rolled forth, while the poor listeners, with pitifully down-cast faces, glanced at each other recognising that, though I might be bad, they were infinitely worse.
The following day I was engaged at a salary of fifty francs a month.
And this was the result of my parents’ efforts to save me from the bottomless pit! Instead of a cursed dramatic composer I had become a damned theatre chorus-singer, excommunicated with bell, book and candle. Surely my last state was worse than my first!
One success brought others. The smiling skies rained down two new pupils and a fellow-provincial, Antoine Charbonnel, whom I met when he came up to study as an apothecary. Neither of us having any money, we—like Walter in the Gambler—cried out together:
“What! no money either? My dear fellow, let’s go into partnership.”
We rented two small rooms in the Rue de la Harpe and, since Antoine was used to the management of retorts and crucibles, we made him cook. Every morning we went marketing and I, to his intense disgust, would insist on bringing back our purchases under my arm without trying to hide them. Oh, pharmaceutical gentility! it nearly landed us in a quarrel.
We lived like princes—exiled ones—on thirty francs a month each. Never before in Paris had I been so comfortable. I began to develop extravagant ideas, bought a piano—such a thing! it cost a hundred and ten francs. I knew I could not play it, but I like trying chords now and then. Besides, I love to be surrounded by musical instruments and, were I only rich enough, would work in company with a grand piano, two or three Erard harps, some wind instruments and a whole crowd of Stradivarius violins and ’cellos.
I decorated my room with framed portraits of my musical gods, and Antoine, who was as clever as a monkey with his fingers (not a very good simile, by-the-way, since monkeys only destroy) made endless little useful things—amongst others a net with which, in spring-time, he caught quails at Montrouge, to vary our Spartan fare.
But the humour of the whole situation lay in the fact that, although I was out every evening at the theatre, Antoine never guessed—during the whole time we lived together—that I had the ill-luck to tread the boards and, not being exactly proud of my position, I did not see the force of enlightening him. He supposed I was giving lessons at the other end of Paris.
It seems as if his silly pride and mine were about on a par. Yet no; mine was not all foolish vanity. In spite of my parents’ harshness, for nothing in the world would I have given them the intense pain of knowing how I gained my living. So I held my tongue and they only heard of my theatrical career—as did Antoine Charbonnel—some seven or eight years after it ended, through biographical notices in some of the papers.
It was at this time that I wrote the Francs-Juges and, after it, Waverley. Even then, I was so ignorant of the scope of certain instruments that, having written a solo in D flat for the trombones in the introduction to the Francs-Juges, I got into a sudden panic lest it should be unplayable.
However one of the trombone players at the opera, to whom I showed it, set my mind at rest.
“On the contrary,” said he, “D flat is a capital key for the trombone; that passage ought to be most effective.”
Overjoyed, I went home with my head so high in the air that I could not look after my feet, whereby I sprained my ankle. I never hear that thing now without feeling my foot ache; probably other people get the ache in their heads.
Neither of my masters could help me in the least in orchestration—it was not in their line. Reicha did certainly know the capacity of most wind instruments, but I do not think he knew anything of the effect of grouping them in different ways; besides it had nothing to do with his department, which was counterpoint and fugue. Even now it is not taught at the Conservatoire.
However, before being engaged at the Nouveautés I had made the acquaintance of a friend of Gardel, the well-known ballet-master, and he often gave me pit tickets for the opera, so that I could go regularly.
I always took the score and read it carefully during the performance, so that, in time, I got to know the sound—the voice, as it were—of each instrument and the part it filled; although, of course, I learnt nothing of either its mechanism or compass.
Listening so closely, I also found out for myself the intangible bond between each instrument and true musical expression.
The study of Beethoven, Weber and Spontini and their systems; searching enquiry into the gifts of each instrument; careful investigation of rare or unused combinations; the society of virtuosi who kindly explained to me the powers of their several instruments, and a certain amount of instinct have done the rest for me.
Reicha’s lectures were wonderfully helpful, his demonstrations being absolutely clear because he invariably gave the reason for each rule. A thoroughly open-minded man, he believed in progress, thereby coming into frequent collision with Cherubini, whose respect for the masters of harmony was simply slavish.
