Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies (essays in honour of François Lesure) 9781315096469, 1315096463

Table of contents :
Berlioz and his time --
Berlioz, Dalayrac and song / David Charlton --
Mozartian undercurrents in Berlioz : appreciation, resistance and unconscious appropriation / Benjamin Perl --
'Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker? : the pre-history of L'Enfance du Christ / Julian Rushton --
A new source for Berlioz's Les troyens / Hugh Macdonald --
Berlioz and the piano at the great exhibition : the challenge of impartiality / Kerry Murphy --
Debussy and his contemporaries --
Taming two Spanish women : reflections on editing opera / Richard Langham Smith --
Grieg, the Société nationale, and the origins of Debussy's string quartet / Michael Strasser --
Symbolism as compositional agent in act IV, scene 4 of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande / Marie Rolf --
A sociology of the Apaches : 'sacred battalion' for Pelléas / Jann Pasler --
Ravel after Debussy : inheritance, influences and style / Barbara L. Kelly.

Citation preview

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies Essays in Honour of François Lesure

The late François Lesure, photographed in 2001. Reproduced with permission from Anik Lesure.

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies Essays in Honour of François Lesure

Edited by

Barbara L. Kelly Kerry Murphy

First published 2007 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2007 Barbara L. Kelly and Kerry Murphy Barbara L. Kelly and Kerry Murphy have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Berlioz and Debussy: sources, contexts and legacies: essays in honour of François Lesure 1. Berlioz, Hector, 1803–1869 – Criticism and interpretation 2. Debussy, Claude, 1862–1918 – Criticism and interpretation I. Kelly, Barbara L. II. Murphy, Kerry III. Lesure, François 780.9′22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berlioz and Debussy: sources, contexts and legacies: essays in honour of François Lesure / edited by Barbara L. Kelly and Kerry Murphy. p. cm. 1. Music – France –19th century – History and criticism. 2. Music – France – 20th century – History and criticism. 3. Berlioz, Hector, 1803–1869 – Criticism and interpretation. 4. Debussy, Claude, 1862–1918 – Criticism and interpretation. I. Kelly, Barbara L. II. Murphy, Kerry. III. Lesure, François. ML270.1.B47 2007 780.92′244–dc22 2006032411 ISBN

Contents List of Figures and Tables

vii

List of Music Examples

ix

Notes on the Contributors

xi

Preface: In Honour of François Lesure Jeanice Brooks

xv

Introduction Barbara Kelly and Kerry Murphy

xxi

Part One: Berlioz and His Time 1

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song David Charlton

2

Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz: Appreciation, Resistance and Unconscious Appropriation Benjamin Perl

19

3

‘Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker’? The Pre-history of L’Enfance du Christ Julian Rushton

35

4 A New Source for Berlioz’s Les Troyens Hugh Macdonald 5

Berlioz and the Piano at the Great Exhibition: the Challenge of Impartiality Kerry Murphy

3

53

67

Part Two: Debussy and His Contemporaries 6

Taming Two Spanish Women: Reflections on Editing Opera Richard Langham Smith

7 Grieg, the Société nationale, and the Origins of Debussy’s String Quartet Michael Strasser

83

103

vi

Contents

8 Symbolism as Compositional Agent in Act IV, Scene 4 of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande Marie Rolf

117

9 A Sociology of the Apaches: ‘Sacred Battalion’ for Pelléas Jann Pasler

149

10

167

Ravel after Debussy: Inheritance, Influences and Style Barbara L. Kelly

Afterword: The Origins of the Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy Roy Howat

181

Bibliography

193

Index

203

List of Figures and Tables Figures 6.1 A page from the livret de mise-en-scène to Carmen, recopied and interleaved with pages from the printed libretto. 6.2 Cover-page for the mise-en-scène of Carmen (Association de la régie théâtrale) 9.1 Literary critic 9.2 Klingsor 9.3 Music critic A.1 At the Fondation des Treilles, July 1986 A.2 Some intense editorial debate, Café de l’Opéra, 1990

96 98 150 153 164 185 191

Tables 1.1 Opéras-comiques before Boieldieu in Earlier Nineteenth-century Revival 1.2 Opéra-comique Sources of Berlioz’s Guitar Arrangements 5.1 Musical Instrument Jury, Great Exhibition, 1851 6.1 The Sources of Bizet’s Carmen 7.1 Number and Types of Chamber Works Appearing on Société nationale Programmes, 1871–91 7.2 Works by Grieg Performed at Société nationale Concerts, as Listed in the Programme. 7.3 Programme for Concert No. 197 of the Société nationale (28 December 1889)

