Scan 4
Musical Courier 1895-06-05: Vol 30 Iss 796, 1895
65 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1PARIS.
3AN AMERICAN PRINCESS WHO IS A REAL MUSICIAN.
5Music is the greatest of the arts. The best musical education is hearing the best musical works. PRINCESSE E. DE POLIGNAC.
7YOU have been constantly reading the names of the Prince and Princess Edouard Polignac, of Paris, as lovers and protectors of the best music in all its forms. Also of the valuable contributions to musical composition by the Prince, his profound researches among ancient forms, and even the invention of a new scale.
9When M. Chas. Bordes, that devoted advocate of classic sacred music for the church, needed encouragement the Polignacs it was who gave it. When at the close of the first successful venture of the Chanteurs de St. Gervais concerts, M. Guilmant and M. Bordes asked each other, "Dare we continue them?" the name of the Princess headed the list of substantial support for the ensuing season. The only morsels of Bach Passion music that have been given here outside of the Conservatoire have been given in the Polignac salons. Beethoven is played there by a string quartet every week regularly; and all artists who have shown themselves sincere adherents of the true school have always been welcomed and encouraged. Dardanus, the recent resurrection of the Rameau epoch, was given there with orchestra, chorus, soloists, &c., recently.
11When asked who was the most serious society lady musician in Paris three musicians of note unhesitatingly answered, "The Princess de Polignac," and no teacher ever spoke more feelingly of the devotion of a pupil to art for art's sake than M. Eugene Gigout, who has had the pleasant task of instructing her in organ music.
13The princess is an American, née, Miss Winnaretta Singer, daughter of the wealthy American of that name who with his family came to France when the little girl was but a few months old. At the time of the war he crossed over to Devonshire, England, where he built an elegant chateau, and where the daughter grew up in the centre of English refinement. She early showed taste for art, and painting was seriously followed under the best French and English masters. Her pictures are in the Salon and at the various expositions, and a fresh canvas is now on the easel.
15Side by side with this art expression was a great love for music, which was also followed.
17Let no one say that American spirit is inherently set on music frivolity. The appearance of this is but the accidental result of a life that was obliged to be ultra practical in the first stages of the country's civilization.
19Here is a girl who was taken from under the influence as a child, brought up in the atmosphere of intelligent art based on reading, study, quiet and the hearing and seeing of the best works of the best masters.
21Hidden with her talent was none of the American haste, none of the vulgar desire to show off, none of the abnormal wish to do something wonderful; nothing but the sober, modest search after perfection, the desire to do something to-day better than yesterday, with the instinctive hope of one day touching truth.
23In this American lady's spirit exists all that simple sincerity, that unbending inflexibility of honest sight, that was such a revolution to me in French character when first coming among the people.
25Speaking of her beloved organ she says:
26"I do not play the organ as an organist, but as a musician. I commenced its study as one would turn a leaf in a book one was reading. I studied the organ to study Bach. I studied Bach to study music—that is all there is of it." The piano was studied in the same way, although on both instruments Mme. de Polignac is much more than an amateur.
28She reads very readily at sight, and frequently plays the piano part during the classic orchestral readings that are a feature of her household. She has studied counterpoint and composition and improvises nicely on the organ, to the great delight of M. Gigout, who is one of the masters of improvisation in Paris.
30"One must have food to think on," she says in speaking of the weekly Beethoven concerts. "One must know Art, necessary to her happiness, so that the dominance of this regal tinting throws a dash of originality over the whole that is extremely fascinating. Her dressing, personal effects, even the jewels on her fingers, contain these mystic glintings, and nothing could be more becoming than their tasteful arrangement.
32But the pride and pet of the household is the music room, or music house rather, as it ought to be called; for at the other end of the crocus covered lawn and gravel sweep fronting the house, Mme. de Polignac has herself designed and planned a perfect music palace.
34From the Gothic and flower-draped door at one side, to the stained glass wall at the other, the whole spacious church-like boudoir, or boudoir like church, is a veritable temple to St. Cecile. It is impossible for the most fertile artistic imagination to discover a lack in the various luxuries of eye and taste sense under that one roof.
36It is not the question of wealth alone. Anybody can make a rich room of any kind. It is not that. It is the exquisite fitness of things, the flawless ease of arrangement, the dreams of color and the dominance of modern and intelligent common sense, through, not over, artistic tradition.
38The roof, church shaped, leads to thoughts of heaven; the walls, a series of little surprise nooks of all sizes, suggest the most delightful mundane associations. Lovely tiling in peacock colors, aristocratic old tapestries, paintings by the gifted hostess, choice rugs of all nations, natural woods, polished strips of flooring and quaint but dainty furnishing, are some of the first view features.
40From back of the centre rises an organ loft on Queen Anne lines, with a lovely organ, the last made by Cavaille-Coll père, with seventeen stops, two claviers and pipes in nickel and gilt; adjoining is a library of classic sacred works. Here the mistress studies and thinks and keeps control of the pedal motion and takes her lessons. Back of a similar balcony opposite is the little atelier, where her fine temperament as a colorist finds expression.
42Below is an alcove in which at short notice a stage can be erected, which, as in the case of the Rameau drama recently given, accommodates some fifty people with piano and orchestral instruments. Opposite is a fireplace, which makes up for all the lack of heating convenience in Paris. It is a huge alcove lined solid in blue tiling. This gorgeous space with the red flames leaping through, and the quaint brass furnishing about, the big mantel above with its curious bric-a-brac and in the centre a life-sized peacock with spread plumage—what a feast for artistic sense!
44The organ is larger than the one of same style built for Gounod, and has a very sweet tone.
46In this charming room are heard none but strains of the best classic masters; and who can measure the benefit of a prestige of so high order for the simple and true in music? And what a delightful link in musical progress, our own charming countrywoman allied to a French nobleman of tastes and thoughts equally noble and refined, and both actively engaged in the promotion of the best musical art!
48What a benefit to New York society music would be a union of will and ability equally worthy!
50AN INTERESTING REHEARSAL.
52An interesting feature of operatic work is study of the rôle with the composer.
54Alone in the work, even with considerable instinct, one feels always more or less in the dark, face to face with question-marks at every phrase, and subject to the influence of other interpreters. With a coach or teacher one finds one's self but following the habits of other singers, and even then is happy till study with another coach or teacher shows the veneer of both.
56With the composer one stands on certainty, in the full electric light of perception, and (if one is sufficiently susceptible) even of inspiration.
58Every correction is a revelation, every word is an idea. Corrections are not simply suggested but made; for the owner of th thought, not one of its merchants, is by. Memory takes hold of what is said from the rarity of the privilege and the truth of the corrections made.
60The drill deals with the soul of the subject, not its dressing. It is not a question of sing loud here and soft there, make this legato and that staccato; phrase this thus and not so. It is story; it is imagination; it is a novel analyzed by one of the actors in the plot; it is the marriage of words and music, and as a consequence the shape, the color, the flavor come by such and such means.
62There is no privilege so great to a singer as this study of a rôle with its creator. To a composer there is on earth no supple so extreme as going over his creation with one who by lack of gift or training is incapable of receiving the impressions desired, and no person, save perhaps the composer himself, can ever estimate the gratitude of a creator to one who clearly and correctly portrays before him the living image of that of which his own soul has but the spiritual cast.
64In a MUSICAL COURIER some months ago were printed the glowing words of Gounod, inspiring a sympathetic vocalist with the rôle of Marguerite. His manner of describing what came to him in the writing, as the spiritual beauty of the character, must be immemorable to any woman singer with (what so few of them have) soul enough to think of
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