Still, in composition Reicha kept strictly to rule. Once I asked his candid opinion on those figures, written entirely on Amen or Kyrie eleison, with which the Requiems of the old masters bristle.
“They are utterly barbarous!” he cried hotly.
“Then, Monsieur, why do you write them?”
“Oh, confound it all! because everyone else does.”
Miseria!
Now Lesueur was more consistent. He considered these monstrosities more like the vociferations of a horde of drunkards than a sacred chorus, and he took good care to avoid them. The few found in his works have not the slightest resemblance to them, and indeed his
is a masterpiece of form, style and dignity.
Those composers who, by writing such abominations, have truckled to custom, have prostituted their intelligence and unpardonably insulted their divine muse.
Before coming to France Reicha had been in Bonn with Beethoven, but I do not think they had much in common. He set great value on his mathematical studies.
“Thanks to them,” he used to say, “I am master of my mind. To them I owe it that my vivid imagination has been tamed and brought within bounds, thereby doubling its power.”
I am not at all sure that his theory was correct. It is quite possible that his love for intricate and thorny musical problems made him lose sight of the real aim of music, and that what the eye gained by his curious and ingenious solution of difficulties the ear did not lose in melody and true musical expression.
For praise or blame he cared nothing; he lived only to forward his pupils, on whom he lavished his utmost care and attention.
At first I could see that he found my everlasting questions a perfect nuisance, but in time he got to like me. His wind instrumental quintettes were fashionable for a time in Paris; they are interesting but cold. On the other hand, I remember hearing a magnificent duet, from his opera Sappho, full of fire and passion.
When the Conservatoire examinations of 1827 came on I went up again, and fortunately passed the preliminary, thereby becoming eligible for the general competition.
The subject set was Orpheus torn by the Bacchantes. I think my version was fair, but the incompetent pianist who was supposed to do duty for an orchestra (such is the incredible arrangement at these contests) not being able to make head or tail of my score, the powers that were—to wit, Cherubini, Päer, Lesueur, Berton, Boïeldieu and Catel, the musical section of the Institute—decided that my music was impracticable, and I was put out of court.
So, after my Kreutzer experience of selfish jealousy, I now had a sample of wooden-headed sticking to the letter of the law. In thus taking away my modest chance of distinction did none of them think of the consequences of driving me to despair like this?
I had got a fortnight’s leave from the Nouveautés for the competition; when it was over I should have again to take up my burden. But just as the time expired I fell ill with a quinsy that nearly made an end of me.
Antoine was always trotting after grisettes and left me almost entirely alone. I believe I should have died without help had I not one night, in a fit of desperation, stuck a pen-knife into the abscess that choked me. This somewhat unscientific operation saved me, and I was beginning to mend when my father—no doubt touched by my steady patience and perhaps anxious as to my means of livelihood—wrote and restored me my allowance.
Thanks to this unhoped-for kindness, I gave up chorus-singing—no small relief, since, apart from the actual bodily fatigue, the idiotic music I had to suffer from would soon have either given me cholera or turned me into a drivelling lunatic.
Free from my dreary trade I gave myself up, with redoubled zest, to my Opera evenings and to the study of dramatic music. I never thought of instrumental, since the only concerts I had heard were the cold and mean Opera performances, of which I was not greatly enamoured. Haydn and Mozart, played by an insufficient orchestra in too large a building, made about as much effect as if they had been given on the plaine de Grenelle. Beethoven, two of whose symphonies I had read, seemed a sun indeed, but a sun obscured by heavy clouds. Weber’s name was unknown to me, while as for Rossini——
The very mention of him and of the fanaticism of fashionable Paris for him put me in a rage that is not lessened by the obvious fact that he is the antithesis of Gluck and Spontini. Believing these great masters perfect, how could I tolerate his puerilities, his unmerciful big drum, his constant repetition of one form of cadence, his contempt for great traditions? My prejudice blinded me even to this exquisite instrumentation of the Barbiere (without the big drum too!) and I longed to blow up the Théâtre Italien with all its Rossinian audience and so put an end to it at one fell swoop. When I met one of the tribe I eyed him with a Shylockian scowl.