6 13 68 86 109 110 113

List of Music Examples 1.1 Dalayrac, ‘Ton amour, ô fille chérie’ from Azémia. 9 1.2 Dalayrac, ‘Aimable et belle’ from Adolphe et Clara. 10 1.3 ‘Chanson languedocienne’ used in the Favarts’ Annette et Lubin. 11 1.4 Della-Maria, ‘Que d’établissements nouveaux’ from L’Opéra-comique, copied by Berlioz. 14 1.5 Berlioz, ‘Petit Oiseau. Chanson de paysan’ (opening). 18 6.1 Bizet, ‘L’Almée’ from Djamileh, opening bars 1–10. Document BHVP-ART. Reproduced with permission. 92 6.2 Debussy, Rodrigue et Chimène, Act II, tableau 2, bars 593–606. Document BHVP-ART. Reproduced with permission. 93 6.3a Bizet: ‘L’Almée’ from Djamileh. Document BHVP-ART. Reproduced with permission. 93 6.3b Debussy, Rodrigue et Chimène, Act II, tableau 2. Document BHVP-ART. Reproduced with permission. 93 8.1 Dramatic and Musical Structure of Act IV, Scene 4 of Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande. Reproduced with permission. 122 8.2a Additive Variation. 125 8.2b Motivic and Rhythmic Variants. 126 8.2c Transformation of Intervallic Content. 127 8.3 Foreshortening. 128 8.4 Additive, Foreshortening and Interruption Procedures. 130–31 8.5 Shared Material in the Modéré and Animé Sections. 132 8.6a Pelléas’s Motif, Act I, scene 2. 135 136 8.6b Pelléas’s Motif, Act IV, scene 4. 8.6c Pelléas’s Motif, Act IV, scene 4. 137 8.7 Grace-note Motive of the Well. 138 8.8a Part I of Act IV, scene 4 (beginning). 140–41 8.8b Part I of Act IV, scene 4 (end). 142–3 8.9 Beginning of Act IV, scene 4 (Pelléas’s entrance). 144 8.10 Part II of Act IV, scene 4 (Pelléas’s search for beauty). 145–6 10.1 Ravel, Sonata for Violin and Cello, second movement, rehearsal figures 5–7. © Éditions Durand, reproduced with kind permission from Éditions Durand. 175 10.2 Ravel, ‘Aoua!’, Chansons madécasses, rehearsal figure 1. © Éditions Durand, reproduced with kind permission from Éditions Durand. 178

Notes on the Contributors Jeanice Brooks is Reader in Music at the University of Southampton. Her research interests include early modern music in France, twentieth-century French music, and gender studies. She is the author of Courtly Song in Late SixteenthCentury France (Chicago, 2000) and has edited volumes of chansons and motets by Renaissance composers Jean de Castro and Guillaume Boni. Her articles on early modern topics and on Nadia Boulanger have appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Early Music History, Early Music, Revue de musicologie, Journal of the Royal Musical Association and Revue belge de musicologie. David Charlton is Professor Emeritus at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent books are Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique, Paris: Répertoire 1762–1972, with Nicole Wild (Liège, 2005), and The Musical Voyager: Berlioz in Europe, edited with Katharine Ellis (Frankfurt, 2007). His study of Opera Reform in the Age of Rousseau will appear with Cambridge University Press. Roy Howat’s special interest in French repertoire led to his influential book Debussy in Proportion and his involvement as one of the founding participants in the Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy. He has also edited critical editions of music by Handel, Chabrier and Fauré. He tours internationally as concert pianist and lecturer, has held university posts in various countries and has recorded numerous discs of piano and chamber music, including all Debussy’s known solo piano music. Following an AHRB Research Fellowship at London’s Royal College of Music, in 2003 he became Keyboard Research Fellow at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Barbara L. Kelly is Senior Lecturer in Music at Keele University. She researches on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French music and on issues of French national identity from 1870 to 1939. She is author of Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud (1912–1939) (Ashgate 2003), and of several articles on Milhaud, Debussy and Ravel, including the Ravel article in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (second edition, 2000) and chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Ravel and the Cambridge Companion to Debussy. She has edited French Music, Culture and National Identity, 1870–1939 (University of Rochester Press, forthcoming), and is preparing a study of French music between the wars.

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Richard Langham Smith studied with Wilfrid Mellers and the late Edward Lockspeiser. He has published widely on French Music, including a translation and edition of Debussy’s articles, Debussy on Music; The Cambridge Companion to Pelléas et Mélisande (with co-author Roger Nichols) and Debussy Studies (CUP). His reconstruction of Debussy’s unfinished opera Rodrigue et Chimène opened the new Opera House in Lyons in 1993 and has recently been published in the Oeuvres complètes. He has held university posts at Lancaster, City, and Exeter universities, and was Visiting Professor at Gresham College London in 2004. He is currently Arnold Kettle Distinguished Scholar in Music at the Open University. In 1994 he was admitted to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the rank of Chevalier for services to French Music. Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor of Music at Washington University, St Louis. He was General Editor of the New Berlioz Edition from its inception in 1967 until its completion in 2006. He has edited all three of Berlioz’s operas, including Les Troyens, the 1969 score of which has contributed to the wide dissemination of the opera in recent years. His edition of Lalo’s Fiesque was prepared for the world premiere of that opera in July 2006, and further scores of French operas are planned. Kerry Murphy is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne. Her book Hector Berlioz and the Development of French Music Criticism was published by UMI Studies in Musicology and she has published widely on nineteenth-century French music criticism. She also works in the area of Australian music research, in which she has published editions of early Australian opera and art song, and recently coordinated a project investigating amateur music-making in colonial Melbourne (the results of which were published in a themed issue of the Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 2005). Jann Pasler is Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. In addition to writing on American music, modernism and postmodernism, she has published widely on French music and culture. In France, she helped create the CNRS’s Centre d’information et de documentation ‘Recherche musicale’ and has participated in research groups sponsored by the European Science Foundation – on concerts and their public, and on conservatories across Europe. Pasler has received fellowships from the NEH, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the National Humanities Center. In 2005 she was awarded the Colin Slim award by the American Musicological Society for the best article in musicology by a senior scholar. In press are two books: Writing through Music (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Useful Music, volume 1: Music as Public Utility (University of California Press); in preparation is Music, Race, and Colonialism in fin-de siècle France.

