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 Théophile 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 Théâtre-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 rôle of Fides in Le Prophète.

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.

We know, or, rather we used to know—for we are beginning to forget that there is an admirable edition of Gluck’s principal works. This edition was due to the interest of an unusual woman, Mlle. Fanny Pelletan, who devoted a part of her fortune to this real monument and to fulfill a wish Berlioz expressed in one of his works. Mlle. Pelletan was an unusually intelligent woman and an accomplished musician, but she needed some one to help her in this large and formidable task. She was unassuming and distrusted her own powers, so that she secured as a collaborator a German musician, named Damcke, who had lived in Paris a long time and who was highly esteemed. He gave her the moral support she needed and some bad advice as well, which she felt obliged to follow. This collaboration accounts for the change of the contralto parts to counter-tenors. It also accounts for the fact that in every instance the parts for the clarinets are indicated in C, in this way attributing to the author a formal intention he never had. Gluck wrote the parts for the clarinets without bothering whether the player—to whom he left a freedom of choice and the work of transposition—would use his instrument in C, B, or A. This method was not peculiar to Gluck. Other composers used it as well, and traces of it are found even in Auber’s works.

After Damcke’s death Mlle. Pelletan got me to help her in this work. I wanted to change the method, but the edition would have lost its unity and she would not consent. It was time that Damcke’s collaboration ended. He belonged to the tribe of German professors who have since become legion. Due to their baneful influence, in a short time, when the old editions have disappeared, the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, even of Chopin, will be all but unrecognizable. The works of Sebastian Bach and Handel will be the only ones in existence in their pristine purity of form, thanks to the admirable editions of the Bach und Händel Gesselschaft. When Mlle. Pelletan brought me into the work, the two Iphigenie had been published; Alceste was about to be, and Armide was ready. In Armide Damcke had been entirely carried away by his zeal for “improvements”—a zeal that can do so much harm. It was time this was stopped. Not only had he corrected imaginary faults here and there, but he had also inserted things of his own invention. He had even gone so far as to re-orchestrate the ballet music, in the naïve belief that he was bringing out the author’s real meaning better than he had done himself. It took an enormous amount of time to undo this mischief, for I distrusted somewhat my own lights and Mlle. Pelletan had too high an opinion of Damcke’s work and did not dare to override his judgment.

That excellent woman did not live to see the end of her work. She began the preparation of Orphée, but she died almost at once. So I was left to finish the score alone without that valuable experience and masterly insight by which she solved the most difficult problems. And there were real enigmas to be solved at every step. The old engraved scores of Gluck’s works reproduced his manuscripts faithfully enough, but they bore evidence of carelessness and amazing inaccuracy. They are mere sketches instead of complete scores. Many details are vague and vagueness is not permissible in a serious edition. It follows that the different editions of Gluck’s works published in the Nineteenth Century, however sumptuous or careful they may be, are worthless. The Pelletan edition alone can be consulted with confidence, because we were the only ones to have all extant and authentic documents in the library at the Opéra to set us right. We had scores copied for actual performances on the stage and portions of orchestral parts of incalculable value. In addition, we had no aim or preoccupation in elaborating this material other than to reconstitute as closely as possible the thought of the author.

Switzerland is a country where artistic productions are not unusual. Every year we have reports of some grandiose performance in which the people take part themselves. They come from every direction to help, even from a considerable distance, thanks to the many means of communication in that delightful land. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that a theatre has been built in the pretty town of Mézières, near Lusanne, for the performance of the works of a young poet, named Morax. These works are dramas with choruses, and the surrounding country furnishes the singers. The work given in 1911 was Allenor—the music by Gustave Doret—and it was a great success.

Gustave Doret is a real artist and he never for a moment thought of keeping the Théâtre du Jorat for his own exclusive use. He dreamt of giving Gluck’s works in their original form, for they are always altered and changed according to the fancies or incompetency of the performers or directors. They formed a large and influential committee and a substantial guarantee fund was subscribed. Then they gave a brilliant banquet at which the Princess of Brancovan was present. And Paderewski, one of the most enthusiastic promotors of the enterprise, delivered an eloquent address. No one should be surprised at either his zeal or his eloquence. Paderewski is not only a pianist; he is a man of great intellect as well,—a great artist who permits himself the luxury of playing the piano marvellously.

As he knew that I had spent several years in studying Gluck’s works under the microscope, so to speak, Gustave Doret did me the honor to ask my advice. His choice for the opening work was Orphée, which requires only three principals, Orpheus, Eurydice, and Love. It has become the custom to add a fourth, a Happy Spirit, but this spirit is one of Carvalho’s inventions and has no reason for existence.