“Miscreant!” I growled between my teeth, “would that I might impale thee on a red-hot iron.”
Time has not changed my opinion, and though I think I can refrain from blowing up a theatre and impaling people on hot irons, I quite agree with our great painter, Ingres, who, speaking of some of Rossini’s work, said:
“It is the music of a vulgar-minded man.”
Here is a picture of one of my opera evenings.
It was a serious business for which I prepared by reading over and studying whatever was to be given.
My faithful pit friends and I had but one religion, with one god, Gluck, and I was his high priest. Our fanaticism for our favourites was only equalled by our frantic hatred of all composers whom we judged to be without the pale.
Did one of my fellow-worshippers tremble or waver in his faith, promptly would I drag him off to the opera to retract—even going so far sometimes as to pay for his ticket. On one special seat would I place my victim, saying, “Now for pity’s sake don’t move. Nowhere else can you hear so well—I know because I have tried the right place for every opera.”
Then I would begin to expound, reading and explaining obscure passages as I went along; we were always in very good time, first to get the places we wanted; next, so as not to miss the opening notes of the overture; lastly, in order to taste to the uttermost the exciting, thrilling expectation of a great pleasure of which one knows the realisation will exceed one’s hopes. The gradual filling of the orchestra—at first as dreary as a stringless harp; the distribution of the parts—an anxious moment this, for the opera might have been changed; the joy of reading the hoped-for title on the desks of the double-basses, which were nearest to us; or the horror of seeing it was replaced by some wretched little drivel like Rousseau’s Devin du Village—when we would rush out in a body, swearing at all and sundry.
Poor Rousseau! What would he have said if he could have heard our curses? He, who thought more of his feeble little opera than of all the masterpieces through which his name lives. How could he foresee that it would some day be extinguished for ever by a huge powdered periwig, thrown at the heroine’s feet by some irreverent scoffer. As it happened, I was present that very night and, naturally, kind friends credited me with this little unrehearsed effect. I am really quite innocent, I even remember being quite as angry about it as I was amused—so I do not think I should or could have done such a thing. Since that night of joyous memory the poor Devin has appeared no more.
But to go back to my story.
Reassured on the subject of the performance, I continued my preachment, singing the leading motifs, explaining the orchestration and doing my best to work my little gang up to a pitch of enthusiasm, to the great wonderment of our neighbours who—mostly simple country folks—were so wrought upon by my speeches that they quite expected to be carried away by their emotions, wherein they were usually grievously disappointed.
I also named each member of the orchestra as he came in and gave a dissertation on his playing until I was stopped short by the three knocks behind the scenes. Then we sat with beating hearts awaiting the signal from Kreutzer or Valentino’s raised baton. After that, no humming, no beating time on the part of our neighbours. Our rule was Draconian.
Knowing every note of the score, I would have let myself be chopped in pieces rather than let the conductor take liberties with it. Wait quietly and write my expostulations? Not exactly! No half-measures for me!
There and then I would publicly denounce the sinners and my remarks went straight home.
For instance, I noticed one day that in Iphigenia in Tauris cymbals had been added to the Scythian dance, whereas Gluck had only employed strings, and in the Orestes recitative, the trombones, that come in so perfectly appropriately, were left out altogether.
I decided that if these barbarisms were repeated I would let them know it and I lay in wait for my cymbals.
They appeared.
I waited, although boiling over with rage, until the end of the movement, then, in the moment’s silence that followed, I yelled:
“Who dares play tricks with Gluck and put cymbals where there are none?”
The murmuring around may be imagined. The public, not being particularly critical, could not conceive why that young idiot in the pit should get so excited over so little. But it was worse when the absence of the trombones made itself evident in the recitative.
Again that fatal voice was heard:
“Where are those trombones? This is simply outrageous!”
The astonishment of audience and orchestra were fairly matched by Valentino’s very natural anger. I heard afterwards that the unlucky trombones were only obeying orders; their parts were quite correctly written.