Notes on the Contributors

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Benjamin Perl received his PhD in 1989 for a doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Orchestra in the Operas of Berlioz and His Contemporaries’. Perl is now Chair of the Department of Literature and Arts at the Open University of Israel in TelAviv. In recent years his research focus has been on Mozart’s music and early Clacissism. Recent publications include ‘Mozart in Turkey’, Cambridge Opera Journal (2000); ‘The Doubtful Authenticity of Mozart’s Horn Concerto K 412’, The Historic Brass Society Journal (2004); ‘A Special Type of Retransition to the Recapitulation in Mozart’s Works’, Mozart-Studien 15 (2005); ‘Mozartian Touches in Michael Haydn’s Dramatic Works’, Min-Ad (2006). Marie Rolf is Professor of Music Theory and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the Eastman School of Music. Her publications cover a variety of topics, from manuscript studies of Debussy and Mozart to the relationship between analysis and performance in songs by Richard Strauss. In 2004, she brought to light a completely unknown song by Debussy, ‘Les Papillons’, publishing a facsimile transcription and essay on the work. Rolf is a founding member of the editorial board for the Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy; her critical edition of La Mer appeared in 1997, and she is currently editing a volume of songs for the Œuvres complètes. Julian Rushton, now Emeritus Professor, occupied the West Riding Chair of Music at the University of Leeds from 1982 to 2002. Previously he taught at the universities of East Anglia and Cambridge. His The Music of Berlioz was published by Oxford University Press in 2001; previous books include The Musical Language of Berlioz and four Cambridge Handbooks on Mozart, Berlioz and Elgar. He has edited four volumes of the New Berlioz Edition and Cipriani Potter’s Symphony in G minor. He was President of the Royal Musical Association, 1994–99, is a Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society, and is Chairman of the Musica Britannica edition. Michael Strasser is an Associate Professor of Musicology at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. Dr. Strasser received his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Illinois in 1998. His research focuses primarily on French music and musical life of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he has presented papers on aspects of his research at conferences of the American Musicological Society and international conferences in France, Great Britain, and the United States. In addition, he has presented papers on Mexican colonial church music and music in colonial New England. His publications include articles on French music and Arnold Schoenberg.

Preface: In Honour of François Lesure Jeanice Brooks When I began my doctoral dissertation on sixteenth-century musical settings of Pierre de Ronsard, I rapidly came to respect the name of François Lesure. Then, as now, late-Renaissance France was not exactly the centre of the musicological universe, so his considerable contributions to the field loomed large. His bibliography of the royal music printers, Le Roy & Ballard, became my constant companion. I relied heavily on Repertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), especially volume BI (Recueils imprimés XVIe–XVIIe siècles), on the bibliography of the printing firm of Nicolas Du Chemin, and the Nuovo Vogel—all partially or completely Lesure’s work—as well as his many articles on composers, instrument builders and musicians in sixteenth-century France. So I was excited to discover, shortly after arriving in Paris to complete my thesis, that François Lesure would be leading a seminar entitled ‘Edition critique des oeuvres de Debussy’ at the Ecole pratique des hautes études. I went to their office to find out more. Could anyone enrol? Yes. So I did, thinking that learning about Debussy would be a useful addition to my postgraduate training, that it would be a nice break from the dissertation, and that although the topic was not related to my own research the course would at least allow me to meet the person whose work on sixteenth-century music I so admired. What I found, when I arrived one Thursday evening for the first meeting, was nothing like the course on editing methods I expected. Instead, François assigned sessions not only to Debussy, but to Massenet, or organ building, or orchestral song, or even—to my great joy—the sixteenth century, depending on the interests of the participants. People brought what they were working on and talked about it for a while, responding to questions from François, other students and whoever else he happened to invite that week. Many were, like me, in advanced stages of doctoral work, and they came from all over the world. But students were not the only participants: there were regular visits from well-established scholars, foreigners   In preparing this essay in honour of François Lesure (1923–2001), I have relied heavily on the bibliography of his publications compiled by Christian Meyer and Jean Gribenski, ‘Bibliographie des travaux de François Lesure’, Revue de musicologie, 88/2 (2002): 457–70, where details of these and other publications may be found. For biographical information and dates, I am indebted to the obituary by Catherine Massip in Revue de musicologie, 87/2 (2001): 517–20. I would like to thank the contributors to the present volume for sharing their memories of François with me.

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passing through the Bibliothèque nationale (François always knew who was in the reading room, and seemed able to snag them for his Thursdays when appropriate), and performers and scholars working largely outside academic frameworks. The atmosphere was convivial, François’s touch light. But although his tone was often ironic, he demonstrated an unfailing interest in what participants had to say—even if in halting French—and a truly impressive ability to engage with everyone, whatever their level and in whatever the field. Though it was billed as a postgraduate research seminar, in François’s hands the course was not so much seminar as salon. Sociable and amusing, he possessed a barbed wit that made him excellent company and rendered contact with him a genuine pleasure as well as beneficial to my scholarly work. Like a charismatic host, he nimbly elicited ideas and information from others and invested the entire proceedings with his own lively curiosity and seemingly inexhaustible energy. Only someone with François’s vast range of knowledge and expertise could have managed such a thing so successfully. If the sixteenth century was indeed a first scholarly love, his subsequent career was remarkably diverse. I soon found that he occupied a similar position in the pantheon of musicological heroes of my fellow students as he did in mine, but for his work on organology, or musical iconography, or music publishing, or Debussy rather than on the Renaissance. His early training at the Sorbonne and the Paris Conservatoire was followed by diplomas from the Ecole pratique des hautes études and the Ecole des chartes, where he completed theses on sixteenth-century instrumentalists and instrument builders in Paris. The Ecole des chartes was and is France’s most prestigious institution for the education of archivists, equipping its elite graduates with enviable skills in paleography, codicology and diplomatic. In its strongly documentary disposition, all of Francois’s work reflected this early training. His delight in turning up new or neglected sources remained fresh and apparent many years later, and a fundamental concern with the material traces of music linked the highly varied subjects of his later research. On completing his diploma from the Ecole des chartes in 1950, François joined the Bibliothèque nationale as a librarian in the recently founded Département de musique. He remained there for most of the rest of his career, becoming director from 1970 until his retirement in 1988. It was as head of the division that many of the contributors to this volume knew him best. Jann Pasler remembers that his office door was always open when she wanted to discuss some aspect of her work, and that she could count on support and attention even when her approaches diverged from François’s own. Julian Rushton recalls with gratitude François’s help with the New Berlioz Edition volume devoted to La Damnation de Faust; the assistant librarians were instructed to keep all the materials on a trolley to be wheeled out on Julian’s arrival. And David Charlton describes one of François’s most characteristic traits: he was always curious about others’ musicological doings, especially if one was in the lift at the same time, had some book or document in hand and could not escape!

