Camille Saint Saens - Musical Memories
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Camille Saint Saens >> Musical Memories
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12 [Illustration: The Master, Camille Saint-Saens]
MUSICAL MEMORIES
BY
CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS
TRANSLATED BY
EDWIN GILE RICH
Translator of Lafond's "_Ma Mitrailleuse_," etc.
[Illustration: (A publisher's seal, inscribed "SCIRE QVOD SCIENDVM".)]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
1919,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD
II THE OLD CONSERVATOIRE
III VICTOR HUGO
IV THE HISTORY OF AN OPERA-COMIQUE
V LOUIS GALLET
VI HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY IN OPERA
VII ART FOR ART'S SAKE
VIII POPULAR SCIENCE AND ART
IX ANARCHY IN MUSIC
X THE ORGAN
XI JOSEPH HAYDN AND THE "SEVEN WORDS"
XII THE LISZT CENTENARY AT HEIDELBERG (1912)
XIII BERLIOZ'S REQUIEM
XIV PAULINE VIARDOT
XV ORPHEE
XVI DELSARTE
XVII SEGHERS
XVIII ROSSINI
XIX JULES MASSENET
XX MEYERBEER
XXI JACQUES OFFENBACH
XXII THEIR MAJESTIES
XXIII MUSICAL PAINTERS
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Master, Camille Saint-Saens
The Paris Opera
The First Performance of _Dejanire_
M. Saint-Saens in his Later Years
The Madeleine where M. Saint-Saens played the organ for twenty years
Hector Berlioz
Mme. Pauline Viardot
Mme. Patti
M. Jules Massenet
Meyerbeer, Composer of _Les Huguenots_
Jacques Offenbach
Ingres, the painter famous for his violin
MUSICAL MEMORIES
MUSICAL MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD
In bygone days I was often told that I had two mothers, and, as a matter
of fact, I did have two--the mother who gave me life and my maternal
great-aunt, Charlotte Masson. The latter came from an old family of
lawyers named Gayard and this relationship makes me a descendant of
General Delcambre, one of the heroes of the retreat from Russia. His
granddaughter married Count Durrieu of the _Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres_. My great-aunt was born in the provinces in 1781, but
she was adopted by a childless aunt and uncle who made their home in
Paris. He was a wealthy lawyer and they lived magnificently.
My great-aunt was a precocious child--she walked at nine months--and
she became a woman of keen intellect and brilliant attainments. She
remembered perfectly the customs of the _Ancien Regime_, and she enjoyed
telling about them, as well as about the Revolution, the Reign of
Terror, and the times that followed. Her family was ruined by the
Revolution and the slight, frail, young girl undertook to earn her
living by giving lessons in French, on the pianoforte--the instrument
was a novelty then--in singing, painting, embroidery, in fact in
everything she knew and in much that she did not. If she did not know,
she learned then and there so that she could teach. Afterwards, she
married one of her cousins. As she had no children of her own, she
brought one of her nieces from Champagne and adopted her. This niece was
my mother, Clemence Collin. The Massons were about to retire from
business with a comfortable fortune, when they lost practically
everything within two weeks, in a panic, saving just enough to live
decently. Shortly after this my mother married my father, a minor
official in the Department of the Interior. My great-uncle died of a
broken heart some months before my birth on October 9, 1835. My father
died of consumption on the thirty-first of the following December, just
a year to a day after his marriage.
Thus the two women were both left widows, poorly provided for, weighed
down by sad memories, and with the care of a delicate child. In fact I
was so delicate that the doctors held out little hope of my living, and
on their advice I was left in the country with my nurse until I was two
years old.
While my aunt had had a remarkable education, my mother had not been so
widely taught. But she made up for any lack by the display of an
imagination and an eager power of assimilation which bordered on the
miraculous. She often told me about an uncle who was very fond of
her--he had been ruined in the cause of Philippe Egalite. This uncle was
an artist, but he was, nevertheless, passionately fond of music. He had
even built with his own hands a concert organ on which he used to play.