After that night the proper readings were restored, the cymbals were silent, the trombones spoke; I was serene.
De Pons, who was just as crazy as I on this point, helped me to put several other points straight but once we went too far and dragged in the public at our heels.
A violin solo advertised for Baillot was left out. We clamoured for it furiously, the pit fired up, then the whole house rose and howled for Baillot. The curtain fell on the confusion, the musicians fled precipitately, the audience dashed into the orchestra smashing everything they could lay hands on and only stopping when there was nothing left to smash.
In vain did I cry:
“Messieurs, messieurs! what are you doing? To break the instruments is too barbarous. That’s Father Chénié’s glorious double-bass with its diabolic tone.”
But they were too far gone to listen, and the havoc was complete.
This was the bad side of our unofficial criticism; the good side was our wild enthusiasm when all went well. How we applauded anything superlative that no one noticed, such as a fine bass, a happy modulation, a telling note of the oboe! The public took us for embryo claqueurs, the claque leader, who knew better and whose little plans were upset, tried to wither us with thunderbolt glances, but we were bomb-proof.
There is no such enthusiasm in France nowadays, not even in the Conservatoire, its last remaining stronghold.
Here is the funniest scene I ever remember at the opera. I had swept off Leon de Boissieux, an unwilling proselyte, to hear Œdipus; however, nothing but billiards appealed to him, and, finding him utterly impervious to the woes of Antigone and her father, I stepped over into a seat in front, giving him up in despair.
But he had a music-loving neighbour and this is what I heard, while my young man was peeling an orange and casting apprehensive glances at the other man, who was evidently in a state of wild excitement.
“Sir, for pity’s sake, do try to be calm.”
“Impossible! It’s killing me! It is so terrible, so overwhelming!”
“My good man, you will be ill if you go on like this. You really shouldn’t.”
“Oh! oh! Leave me alone! Oh!”
“Come! come! Do cheer up a bit. Remember it is nothing but a play. Here, take a piece of my orange.”
“It’s sublime——”
“Yes, it’s Maltese——”
“What glorious art!”
“Don’t say ‘No.’”
“Oh, sir! what music!”
“Yes, it’s not bad.”
By this time the opera had got to the lovely trio, “Sweet Moments,” and the exquisite delicacy of the simple air overcame me too. I hid my face in my hands, and tears trickled between my fingers. I might have been plunged in the depths of woe.
As the trio ended two strong arms lifted me off my seat, nearly crushing my breast-bone in; the enthusiast, recognising one fellow-worshipper amongst the cold-blooded lot around, hugged me furiously, crying:
“B-b-b-by Jove, sir! isn’t it beautiful?”
“Are you a musician?”
“No, but I am as fond of it as if I were.”
Then, regardless of surrounding giggles and of my orange-devouring neophyte, we exchanged names and addresses in a whisper.
He was an engineer, a mathematician! Where, the devil, will true musical perception next find a lodging, I wonder? His name was Le Tessier, but we never met again.
Into the midst of this stormy student life of mine came the revelation of Weber, by means of a miserable, distorted version of Der Freyschütz, called Robin des Bois, which was performed at the Odéon. The orchestra was good, the chorus fair, the soloists simply appalling.
One wretched woman alone, Madame Pouilley, by the imperturbably wooden way in which she went through her part—even that glorious air in the second act—would have been enough to wreck the whole opera. Small wonder that it took me a long while to unearth all the beauty of its hidden treasures.
The first night it was received with hisses and laughter, the next the audience began to see something in the Huntsmen’s Chorus, and they let the rest pass. Then they rather fancied the Bridesmaid’s Chorus and Agatha’s Prayer, half of which was cut out. A glimmering notion that Max’s great aria was fairly dramatic followed; finally it burst upon them that the Wolf’s Glen scene was really quite comic; so all Paris rushed to see this misshapen horror, the Odéon got rich, and Castilblaze netted a hundred thousand francs for destroying a masterpiece.
Now I must own frankly that I was getting rather tired of high tragedy, in spite of my conservatism, and, chopped about as it was, the sweet wild savour of this woodland pastoral, its dainty grace and tender melancholy opened to me a new world of music.