There are, however, two Orphée. The first is Orfeo which was written in Italian, on Calzabigi’s text, and was first presented at Venice in 1761. The rôle of Orpheus in this score was written for a contralto and was designed for the eunuch Quadagni. The Venetian engravers of that day were either incompetent or, perhaps, there were none, for the scores of Gluck’s Alceste in Italian and Haydn’s Seasons were printed from type. However that may be the score of Orfeo was engraved in Paris. The composer Philidor corrected the proofs. He little thought that Orfeo would ever get so far as Paris, so he appropriated the romanza in the first act and introduced it with but slight modifications into his opéra-comique Le Sorcier. Later on Marie Antoinette called Gluck to Paris and thus afforded him the opportunity for the complete development of his genius. After he had written Iphigenie en Aulide, performed in 1774, especially for the Opéra, he had the idea of adapting Orfeo for the French stage. To tell the truth he must have thought of it before, for Orphée appeared at the Opéra only three months after Iphigenie and it had been entirely rewritten in collaboration with Moline. The contralto part had been changed to tenor and so the principal rôle was given to Legros.

While it may be true that the author improved this work in the French version, it is not true in every case. There is some question whether the overture existed in the Italian score. It is generally believed that it did, but there are old copies of this version in existence and they begin the opera with the funeral chorus and show no overture at all. This overture, although the Mercure de France treats it as a “beautiful symphonic piece which serves as a good introduction to the work,” in reality does not resemble the style of the rest at all. It in no way prepares for that admirable chorus at the beginning—unequaled of its kind—which Orpheus’s broken hearted cry of “Eurydice! Eurydice!” makes so pathetic.

The first act of Orfeo ends in a tumultuous effect of the stringed instruments which was evidently intended to indicate a change of scene and the appearance of the stage settings of the infernal regions. This passage does not appear in the French Orphée and it is lacking in the engraved score, where it is replaced by a bravura aria of doubtful taste, accompanied by a single quartet. Whether the stage managers wanted an entr’acte or the tenor, Legros, demanded an effective aria, or for both these reasons, a reading of the manuscript indicates how absolutely the author’s meaning was changed. There is no doubt that except for some such reason he would have changed this aria and put it in harmony with the rest of the work.

For a long time this aria was attributed to Bertoni, the composer, and Gluck was accused of plagiarizing it. As a matter of fact, and to the contrary, this aria came from an older Italian opera of Gluck’s. Bertoni not only imitated it in one of his scores, but he had the hardihood to write an Orfeo on the text already followed by Gluck in which he plagiarized the work of his illustrious predecessor in a scandalous fashion.

This same aria, changed with real genius and performed with prodigious eclat by Madame Viardot, and re-orchestrated by myself, was one of the strongest reasons for the success of the famous performances at the Théâtre-Lyrique. But it is well understood that it could not properly find a place in an edition where the sole end was artistic sincerity and purity of the text.

From this point of view it would seem that the best manner of giving Orphée would be to conform to the author’s definitive version. A tenor would have to take the part of Orpheus, since we no longer have male contraltos, and to keep to this kind of a voice in Orphée we would have to have recourse to what is called, in theatrical terms, a travesti. There are obstacles to this, however. The pitch has changed since the Eighteenth Century; it has gone up and it is now impossible, or nearly so, to sing the rôle written for Legros. The contraltos of the Italian chorus have become the counter-tenors, who, for the same reason, find themselves struggling with too sharp notes.

In the Seventeenth Century the French pitch was even more flat, and it is a great pity, for it is almost impossible to perform our old music, on account of the insuperable obstacles. This is not the case in Germany, however, or in Italy, and that is the reason why the works of Sebastian Bach and Mozart can be sung. The same is true of Gluck’s Italian works.

This was the reason that Doret gave the part of Orpheus to a contralto, just as is done at the Opéra-Comique. The poetic character of the part of Orpheus lends itself excellently to such a feminine interpretation. But in resuming the key of the Italian score, it is necessary to go back, at least to a considerable degree, to the instrumentation. By a curious anomaly the beautiful recitative, accompanied by the murmur of brooks and the songs of the birds, is in C major in both scores. The author could not have changed them. On the contrary he modified his instrumentation greatly, simplified and perfected it.

We know that the authors, in utter defiance of mythology, wanted a happy ending and so brought Eurydice back to life a second time. Love accomplished this miracle and the work ended with the song “Love Triumphs,” which is exceedingly joyful and in harmony with the situation. They did not want this ending, which was in Orfeo and which Gluck retained in Orphée, at the old Théâtre-Lyrique and the Opéra-Comique, and they replaced it with a chorus by Echo and Narcissus. This chorus is charming, but that does not excuse it. Joy was what the author wanted and this does not give joy at all. Gluck’s finale is regarded as not sufficiently distinguished, but this is wrong. The real finale was sung at Mézières and it was found that it was not at all common, but that its frank gaiety was in the best of taste.

