Musicians of To-Day Part 8

[Footnote 115:

But ten years old, slightly built and pale, Yet full of simple confidence and joy (_Rimes familieres_).

[Footnote 116: Charles Gounod, _Memoires d'un Artiste_, 1896.]

In Germany, however, they make no mistake about him. There, the name of Camille Saint-Saens stands for the French cla.s.sical spirit, and is thought worthiest to represent us in music from the time of Berlioz until the appearance of the young school of Cesar Franck--though Franck himself is as yet little known in Germany. M. Saint-Saens possesses, indeed, some of the best qualities of a French artist, and among them the most important quality of all--perfect clearness of conception. It is remarkable how little this learned artist is bothered by his learning, and how free he is from all pedantry. Pedantry is the plague of German art, and the greatest men have not escaped it. I am not speaking of Brahms, who was ravaged with it, but of delightful geniuses like Schumann, or of powerful ones like Bach. "This unnatural art wearies one like the sanctimonious salon of some little provincial town; it stifles one, it is enough to kill one."[117] "Saint-Saens is not a pedant," wrote Gounod; "he has remained too much of a child and become too clever for that." Besides, he has always been too much of a Frenchman.

[Footnote 117: Quoted from Saint-Saens by Edmond Hippeau in _Henry VIII et L'Opera francais_, 1883. M. Saint-Saens speaks elsewhere of "these works, well written, but heavy and unattractive, and reflecting in a tiresome way the narrow and pedantic spirit of certain little towns in Germany" (_Harmonie et Melodie_).]

Sometimes Saint-Saens reminds me of one of our eighteenth-century writers. Not a writer of the _Encyclopedie_, nor one of Rousseau's camp, but rather of Voltaire's school. He has a clearness of thought, an elegance and precision of expression, and a quality of mind that make his music "not only n.o.ble, but very n.o.ble, as coming of a fine race and distinguished family."[118]

He has also excellent discernment, of an unemotional kind; and he is "calm in spirit, restrained in imagination, and keeps his self-control even in the midst of the most disturbing emotions."[119] This discernment is the enemy of anything approaching obscurity of thought or mysticism; and its outcome was that curious book, _Problemes et Mysteres_--a misleading t.i.tle, for the spirit of reason reigns there and makes an appeal to young people to protect "the light of a menaced world" against "the mists of the North, Scandinavian G.o.ds, Indian divinities, Catholic miracles, Lourdes, spiritualism, occultism, and obscurantism."[120]

His love and need of liberty is also of the eighteenth century. One may say that liberty is his only pa.s.sion. "I am pa.s.sionately fond of liberty," he wrote.[121]

[Footnote 118: Charles Gounod, _"Ascanio" de Saint-Saens_, 1890.]

[Footnote 119: _Id., ibid._]

[Footnote 120: C. Saint-Saens, _Problemes et Mysteres_, 1894.]

[Footnote 121: _Harmonie et Melodie_.]

And he has proved it by the absolute fearlessness of his judgments on art; for not only has he reasoned soundly against Wagner, but dared to criticise the weaknesses of Gluck and Mozart, the errors of Weber and Berlioz, and the accepted opinions about Gounod; and this cla.s.sicist, who was nourished on Bach, goes so far as to say: "The performance of works by Bach and Handel to-day is an idle amus.e.m.e.nt," and that those who wish to revive their art are like "people who would live in an old mansion that has been uninhabited for centuries."[122] He went even further; he criticised his own work and contradicted his own opinions.

His love of liberty made him form, at different periods, different opinions of the same work. He thought that people had a right to change their opinions, as sometimes they deceived themselves. It seemed to him better boldly to admit an error than to be the slave of consistency. And this same feeling showed itself in other matters besides art: in ethics, as is shown by some verses which he addressed to a young friend, urging him not to be bound by a too rigid austerity:

"Je sens qu'une triste chimere A toujours a.s.sombri ton ame: la Vertu...."[123]

and in metaphysics also, where he judges religions, faith, and the Gospels with a quiet freedom of thought, seeking in Nature alone the basis of morals and society.

[Footnote 122: C. Saint-Saens, _Portraits et Souvenirs_, 1900.]

[Footnote 123:

I know that a vain dream of virtue Has always cast a shadow on your soul (_Rimes familieres_).

Here are some of his opinions, taken at random from _Problemes et Mysteres_:

"As science advances, G.o.d recedes."

"The soul is only a medium for the expression of thought."

"The discouragement of work, the weakening of character, the sharing of one's goods under pain of death--this is the Gospel teaching on the foundation of society."

"The Christian virtues are not social virtues."

"Nature is without aim: she is an endless circle, and leads us nowhere."

His thoughts are unfettered and full of love for humanity and a sense of the responsibility of the individual. He called Beethoven "the greatest, the only really great artist," because he upheld the idea of universal brotherhood. His mind is so comprehensive that he has written books on philosophy, on the theatre, on cla.s.sical painting,[124] as well as scientific essays,[125] volumes of verse, and even plays.[126]

[Footnote 124: C. Saint-Saens, _Note sur les decors de theatre dans l'antiquite romaine_, 1880, where he discusses the mural paintings of Pompeii.]

[Footnote 125: Lecture on the Phenomena of Mirages, given to the Astronomical Society of France in 1905.]

[Footnote 126: C. Saint-Saens, _La Crampe des ecrivains_, a comedy in one act, 1892.]

He has been able to take up all sorts of things, I will not say with equal skill, but with discernment and undeniable ability. He shows a type of mind rare among artists and, above all, among musicians. The two principles that he enunciates and himself follows out are: "Keep free from all exaggeration" and "Preserve the soundness of your mind's health."[127] They are certainly not the principles of a Beethoven or a Wagner, and it would be rather difficult to find a noted musician of the last century who had applied them. They tell us, without need of comment, what is distinctive about M. Saint-Saens, and what is defective in him. He is not troubled by any sort of pa.s.sion. Nothing disturbs the clearness of his reason. "He has no prejudices; he takes no side"[128]--one might add, not even his own, since he is not afraid to change his views--"he does not pose as a reformer of anything"; he is altogether independent, perhaps almost too much so. He seems sometimes as if he did not know what to do with his liberty. Goethe would have said, I think, that he needed a little more of the devil in him.

[Footnote 127: _Harmonie et Melodie_.]

[Footnote 128: Charles Gounod, _Memoires d'un Artiste_.]

His most characteristic mental trait seems to be a languid melancholy, which has its source in a rather bitter feeling of the futility of life;[129] and this is accompanied by fits of weariness which are not altogether healthy, followed by capricious moods and nervous gaiety, and a freakish liking for burlesque and mimicry. It is his eager, restless spirit that makes him rush about the world writing Breton and Auvergnian rhapsodies, Persian songs, Algerian suites, Portuguese barcarolles, Danish, Russian, or Arabian caprices, souvenirs of Italy, African fantasias, and Egyptian concertos; and, in the same way, he roams through the ages, writing Greek tragedies, dance music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and preludes and fugues of the eighteenth.

But in all these exotic and archaic reflections of times and countries through which his fancy wanders, one recognises the gay, intelligent countenance of a Frenchman on his travels, who idly follows his inclinations, and does not trouble to enter very deeply into the spirit of the people he meets, but gleans all he can, and then reproduces it with a French complexion--after the manner of Montaigne in Italy, who compared Verona to Poitiers, and Padua to Bordeaux, and who, when he was in Florence, paid much less attention to Michelangelo than to "a very strangely shaped sheep, and an animal the size of a large mastiff, shaped like a cat and striped with black and white, which they called a tiger."

[Footnote 129: _Les Heures; Mors; Modestie (Rimes familieres_).]

From a purely musical point of view there is some resemblance between M.

Saint-Saens and Mendelssohn. In both of them we find the same intellectual restraint, the same balance preserved among the heterogeneous elements of their work. These elements are not common to both of them, because the time, the country, and the surroundings in which they lived are not the same; and there is also a great difference in their characters. Mendelssohn is more ingenuous and religious; M.

Saint-Saens is more of a dilettante and more sensuous. They are not so much kindred spirits by their science as good company by a common purity of taste, a sense of rhythm, and a genius for method, which gave all they wrote a neo-cla.s.sic character.

As for the things that directly influenced M. Saint-Saens, they are so numerous that it would be difficult and rather bold of me to pretend to be able to pick them out. His remarkable capacity for a.s.similation has often moved him to write in the style of Wagner or Berlioz, of Handel or Rameau, of Lulli or Charpentier, or even of some English harpsichord or clavichord player of the sixteenth century, like William Byrd--whose airs are introduced quite naturally in the music of _Henry VIII_; but we must remember that these are deliberate imitations, the amus.e.m.e.nts of a virtuoso, about which M. Saint-Saens never deceives himself. His memory serves him as he pleases, but he is never troubled by it.