I deserted the opera in favour of the Odéon, where I had the entrée to the orchestra, and soon knew Der Freyschütz (according to Castilblaze) by heart.
More than twenty years have passed since Weber himself passed through Paris for the first and last time. He was on his way to his London death-bed, and breathlessly I followed in his track, hoping and longing to meet him face to face.
One morning Lesueur said:
“Why were you not here five minutes sooner? Weber has been playing our French scores by heart to me.”
A few hours later in a music shop—
“Whom do you think we had here just now? Why, Weber!”
At the Odéon people were saying:
“Weber has just gone by. He is up in one of the boxes.”
It was maddening—I, alone, never saw him. Unlike Shakespeare’s apparitions, he was visible to all but one.
Too obscure to dare to write, without a friend who could introduce me, he passed out of my world.
Ah, why do not the thrice-gifted ones of this world know of the passionate love and devotion their works inspire! If they could but divine the suppressed admiration of a few faithful hearts! Would they not gladly gather these chosen disciples about them to become a bulwark against the shafts of envy, hatred, malice, and luke-warm tolerance of which a thoughtless world makes them the target!
Weber was justly angry when he found out how Castilblaze—veterinary surgeon of music—had butchered his beautiful work, and he published a complaint before leaving Paris. Castilblaze actually had the audacity to play the injured innocent, and to say that it was entirely owing to his adaptation that Freyschütz had succeeded at all!
The wretch!—--yet a poor sailor gets fifty lashes for the slightest insubordination.
Exactly the same thing had been done a few years earlier with Mozart’s Magic Flute. It had been botched into a ghastly pot-pourri by Lachnith—whom I hereby pillory with Castilblaze—and given as the Mysteries of Isis.
Thus mocked, travestied, deprived of a limb here, an eye there—twisted and maimed—these two men of genius were introduced to the French public.
How is it that they put up with these atrocities?
Mozart assassinated by Lachnith.
Weber by Castilblaze—who did the same for Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, and Beethoven.
Beethoven’s symphonies “corrected” by Fétis, by Kreutzer, and by Habeneck (of this I have more to say).
Molière and Corneille chopped up by Théâtre Français demons.
Shakespeare “arranged” for performance in England by Colley Cibber! The list is endless.
No, a thousand times no! No man living has a right to try and destroy the individuality of another, to force him to adopt a style not his own, and to give up his natural point of view. If a man be commonplace, let him remain so; if he be great—a choice spirit set above his fellows—then, in the name of all the gods, bow humbly before him, and let him stand erect and alone in his glory.
I know that Garrick improved Romeo and Juliet by putting his exquisite, pathetic ending in the place of Shakespeare’s; but who are the miscreants who doctored King Lear, Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard the Third?
That all comes from Garrick’s example. Every mean scribbler thinks he can give points to Shakespeare.
But to go back to music. At the last sacred concerts, after Kreutzer had experimentalised by making cuts in one Beethoven symphony, did not Habeneck follow suit by dropping out several instruments in another, and M. Costa, in London, try all sorts of weird conclusions with big drums, ophicleides, and trombones in Don Giovanni and Figaro? Well! if conductors lead the way, who can blame the small fry for following after?
But is not this the ruin of Art? Ought not we, who love and honour her, who are jealous for the prescriptive rights of human intellect, to hound down and annihilate the transgressor; to cry aloud:
“Thy crime is ridiculous. Thy stupidity beneath contempt. Despair and die! Be thou contemned, be thou derided, be thou accursed! Despair and die!!!”
My devotion to Gluck and Spontini at first somewhat blinded me to the glories of Mozart. Not only had I a prejudice against Italian, both language and singers, but in Don Giovanni the composer has written a passage that I call simply criminal. Doña Anna bewails her fate in a passage of heart-rending beauty and sorrow, then, right in the middle, after Forse un giorno comes an impossible piece of buffoonery that I would give my blood to wipe out.