My mother used to sit between his knees and, while he amused himself by
running his fingers through her splendid black hair, he would talk to
her about art, music, painting--beauty in every form. So she got it into
her head that if she ever had sons of her own, the first should be a
musician, the second a painter, and the third a sculptor. As a result,
when I came home from the nurse, she was not greatly surprised that I
began to listen to every noise and to every sound; that I made the doors
creak, and would plant myself in front of the clocks to hear them
strike. My special delight was the music of the tea-kettle--a large one
which was hung before the fire in the drawing-room every morning. Seated
nearby on a small stool, I used to wait with a lively curiosity for the
first murmurs of its gentle and variegated _crescendo_, and the
appearance of a microscopic oboe which gradually increased its song
until it was silenced by the kettle boiling. Berlioz must have heard
that oboe as well as I, for I rediscovered it in the "Ride to Hell" in
his _La Damnation de Faust_.
At the same time I was learning to read. When I was two-years-and-a-half
old, they placed me in front of a small piano which had not been opened
for several years. Instead of drumming at random as most children of
that age would have done, I struck the notes one after another, going on
only when the sound of the previous note had died away. My great-aunt
taught me the names of the notes and got a tuner to put the piano in
order. While the tuning was going on, I was playing in the next room,
and they were utterly astonished when I named the notes as they were
sounded. I was not told all these details--I remember them perfectly.
I was taught by Le Carpentier's method and I finished it in a month.
They couldn't let a little monkey like that work away at the piano, and
I cried like a lost soul when they closed the instrument. Then they left
it open and put a small stool in front of it. From time to time I would
leave my playthings and climb up to drum out whatever came into my head.
Gradually, my great-aunt, who fortunately had an excellent foundation in
music, taught me how to hold my hands properly so that I did not acquire
the gross faults which are so difficult to correct later on. But they
did not know what sort of music to give me. That written especially for
children is, as a rule, entirely melody and the part for the left hand
is uninteresting. I refused to learn it. "The bass doesn't sing," I
said, in disgust.
Then they searched the old masters, in Haydn and Mozart, for things
sufficiently easy for me to handle. At five I was playing small sonatas
correctly, with good interpretation and excellent precision. But I
consented to play them only before listeners capable of appreciating
them. I have read in a biographical sketch that I was threatened with
whippings to make me play. That is absolutely false; but it was
necessary to tell me that there was a lady in the audience who was an
excellent musician and had fastidious tastes. I would not play for those
who did not know.
As for the threat of whippings, that must be relegated to the realm of
legends with the one that Garcia punished his daughters to make them
learn to sing. Madame Viardot expressly told me that neither she nor her
sister was abused by their father and that they learned music without
realizing it, just as they learned to talk.
But in spite of my surprising progress my teacher did not foresee what
my future was to be. "When he is fifteen," she said, "if he can write a
dance, I shall be satisfied." It was just at this time, however, that I
began to write music. I wrote waltzes and galops--the galop was
fashionable at that period; it ran to rather ordinary musical motives
and mine were no exception to the rule. Liszt had to show by his _Galop
Chromatique_ the distinction that genius can give to the most
commonplace themes. My waltzes were better. As has always been the case
with me, I was already composing the music directly on paper without
working it out on the piano. The waltzes were too difficult for my
hands, so a friend of the family, a sister of the singer Geraldy, was
kind enough to play them for me.
I have looked over these little compositions lately. They are
insignificant, but it is impossible to find a technical error in them.
Such precision was remarkable for a child who had no idea of the science
of harmony. About that time some one had the notion that I should hear
an orchestra. So they took me to a symphony concert and my mother held
me in her arms near the door. Until then I had only heard single violins
and their tone had not pleased me. But the impression of the orchestra
was entirely different and I listened with delight to a passage played
by a quartet, when, suddenly, came a blast from the brass
instruments--the trumpets, trombones and cymbals. I broke into loud
cries, "Make them stop. They prevent my hearing the music." They had to
take me out.
When I was seven, I passed out of my great-aunt's hands into Stamaty's.
He was surprised at the way my education in music had been directed and
he expressed this in a small work in which he discussed the necessity of
making a correct start. In my case, he said, there was nothing to do but
to perfect.
