Musicians of to-day

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

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

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

There again, on the territory of science, as on that of art, a new generation of musicians had sprung up since the war, a group of men versed in the history and aesthetics of music such as France had never known before. About 1890 the result of their labours began to appear. Henry Expert published his fine work, Maîtres Musiciens de la Renaissance, in which he revived a whole century of French music. Alexander Guilmant and André Pirro brought to daylight the works of our seventeenth and eighteenth century organists. Pierre Aubry studied mediaeval music. The admirable publications of the Benedictines of Solesmes awoke at the Schola and in the world outside it a taste for the study of religious music. Michel Brenet attacked all epochs of musical history, and produced, by his solid learning, some fine work. Julien Tiersot began the history of French folk-song, and rescued the music of the Revolution from oblivion. The publisher Durand set to work on his great editions of Rameau and Couperin. Towards 1893 the study of Music was introduced at the Sorbonne by some young professors, who made the subject the theses for their doctor's degree.[239]

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

Thus music had almost come back to its own, as far as the higher kind of teaching and the intellectual world were concerned. It remained for a place to be found for it in other kinds of teaching; for there, and especially in secondary education, its advance was less sure. It remained for us to make it enter into the life of the nation and into the people's education. This was a difficult task, for in France art has always had an aristocratic character; and it was a task in which neither the State nor musicians were very interested. The Republic still continued to regard music as something outside the people. There had even been opposition shown during the last thirty years towards any attempt at popular musical education. In the old days of the Pasdeloup concerts one could pay seventy-five centimes for the cheapest places, and have a seat for that; but at some of the symphony concerts to-day the cheapest seats are two and four francs. And so the people that sometimes came to the Pasdeloup concerts never come at all to the big concerts to-day.

And that is why one should applaud the enterprise of Victor Charpentier, who, in March, 1905, founded a Symphonic Society of amateurs called L'Orchestre, to give free hearings for the benefit of the people. And in that Paris, where forty years ago one would have had a good deal of trouble to get together two or three amateur quartettes, Victor Charpentier has been able to count on one hundred and fifty good performers,[240] who under his direction, or that of Saint-Saëns or Gabriel Fauré, have already given seventeen free concerts, of which ten were given at the Trocadéro.[241] It is to be hoped that the State will help forward such a generous work for the people in a rather more practical way than it has done up till now.[242]

Attempts have been made at different times to found a Théâtre Lyrique Populaire. But up to the present time none has succeeded. The first attempts were made in 1847. M. Carvalho's old Théâtre-Lyrique was never a financial success, though quite distinguished performances of operas were given there, such as Gounod's Faust and Gluck's Orfeo, with Mme. Viardot as an interpreter and Berlioz as conductor; and the directors who followed Carvalho—Rety, Pasdeloup, etc.—did not succeed any better. In 1875 Vizentini took over the Gaîté, with a grant of two hundred thousand francs and excellent artists; but he had to give it up. Since then all sorts of other schemes have been tried by Viollet-le-Duc, Guimet, Lamoureux, Melchior de Vogüé and Julien Goujon, Gabriel Parisot, Colonne and Milliet, Deville, Lagoanère, Corneille,Gailhard, and Carré; but none of them achieved any success. At the moment, a new attempt is being made; and this time the thing seems to show every sign of being a success.

And besides, it is not enough to know one's letters; one must also have books to read. What books have the people had?—so far songs sung at the café concerts and the stupid repertoires of choral societies. The folk-song had practically disappeared, and was not yet ready for re-birth; for the populace, even more readily than the cultured people, are inclined to blush at anything which suggests "popularity."[243]

It is nearly twenty-five years since M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, who was one of the people who fostered the growth of choral singing in France, pointed out, in an account of the teaching of singing, the usefulness of making children sing the old popular airs of the French provinces, and of getting the teachers to make collections of them. In 1895, as the result of a meeting organised by the Correspondance générale de l'Instruction primaire, delightful collections of folk-songs were distributed in the schools. The melodies were taken from old airs collected by M. Julien Tiersot, and M. Maurice Buchor had put some fresh and sparkling verses to them. "M. Buchor," I wrote at the time, "will enjoy a pleasure not common to poets of our day: his songs will soar up into the open air, like the lark in his Chanson de labour. The populace may even recognise its own spirit in them, and one day take possession of them, as if they were of their own contriving."[244] This prediction has been almost completely realised, and M. Buchor's songs are now the property of all the people of France.

