Musical Memories Part 11

The two great artists did not have to be urged. Then an unheard of thing happened. As he never had a written programme on such occasions, Rossini managed so that they believed that the duet was his own. It is easy to imagine the success of the piece under these conditions. When the encore was over, Rossini took me to the dining-room and made me sit near him, holding me by the hand so that I could not get away. A procession of fawning admirers pa.s.sed in front of him. Ah! Master! What a masterpiece!

Marvellous!

And when the victim had exhausted the resources of the language in praise, Rossini replied, quietly:

"I agree with you. But the duet wasn't mine; it was written by this gentleman."

Such kindness combined with such ingenuity tells more about the great man than many volumes of commentaries. For Rossini was a great man. The young people of to-day are in no position to judge his works, which were written, as he said himself, for singers and a public who no longer exist.

"I am criticised," he said one day, "for the great _crescendo_ in my works. But if I hadn't put the _crescendo_ into my works, they would never have been played at the Opera."

In our day the public are slaves. I have read in the programme of one house, "All marks of approbation will be severely repressed." Formerly, especially in Italy, the public was master and its taste law. As it came before the lights were up, a great overture with a _crescendo_ was as necessary as cavatinas, duets and ensembles: they came to hear the singers and not to be present at an opera. In many of his works, especially in _Otello_, Rossini made a great step forward towards realism in opera. In _Mose_ and _Le Siege de Corinthe_ (not to mention _Guillaume Tell_) he rose to heights which have not been surpa.s.sed in spite of the poverty of the means at his disposal. As Victor Hugo has victoriously demonstrated, such poverty is no obstacle to genius and wealth in them is only an advantage to mediocrity.

I was one of the regular pianists at Rossini's. The others were Stanzieri, a charming young man of whom Rossini was very fond and who lived but a short time, and Diemer, who was also young but already a great artist. One or the other of us would often play at the evening entertainments the slight pieces for the piano which the Master used to write to take up his time. I was only too willing to accompany the singers, when Rossini did not do so himself. He accompanied them admirably for he played the piano to perfection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mme. Patti]

Unfortunately I was not there the evening that Patti sang for Rossini the first time. We know that after she had sung the aria from _Le Barbier_, he said to her, after the usual compliments,

"Who wrote that aria you just sang?"

I saw him three days afterwards and he hadn't cooled off even then.

"I am fully aware," he said, "that arias should be embellished. That's what they are for. But not to leave a note of them even in the recitatives! That is too much!"

In his irritation he complained that the sopranos persisted in singing this aria which was written for a contralto and did not sing what had been written for the sopranos at all.

On the other hand the diva was irritated as well. She thought the matter over and realized that it would be serious to have Rossini for an enemy.

So some days later she went to ask his advice. It was well for her that she took it, for her talent, though brilliant and fascinating, was not as yet fully formed. Two months after this incident, Patti sang the arias from _La Gaza Ladra_ and _Semiramide_, with the master as her accompanist. And she combined with her brilliancy the absolute correctness which she always showed afterwards.

Much has been written about the premature interruption of Rossini's career after the appearance of _Guillaume Tell_. It has been compared with Racine's life after _Phedre_. The failure of _Phedre_ was brutal and cruel, which was added to by the scandalous success of the _Phedre_ of an unworthy rival. Racine's friends, the Port Royalists, did not hesitate to make the most of the opportunity. "You've lost your soul,"

they told him. "And now you haven't even success." But later, when he took up his pen again, he gave us two masterpieces in _Esther_ and _Athalie_.

Rossini was accustomed to success and it was hard for him to run into a half-hearted success when he knew he had surpa.s.sed himself. This was doubtless due to the extravagant phraseology of Hippolyte Bis, one of the librettists. But _Guillaume Tell_ had its admirers from the start.

I heard it spoken of constantly in my childhood. If the work did not appear on the bills of the Opera, it furnished the amateurs with choice bits.

In my opinion, if Rossini committed suicide as far as his art was concerned, he did so because he had nothing more to say. Rossini was a spoiled child of success and he could not live without it. Such unexpected hostility put an end to a stream which had flowed so abundantly for so long.

The success of his _Soirees Musicales_ and his _Stabat_ encouraged him.

But he wrote nothing more except those slight compositions for the piano and for singing which may be compared to the last vibrations of a sound, as it dies away.

Later--much later--came _La Messe_ to which undue importance has been attributed. "_Le Pa.s.sus_," one critic wrote, "is the cry of a stricken spirit." La Messe is written with elegance by an a.s.sured and expert hand, but that is all. There are no traces of the pen which wrote the second act of _Guillaume Tell_.

Apropos of this second act, it is not, perhaps, generally known that the author had no idea of ending it with a prayer. Insurrections are not usually begun with so serious a song. But at the rehearsals the effect of the unison, _Si parmi nous il est des Traitres_, was so great that they did not dare to go on beyond it. So they suppressed the real ending, which is now the brilliant entrancing end of the overture. This finale is extant in the library at the Opera. It would be an interesting experiment to restore it and give this beautiful act its natural conclusion.

CHAPTER XIX

JULES Ma.s.sENET

Ma.s.senet has been praised indiscriminately--sometimes for his numerous and brilliant powers and sometimes for merits he did not have at all.

I have waited to speak of him until the time when the Academie was ready to replace him,--that is to say, put some one in his place, for great artists are never replaced. Others succeed them with their own individual and different powers, but they do not take their places nevertheless. Malibran has never been replaced, nor Madame Viardot, Madame Carvalho, Talma and Rachel. No one can ever replace Patti, Bartet or Sarah Bernhardt. They could not replace Ingres, Delacroix, Berlioz, or Gounod, and they can never replace Ma.s.senet.

It is a question whether he has been accorded his real place. Perhaps his pupils have estimated him at his true worth, but they were grateful for his excellent teaching, and may be rightly suspected of partiality.

Others have spoken slightingly of his works and they have applied to him by transposing the words of the celebrated dictum: _Saltavit et placuit_. He sang and wept, so they sought to deprecate him as if there were something reprehensible in an artist's pleasing the public. This notion might seem to have some basis in view of the taste that is affected to-day--a predilection for all that is shocking and displeasing in all the arts, including poetry. Sorcieres's epigram--the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful ugly--has become a programme. People are no longer content with merely admiring atrocities, they even speak with contempt of beauties hallowed by time and the admiration of centuries.

The fact remains that Ma.s.senet is one of the most brilliant diamonds in our musical crown. No musician has enjoyed so much favor with the public save Auber, whom Ma.s.senet did not care for any more than he did for his school, but whom he resembled closely. They were alike in their facility, their amazing fertility, genius, gracefulness, and success.

Both composed music which was agreeable to their contemporaries. Both were accused of pandering to their audiences. The answer to this is that both their audiences and the artists had the same tastes and so were in perfect accord.

To-day the revolutionists are the only ones held in esteem by the critics. Well, it may be a fine thing to despise the mob, to struggle against the current, and to compel the mob by force of genius and energy to follow one despite their resistance. Yet one may be a great artist without doing that.

There was nothing revolutionary about Sebastian Bach with his two hundred and fifty cantatas, which were performed as fast as they were written and which were constantly in demand for important occasions.

Handel managed the theater where his operas were produced and his oratorios were sung, and they would have indubitably failed, if he had gone against the accustomed taste of his audiences. Haydn wrote to supply the music for Prince Esterhazy's chapel; Mozart was forced to write constantly, and Rossini worked for an intolerant public which would not have allowed one of his operas to be played, if the overture did not contain the great _crescendo_ for which he has been so reproached. These were none of them revolutionists, yet they were great musicians.

Another criticism is made against Ma.s.senet. He was superficial, they say, and lacked depth. Depth, as we know, is very much the fas.h.i.+on.

It is true that Ma.s.senet was not profound, but that is of little consequence. Just as there are many mansions in our Father's house, so there are many in Apollo's. Art is vast. The artist has a perfect right to descend to the nethermost depths and to enter into the inner secrets of the soul, but this right is not a duty.