Stamaty was Kalkbrenner's best pupil and the propagator of the method he
had invented. This method was based on the _guide main_, so I was put to
work on it. The preface to Kalkbrenner's method, in which he relates the
beginnings of his invention, is exceedingly interesting. This invention
consisted of a rod placed in front of the keyboard. The forearm rested
on this rod in such a way that all muscular action save that of the hand
was suppressed. This system is excellent for teaching the young pianist
how to play pieces written for the harpsichord or the first pianofortes
where the keys responded to slight pressure; but it is inadequate for
modern works and instruments. It is the way one ought to begin, for it
develops firmness of the fingers and suppleness of the wrist, and, by
easy stages, adds the weight of the forearm and of the whole arm. But in
our day it has become the practice to begin at the end. We learn the
elements of the fugue from Sebastian Bach's _Wohltemperirte Klavier_,
the piano from the works of Schumann and Liszt, and harmony and
instrumentation from Richard Wagner. All too often we waste our efforts,
just as singers who learn roles and rush on the stage before they know
how to sing ruin their voices in a short time.
Firmness of the fingers is not the only thing that one learns from
Kalkbrenner's method, for there is also a refinement of the quality of
the sound made by the fingers alone, a valuable resource which is
unusual in our day.
Unfortunately, this school invented as well continuous _legato_, which
is both false and monotonous; the abuse of nuances, and a mania for
continual _expressio_ used with no discrimination. All this was opposed
to my natural feelings, and I was unable to conform to it. They
reproached me by saying that I would never get a really fine effect--to
which I was entirely indifferent.
When I was ten, my teacher decided that I was sufficiently prepared to
give a concert in the Salle Pleyel, so I played there, accompanied by an
Italian orchestra, with Tilmant as the conductor. I gave Beethoven's
_Concerto in C minor_ and one of Mozart's concertos in B flat. There was
some question of my playing at the Societe des Concerts du
Conservatoire, and there was even a rehearsal. But Seghers, who
afterwards founded the Societe St. Cecile, was a power in the affairs of
the orchestra. He detested Stamaty and told him that the Societe was not
organized to play children's accompaniments. My mother felt hurt and
wanted to hear nothing more of it.
After my first concert, which was a brilliant success, my teacher
wanted me to give others, but my mother did not wish me to have a career
as an infant prodigy. She had higher ambitions and was unwilling for me
to continue in concert work for fear of injuring my health. The result
was that a coolness sprang up between my teacher and me which ended our
relations.
At that time my mother made a remark which was worthy of Cornelia. One
day some one remonstrated with her for letting me play Beethoven's
sonatas. "What music will he play when he is twenty?" she was asked. "He
will play his own," was her reply.
* * * * *
The greatest benefit I got from my experience with Stamaty was my
acquaintance with Maleden, whom he gave me as my teacher in composition.
Maleden was born in Limoges, as his accent always showed. He was thin
and long-haired, a kind and timid soul, but an incomparable teacher. He
had gone to Germany in his youth to study with a certain Gottfried
Weber, the inventor of a system which Maleden brought back with him and
perfected. He made it a wonderful tool with which to get to the depths
of music--a light for the darkest corners. In this system the chords are
not considered in and for themselves--as fifths, sixths, sevenths--but
in relation to the pitch of the scale on which they appear. The chords
acquire different characteristics according to the place they occupy,
and, as a result, certain things are explained which are, otherwise,
inexplicable. This method is taught in the Ecole Niedermeuer, but I
don't know that it is taught elsewhere.
Maleden was extremely anxious to become a professor at the
Conservatoire. As the result of powerful influence, Auber was about to
sign Maleden's appointment, when, in his scrupulous honesty, he thought
he ought to write and warn him that his method differed entirely from
that taught in the institution. Auber was frightened and Maleden was not
admitted.
Our lessons were often very stormy. From time to time certain questions
came up on which I could not agree with him. He would then take me
quietly by the ear, bend my head and hold my ear to the table for a
minute or two. Then, he would ask whether I had changed my mind. As I
had not, he would think it over and very often he would confess that I
was right.
"Your childhood," Gounod once told me, "wasn't musical." He was wrong,
for he did not know the many tokens of my childhood. Many of my attempts
are unfinished--to say nothing of those I destroyed--but among them are
songs, choruses, cantatas, and overtures, none of which will ever see
the light. Oblivion will enshroud these gropings after effect, for they
are of no interest to the public. Among these scribblings I have found
some notes written in pencil when I was four. The date on them leaves no
doubt about the time of their production.
CHAPTER II
THE OLD CONSERVATOIRE
I cannot let the old Conservatoire in the Rue Bergere go without paying
it a last farewell, for I loved it deeply as we all love the things of
our youth. I loved its antiquity, the utter absence of any modern note,
and its atmosphere of other days. I loved that absurd court with the
wailing notes of sopranos and tenors, the rattling of pianos, the blasts
of trumpets and trombones, the arpeggios of clarinets, all uniting to
form that ultra-polyphone which some of our composers have tried to
attain--but without success. Above all I loved the memories of my
education in music which I obtained in that ridiculous and venerable
palace, long since too small for the pupils who thronged there from all
parts of the world.
I was fourteen when Stamaty, my piano teacher, introduced me to
Benoist, the teacher of the organ, an excellent and charming man,
familiarly known as "Father Benoist." They put me in front of the
keyboard, but I was badly frightened, and the sounds I made were so
extraordinary that all the pupils shouted with laughter. I was received
at the Conservatoire as an "auditor."
So there I was only admitted to the honor of listening to others. I was
extremely painstaking, however, and I never lost a note or one of the
teacher's words. I worked and thought at home, studying hard on
Sebastian Bach's _Wohltemperirte Klavier_. All of the pupils, however,
were not so industrious. One day, when they had all failed and Benoist,
as a result, had nothing to do, he put me at the organ. This time no one
laughed and I at once became a regular pupil. At the end of the year I
won the second prize. I would have had the first except for my youth and
the inconvenience of having me leave a class where I needed to stay
longer.
That same year Madeleine Brohan won the first prize in comedy. She
competed with a selection from _Misanthrope_, and Mlle. Jouassin gave
the other part of the dialogue. Mlle. Jouassin's technique was the
better, but Madeleine Brohan was so wonderful in beauty and voice that
she carried off the prize. The award made a great uproar. To-day, in
such a case, the prize would be divided. Mlle. Jouassin won her prize
the following year. After leaving school, she accepted and held for a
long time an important place at the Comedie-Francaise.
Benoist was a very ordinary organist, but an admirable teacher. A
veritable galaxy of talent came from his class. He had little to say,
but as his taste was refined and his judgment sure, nothing he said
lacked weight or authority. He collaborated in several ballets for the
Opera and that gave him a good deal of work to do. It sounds incredible,
but he used to bring his "work" to class and scribble away on his
orchestration while his pupils played the organ. This did not prevent
his listening and looking after them. He would leave his work and make
appropriate comments as though he had no other thought.
In addition to his ballets, Benoist did other little odd jobs for the
Opera. As a result one day, without thinking, he gave me the key to a
deep secret. In his famous _Traite d'Instrumentation_ Berlioz spoke of
his admiration for a passage in Sacchini's _Oedipus a Colone_. Two
clarinets are heard in descending thirds of real charm just before the
words, "_Je connus la charmante Eriphyle._" Berlioz was enthusiastic and
wrote:
"We might believe that we really see Eriphyle chastely kiss his eyes. It
is admirable. And yet," he adds, "there is no trace of this effect in
Sacchini's score."
Now Sacchini, for some reason or other which I do not know, did not use
clarinets once in the whole score. Benoist was commissioned to add them
when the work was revived, as he told me as we were chatting one day.
Berlioz did not know this, and Benoist, who had not read Berlioz's
_Traite_, knew nothing of the romantic musician's enthusiastic
admiration of his work. These happily turned thirds, although they
weren't Sacchini's, were, none the less, an excellent innovation.
Benoist was less happy when he was asked to put some life into
Bellini's _Romeo_ by using earsplitting outbursts of drums, cymbals, and
brass. During the same noise-loving period Costa, in London, gave
Mozart's _Don Juan_ the same treatment. He let loose throughout the
opera the trombones which the author intentionally reserved for the end.
Benoist ought to have refused to do such a barbarous piece of work.
However, it had no effect in preventing the failure of a worthless
piece, staged at great expense by the management which had rejected Les
Troyens.
I was fifteen when I entered Halevy's class. I had already completed the
study of harmony, counterpoint and fugue under Maleden's direction. As I
have said, his method was that taught at the Ecole Niedermeuer. Faure,
Messager, Perilhou, and Gigot were trained there and they taught this
method in turn. My class-work consisted in making attempts at vocal and
instrumental music and orchestration. My _Reverie_, _La Feuille de
Peuplier_ and many other things first appeared there. They have been
entirely forgotten, and rightly, for my work was very uneven.