This and other similar passages that I found in his compositions sent my admiration for Mozart down below zero. I felt I could not trust his dramatic instinct, and it was not until years later, when I found the original score of the Magic Flute instead of its travesty, the Mysteries of Isis, and made acquaintance with the marvellous beauty of his quartettes and quintettes, and some of his sonatas, that this Angelic Doctor took his due place in my mind.
I cannot go minutely into all the sorrowful details of the great drama of my life, upon which the curtain rose about this time (1827).
An English company had come over to Paris to play Shakespeare, and at their first performance—Hamlet—I saw in Ophelia the Henriette Smithson who, five years later, became my wife. The impression made upon my heart and mind by her marvellous genius was only equalled by the agitation into which I was plunged by the poetry she so nobly interpreted.
Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me down as with a thunderbolt. His lightning spirit, descending upon me with transcendent power from the starry heights, opened to me the highest heaven of Art, lit up its deepest depths, and revealed the best and grandest and truest that earth can shew.
I realised the paltry meanness of our French view of that mighty brain. The scales fell from my eyes, I saw, felt, understood, lived; I arose and walked!
But the shock was overwhelming, and it was long ere I recovered. Intense, profound melancholy, combined with extreme nerve-exhaustion, reduced me to a pitiable state of mind and body that only a great physiologist could diagnose.
A martyr to insomnia, I lost all elasticity of brain, all concentration, all taste for my best loved studies, and I wandered aimlessly about the Paris streets and through the country round.[3]
By dint of overtiring my body, I managed, during this wretched time, to get four spells of death-like sleep or torpor, and four only; one night in a field near Ville-Juif, one day near Sceaux; a third in the snow by the frozen Seine near Neuilly, and the last on a table in the Café Cardinal, where I slept five hours, to the great fright of the waiters, who dared not touch me lest I should be dead.
Returning one day from this dreary wandering in search of my lost soul, I noticed Moore’s Irish Melodies open on the table at
and, catching up a pen, I wrote the music to that heart-rending farewell straight off. It is the Elégie at the end of my set of songs called Ireland. This is the only time I can remember being able to depict a sentiment while actively under its influence, and seldom have I gone so direct to the heart of it.
It is a most difficult song both to sing and to accompany. To do it justice the singer must create his own atmosphere, so must the pianist and only the most sensitive and artistic souls should attempt it.
For this reason, during all the twenty odd years since it was written, I have never asked anyone to try it; but one day Alizard picked it up and began trying it without the piano. Even that upset me so terribly that I had to beg him to stop. He understood. I know he would have interpreted it perfectly, and it was more than I could bear. I did begin to set it to an orchestral accompaniment, but I thought:
“No, this is not for the general public. I could not stand their calm indifference,” and I burnt the score.
Yet some day it may chance, in England or Germany, to find a niche in some wounded breast, some quivering soul—in France and Italy it is a hopeless alien.
Coming away from Hamlet, I vowed that never more would I expose myself to Shakespearian temptation, never more singe my scorched wings in his flame.
Next morning Romeo and Juliet was placarded. In terror lest the free list of the Odéon should be suspended by the new management, I tore round to the box-office and bought a stall. I was done for!
Ah! what a change from the dull grey skies and icy winds of Denmark to the burning sun, the perfumed nights of Italy! From the melancholy, the cruel irony, the tears, the mourning, the lowering destiny of Hamlet, what a transition to the impetuous youthful love, the long-drawn kisses, the vengeance, the despairing fatal conflict of love and death in those hapless lovers!
By the third act, half suffocated by my emotion, with the grip of an iron hand upon my heart, I cried to myself: “I am lost—am lost!”
Knowing no English I could but grope mistily through the fog of a translation, could only see Shakespeare as in a glass—darkly. The poetic weft that winds its golden thread in network through those marvellous creations was invisible to me then; yet, as it was, how much I learnt!
An English critic has stated in the Illustrated London News that, on seeing Miss Smithson that night, I said:
“I will marry Juliet and will write my greatest symphony on the play.”
I did both, but I never said anything of the kind. I was in far too much perturbation to entertain such ambitious dreams. Only through much tribulation were both ends gained.
After seeing these two plays I had no more difficulty in keeping away from the theatre. I shuddered at the bare idea of renewing such awful suffering, and shrank as if from excruciating physical pain.
Months passed in this state of numb despair, my only lucid moments being dreams of Shakespeare and of Miss Smithson—now the darling of Paris—and dreary comparisons between her brilliant triumphs and my sad obscurity.
As I gradually awoke to life again, a plan began to take shape in my mind. She should hear of me; she should know that I also was an artist; I would do what, so far, no French artist had ever done—give a concert entirely of my own works. For this three things were needed—copies, hall, and performers.
Therefore (this was early in the spring of 1828) I set to work, and, writing sixteen hours out of twenty-four, I copied every single part of the pieces I had chosen, which were the overtures to Waverley and the Francs-Juges, an aria and trio from the latter, the scena Heroic Greek, and the cantata on the Death of Orpheus, that the Conservatoire committee had judged unplayable.
While copying furiously I saved furiously too, and added some hundreds of francs to my store, wherewith to pay the chorus; for orchestra I knew I might count on the friendly help of the staff of the Odéon, with a sprinkling of assistants from the Opera and the Nouveautés.
My chief difficulty was the hall; it always is in Paris. For the only suitable one—the Conservatoire—I must have a permit from M. de Larochefoucauld and also the consent of Cherubini.
The first was easily obtained; not so the second.
At the first mention of my design Cherubini flew in a rage.
“Vant to gif a conchert?” he said, with his usual suavity.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Must ’ave permission of Fine Arts Director first.”
“I have it.”
“M. de Larossefoucauld, ’e consent?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“But me, I not consent. I vill oppose zat you get ze ’all.”
“But, monsieur, you can have no reasonable objection, since the hall is not engaged for the next fortnight.”
“But I tell to you zat I vill not ’ave zat you gif zis conchert. Everyone is avay and no profit vill be to you.”
“I expect none. I merely wish to become known.”
“Zere is no necessity zat you become known. And zen for expense you vill want monee. Vhat ’ave you of monee?”
“Sufficient, monsieur.”
“A-a-ah! But vhat vill you make ’ear at zis conchert?”
“Two overtures, some excerpts from an opera and the Death of Orpheus.”
“Zat competition cantata? I vill not ’ave zat! She is bad—bad; she is impossible to play.”
“You say so, monsieur; I judge differently. That a bad pianist could not play it is no reason that a good orchestra should not.”
“Zen it is for insult of ze Académie zat you play zis?”
“No, monsieur; it is simply as an experiment. If, as is possible, the Academy was right in saying my score could not be played, then certainly the orchestra will not play it. If the Academy was wrong, people will only say that I made good use of its judgment and have corrected my score.”
“You can only ’ave your conchert on ze Sunday.”
“Very well, I will take Sunday.”
“But zose poor employés—ze doorkeepers—zey ’ave but ze Sunday for repose zem. Vould you take zeir only rest-day? Zey vill die—zose poor folks—zey vill die of fatigue.”
“On the contrary, monsieur. These poor folks are delighted at the chance of earning a few extra francs, and they will not thank you for depriving them of it.”
“I vill not ’ave it; I vill not! And I write to ze Director zat he vizdraw permission.”
“Most hearty thanks, monsieur, but M. de Larochefoucauld never breaks his word. I also shall write and retail our conversation exactly. Then he will be able to weigh the arguments on both sides.”
I did so, and was afterwards told by one of his secretaries that my dialogue-letter made the Director laugh till he cried. He was, above all, touched at Cherubini’s tender consideration for those poor devils of employés whom I was going to kill with fatigue.
He replied, as any man blessed with commonsense would, repeating his authorisation and adding:
“You will kindly show this letter to M. Cherubini, who has already received the necessary orders.”
Of course I posted off to the Conservatoire and handed in my letter; Cherubini read it, turned pale, then yellow, and finally green, then handed it back without a word.
This was my first Roland for the Oliver he gave me in turning me out of the library. It was not to be my last.
Having secured orchestra, hall, chorus and parts, I only wanted soloists and a conductor. Bloc, of the Odéon, kindly accepted the latter post, and Alexis Dupont, although very unwell, took under his wing my Orpheus, which he had promised to sing before the jury of the Institute, had it been passed.