Gluck had no scruples about grinding several grists from the same sack and drawing from his old works to help out his new ones. So the parasitical aria attributed to Bertoni was written by Gluck in the first place in 1764 for a soprano. He wove this into his opera Aristo in 1769. This is also true of the trio, Tendre Amour, which precedes the finale in the last act. A serious-minded analyst might be tempted to admire the profound psychology of the author in mingling doleful accents with expressions of joy, but he would have his labor for his pains. The trio was taken from the opera Elena e Paride, where Gluck expressed strongly wrought up emotions. Doret did not keep these two passages and one can’t blame him. On the other hand, he retained, by making it an entr’acte, the Ballet des Furies. This was taken from a ballet, Don Giovanni o il convitato de pietra, which was performed at Vienna in 1761. This passage was used as the accompaniment to Don Juan’s descent into Hell, surrounded by his band of demons.

Many of Gluck’s compatriots came to Mézières to see Orphée and they were loyal enough to recognize the superiority of the performance. Some even had the courage to say, “We murder Gluck in Germany.”

I discovered that fact a long time ago. In my youth I was indignant when I saw Paris, where Gluck wrote his finest works, quite neglecting them, whereas Germany continued to promote them. In those days I was frequently called to the other side of the Rhine to play in concerts, and I watched for a chance to see one of these masterpieces which had been forgotten in France. So it was with the liveliest joy that one day I entered one of the leading German theaters where they were giving Armide. What a hollow mockery it was!

Madame Malten was Armide, and she was everything that could be wished in voice, talent, style, beauty and charm. She spoke French without an accent and was as remarkable as an actress as a singer, so she would without doubt have had great success at the Opéra in Paris. She was Armide herself, an irresistible enchantress.

But the rest! Renaud was a raw boy, and his shaven chin brought out in sharp relief enormous black moustaches with long waxed ends. He had a voice, to be sure, but no style, and no understanding of the work he was trying to interpret.

Hidradot is an old sorcerer tempered in the fires of Hell. He enters, saying:

“I see hard by Death that threatens me,

And already old age, that has chilled my blood,

Is on me, bowing me beneath a crushing burden.”

Imagine my surprise at seeing come on the stage a magnificent specimen of manhood, with a curled black beard, in all the glory of his youth and vigor superbly arrayed in a red cloak trimmed with gold!

The stage setting was also extraordinary. In the second act Renaud went to sleep at the back of the stage, forcing Armide to speak the whole of the beautiful scene which follows, one of the most important in the part, at a distance from the footlights and with her back to the audience.

As for the orchestra, sometimes it followed Gluck’s text and sometimes it borrowed bits of orchestration which Meyerbeer had written for the Opéra at Berlin. This orchestration is interesting, and I know it well for I have had it in hand. It is only fair to say that Gluck, from some inexplicable caprice, did not give the same care to the instrumentation of Armide that he did to Orphée, Alcesti, and the Iphigenies. The trombones do not appear at all and the drums and flutes only at rare intervals. Re-orchestration is not absolutely necessary and Meyerbeer’s is no more reprehensible than those with which Mozart enriched Handel’s Messe and La Fête d’Alexandre. What was inadmissible was not deciding frankly for one version or the other. It was like a badly patched coat which shows the old cloth in one place and the new in another.

Afterwards I saw Armide treated in another way.

Did you ever happen to cherish the memory of a delightful and picturesque city, where everything made a harmonious whole, where the beautiful walks were arched over by old trees—and later come back to it to find it embellished, the trees cut down, the walks replaced by enormous buildings which dwarfed into insignificance the ancient marvels which gave the city its charm?

This was the case with me when I saw Armide again in a city which I shall not name. The opera had been judged superannuated and had been “improved.” A young composer had written a new score in which he inserted here and there such bits of Gluck as he thought worthy of being preserved. A costly and magnificently imbecile luxuriousness set off the whole piece. I may be pardoned the cruel adjective when I say that in the scene of Hate, so deeply inspired, and which takes place in a sort of cave, they relegated the chorus to the wings to make a place for dragons, fantastic birds beating their wings, and other deviltries. This, of course, deprived the chorus of all its power and distinction.

But the best was at the end of the second act. The forest with its trees, grass and rocks entirely disappeared in the flies taking Renaud and Armide with it and the spectator was left, for some unknown reason, looking at a background surrounded by mountains. Then, by a marvel of mechanism, there appeared to the sound of ultramodern music, Renaud sleeping on a bed of state, with Armide standing at the foot and stretching forth her hand with a gesture of authority, declaiming in a solemn tone,

“Rinaldo, I love you!”

and the curtain fell to the applause of the audience.