At the end of his career Halevy was constantly writing opera and
opera-comique which added nothing to his fame and which disappeared
never to be revived after a respectable number of performances. He was
entirely absorbed in his work and, as a result, he neglected his classes
a good deal. He came only when he had time. The pupils, however, came
just the same and gave each other instruction which was far less
indulgent than the master's, for his greatest fault was an overweening
good nature. Even when he was at class he couldn't protect himself from
self-seekers. Singers of all sorts, male and female, came for a hearing.
One day it was Marie Cabel, still youthful and dazzling both in voice
and beauty. Other days impossible tenors wasted his time. When the
master sent word that he wasn't coming--this happened often--I used to
go to the library, and there, as a matter of fact, I completed my
education. The amount of music, ancient and modern, I devoured is beyond
belief.
But it wasn't enough just to read music--I needed to hear it. Of course
there was the Societe des Concerts, but it was a Paradise, guarded by an
angel with a flaming sword, in the form of a porter named Lescot. It was
his duty to prevent the profane defiling the sanctuary. Lescot was fond
of me and appreciated my keen desire to hear the orchestra. As a result
he made his rounds as slowly as possible in order to put me out only as
a last resort. Fortunately for me, Marcelin de Fresne gave me a place in
his box, which I was permitted to occupy for several years.
I used to read and study the symphonies before I heard them and I saw
grave defects in the Societe's vaunted execution. No one would stand
them now, but then they passed unnoticed. I was naive and lacked
discretion, and so I often pointed out these defects. It can be easily
imagined what vials of wrath were poured on me.
As far as the public was concerned, the great success of these concerts
was due to the incomparable charm of the depth of tone, which was
attributed to the hall. The members of the Societe believed this, too,
and they would let no other orchestra be heard there. This state of
affairs lasted until Anton Rubinstein got permission from the Minister
of Fine Arts to give a concert there, accompanied by the Colonne
orchestra. The Societe fretted and fumed at this and threatened to give
up its series of concerts. But the Societe was overruled and the concert
was given. To the general surprise it was seen that another orchestra in
the same hall produced an entirely different effect. The depth of tone
which had been appreciated so highly, it was found, was due to the
famous Societe itself, to the character of the instruments and the
execution.
Nevertheless, the hall is excellent, although it is no longer adequate
for the presentation of modern compositions. But it is a marvellous
place for the numerous concerts given by virtuosi, both singers and
instrumentalists, accompanied by an orchestra, and for chamber music.
Finally, the hall where France was introduced to the masterpieces of
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whose influence has been so profound, is a
historic place.
Numerous improvements in the administration of the Conservatoire have
been introduced during the last few years. On the other hand, old and
honored customs have disappeared and we can but regret their loss. From
Auber's time on there was a _pension_ connected with the Conservatoire.
Here the young singers who came from the provinces at eighteen found
board and lodging, a regular life, and a protection from the temptations
of a large city, so dangerous to fresh young voices. Bouhy, Lassalle,
Capoul, Gailhard and many others who have made the French stage famous
came from this _pension_.
We also used to have dramatic recitals which were excellent both for the
performers and the audiences as they gave works which were not in the
usual repertoire. In these recitals they gave Mehul's _Joseph_, which
had disappeared from the stage for a long time. The beautiful choruses
sung by the fresh voices of the pupils made such a success and the whole
work was so enthusiastically applauded that it was revived at the
Opera-Comique and won back a success which it has never lost. We also
heard there Gluck's _Orphee_ long before that masterpiece was revived at
the Theatre-Lyrique. Then there was Mehul's _Irato_, a curious and
charming work which the Opera took up afterwards. And there, too, they
gave the last act of Rossini's _Otello_. The tempest in that act gave me
the idea of the one which rumbles through the second act of _Samson_.
When the hall was reconstructed, the stage was destroyed so that such
performances are impossible. But to make up for this, they installed a
concert organ, a necessary adjunct for musical performances.
Finally, in Auber's day and even in that of Ambroise Thomas, the
director was master. No one had dreamed of creating a committee, which,
under cover of the director's responsibility, would strangely diminish
his authority. The only benefit from the new system has been the end of
the incessant war which the musical critics waged on the director. But
that did no harm, either to the director or to the school, for the
latter kept on growing to such an extent that it ought to have been
enlarged long ago. The committee plan has won and the incident is
closed. One may only hope that steps will be taken to make possible an
increase in the number of pupils since so many candidates apply each
year and so few are chosen.
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