But unluckily his hoarseness got so much worse that, when the day came, he was unable to sing at all, so I was deprived of the wicked joy of putting on the programme, “Death of Orpheus; lyric poem, judged impossible of execution by the Académie des Beaux Arts, performed May 1828.”
A concert at which most of the executants helped for love and not for money naturally came off poorly in rehearsals; still, at the final rehearsal the overtures went fairly well, the Francs-Juges calling forth warm applause from the orchestra; the finale of the cantata being even more successful.
In this, after the Bacchanal, I made the wind carry on the motif of Orpheus’ love-song to a strange rushing undertone accompaniment by the rest of the players, while the dying wail of a far-off voice cries:
“Eurydice! Eurydice! hapless Eurydice!”
The wild sadness of my music-picture affected the whole orchestra, and they hailed it with wild enthusiasm. I am sorry now that I burnt it, it was worth keeping for those last pages alone.
With the exception of the Bacchanal—the famous piece in which the Conservatoire pianist got hung up—which was given with magnificent verve, nothing else in the cantata went very well and, thanks to Dupont’s illness, it was withdrawn. No doubt Cherubini preferred to say that it was because the orchestra could not play it.
In this cantata I first noticed how impossible conductors, unused to grand opera, find it to give way to the capricious and varied time of the recitative. Bloc, only accustomed to songs interspersed with spoken dialogue, was quite confused and, in some places, never got right at all, which made a learned periwigged amateur, who was at rehearsal, say, as he shook his head at me:
“Give me good old Italian cantatas! Now that’s the music that never bothers a conductor. It plays itself, it runs alone.”
“Yes,” I said dryly, “just as old donkeys plod round and round their treadmill.”
That is how I set about making friends.
Much against the grain I replaced Orpheus by the Resurrexit from my mass, and finally the concert came off.
Duprez, with his sweet, weak voice, did well in the aria; the overtures and Resurrexit were also a success, but the trio with chorus was a regular failure.
Not only was the trio miserably sung, but the chorus missed its entry and never came in at all!
I need hardly say that, after paying expenses, including the chorus that held its tongue in such a masterly manner, I was completely cleaned out.
However, the concert was a most useful lesson to me.
Not only did I become known to artists and public, which (pace Cherubini!) was a necessity, but, by doggedly facing the innumerable difficulties of a composer, I gained most valuable experience.
Several of the papers praised me, and even Fétis—Fétis, who afterwards[4] ... spoke of me, in a drawing-room, as a coming man.
But what of Miss Smithson?
Alas! I found out that, absorbed in her own engrossing work, of me and my concert she never heard a whisper!
To Humbert Ferrand.
“6th June 1828.—Are you parched with anxiety to know the result of my concert? I have only waited in order to send you the papers too. Triumphant success! After the applause at the general rehearsals of Friday and Saturday I had no more misgivings.
“Our beloved Pastoral was ruined by the chorus that only found out it had not come in just as the whole thing finished. But oh, the Resurrexit! and oh, the applause! As soon as one round finished another began until, being unable to stand it all, I doubled up on the kettle-drum and cried hard.
“Why were you not there, dear friend, faithful champion? I thought of and longed for you.
“At that wild trombone and ophicleide solo in the Francs-Juges, one of the first violins shouted:
“‘The rainbow is the bow of your violin, the winds play your organ and the seasons beat time!’
“Whereupon the whole orchestra started applauding a thought of which they could not possibly grasp the extent. The drummer by my side seized my arm, ejaculating, ‘Superb—sublime,’ while I tore my hair and longed to shriek:
“‘Monstrous! Gigantic! Horrible!’
“All the opera people were present, and there was no end to the congratulations. The most pleased were Habeneck, Dérivis, Dupont, Mademoiselle Mori, Hérold, etc. Nothing was lacking to my success—not even the criticisms of Panseron and Brugnières, who say my style is new and bad, and that such writing is not to be encouraged.
“My dear, dear fellow! in pity send me an opera. How can I write without a book? For heaven’s sake finish something!”