We owe much to Germany in music, for it has produced many great musicians. It can set off against our trinity of Corneille, Racine, and Molière, the no less glorious Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. But Germany seems to have lost all respect for the meaning of its own music and for its own glories. Instead of watching over the purity of the text of its masterpieces, it alters them at its pleasure and makes them all but unrecognizable. We abuse nuances but they were rare in earlier days. An orchestra conductor who performs symphonies by Haydn and Mozart, even by Beethoven, has the right to make additions. But it is intolerable that the scores should be printed with these nuances and bowings which are in no way due to the author and which are imposed by the editor. Nevertheless, that is what happens, and it is impossible to tell where the authentic text ends and the interpolation begins. In addition, the interpolation may be the exact contrary of what the author intended.

This evil is at its worst in piano music. Our famous teachers, like Marmontel and Le Couppey, have published editions of the classics which are full of their own directions. But the player is forewarned; it is the Marmontel or Le Couppey edition and makes no pretence of authenticity. In Germany, however, there are supposedly authentic editions, based on the originals, but which superimpose their own pernicious inventions on the author’s text.

The touch of the piano used to be different from what it is to-day. The directions in Mozart’s and Beethoven’s works show that they used the execution of stringed instruments as their model. The touch was lighter and the fingers were raised so that the notes were separated slightly, and not run together except when indicated. The supposition is that this must have led to a dryness of tone. I remember to have heard in my childhood some old people whose playing was singularly hopping. Then, there came a reaction, and with it a passion for slurring the notes. When I was Stamaty’s pupil, it was considered most difficult to “tie” the notes; that required, however, only dexterity and suppleness. “When she learns to ‘tie,’ she will know how to play,” said the mother of a young pianist. Nevertheless, the trick of perpetual legato becomes exceedingly monotonous and takes away all character from the pianoforte classics. But it is insisted on everywhere in the modern German editions. Throughout there are connections seemingly interminable in length, and indications of legato, sempre legato, which the author not only did not indicate, but in places where it is easy to see that he intended the exact opposite.

If this is the case, what shall be said of marking the fingering on all the notes—which often makes good playing impossible. Liszt taught hundreds of pupils according to the best principles, yet such erroneous principles have prevailed!

Disciples of the ivory keys are numerous in our day. Everybody wants to have a piano, and everybody plays it or thinks he does, which is not always the same thing, and few really understand what the term “to play the piano,” so currently used, means.

The harpsichord reigned supreme before the appearance of the piano—an instrument which is beloved by some and execrated by others. To his utter amazement Reyer was considered an enemy of the pianoforte. The harpsichord has been revived of late so that it is needless to describe it. It lacks strength, and that was the reason it was dethroned in a period when strength was everything. On the other hand, it has distinction and elegance. As the player can not modify the intensity of the sound by a single pressure of the finger—in which it resembles the organ—like the organ, with its multiple keyboards and registers, the harpsichord has a wide variety of effects and affords the opportunity for several octaves to sound simultaneously. As a result, while music written for the harpsichord gains in strength and expression on the modern instrument, it often assumes a deceptive monotony for which the author is not responsible.

The players of the harpsichord were ignorant of muscular effects; there was nothing of the unchained lion about them. The delicate hands of a marquise lost none of their gracefulness as they skimmed over the keyboards, and the red or black keys emphasized their whiteness.

The introduction of the hammer in the place of the tiny nib permitted the modification of the quality of sound by differences in the pressure of the fingers, and also the production at will of such nuances as forte and piano without recourse to the different registers. This is the reason why the new instrument was first called the pianoforte. The word was long and cumbersome and was cut in half. When it became necessary to assault the note, they used the phrase “to hit the forte.” The papers which gave accounts of young Mozart’s concerts praised him for his ability to “hit.”

Nevertheless one did not hit hard. These keyboards with their limited keys responded so easily that a child’s fingers were sufficient. I first played on one of these instruments at the age of three. It was made by Zimmerman, whose son was Gounod’s father-in-law.

Later, the weight of the keys was increased to get a greater volume of sound. Then, when long-haired virtuosi, playing by main strength, produced peals of thunder, they really “toucha du piano.”

To return to Orphée and end as we began, I have to make a painful confession. If the works of Gluck in general and Orphée in particular have had a happy influence on our musical taste, a passage from this last work has been a noxious influence,—the famous chorus of the demons “Quel est l’audacieux—qui dans ces sombres lieux—ose porter ses pas?”