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The library provided an ideal base for the work on sources that informed virtually all of François’s numerous publications, including the Debussy research that became a central concern from the 1960s. Many of his early articles on the composer relied on unpublished letters, several of them edited for the special centenary number of the Revue de musicologie in 1962. Other letters furnished material for a stream of important articles in the 1960s and 1970s, leading finally to François’s edition of Debussy’s selected correspondence.At the time of his death he was involved in preparing a complete edition of the letters. Another centenary effort involved François in mounting major exhibitions on Debussy in Paris, Bordeaux and Lisbon; this work served as preparation for his iconography, Claude Debussy, of 1975. François was equally interested in Debussy’s critical writings, which he edited in Monsieur Croche et autres écrits. With his bibliographer’s zeal, François was indefatigable in tracking down sources for Debussy’s music; in many cases, he was able to bring them into the public domain by purchasing them for the Bibliothèque nationale. Among the large number of significant acquisitions he made for the library during his tenure was the autograph of the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, bought in 1977. The same year saw the publication of both François’s facsimile edition of the autograph sketches for Pelléas et Mélisande and his Catalogue de l’oeuvre de Claude Debussy (Geneva). The catalogue was the essential first step in the preparation of the critical edition of Debussy’s works under François’s direction; its first volume appeared in 1985. It was typical of François’s method that only after many years of documentary research did he feel ready to produce a synthetic account of Debussy’s career; his two volumes of biography—Debussy avant Pelléas ou les années symbolistes and Claude Debussy: biographie critique (Paris, 1992 and 1994)—reflect several decades of intimate familiarity with primary sources. Although François’s work on Berlioz was less extensive than his Debussy research, it was similarly informed by engagement with documentary materials. An article on Berlioz’s will appeared for the centenary of the composer’s death and work on Berlioz’s letters led to the edition of two volumes of the Correspondance générale in collaboration with Hugh Macdonald. It was characteristic of François to find these sources fascinating, even though his own reactions to Berlioz were somewhat equivocal. He remained slightly baffled by the intensity of the anglophone love affair with the composer’s music, and while appreciating their scholarly work, he enjoyed gently mocking Berlioz’s fans. Vol. 48, Claude Debussy, 1862–1962: textes et documents inédits. Claude Debussy, Lettres, 1884–1918 (Paris, 1980); 2nd rev. ed. as Claude Debussy, Correspondance, 1884–1918 (Paris, 1993).   Claude Debussy: iconographie musicale (Geneva, 1975); bilingual French–English ed. (Geneva and Paris, 1980).   Monsieur Croche et autres écrits (Paris, 1971; 2nd rev. ed., 1987).   ‘Le Testament d’Hector Berlioz’, Revue de musicologie, 55 (1969): 219–23.   Correspondance générale (gen. ed. Pierre Citron), vols. 5: 1855–1859, and 6: 1859–1863 (Paris, 1989 and 1995).    

xviii Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies Julian Rushton remembers encountering François in the interval of a Parisian concert and being teased about the volume of Berlioz’s letters he had clutched under his arm. His ambivalence about the composer did not affect his perception of Berlioz’s importance, however, and François was a major force in mounting celebrations of his life and work. The centenary of Berlioz’s death was marked by exhibitions in the Bibliothèque nationale and Lisbon’s Palacio Foz; at the time of François’s death, he was hard at work on preparations for the bicentenary of the composer’s birth. David Charlton remembers that at one subcommittee meeting for the Berlioz Bicentennial, François seemed to have more ideas than the rest of the group put together. Given the extent of his work as a librarian and as an immensely productive scholar—the publications I have mentioned here represent only a fraction of his vast output—it is remarkable that François found time to invest his energies in the training of younger musicologists. Yet he taught at the Université libre in Brussels from 1964 to 1977, and in 1973 took over from Solange Corbin at the Ecole pratique des hautes études. His seminars there provided support for several generations of scholars, including Kerry Murphy and Jann Pasler, who vividly remember the atmosphere of encouragement they found there. The seminars also provided a mode of introducing younger musicologists to established figures in the field; François regularly invited senior scholars to hear presentations at the Ecole pratique when he found a student’s work promising and thought an introduction could be useful. This was perhaps not as altruistic as it sounds; François liked to be in the thick of things, at the centre of the musicological stock exchange, bartering information on sources and projects—a role for which he was ideally suited by temperament and through his position at the Bibliothèque nationale. His support for younger scholars thus often took the form of useful introductions and practical aid in gaining access to documents. Jann Pasler recalls that François shared with her all the names and addresses of people who had contributed to the 1975 Ravel exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale, which allowed her to set up interviews with nearly forty of them during her research on Maurice Delage; François also put her in contact with an important Stravinsky collaborator. François was always eager to involve younger musicologists in his projects, and was generous in offering important breaks to scholars in the early stages of their careers. David Charlton remembers being honoured by François’s invitation to contribute to a collection on musical iconography. For Richard Langham Smith, he provided permission and practical help with the English translation of François’s edition of Debussy’s writings, and—perhaps more importantly—started him on the work on Rodrigue et Chimène that is still occupying him today. In my own case, François not only introduced me to many people (including several of the contributors to this volume) but spent many hours patiently going over my early efforts at transcribing near-illegible sixteenth-century notarial documents.  

Lesure, (ed.) Hector Berlioz (Paris, 1969); Hector Berlioz (Lisbon, 1969).

Preface: In Honour of François Lesure

xix

This book is a testament to François’s generosity, focusing on two composers that formed important points of contact between him and the anglophone scholars he befriended and supported. In its multiplicity of voices and approaches, it stands as a written counterpart to those seminars at the Ecole pratique with François’s animating voice at its heart. François was both deeply engaged in the preservation and promotion of French musical culture and history, and tolerant, open and enthusiastic about foreign scholars’ interest in French music. It is a pleasure for those who worked with him and learned from him to offer this tribute to his memory.

Introduction Berlioz and Debussy are two of the most innovative figures in French music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They stand out for their original contributions in areas such as orchestral colour, instrumentation and timbre. Yet some have regarded them as standing apart from the French ‘musical tradition’. Indeed, Debussy made precisely that observation in response to Paul Landormy’s Enquête (1904) about the importance of Berlioz. For Debussy, Berlioz was an exception to the French musical tradition, since he was too literary and not entirely musical. Yet, the same has been said of Debussy, who derived much of his musical inspiration from writers and painters. In both cases their roles as critics had an impact on how their reputations and their works were received. While Berlioz was very critical of French musical life, and outspoken about operatic practices, Debussy’s irreverent comments on Gluck, Berlioz and Wagner caused many to doubt his suitability to assume the role of chef d’école. Both Berlioz and Debussy had enthusiastic supporters as well as outspoken detractors. While Berlioz was initially associated with the perceived low state into which French music had fallen at the time of the Franco-Prussian defeat, the process of his rehabilitation would soon lead to his being considered the upholder of French symphonic traditions. Champions such as Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, and especially Bruneau in his state-commissioned report (1901) did much to bring about a reassessment of Berlioz’s importance, and that of Romanticism in general. Alluding to the 1871 defeat, Bruneau cites Berlioz as an inspiration for the younger generation in the area of symphonic music, which he regards as a growth area and priority for French music. For his part, Debussy was involved   Claude Debussy in Paul Landormy, ‘L’Etat actuel de la musique française’, La Revue bleue 14 (2 April 1904) in Debussy, M. Croche et autres écrits (Paris, 1971), pp. 278–9 ; see also Vincent d’Indy’s response in La Revue bleue 13 (26 March 1904), p. 395, where he described Berlioz as scarcely French at all.   See Jean Chantavoine, A. Chéramy and Arthur Coquard in Le Cas Debussy : Une enquête de la Revue du temps présent, ed. C-Francis Caillard and José de Bérys (Paris, 1910), pp. 69, 71 and 75.   See Camille Mauclair in Le Cas Debussy, p. 90 and Julien Tiersot, ‘Claude Debussy’, Le Courrier musical (15 April 1918) : 172.   Saint-Saëns, ‘Discours de M. Saint-Saëns’, Le Guide musical (6 and 13 September 1903): 627, quoted in Lesley Wright, ‘Berlioz’s impact in France’, The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz, ed. Peter Bloom (Cambridge, 2000), p. 263; Albert Bruneau, La Musique française contemporaine (Paris, 1901), pp. 74–81, 96; see also Rapport sur la musique française contemporaine, ed. Paul-Marie Masson (Rome, 1913), pp. 8–9, and Darius Milhaud in La Vie de Berlioz, ed. Jean Roy (Paris, 1954), pp. 8–9.   Bruneau, La Musique française, p. 96.

xxii Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies in the process of establishing his position as France’s leading composer in his public pronouncements on Rameau and the state of French music, and his overtly patriotic references in his war-time music. He was aided by articulate supporters such as Louis Laloy and Emile Vuillermoz, who championed and ‘canonized’ the composer on his death, towards the end of World War I. Julien Tiersot, a specialist on Berlioz, commented on the lasting value of both composers; while he linked Berlioz’s music to that of his illustrious forebear, Beethoven, as having ‘expressed the purest, most sincere and most profound essence of humanity’, he acknowledged Debussy as a ‘master in the art he has inaugurated’, despite his disrespectful attitude towards ‘heroes of art such as Gluck, Wagner and Beethoven’. At the heart of the ambivalence surrounding these two figures is a debate concerning the nature and character of French music. Romain Rolland gets to the crux of this issue in identifying two sides to the French character, the sensual and refined element represented by Debussy, and the heroic and passionate side represented by Berlioz. ‘To tell the truth’, he added, ‘this [Berlioz] is the one I prefer. But God prevent me from renouncing the other. It is the balance between these two Frances that produces the French genius.’ Thus a consideration of these two figures side by side reveals the range, diversity and distinctiveness of French music during this period. The contributors to this volume are largely English-speaking colleagues and/or former students of François Lesure, who came across him in their research on French music either in his position as music librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale de France or as director of musicology at the École pratique des hautes études. The seminars that Lesure ran at the École are described most eloquently in the introduction to this volume by Jeanice Brookes, who stresses the role they served in fostering exchange and communication between scholars. Brookes’s introduction presents this book as a testimony to Lesure’s abilities as a ‘mentor, friend, etc to anglophone scholars; as a written counterpart to those seminars at the Ecole pratique’. The articles in the first half of the book have Berlioz as their focus, and all concern aspects of Berlioz not previously dealt with in any depth in the literature. David Charlton’s chapter demonstrates that study of Berlioz’s critical thinking on music (which is now becoming so easily available through the splendid edition of his complete music criticism) might help us to understand his creative output – in   See Barbara L. Kelly ‘Debussy and the Making of a ‘musicien français’: Pelléas, the Press and the First World War’, in French Music, Culture, and National Identity, ed. Kelly (Rochester, forthcoming) n.p.   Saint-Saëns, in Lesley Wright, ‘Berlioz’s impact in France’, p. 263 and Tiersot, ‘Claude Debussy’, p. 172.   Romain Rolland, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1908), p. 206, quoted in Hugh Macdonald, ‘Un pays où tous sont musiciens’, in Parnassus Essays in Honor of Jacques Barzun, ed. Dora Weiner and William Keylor (New York, 1976), p. 294.

Introduction

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this case his songs – better. Charlton examines the pre-Romantic romance tradition, including some fascinating documentation of folk-song associations in this repertoire, alongside both Berlioz’s creative response to romances and other songs that he knew, and finally his own compositions in the genre, particularly those bearing the designation ‘Romance’. Charlton shows that Berlioz, the stern defender of the integrity of the artwork, actually reverted to a more flexible mode with his songs, which he arranged, embellished, and orchestrated. Charlton claims that despite the sophistication of Berlioz’s later vocal writing, he never ‘forsook the ideal of the simple melody that belonged to the generality of the musical public’. Benjamin Perl (whose doctoral thesis on ‘The Orchestra in the Operas of Berlioz and His Contemporaries’ was supervised by Lesure and François-Bernard Mâche) examines how despite Berlioz’s admiration for some of Mozart’s works, there is also a hidden antagonism towards Mozart, which at times breaks through openly. Perl examines Berlioz’s conflicting attitude to Mozart through analysing the numerous comments on Mozart’s works in Berlioz’s critical writings. Perl argues that Berlioz unconsciously saw Mozart as a threat to his self-assurance as a musician. Two articles in this section deal with Berlioz source studies. Hugh Macdonald’s article ‘A New Source for Les Troyens’ is based on a recently acquired manuscript libretto of Berlioz’s opera found at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels. This is the most revealing document to have come to light since Macdonald published his critical edition of the opera in 1969–71, and he shows how the newly discovered libretto supplies a unique, indeed precious glimpse of the composer at work, in which Berlioz has recorded his many changes of heart and mind. Julian Rushton’s article on the prehistory of Berlioz’s much-loved work L’Enfance du Christ also examines sources. Rushton looks at possible literary, visual, religious and even musical sources for L’Enfance du Christ as he attempts to ground it firmly in the context of its time. Berlioz’s use of modality and oratorio-like writing, for instance, Rushton places as part of the historicist mode of the day, in line with the interest in early music encouraged by the St Cecilians. Rushton claims that the influence of Berlioz’s early Catholic upbringing – at least the first seven years of his life – has perhaps been overshadowed by his later public statements of his lack of faith, and that L’Enfance du Christ reflects in many ways a nostalgia for his early childhood, a time in which religion and religious music (such as carols) featured very strongly. Despite Berlioz’s lack of religious conviction, Rushton claims that the work could be seen as representing a metaphorical form of Catholic devotion. Kerry Murphy’s chapter looks at Berlioz neither as critic (her Ph.D. on Berlioz’s criticism was supervised by Lesure) nor composer, but as a judge on the instrumental panel of the Great Exhibition of 1851. She claims that despite the rhetoric of impartiality espoused at the Exhibition, in practice the strength of national rivalries made impartiality very difficult to achieve. And Berlioz was no exception. Murphy argues that although he claimed to approach his job as juror

xxiv Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies with an impartial eye, he came also to ‘defend the French’, which was hardly an impartial position. Fortunately he had an easy task that required no moral or artistic compromise between his professional and patriotic duties. On the other hand there is the feeling that despite his irritation with some of the British jury members for attempting to manipulate the judging, Berlioz did not wish to be too critical and perhaps tempered his public comments (something that as a critic he had plenty of experience at doing). The British were, after all, to provide him with employment for much of the first half of the following year. The articles in Part 2 are focused on Debussy and his close contemporaries, particularly the Apaches and Ravel. All make a new contribution to scholarship on Debussy and music in the Third Republic. Richard Langham Smith’s chapter, ‘Taming two Spanish Women: Reflections on Editing Opera’, focuses on his editorial work on Debussy’s Rodrigue et Chimènes (for the Debussy complete edition) and Bizet’s Carmen. He argues convincingly for the important role the literary texts surrounding the operas played for the editor, in throwing crucial light on the libretto and vocal score. He also discusses the problematic issues of the most authoritative source and the composer’s final intention. He asks what a ‘performing Urtext’ edition should include in its aim to capture what was performed at the Opéra-comique. Michael Strasser re-examines the links between Debussy’s String Quartet and Grieg’s String Quartet in G minor. Drawing on archival sources, contemporary press accounts, and correspondence, this chapter documents the Société nationale’s interest in Grieg. By suggesting a possible rationale for Debussy’s decision to compose a string quartet, and demonstrating that he would have had great incentive to model his work on that of the Norwegian, it sheds new light on the genesis of one of his earliest masterpieces. Marie Rolf, who worked closely with Lesure on the editorial board of the Debussy edition, gives a detailed study of the climax of Debussy’s Pelléas: Act IV, Scene 4. She argues that Debussy developed specific compositional techniques in this act to respond to Maeterlinck’s Symbolist text. Drawing on Debussy’s working draft manuscripts of the opera, she shows how his sensitivity to ambiguity and symbolic images evolved over time and had an impact on local musical events as well as on large-scale structure. Pelléas provided the impetus for the formation of the group known as the Apaches, who formed a ‘sacred battalion’ in support of the opera against negative press coverage and to counterbalance the snobs who flocked to the opera. Drawing on numerous interviews with close family members and friends of the group, and documents in private collections, including Ricardo Viñes’s diaries, Jann Pasler’s study gives an important insight into the formation, activities and values of this group of mainly musicians, artists and writers. In so doing, she provides a special window on the private side of musical life in pre-World-War-I France. Barbara L. Kelly’s chapter examines the position of a key Apache after the group’s demise and the death of Debussy in 1918. It considers Ravel’s stature,

Introduction

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reputation and relationship with Les Six at this moment of crisis in French music. In assessing his significance in the post-World-War-I context, Kelly explores the extent to which his latest compositions reflected contemporary preoccupations with bitonality, jazz, dépouillement and Neoclassical Stravinsky. Turning finally to Lesure, Roy Howat’s afterword gives a fascinating account of the links and circumstances surrounding the founding of the Debussy complete edition, in which Lesure played a central role. In detailing how the committee came together and their first editorial challenges, this afterword gives insight into how editions function and progress, and also pays homage to Lesure’s energy and initiative. Barbara L. Kelly and Kerry Murphy

Part One

Berlioz and His Time

Chapter one

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song David Charlton Introduction The field of Berlioz studies is changing with the enhanced availability of sources. This chapter asks, with Annegret Fauser, how we might integrate the study of ‘normal works’ within the more publicly familiar ‘canon’; and also how the wealth of Berliozian thinking on music, now being edited in the complete edition of his Critique musicale, might assist in our coming to terms with his creative production. One area that undoubtedly profits from our new critical exposure is that of opéra-comique, even though Kerry Murphy’s 1988 survey already indicated that Nicolas-Marie Dalayrac (1753–1809) and other ancien régime composers ‘represented for Berlioz a type of perfection’, especially in ‘the grace and perennial freshness of their melodies’. The limited subject of song (especially romances) has the advantage of being an especially potent symbol of the stage genre. Romances were from the first designed to be transferred out of opéra-comique and into the home, often via purchased arrangements, thereby leading a double life in the development of secular melody from around 1750. The tradition continued unbroken into the nineteenth century, and Berlioz consequently modelled his earliest-known compositions within the romance tradition. Circulating between an orchestral genre known from theatre works, and the one accompanied by keyboard (or perhaps guitar) appropriate to the home, the romance represents a doubly interesting influence on our composer, and the new edition of his complete song production makes it apposite to attempt an overview of his creative response to romances and to other songs that he knew.   Annegret Fauser, ‘The Songs’, in Peter Bloom (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 108–24. Founded by H. Robert Cohen and Yves Gérard, Hector Berlioz: La Critique musicale (hereafter CM) (Paris, 1996–), a projected ten-volume edition of the composer’s music criticism, is now under the directorship of Anne Bongrain and Marie-Hélène Coudroy-Saghaï.   Kerry Murphy, Hector Berlioz and the Development of French Music Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1988), p. 91.   I will refer in this connection to the New Berlioz Edition of the complete works (hereafter NBE), vol. 22b: Arrangements of Works by Other Composers, ed. Ian Rumbold (Kassel, 2004) and vol. 15: Songs with Piano, ed. Ian Rumbold (Kassel, 2005). Information regarding the particular romance tradition here dealt with is found in (i) Daniel Heartz, ‘The Beginnings of the Operatic Romance:



Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

The fields we have for comparison are (i) the pre-Romantic romance tradition; (ii) the composer’s critical and emotional reactions to earlier song as located in opéra-comique; and (iii) the composer’s essays in composition, particularly those bearing a designation ‘Romance’. In addition, I shall make documentary reference to folk-music associations with songs prior to Berlioz, to round out the way that romances were formerly understood in a cultural sense. Whereas ‘folk-music sources’ are usually separated from the world of other influences, it may be that in principle the two should be better considered as one joint sphere of influence. The romance from Dalayrac’s Nina (1786) stands at the portal of Berlioz’s Mémoires, but not only as ‘my first musical experience’: the earlier composer is also mythologized here as a nearly forgotten author of music conveying ‘marvellous power of true expression’. In reality Berlioz does this to express a personal debt, not to reflect objective reality: as shown below, Dalayrac’s works were not at all absent from public view under the July Monarchy. I conclude, further, that Berlioz indulges in some covert self-identification, for it may have been truer of himself than of Dalayrac to say that ‘the people, quick to forget musicians, hardly remember your name at this hour!’, where the last three words signify ‘in this year of revolutions’. Dalayrac seems to enter the area of ‘aesthetic autobiography’, as evoked by Fauser. Whether concerning the romance in particular or opéra-comique in general, Berlioz’s position (as critic and composer) was affected by the institutional ‘permanence’ of the two genres. His attitude to such popular genres was complex and perhaps ambivalent. He valued their continuity, because artists need to feel rooted, not least in such an institutionally grounded culture as France: they ‘underline his identity as a French composer’. Berlioz came to detest the almost factory-like routine of producing opéras-comiques. Nevertheless, he came to define an acceptable field of discrimination within opéra-comique: in effect, it became part of his own negotiation with music of the past. So he formed the idea Rousseau, Sedaine and Monsigny’, Eighteenth-century Studies, 15/2 (1981–82): 149–78; and (ii) David Charlton, ‘The romance and its Cognates: Narrative, Irony and vraisemblance in Early Opéracomique’, in French Opera 1730–1830: Meaning and Media (Aldershot, 2000).   As, for example, Julian Rushton does in The Musical Language of Berlioz (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 151–2.   ‘ma première impression musicale’; ‘merveilleuse puissance de l’expression vraie’. Hector Berlioz, Mémoires, ed. Pierre Citron (Paris, 1991), pp. 39–40. Unless otherwise stated all translations are by the author.   ‘le peuple oublieux des musiciens se souvient à peine de ton nom, à cette heure!’ Berlioz, Mémoires, p. 40. Berlioz described it as a year of revolutions just one page earlier in his Preface, signed ‘Londres, 21 mars 1848’. After the wounding failure of La Damnation de Faust (1846) Berlioz spent much of 1847–48 out of Paris.   Fauser, ‘The Songs’, p. 124.   Fauser, ‘The Songs’, p. 112.   See Peter Bloom (ed.), Berlioz: Past, Present, Future (Rochester, NY, 2003). See also ‘The Lyric Berlioz’ in Julian Rushton, The Music of Berlioz (Oxford, 2001), pp. 165–91, which emphasizes continuities.