But M. Buchor did not remain content to be a poet of popular song. During the last twelve years he has made, with untiring energy, a tour of all the Écoles Normales in France, returning several times to places where he found signs of good vocal ability. In each school he made the pupils sing his songs—in unison, or in two or three parts, sometimes massing the boys' and girls' schools of one town together. His ambition grew with his success; and to the folk-song melodies[245] he began gradually to add pieces of classical music. And to impress the music better on the singers he changed the existing words, and tried to find others, which by their moral and poetic beauty more exactly translated the musical feeling.[246]

And at last he composed and grouped together twenty-four poems in his Poème de la Vie humaine[247]—fine odes and songs, written for classic airs and choruses, a vast repertory of the people's joys and sorrows, fitting the momentous hours of family or public life. With a people that has ancient musical traditions, as Germany has, music is the vehicle for the words and impresses them in the heart; but in France's case it is truer to say that the words have brought the music of Händel and Beethoven into the hearts of French school-children. The great thing is that the music has really got hold of them, and that now one may hear the provincial Écoles Normales performing choruses from Fidelio, The Messiah, Schumann'sFaust, or Bach cantatas.[248] The honour of this remarkable achievement, which no one could have believed possible twenty years ago, belongs almost entirely to M. Maurice Buchor.[249]

M. Buchor's endeavours have been the most extensive and the most fruitful, but he is not alone in individual effort. There was, twenty years ago, in the suburbs of Paris and in the provinces, a large number of well-meaning people who devoted themselves to the work of musical education with sincerity and splendid enthusiasm. But their good works were too isolated, and were swamped by the apathy of the people about them; though sometimes they kindled little fires of love and understanding in art, which only needed coaxing in order to burn brightly; and even their less happy efforts generally succeeded in lighting a few sparks, which were left smouldering in people's hearts.[250]

At length, as a result of these individual efforts, the State began to show an interest in this educational movement, although it had for so long stood apart from it.[251] It discovered, in its turn, the educational value of singing. A musical test was instituted at the examination for the Brevet supérieur[252] which made the study of solfeggio a more serious matter in the Écoles Normales. In 1903 an endeavour was made to organise the teaching of music in the schools and colleges in a more rational way.[253]

In 1904, following the suggestions of M. Saint-Saëns and M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, class-singing was incorporated with other subjects in the programme of teaching,[254] and a free school of choral singing was started in Paris under the honorary chairmanship of M. Henry Marcel, director of the Beaux-Arts, and under the direction of M. Radiguer. Quite lately a choral society for young school-girls has been formed, with the Vice-Provost as president and a membership of from six to seven hundred young girls, who since 1906 have given an annual concert under the direction of M. Gabriel Pierné. And lastly, at the end of 1907, an association of professors was started to undertake the teaching of music in the institutions of public instruction; its chairman was the Inspector-General, M. Gilles, and its honorary presidents were M. Liard and M. Saint-Saëns. Its object is to aid the progress of musical instruction by establishing a centre to promote friendly relations among professors of music; by centralising their interests and studies; by organising a circulating library of music and a periodical magazine in which questions relating to music may be discussed; by establishing communication between French professors and foreign professors; and by seeking to bring together professors of music and professors in other branches of public teaching.

All this is not much, and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than primary teaching.[255] But we are scrambling out of an abyss of ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric state of musical prosperity. The great choral societies only date from the end of the eighteenth century. Germany in the time of Bach was poor—if not poorer—in means for performing choral works than France to-day. Bach's only executants were his pupils at the Thomasschule at Leipzig, of which barely a score knew how to sing.[256] And now these people gather together for the great Männergesangsfeste (choral festivals) and the Musikfeste (music festivals) of Imperial Germany.

Let us hope on and persevere. The main thing is that a start has been made; the thing that remains is to have patience and—persistence.