In the old days French opera was based on declamation and it was scrupulously respected even in the arias. There is a fine example of this excellent system in Lully’s famous aria from Medusa to prove what strength results from a close relation between the accent of the verse and the music. Gluck was one of the most fervent disciples of this system, but Orphée, as we know, was derived from Orfeo. The question was whether he could even think of suppressing this spectacular chorus with its amazing strength which was one of the principal reasons for the work’s success. Unfortunately the music of the chorus was moulded on the Italian text, and each verse ended with the accent on the antepenult, which occurs frequently in German and Italian, but never in French. And they sing:

Quel est l’audacieux

Qui dans ces sombres lieux

Ose porter ses pas

Et devant le trepas

Ne frémit pas?

As French is not strongly accented such faults are tolerated. Gluck’s theme impressed itself on the memory, so that he dealt a terrific blow to the purity of prosody. We gradually became so disinterested in this that by Auber’s time scarcely any attention was paid to it. Finally, Offenbach appeared. He was a German by birth and his musical ideas naturally rhymed with German in direct contradiction to the French words to which they applied. This constant bungling passed for originality. Sometimes it would have been necessary to change the division of a measure to get a correct melody, as in the song:

Un p’tit bonhomme

Pas plus haut qu’ça.

In such a case we might say that he did wrong for the mere pleasure of going astray. But popular taste was so corrupted that no one noticed it and everybody who wrote in the lighter vein fell into the same habits.

We owe a debt of gratitude to André Messager for breaking away from this manner and setting musical phraseology aright. His return to the old traditions was not the least of the attractions of his delightful Véronique.

But we are wandering far from Gluck and Orphée, although not so far as we might think. In art, as in everything, extremes meet, and there are all kinds of tastes.

Felix Duquesnal in one of his brilliant articles has written something about Delsarte, the singer, in connection with his controversy with Madame Carvalho. The cause of this controversy was the lessons she took from him. The name of Delsarte should never be forgotten, as I shall try to explain. Madame Carvalho did not refuse to pay Delsarte for her lessons, but she did not want to be called his pupil. Although she had attended the Conservatoire, she wanted to be known solely as a pupil of Duprez. As a matter of fact it was Duprez who knew how to make the “Little Miolan,” the delightful warbler, into the great singer with her important place on the French stage.

But this was accomplished at a price. Madame Carvalho told me about it herself. Her medium register was weak and Duprez undertook to substitute chest tones and develop clearness as much as possible. “When I began to work,” she said, “my mother was frightened. One would have thought that a calf was being killed in the house.”

Ordinarily such a method would produce a harsh, shaky voice and all freshness would be lost. But in Madame Carvalho’s case the opposite was true. The freshness and purity of her voice were beyond compare, while its smoothness and the harmony of the registers were perfect. It was a miracle the like of which we shall probably never see again.

But if Duprez made a wonderful voice at the risk of breaking it, I have always thought that Madame Carvalho owed her admirable diction, so distinguishing a mark of her talent, to Delsarte. Delsarte was a disastrous and deadly teacher of singing. No voice could stand up under his methods, not even his own, although he attributed its loss to teaching at the Conservatoire. But he studied deeply the arts of speaking and gesture, and he was a past master in them.

I once attended a course he gave in these subjects. He stated highly illuminating truths and gave the psychological reasons for accents and the physiological reasons for the gestures. He determined the use of gestures in some sort of scientific way. Mystic fancies were mixed up in these questions.

It was extremely interesting to see him dissect one of Fontaine’s fables or a passage from Racine, and to hear him explain why the accent should be on such a word or on such a syllable and not on another, to bring out the sense. Although this course was so instructive, few took it, for Delsarte was almost unknown to people. His influence scarcely extended outside a narrow circle of admirers, but the quality made up for the quantity. This was the circle of the old Debats, which was formerly devoted exclusively to Romanticism, but at this time to the classics—the set headed by Ingres in painting and Reber in music. Theirs was a secluded and ascetic world in silent revolt against the abominations of the century. One had to hear the tone of devotion in which the members of this circle spoke of the ancients to appreciate their attitude. Nothing in our day can give any idea of them. “They say,” one of the devotees once told me, “that the ancients learned Beauty through a sort of revelation, and Beauty has steadily degenerated ever since.”

Such false notions were, however, professed by the most sincere people who were deeply devoted to art. So this group, which had no influence on their own contemporaries, nevertheless, without knowing it or wishing to do so, played a useful rôle.

As we know, the public was divided into two camps. On one side were the partisans of Melody, opéra-comique, the Italians, and, with some effort, of grand opera. Opposed to them were the partisans of music in the grand style—Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Sebastian Bach, although he was little known and is less well known now.

No one gave a thought to our old French school, to the composers from Lulli to Gluck, who produced so many excellent works. Reber showed Delsarte the way and the latter, naturally an antiquarian, threw himself into this unexplored field with surprising vigor. Only Lulli’s name was known, while Campra, Mondonville and the others were entirely forgotten. Even Gluck himself had been forgotten. First editions of his orchestral scores, which it is impossible to find to-day, sold for a few francs at the second-hand book shops. Rameau was never mentioned.

Delsarte, handsome, eloquent, and fascinating, wielded an almost imperial sway over his little coterie of artists. Thanks to him the lamp of our old French school was kept dimly burning until the day when inherent justice permitted it to be revived. In this restricted world no evening was complete without Delsarte. He would come in with some story of frightful throat trouble to justify his chronic lack of voice, and, then, without any voice at all but by a kind of magic, would put shudders into the tones of Orpheus or Eurydice. I often played his accompaniments and he always demanded pianissimo.

“But,” I would say, “the author has indicated forte.”

“That is true,” he would answer, “but in those days the harpsichord had little depth of tone.”

It would have been easy to answer that the accompaniment was written for the orchestra and not for the harpsichord.

Delsarte’s execution, on account of the insufficiency of his vocal powers, was often entirely different from what the author intended. Furthermore, he was absolutely ignorant of the correct way to interpret the appogiatures and other marks which are not used to-day. As a result his interpretation of the older works was inexact. But that did not matter, for even if masterpieces are presented badly, there is always something left. Besides, both the singer and his hearers had Faith. He had a way of pronouncing “Gluck” which aroused expectation even before one heard a note.

From time to time Delsarte gave a concert. He would come on the stage and say that he had a bad throat, but that he would try to give Iphigenia’s Dream or something of that sort. His courage would prove to be greater than his strength and he would have to stop. He would then fall back on old-time songs or La Fontaine’s fables in which he excelled. A skilfully studied mimicry, which seemed entirely natural, underlay his reading. A red handkerchief, which he knew how to draw from his pocket at just the proper moment, always excited applause.

One day he conceived the idea of giving one of Bossuet’s sermons at his concert. Religious authority was very powerful at the time and forbade it. Yet there would have been no sacrilege, and I regretted keenly that I could not hear this magnificent prose delivered so wonderfully. Now that religious authority has lost its secular support, we see things in an entirely different way. Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints walk the stage, speak in prose or verse, and sing. It would seem that no one is shocked for there is no protest. For my own part I must frankly confess that such pseudo-religious exhibitions are disagreeable. They disturb me greatly and I can see no use in them.

In order to foster admiration for the old masters, Delsarte conceived the idea of publishing a collection of pieces taken from their works right and left, and, as a result, he created his Archives du Chant. He had special type made and the publication was a marvel of beautiful typography, correctness and good taste. At the beginning of each part was a cleverly harmonised passage of church music. The support of a publisher was necessary for the success of such a work, but Delsarte was his own publisher and he met with no success at all. Similar but inferior publications have been markedly successful.

Delsarte aimed at purity of text, but his successors have been forced to modernize the works to make them accessible for the public. This fact is painful. In literature the texts are studied and the endeavor is to reproduce the writer’s thought as closely as possible. In music it is entirely different. With each new edition a professor is commissioned to supervise the work and he adds something of his own invention.

Delsarte, a singer without a voice, an imperfect musician, a doubtful scholar, guided by an intuition which approached genius, in spite of his numerous faults played an important rôle in the evolution of French music in the Nineteenth Century. He was no ordinary man. The impression he gave to all who knew him was of a visionary, an apostle. When one heard him speak with his fiery enthusiasm about these works of the past which the world had forgotten, one could but believe that such oblivion was unjust and desire to know these relics of another age.

Without the shadow of a doubt I owed to his leadership the necessary courage to make a profound study of the works of the old school, for they are unattractive at first. Berlioz berated all this music. He had seen Gluck’s works on the stage in his youth, but he could see nothing in them that was not “superannuated and childish.” With all respect to Berlioz’s memory, it deserved a kinder judgment than that. When one reaches the depths of this music, although it may be at the price of some effort, he is well repaid for his pains. There is real feeling, grandeur and even something of the picturesque in these works—as much as could be with the means at their disposal.

It is only right that we should pay tribute to Delsarte’s memory. He was a pioneer who, during his whole life, proclaimed the value of immortal works, which the world despised. That is no slight merit.

While Delsarte was preparing the way for the old French opera and above all for Gluck’s works, another pioneer of musical evolution was working to form the taste of the Parisian public, but with an entirely different power and another effect. Seghers was the man. He played a great rôle and his memory should be honored.

As his name indicates, Seghers was a Belgian. He started life as a violinist and was one of Baillot’s pupils. His execution was masterly, his tone admirable, and he had a musical intelligence of the first order. He had every right to a first rank among virtuosi, but this man, herculean in appearance and tenacious in his purposes, lost all his power before an audience.

He had a dream of giving to lovers of music the last of Beethoven’s quartets, which were considered at the time both unplayable and incomprehensible. In the end he planned a series of concerts at which, despite my age—I was only fifteen—I was to be the regular pianist. He planned to give in addition to these quartets, some of Bach’s sonatas and Reber’s and Schumann’s trios. I spoke of this plan to his mother-in-law one day as she was peacefully embroidering at the window, and told her how pleased I was at the thought of the concerts.

“Don’t count on it too much,” she told me. “He’ll never give them.”

When everything was ready, he invited some thirty people to listen to a trial performance. It was wretched. All the depth of tone had gone from his violin as well as the skill from his fingers.... The project was abandoned.

It was left for Maurin to make something out of these terrible quartets. Maurin had peculiar gifts. He had a lightness of bow which I have never seen equalled by anyone and a lightness and charm which enchanted the public. But I can say in all sincerity that Seghers’s execution was even better. Unfortunately for him I was his only listener.

Madame Seghers was a woman of great beauty, unusually intelligent and distinguished. She had been one of Liszt’s pupils and was a pianist of first rank. But she was even more timid than her husband—a single listener was sufficient to paralyze her. When Liszt was teaching Madame Seghers, he came to appreciate her husband’s real worth and entrusted his daughter’s musical education to him. This is sufficient indication of the esteem in which Liszt held Seghers. So it was not surprising that he gave me valuable and greatly needed suggestions in regard to style and the piano itself, for his friendship with Liszt had given him a thorough understanding of the instrument.

I first saw and heard Liszt at Seghers’s house. He had reappeared in Paris after long years of absence, and by that time he had begun to seem almost legendary. The story went that since he had become chapel-master at Weimar he was devoting himself to grand compositions, and, what appeared unbelievable, “piano music.” People who ought to have known that Mozart was the greatest pianist of his time shrugged their shoulders at this. As a climax it was insinuated that Liszt was setting systems of philosophy to music.

I studied Liszt’s works with all the enthusiasm of my eighteen years for I already regarded him as a genius and attributed to him even before I saw him almost superhuman powers as a pianist. Remarkable to relate he surpassed the conception I had formed. The dreams of my youthful imagination were but prose in comparison with the Bacchic hymn evoked by his supernatural fingers. No one who did not hear him at the height of his powers can have any idea of his performance.

Seghers was a member of the Société des Concerts at the Conservatoire. This reached only a restricted public and there was no other symphony concert worthy of the name in Paris at the time. And if the public was limited, the repertoire was even more so. Haydn’s, Mozart’s and Beethoven’s symphonies were played almost exclusively, and Mendelssohn’s were introduced with the greatest difficulty. Only fragments of vast compositions like the oratorios were given. An author who was still alive was looked upon as an intruder. However, the conductor was permitted to introduce a solo of his own selection. Thus my friend Auguste Tolbecque, who was over eighty, was permitted to give—he still played beautifully—my first concerto for the violoncello which I had written for him. Deldevez, the conductor of the famous orchestra at the time, did not overlook the chance to tell me that he had put my concerto on the programme only through consideration for Tolbecque. Otherwise, he added, he would have preferred Messieurs So-and-so’s.

Not only did the Conservatoire audiences know little music, but the larger public knew none at all. The symphonies of the three great classic masters were known to amateurs for the most part only through Czerny’s arrangement for two pianos.

This was the situation when Seghers left the Société des Concerts and founded the Société St. Cécile. He led the orchestra himself. The new society took its name from the St. Cécile hall which was then in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. It was a large square hall and was excellent in spite of the prejudice in favor of halls with curved lines for music. Curved surfaces, as Cavaillé-Coll, who was an expert in this matter, once told me, distort sound as curved mirrors distort images. Halls used for music should, therefore, have only straight lines. The St. Cécile hall was sufficiently large to allow a complete orchestra and chorus to be placed properly and heard as well.

Seghers managed to assemble an excellent and sizable orchestra and he also secured soloists who were young then but who have since become celebrities. The orchestra was poorly paid and also very unruly. I have seen them rebel at the difficulties in Beethoven, and it was even worse when Seghers undertook to give Schumann who was considered the ne plus ultra of modernism. Oftentimes there were real riots. But we heard there for the first time the overture of Manfred, Mendelssohn’s Symphony in A minor, and the overture to Tannhauser.

The modern French school found the doors in the Rue Bergère closed to them, but they were welcomed with open arms at the Chaussée d’Antin. Among them were Reber, Gounod, and Gouvy, and even beginners like Georges Bizet and myself. I made my first venture there with my Symphony in E flat which I wrote when I was seventeen. In order to get the committee to adopt it, Seghers offered it as a symphony by an unknown author, which had been sent to him from Germany. The committees swallowed the bait, and the symphony, which would probably not had a hearing if my name had been signed, was praised to the skies.

I can still see myself at a rehearsal listening to a conversation between Berlioz and Gounod. Both of them were greatly interested in me, so that they spoke freely and discussed the excellences and faults of this anonymous symphony. They took the work seriously and it can be imagined how I drank in their words. When the veil of mystery was lifted, the interest of the two great musicians changed to friendship. I received a letter from Gounod, which I have kept carefully, and as it does credit to the author, I take the liberty of reproducing it here:

My dear Camille:

I was officially informed yesterday that you are the author of the symphony which they played on Sunday. I suspected it; but now that I am sure, I want to tell you at once how pleased I was with it. You are beyond your years; always keep on—and remember that on Sunday, December 11, 1853, you obligated yourself to become a great master.

Your pleased and devoted friend,

Ch. Gounod.

Many works which had been unknown to Parisian audiences were given at these concerts and nowhere else. Among them were Schubert’s Symphony in C, fragments of Weber’s opera Préciosa, his Jubel overture, and symphonies by Gade, Gouvy, Gounod, and Reber. These symphonies are not dazzling but they are charming. They form an interesting link in the golden chain, and the public has a right and even some sort of duty to hear them. They would enjoy hearing them too, just as at the Louvre they like to see certain pictures which are not extraordinary but which are, nevertheless, worthy of the place they occupy. That is to say, if the public is really guided by a love of art and seeks only intellectual pleasure instead of sensations and shocks. Some one has said lately that where there is no feeling there is no music. We could, however, cite many passages of music which are absolutely lacking in emotion and which are beautiful nevertheless from the standpoint of pure esthetic beauty. But what am I saying? Painting goes its own way and emotion, feeling, and passion are evoked by the least landscape. Maurice Barres brought in this fashion and he could even see passion in rocks. Happy is he who can follow him there.

Among the things we heard at that time and which we never hear now I must note especially Berlioz’s Corsaire and King Lear. His name is so much beloved by the present day public that this neglect is both unjust and unjustifiable. The great man himself came to the Société St. Cécile one day to conduct his L’Enfance du Christ which he had just written—or rather La Fuite en Egypt which was the only part of the work that was in existence then. He composed the rest of it afterwards. I remember perfectly the performances which the great man directed. They were lively and spirited rather than careful, but somewhat slower than what Edouard Colonne has accustomed us to. The time was faster and the nuances sharper.

In spite of the enthusiasm of the conductor and the skill and talent of the orchestra, the society led a hand-to-mouth existence. The sinews of war were lacking. Weckerlin directed the choruses and I acted as the accompanist at the rehearsals. Love of art sufficed us, but the singers and instrumentalists were not satisfied with that in the absence of all emoluments. If Seghers had been adaptable, he might have secured resources, but that was not his forte. Meyerbeer wanted him to give his Struensée and Halévy wanted a performance of his Prométhée. But this was contrary to Seghers’s convictions, and when he had once made up his mind nothing could change him. Nevertheless he did give the overture to Struensée and it would have been no great effort to give the rest. As to Prométhée, even if the last part is not in harmony with the rest of it, the work was well worthy the honor of a performance, which the proud society in the Rue Bergère had accorded it. By these refusals Seghers was deprived of the support of two powerful protectors.

Pasdeloup craftily took advantage of the situation. He had plenty of money and, as he knew what the financial situation was, he went to the rehearsals and corrupted the artists. For the most part they were young people in needy circumstances and could not refuse his attractive propositions. He killed Seghers’s society and built on its ruins the Société des Jeunes Artistes, which later became the Concerts Populaires.

Pasdeloup was sincerely fond of music but he was a very ordinary musician. He had little of Seghers’s feeling and profound comprehension of the art. In Seghers’s hands the popular concerts would have become an admirable undertaking, but Pasdeloup, in spite of his zeal and skill, was able to give them only a superficial and deceptive brilliancy. Besides, Seghers would have worked for the development of the French school whom Pasdeloup, with but few exceptions, kept under a bushel until 1870. Among these exceptions were a symphony by Gounod, one by Gouvy and the overture to Berlioz’s Frances-Juges. Until the misfortunes and calamities of that terrible year the French symphonic school had been repressed and stifled between the Société des Concerts and the Concerts Populaires. Perhaps they were necessary so that this school might be freed and give flight to its fancies.