland on _The Beginnings of Opera before Lully and Scarlatti_, and of M. Maurice Emmanuel on _Greek Orchestics_. There followed, several years afterwards, M. Louis Laloy's _Aristoxenus of Tarento and Greek Music_ and M. Jules ecorcheville's _Musical Aesthetics, from Lully to Rameau_ and _French Instrumental Music of the Seventeenth Century_, M. Andre Pirro's _Aesthetics of Johann Sebastian Bach_, and M. Charles Lalo's _Sketch of Scientific Musical Aesthetics_.]

This movement with regard to musical study grew rapidly; and the first International Congress of Music, held in Paris at the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1900, gave historians of music an opportunity of realising their influence. In a few years, teaching about music was to be had everywhere. At first there were the free lectures of M. Lionel Dauriac and M. Georges Houdard at the Sorbonne, those of MM. Aubry, Gastoue, Pirro, and Vincent d'Indy at the _Schola_ and the _Inst.i.tut Catholique_; and then, at the beginning of 1902, there was the little Faculty of Music of the _ecole des Hautes etudes sociales_, making a centre for the efforts of French scholars of music; and, in 1900, two official courses of lectures on Musical History and Aesthetics were given at the College de France and the Sorbonne.

The progress of musical criticism was just as rapid. Professors of faculties, old pupils of the ecole Normale Superieure, or the ecole des Chartes, such as Henri Lichtenberger, Louis Laloy, and Pierre Aubrey, examined works of the past, and even of the present, by the exact methods of historical criticism. Choir-masters and organists of great erudition, such as Andre Pirro and Gastoue, and composers like Vincent d'Indy, Dukas, Debussy, and some others, a.n.a.lysed their art with the confidence that the intimate knowledge of its practice brings. A perfect efflorescence of works on music appeared. A galaxy of distinguished writers and a public were found to support two separate collections of Biographies of Musicians (which were issued at the same time by different publishers), as well as five or six good musical journals of a scientific character, some of which rivalled the best in Germany. And, finally, the French section of the _Societe Internationale de Musique_, which was founded in 1899 in Berlin to establish communication between the scholars of all countries, found so favourable a ground with us that the number of its adherents in Paris alone is now over one hundred.