We have seen how the musical education of France is going on in theatres, in concerts, in schools, by lectures and by books; and the Parisian's rather restless desire for knowledge seems to be satisfied for the moment. The mind of Paris has made a journey—a hasty journey, it is true through the music of other countries and other times,[257] and is now becoming introspective. After a mad enthusiasm over discoveries in strange lands, music and musical criticism have regained their self-possession and their jealous love of independence. A very decided reaction against foreign music has been shown since the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1900. This movement is not unconnected, consciously or unconsciously, with the nationalist train of thought, which was stirred up in France, and especially in Paris, somewhere about the same time. But it is also a natural development in the evolution of music. French music felt new vigour springing up within her, and was astonished at it; her days of preparation were over, and she aspired to fly alone; and, in accordance with the eternal rule of history, the first use she made of her newly-acquired strength was to defy her teachers. And this revolt against foreign influences was directed—one had expected it—against the strongest of the influences—the influence of German music as personified by Wagner. Two discussions in magazines, in 1903 and 1904, brought this state of mind curiously to light: one was an enquiry held by M. Jacques Morland in the Mercure de France (January, 1903) as to The Influence of German Music in France; and the other was that of M. Paul Landormy in the Revue Bleue (March and April,1904) as to The Present Condition of French Music. The first was like a shout of deliverance, and was not without exaggeration and a good deal of ingratitude; for it represented French musicians and critics throwing off Wagner's influence because it had had its day; the second set forth the theories of the new French school, and declared the independence of that school.

For several years the leader of the young school, M. Claude Debussy, has, in his writings in the Revue Blanche and Gil Blas, attacked Wagnerian art. His personality is very French—capricious, poetic, and spirituelle, full of lively intelligence, heedless, independent, scattering new ideas, giving vent to paradoxical caprice, criticising the opinions of centuries with the teasing impertinence of a little street boy, attacking great heroes of music like Gluck, Wagner, and Beethoven, upholding only Bach, Mozart, and Weber, and loudly professing his preference for the old French masters of the eighteenth century. But in spite of this he is bringing back to French music its true nature and its forgotten ideals—its clearness, its elegant simplicity, its naturalness, and especially its grace and plastic beauty. He wishes music to free itself from all literary and philosophic pretensions, which have burdened German music in the nineteenth century (and perhaps have always done so); he wishes music to get away from the rhetoric which has been handed down to us through the centuries, from its heavy construction and precise orderliness, from its harmonic and rhythmic formulas, and the exercises of oratorical embroidery. He wishes that all about it shall be painting and poetry; that it shall explain its true feeling in a clear and direct way; and that melody, harmony, and rhythm shall develop broadly along the lines of inner laws, and not after the pretended laws of some intellectual arrangement. And he himself preaches by example in his Pelléas et Mélisande, and breaks with all the principles of the Bayreuth drama, and gives us the model of the new art of his dreams. And on all sides discerning and well-informed critics, such as M. Pierre Lalo of Le Temps, M. Louis Laloy of the Revue Musicale and the Mercure Musicale, and M. Marnold of Le Mercure de France, have championed his doctrines and his art. Even the Schola Cantorum, whose eclectic and archaic spirit is very different from that of Debussy, seemed at first to be drawn into the same current of thought; and this school which had so helped to propagate the foreign influences of the past, did not seem to be quite insensible to the nationalistic preoccupation of the last few years. So the Schola devoted itself more and more—as was moreover its right and duty—to the French music of the past, and filled its concert programmes with French works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—with Marc Antoine Charpentier, Du Mont, Leclair, Clérambault, Couperin, and the French primitive composers for the organ, the harpsichord, and the violin; and with the works of dramatic composers, especially of the great Rameau, who, after a period of complete oblivion, suddenly benefited by this excessive reaction, to the detriment of Gluck, whom the young critics, following M. Debussy's example, severely abused.[258] There was even a moment when the Schola took a decided share in the battle, and, through M. Charles Bordes, issued a manifesto—Credo, as they called it—about a new art founded on the ancient traditions of French music:

It was open war against the metrical art of the last three centuries, in the name of national tradition (more or less freely interpreted), of folk-song, and of Gregorian chant. And "the constant and avowed purpose of all this campaign was the triumph of French music, and its cult."[259]

This manifesto reflects in its own way the spirit of Debussy and his untrammelled musical impressionism; and though it shows a good deal of naïveté and some intolerance, there was in it a strength of youthful enthusiasm that accorded with the great hopes of the time, and foretold glorious days to come and a splendid harvest of music.