The artists of Ancient Greece, with all their marvellous works, were not profound. Their marble G.o.ddesses were beautiful, and beauty was sufficient.

Our old-time sculptors--Clodion and Coysevox--were not profound; nor were Fragonard, La Tour, nor Marivaux, yet they brought honor to the French school.

All have their value and all are necessary. The rose with its fresh color and its perfume, is, in its way, as precious as the st.u.r.dy oak.

Art has a place for artists of all kinds, and no one should flatter himself that he is the only one who is capable of covering the entire field of art.

Some, even in treating a familiar subject, have as much dignity as a Roman emperor on his golden throne, but Ma.s.senet did not belong to this type. He had charm, attraction and a pa.s.sionateness that was feverish rather than deep. His melody was wavering and uncertain, oftentimes more a recitative than melody properly so called, and it was entirely his own. It lacks structure and style. Yet how can one resist when he hears Manon at the feet of Des Grieux in the sacristy of Saint-Sulpice, or help being stirred to the depths by such outpourings of love? One cannot reflect or a.n.a.lyze when moved in this way.

After emotional art comes decadent art. But that is of little consequence. Decadence in art is often far from being artistic deterioration.

Ma.s.senet's music has one great attraction for me and one that is rare in these days--it is gay. And gaiety is frowned upon in modern music.

They criticise Haydn and Mozart for their gaiety, and turn away their faces in shame before the exuberant joyousness with which the _Ninth Symphony_ comes to its triumphal close. Long live gloom. Hurrah for boredom! So say our young people. They may live to regret, too late, the lost hours which they might have spent in gaiety.

Ma.s.senet's facility was something prodigious. I have seen him sick in bed, in a most uncomfortable position, and still turning off pages of orchestration, which followed one another with disconcerting speed. Too often such facility engenders laziness, but in his case we know what an enormous amount of work he accomplished. He has been criticised as being too prolific. However, that is a quality which belongs only to a master.

The artist who produces little may, if he has ability, be an interesting artist, but he will never be a great one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: M. Jules Ma.s.senet]

In this time of anarchy in art, when all he had to do to conciliate the hostile critics was to array himself with the _fauves_, Ma.s.senet set an example of impeccable writing. He knew how to combine modernism with respect for tradition, and he did this at a time when all he had to do was to trample tradition under foot and be proclaimed a genius. Master of his trade as few have ever been, alive to all its difficulties, possessing the most subtle secrets of its technique, he despised the contortions and exaggerations which simple minds confound with the science of music. He followed out the course he had set for himself without any concern for what they might say about him. He was able to adopt within reason the novelties from abroad and he was clever in a.s.similating them perfectly, yet he presented the spectacle of a thoroughly French artist whom neither the Lorelei of the Rhine nor the sirens of the Mediterranean could lead astray. He was a _virtuoso_ of the orchestra, yet he never sacrificed the voices for the instruments, nor did he sacrifice orchestral color for the voices. Finally, he had the greatest gift of all, that of life, a gift which cannot be defined, but which the public always recognizes and which a.s.sures the success of works far inferior to his.

Much has been said about the friends.h.i.+p between us--a notion based solely on the demonstrations he showered on me in public--and in public alone. He might have had my friends.h.i.+p, if he had wanted it, and it would have been a devoted friends.h.i.+p, but he did not want it. He told--what I never told--how I got one of his works presented at Weimar, where _Samson_ had just been given. What he did not tell was the icy reception he gave me when I brought the news and when I expected an entirely different sort of a reception. From that day on I never intervened again, and I was content to rejoice in his success without expecting any reciprocity on his part, which I knew to be impossible after a confession he made to me one day. My friends and companions in arms were Bizet, Guiraud and Delibes; Ma.s.senet was a rival. His high opinion of me, therefore, was the more valuable when he did me the honor of recommending his pupils to study my works. I have brought up this question only to make clear that when I proclaim his great musical importance, I am guided solely by my artistic conscience and that my sincerity cannot be suspected. One word more. Ma.s.senet had many imitators; he never imitated anyone.

CHAPTER XX