As far as one can judge, M. Saint-Saens' musical ideas are infused with the spirit of the great cla.s.sics belonging to the end of the eighteenth century--far more, whatever people may say, with the spirit of Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart, than with the spirit of Bach. Schumann's seductiveness also left its mark upon him, and he has felt the influence of Gounod, Bizet, and Wagner. But a stronger influence was that of Berlioz, his friend and master,[130] and, above all, that of Liszt. We must stop at this last name.

[Footnote 130: "Thanks to Berlioz, all my generation has been shaped, and well shaped" _(Portraits et Souvenirs_).]

M. Saint-Saens has good reason for liking Liszt, for Liszt was also a lover of freedom, and had shaken off traditions and pedantry, and scorned German routine; and he liked him, too, because his music was a reaction from the stiff school of Brahms.[131] He was enthusiastic about Liszt's work, and was one of the earliest and most ardent champions of that new music of which Liszt was the leading spirit--of that "programme" music which Wagner's triumph seemed to have nipped in the bud, but which has suddenly and gloriously burst into life again in the works of Richard Strauss. "Liszt is one of the great composers of our time," wrote M. Saint-Saens; "he has dared more than either Weber, or Mendelssohn, or Schubert, or Schumann. He has created the symphonic poem. He is the deliverer of instrumental music.... He has proclaimed the reign of free music."[132] This was not said impulsively in a moment of enthusiasm; M. Saint-Saens has always held this opinion. All his life he has remained faithful to his admiration of Liszt--since 1858, when he dedicated a _Veni Creator_ to "the Abbe Liszt," until 1886, when, a few months after Liszt's death, he dedicated his masterpiece, the _Symphonic avec orgue_, "To the memory of Franz Liszt."[133]

[Footnote 131: "I like Liszt's music so much, because he does not bother about other people's opinions; he says what he wants to say; and the only thing that he troubles about is to say it as well as he possibly can" (Quoted by Hippeau).]

[Footnote 132: The quotations are taken from _Harmonie et Melodie_ and _Portraits et Souvenirs_.]

[Footnote 133: In _Harmonie et Melodie_ M. Saint-Saens tells us that he organised and directed a concert in the Theatre-Italien where only Liszt's compositions were played. But all his efforts to make the French musical public appreciate Liszt were a failure.]

"People have not hesitated to scoff at what they call my weakness for Liszt's works. But even if the feelings of affection and grat.i.tude that he inspired in me did come like a prism and interpose themselves between my eyes and his face, I do not see anything greatly to be regretted in it.[134] I had not yet felt the charm of his personal fascination, I had neither heard nor seen him, and I did not owe him anything at all, when my interest was gripped in reading his first symphonic poems; and when later they pointed the way which was to lead to _La Danse macabre_, _Le Rouet d'Omphale_, and other works of the same nature, I am sure that my judgment was not bia.s.sed by any prejudice in his favour, and that I alone was responsible for what I did."[135]

[Footnote 134: The admiration was mutual. M. Saint-Saens even said that without Liszt he could not have written _Samson et Dalila_. "Not only did Liszt have _Samson et Dalila_ performed at Weimar, but without him that work would never have come into being. My suggestions on the subject had met with such hostility that I had given up the idea of writing it; and all that existed were some illegible notes.... Then at Weimar one day I spoke to Liszt about it, and he said to me, quite trustingly and without having heard a note, 'Finish your work; I will have it performed here.' The events of 1870 delayed its performance for several years." (_Revue Musicale_, 8 November, 1901).]

[Footnote 135: _Portraits et Souvenirs_.]

This influence seems to me to explain some of M. Saint-Saens' work. Not only is this influence evident in his symphonic poems--some of his best work--but it is to be found in his suites for orchestra, his fantasias, and his rhapsodies, where the descriptive and narrative element is strong. "Music should charm unaided," said M. Saint-Saens; "but its effect is much finer when we use our imagination and let it flow in some particular channel, thus imaging the music. It is then that all the faculties of the soul are brought into play for the same end. What art gains from this is not greater beauty, but a wider field for its scope--that is, a greater variety of form and a larger liberty."[136]