Not many years have passed since then; yet the sky is already a little clouded, the light not quite so bright. Hope has not failed; but it has not been fulfilled. France is waiting, and is getting a little impatient. But the impatience is unnecessary; for to found an art we must bring time to our aid; art must ripen tranquilly. Yet tranquillity is what is most lacking in Parisian art. The artists, instead of working steadily at their own tasks and uniting in a common aim, are given up to sterile disputes. The young French school hardly exists any longer, as it has now split up into two or three parties. To a fight against foreign art has succeeded a fight among themselves: it is the deep-rooted evil of the country, this vain expenditure of force. And most curious of all is the fact that the quarrel is not between the conservatives and the progressives in music, but between the two most advanced sections: the Schola on the one hand, who, should it gain the victory, would through its dogmas and traditions inevitably develop the airs of a little academy; and, on the other hand, the independent party, whose most important representative is M. Debussy. It is not for us to enter into the quarrel; we would only suggest to the parties in question that if any profit is to result from their misunderstanding, it will be derived by a third party—the party in favour of routine, the party that has never lost favour with the great theatre-going public,—a party that will soon make good the place it has lost if those who aim at defending art set about fighting one another. Victory has been proclaimed too soon; for whatever the optimistic representatives of the young school may say, victory has not yet been gained; and it will not be gained for some time yet—not until public taste is changed, not while the nation lacks musical education, nor until the cultured few are united to the people, through whom their thoughts shall be preserved. For not only—with a few rare and generous exceptions—do the more aristocratic sections of society ignore the education of the people, but they ignore the very existence of the people's soul. Here and there, a composer—such as Bizet and M. Saint-Saëns, or M. d'Indy and his disciples—will build up symphonies and rhapsodies and very difficult pieces for the piano on the popular airs of Auvergne, Provence, or the Cevennes; but that is only a whim of theirs, a little ingenious pastime for clever artists, such as the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century indulged in when they decorated popular airs with polyphonic elaborations. In spite of the advance of the democratic spirit, musical art—or at least all that counts in musical art—has never been more aristocratic than it is to-day. Probably the phenomenon is not peculiar to music, and shows itself more or less in other arts; but in no other art is it so dangerous, for no other has roots less firmly fixed in the soil of France. And it is no consolation to tell oneself that this is according to the great French traditions, which have nearly always been aristocratic. Traditions, great and small, are menaced to-day; the axe is ready for them. Whoever wishes to live must adapt himself to the new conditions of life. The future of art is at stake. To continue as we are doing is not only to weaken music by condemning it to live in unhealthy conditions, but also to risk its disappearing sooner or later under the rising flood of popular misconceptions of music. Let us take warning by the fact that we have already had to defend music[260] when it was attacked at some of the parliamentary assemblies; and let us remember the pitifulness of the defence. We must not let the day come when a famous speech will be repeated with a slight alteration—"The Republic has no need of musicians."

It is the historian's duty to point out the dangers of the present hour, and to remind the French musicians who have been satisfied with their first victory that the future is anything but sure, and that we must never disarm while we have a common enemy before us, an enemy especially dangerous in a democracy—mediocrity.

The road that stretches before us is long and difficult. But if we turn our heads and look back over the way we have come we may take heart. Which of us does not feel a little glow of pride at the thought of what has been done in the last thirty years? Here is a town where, before 1870, music had fallen to the most miserable depths, which to-day teems with concerts and schools of music—a town where one of the first symphonic schools in Europe has sprung from nothing, a town where an enthusiastic concert-going public has been formed, possessing among its members some great critics with broad interests and a fine, free spirit—all this is the pride of France. And we have, too, a little band of musicians; among them, in the first rank, that great painter of dreams, Claude Debussy; that master of constructive art, Dukas; that impassioned thinker, Albéric Magnard; that ironic poet, Ravel; and those delicate and finished writers, Albert Roussel and Déodat de Séverac; without mention of the younger musicians who are in the vanguard of their art. And all this poetic force, though not the most vigorous, is the most original in Europe to-day. Whatever gaps one may find in our musical organisation, still so new, whatever results this movement may lead to, it is impossible not to admire a people whom defeat has aroused, and a generation that has accomplished the magnificent work of reviving the nation's music with such untiring perseverance and such steadfast faith. The names of Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, Charles Bordes, and Vincent d'Indy, will remain associated before all others with this work of national regeneration, where so much talent and so much devotion, from the leaders of orchestras and celebrated composers down to that obscure body of artists and music-lovers, have joined forces in the fight against indifference and routine. They have the right to be proud of their work. But for ourselves, let us waste no time in thinking about it. Our hopes are great. Let us justify them.

FOOTNOTES: