Scan 7
Musical Courier 1893-09-27: Vol 27 Iss 707, 1893
34 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 8. See the scan on archive.org.
1composing drifting. It is the decadence—perhaps an artistic "Götterdämmerung."
3The nuance in piano playing is ruler. The reign of noise is past. In Saint-Saëns's music sonority, brilliancy is present, but the nuance is necessary—not alone the nuance of tone but of expression. Infinite shadings are to be found where before were but the forte, the piano and the mezzo forte. Joseffy taught America the nuance, just as Rubinstein revealed to us the potency of tone. As Paul Verlaine, the French poet, ceaselessly cries: "Pas la couleur rien que la nuance * * * et tout le reste est littérature." one of two readings
4The nuance in piano playing is ruler. The reign of noise is past. In Saint-Saën's music sonority, brilliancy is present, but the nuance is necessary—not alone the nuance of tone but of expression. Infinite shadings are to be found where before were but the forte, the piano and the mezzo forte. Joseffy taught America the nuance, just as Rubinstein revealed to us the potency of tone. As Paul Verlaine, the French poet, ceaselessly cries: "Pas la couleur rien que la nuance * * * et tout le reste est littérature." one of two readings
6THE CENTENARY OF THE PARIS CONSERVATORY.
8FOR a number of years, says Arthur Pougin, we have borrowed from Germany an interesting custom which is not only impressive, but which is far from wanting in moral character when it is not, as in that country, ignorant alike of tact and moderation, pushed to its furthest limits, and in consequence stamped in certain cases somewhat with ridicule and frivolity. I would speak of the celebration of anniversaries relative to great historical events, the birth and death of celebrated men, or to the creation of institutions useful to humanity, to art or science. If I have said that Germany brings ridicule sometimes on this order of ideas it is in effect because her people, more vain than proud, often push things to puerility, which, to not wander outside of artistic facts, we may see at every instant in the celebration of "jubilees," the intellectual interest in which is mediocre to the point of being absolutely null. Some singer of the second or third or fourth rank, some capellmeister of the theatre in a town of 20,000 souls, some wretched organist of a village church, will be the object of a solemn and enthusiastic manifestation on the occasion of the twentieth or the twenty-fifth anniversary of his "entry into this career" or of taking possession of the glorious post which they occupy by grace of circumstances or the confidences of its citizens. It is none the less true that this is an excellent custom when it is maintained within justifiable limits and when it has for its object the revival and the preservation of the memory of men and of things really memorable.
10In this respect we live in France, by grace of the Revolution, in a period singularly prolific of anniversaries of this kind, through the fact of an accumulation, astonishingly rapid, of stupendous deeds such as no other people can show in its history. If the political and military side escapes me here, at least I can insist on one thing, the action of which has been singularly considerable in all that touches on the progress of art in our country. I would speak of the foundation of the Conservatory of Music, which, like the Conservatory "des Arts et Métiers," the Museum, the Normal School, the École Polytechnique and many other institutions of instruction, is due to the first Revolution. We have here, it seems to me, an event too important in what concerns the honor and glory of French music for its anniversary to be passed by unnoticed, and I think such a fact calls for a brilliant commemoration, and that nothing should be neglected to give to it all the importance that it merits in every respect. It is for this reason that it will not be too soon to think already, and to occupy ourselves from to-day with the means which we can put in motion to give to the celebration of this great artistic anniversary all the solemnity that it will admit of. This will be at the same time an opportunity to pay to the memory of old Sarrette, the veritable founder of the Conservatory, who urged its creation with such constant and such masculine energy in the midst of the dangers and perils by which he was surrounded, the homage which is well due to the organizer, truly too forgotten and too neglected in an institution so useful, so glorious, and which we may well say does honor to France.
12I say that Sarrette, who dowered his country with an institution so useful, and which has never ceased to be so flourishing, is really too neglected, and has never had the recognition that he merited. I have the proof of it in a letter which I received fourteen years ago from his son, Jules Sarrette, dead to-day and well on in years at that time, a letter in which he protests, very justly, against the forgetfulness in which we have left the name of his father, and demands that his name should be given to one of the new streets of Paris.
14Jules Sarrette had reason to testify his recognition to the National Convention, owing to which his father was able to found the Conservatory, and to Napoleon I., who had encouraged an institution of which he had understood and recognized the great usefulness. He was not able to do the same by the Government of the Restoration. This, in hatred of the régime to which they owed the existence even of this admirable school, began by rudely closing it, disbanding its staff, and in dismissing like a valet, with a coarseness of which one can have no idea, the man of heart and intelligence who after having created it had vowed his life to it. Next, as if in spite of all, they were obliged to recognize that this school had become indispensable, they finished by reopening it, but in the most deplorable fashion, by removing its title of Conservatory, which, it appeared to them, sounded, too much, of its Revolutionary origin, and in giving to it that of the "Royal School of Music and Declamation," and by removing also its director, whom they replaced by a "general inspector," by reducing to ridiculous proportions the number and the treatment of the professors, by diminishing in fine its receipts and expenses in such a manner that it became impossible to even warm the class rooms, and they were reduced in the winter to burn the furniture and instruments, among other things some superb pianos, the value of which to-day would be double, and the destruction of which, unfortunately compulsory, was a veritable act of vandalism.
16The force of circumstances aiding it, the Conservatory finished nevertheless by knowing better days. Its title was restored and its director was restored in the person of Cherubini, under whose hand it refound its ancient splendor. Its budget in fine was re-established on almost normal conditions. And if unfortunately that budget remains to-day beneath its real wants, if on the other hand while they reconstruct and install with all the space and all the comforts desirable all our great establishments of superior instruction—the Sarbonne, the Museum, the école de droit and the School of Medicine—the Conservatory remains miserably and insufficiently lodged, still, whatever may be said, and whatever may be the value of certain criticisms more or less sincere, more or less disinterested, we can affirm that its teaching is certainly at the height of musical civilization, that it responds to all needs, that it defies rivalry, and that the renown of the school is immense all over Europe, where its superiority is recognized by all.
18It would be difficult in fact to find in musical teaching a staff more brilliant, one might say more glorious, than that which the Conservatory has attached to itself since what will soon be a century. During that space of a century there has not been, so to say, a single one of our celebrated artists who has not been devoted to it and who has not held it an honor to belong to it; and those who were not celebrated were assuredly always chosen from among the most skillful and the most distinguished. I need not inscribe here the names of the present professors, whom every one knows and who are in everybody's mouth. But perhaps it will not be useless to recall those of the old masters whom this noble house can cite with pride and who have so powerfully contributed to its prosperity, to its brilliancy and its glory. Here is a kind of "golden book," which one may open at hazard, at no matter what page, with the certitude of meeting there one or many of those artists which the country is proud to count among the number of her children.
20To begin, in composition and theory: Méhul, Cherubini, Gossec, Lesueur, Monsigny, Martini, Catel, Boieldieu, Berton, Grétry, Carafa, Dausoigne, Dourlen, Paër, Panseron, Leborne, Rodolphe, Reicha, Adolphe Adam, Halévy, Reber, Chapissard, Victor Massé, Ernest Guiraud, Léo Delibes; for simple or dramatic singing, Mengozzi, Garat, Richer, Martin, Lays, Blangini, Plantade, Manuel Garcia, Bordogni, Mra. Cinti-Damoreau, Galli, Ponchard, Levasseur, Adolphe Nourrit, Pellegrini, Moreau-Sainti, Duprez, Faure, Révial, Mra. Pauline Viardot, Couderc, Moecker, Obin, Battaille, Fontana; for piano, Louis Adam, Pradher, Jadin, Zimmermann, Mrs. Coche, Mrs. Farrère, Henri Herz, Marmontel, Le Couppier, Mrs. Massart; for violin, Ballot, Roche, Gaviniès, les deux Kreutzer, Grasset, Blasis, La Houssaye, Habeneck, Alard, Girard, Sauzay, Charles Dancla, Massart; for violoncello, Baudiot, Duport, Romberg, Levasseur, Franc-homme, Norblin; for harp, Naderman, Labarré, Prumier; for organ, Benoist, César Franck; for wind instruments, Devienne, Hugot, Tulou, Vogt, Verroust, Sallantin, Klosé, Gebauer, Delcambre, Ozi, Berr, Dauprat, Gallay, Meifred, Dauverné; lastly, for dramatic declamation, Dazincourt, Fleury, Dugazon, Grandmesnil, Monvel, Talma, Granger, Lafon, Michelot, Saint-Fal, Saint-Prix, Provost, Samson, Augustine Brohan, Miss Mars, Rachel, Régnier, Monrose, Beauvallet, Bressant, &c. one of two readings
21To begin, in composition and theory: Méhul, Cherubini, Gossec, Lesueur, Monsigny, Martini, Catel, Boieldieu, Berton, Grétry, Carafa, Dausoigne, Dourlen, Paër, Panseron, Leborne, Rodolphe, Reicha, Adolphe Adam, Halévy, Reber, Chapissard, Victor Massé, Ernest Guiraud, Léo Delibes; for simple or dramatic singing, Mengozzi, Garat, Richer, Martin, Lays, Blangini, Plantade, Manuel Garcia, Bordogni, Mra. Cinti-Damoreau, Galli, Ponchard, Levasseur, Adolphe Nourrit, Pellegrini, Moreau-Sainti, Duprez, Faure, Révial, Mra. Pauline Viardot, Couderc, Moecker, Obin, Battaille, Fontana; for piano, Louis Adam, Pradher, Jadin, Zimmermann, Mrs. Coche, Mrs. Farrère, Henri Herz, Marmontel, Le Couppier, Mrs. Massart; for violin, Ballot, Roche, Gaviniès, les deux Kreutzer, Grasset, Blasis, La Houssaye, Habeneck, Alard, Girard, Sauzay, Charles Dancla, Massart; for violoncello, Baudiot, Duport, Romberg, Levasseur, Franc-homme, Norblin; for harp, Naderman, Labarré, Prumier; for organ, Benoist, César Franck; for wind instruments, Devienne, Hugot, Tulou, Vogt, Verroust, Sallantin, Klosé, Gebauer, Delcambe, Ozi, Berr, Dauprat, Gallay, Meifred, Dauverné; lastly, for dramatic declamation, Dazincourt, Fleury, Dugazon, Grandmesnil, Monvel, Talma, Granger, Lafon, Michelot, Saint-Fal, Saint-Prix, Provost, Samson, Augustine Brohan, Miss Mars, Rachel, Régnier, Monrose, Beauvallet, Bressant, &c. one of two readings
23It can be imagined, with such a selection of professors, that the Conservatory has had a brilliant past; that its superiority, so strongly established from its birth, has been maintained for a century intact, unto this day, and that its history has been that of one of the most solid, artistic institutions that can be mentioned in the musical annals of Europe. It is this existence, already secular, that we would wish to see celebrated with all the brilliancy with which such a solemnity can be surrounded, and it seems to me that it is not too soon to think of it, to discuss it, to prepare it, to make, in fine, of this anniversary a festival worthy of it, worthy of art and worthy of France.
25THE MODEL WAGNER PERFORMANCES AT MUNICH AND BAYREUTH.
27EVERYBODY is disgruntled about them says Rene Renard: the enemies of Possart and the "new course" at the Munich Court Theatre, because the financial success will, like a kind of Guelph-fund, strengthen the Régime Possart; the rest of the natives on account of the colossal price of admission; the strangers on account of the infernal heat, which weakened the pinions of their enthusiasm, already sufficiently laden with beer; and Mrs. Cosima and her disciples on account of the absence of Weingartner, because she fears that many a pious pilgrim will keep aloof from the Kaaba of Bayreuth, in which alone there is salvation, during the year 1894, &c. Mr. Possart, however, stands smiling on the Capitoline hill of success, and strong in the irony of facts, disavows like the Roman Dictator, from evening to evening, the voices of prophets and augurs, who prophesied from the entrails of chickens and wheaten cake a lamentable fiasco. But let us leave all this. Here the means sanctifies the end. Money is required for the intendant's treasury, and if it can be obtained in no worse way than by the careful preparation and splendid execution of the works of Richard Wagner, we may be content.
29A thoughtful comparison with Bayreuth must convince every intelligent person that the representations at Bayreuth were in general on the same high artistic plane as the latest Festival performances. If some rôles, as that of "Alberich" for example, were not well filled, if the sonorous effect of the covered orchestra was not attained, if in details there was weakness, if before all things the consecrated atmosphere of the Festival House was lacking, all this arises from unavoidable conditions. On the other hand we can point, quite apart from the musical achievements of the noble orchestra under Levi and Mottl, to a series of individual performances which certainly reach the best that has been done in Bayreuth since Wagner's death. I need only mention the "Sachs" of Gura, the "Tristan" of Vogel, the "Isolde" of Mrs. Sucher, and Mrs. Temina, Bettaque, Dressler, &c.
31But what gave special importance to this Model Performance is the breaking through of the orthodox Bayreuth style, which, based on superficial, petty, falsely understood relics of tradition, has become so powerful that every intelligent friend of the grand art and the ideal strivings of Wagner must now be thankful to Mr. Possart that he gave to the performers opportunity to show how, under the free development of individuality the representation of these works can be perfectly successful.
33What Mrs. Cosima, with her servile Squires of the Grail and Caesar-swinging Paladins, among whom very many aesthetic "hurrah-boys" and very few good artists are to be found, seeks to place instead of the serious tradition of her late husband is a personal and Messiah cultus, a tasteless sort of performance, with a considerable tendency toward the Oberammergau style, and at the same time a treatment of
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