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song



that certain earlier composers possessed the secret of writing songs and certain melodies that were, in some way, ‘authentic’ in his experience. Consequently, we are surely justified in trying to gauge whether, or how far, Berlioz’s own romances can be said to emulate that kind of authenticity. His own participation in these genres is typified in this letter of February 1822, serving as documentary evidence of the way opéras-comiques could grip their audiences: We went to the Théâtre Feydeau to hear [Jean-Blaise] Martin; that evening they were playing Azémia [by Dalayrac, 1786/87] and Les Voitures versées [by François-Adrien Boieldieu, 1808] … I was transported … by Dalayrac’s touching, enchanting music, the gaiety of the Boieldieu, the unbelievable skills of the actresses, the perfection of Martin and of [Louis] Ponchard.10

Critical Attitudes The Critique musicale (the five volumes published so far cover the period up to 1844) should encourage new perceptions of Berlioz’s personal ‘mythology’, for example involving those opéra-comique composers whose works he knew either from library inspection, or concert excerpts or theatre performance. Almost all Parisian opéras-comiques except outright failures were committed to print in full score, so Berlioz had potential access to hundreds of compositions. Many such operas contained two or more strophic romances or similar song-forms, for example couplets, the barcarolle, chanson and, later, ballade. Originally they always entered the drama as fictively pre-composed (and so ‘performative’) songs, but this convention rapidly widened, so they came to serve a variety of either narrative or non-narrative purposes. Pending systematic surveys, one can assert from the volumes of Critique musicale so far published that Berlioz’s detailed knowledge of works no longer in repertory was fairly comprehensive. At the same time, many works from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were still revived, especially up to 1839, but frequently afterwards too. This added to the ‘anxiety of influence’ for composers in Paris because, no less than the Société des concerts du conservatoire, the institution of the Opéra-comique was the guardian of an important classical canon. Berlioz genuinely respected the institution, though not always the way it was run, and its performances gave him the chance to recalibrate earlier opinions (see below), or sometimes to make discoveries. Analyses of his reviews show that Berlioz possessed sharply differing opinions regarding this range of composers; their music may be routinely unknown today, but was certainly alive in his terms, representing a tap-root into a collective musical past (actual and imagined). As a ‘national’ tradition, for instance, opéra10  ‘nous allâmes à Feydeau entendre Martin; on jouait ce soir-là Azémia et les Voitures versées … J’absorbais … cette musique touchante, enchanteresse, de Daleyrac [sic], la gaieté de celle de Boieldieu, les inconcevables tours de force des actrices, la perfection de Martin et de Ponchard’. Hector Berlioz, Correspondance générale (hereafter CG), vol. 1, ed. Pierre Citron (Paris, 1972), pp. 38–9.



Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies Table 1.1  Opéras-comiques before Boieldieu in Earlier Nineteenth-century Revival

Monsigny Grétry

Dalayrac

Devienne Della-maria Nicolo

Berton Kreutzer Cherubini Méhul Gaveaux

Le Déserteur (1832–33; 1843–49) Le Tableau parlant (1825–30; 1835–38); Zémire et Azor (1826–30; 1832; 1834–36; 1846–48); Richard Coeur-de-lion (1825–27; 1841–47) Les Deux Petits Savoyards (1825–26; 1836–38); Camille (1825–27; 1836; 1841–42); La Maison isolée (1827; 1831); Adolphe et Clara (1825–33; 1835–42; 1844; 1849); Picaros et Diégo (1825–37); Une Heure de mariage (1825–27; 1829–31; 1833–39; 1842); Maison à vendre (1826–28; 1830–36) Les Visitandines (1825–35) Le Prisonnier (1827–33; 1836–39); L’Opéra-comique (1825–29; 1831; 1833–34; 1836–39) Jeannot et Colin (1827–30; 1832–34; 1842–47); Le Billet de loterie (1825–33); Joconde (1825–31; 1840–46); Les Rendezvous bourgeois (1825–37; 1848–76); Cendrillon (1845–48) Le Charme de la voix (1832–34) L’Homme sans façon (1826–33); Paul et Virginie (1825; 1827; 1830; 1846) Les Deux journées (1825; 1827; 1830; 1842) L’Irato (1828; 1832–33); Une Folie (1826–30; 1833; 1843) Le Bouffe et le tailleur (1836); Monsieur Deschalumeaux (1825; 1830–31; 1833; 1843)

Note  information taken from Albert Soubies, Soixante-neuf ans à l’Opéra-comique en deux pages de la première de La Dame Blanche à la millième de Mignon, 1825–1894 (Paris, 1894). I have omitted the number of performances Soubies recorded, using press reviews and announcements.

comique and romances had been celebrated as consciously French properties from a notably early stage. This 1766 critique bears out the point regarding song: in Italy, M. de Monsigny would be sent from the theatre back to school … but in France the public is easier to please, and a few agreeable melodies set out in score, heaven help us, romances above all, the national genre of music, for which the groundlings are singularly enthusiastic, have earned this composer the most flattering successes …11 11  ‘en Italie M. de Monsigny serait renvoyé du théâtre à l’école … mais en France, le public n’est pas si difficile, et quelques chants agréables mis en partition comme il plaît à Dieu, des romances surtout, genre de musique national, pour lequel le parterre est singulièrement passionné, ont valu à ce compositeur les succès les plus flatteurs …’. Jean-François Marmontel, ‘Sur le compositeur Monsigny, l’opéra français et l’Encyclopédie’, 15 May 1766, in Correspondance inédite de Grimm et de Diderot, et recueil de lettres … retranchés par la censure impériale (Paris, 1829), p. 220.

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song



In Berlioz’s pantheon (to 1844) there were only two consistently worthy representatives of early opéra-comique: André Grétry (1741–1813) and Dalayrac. Etienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763–1817) occupies a somewhat different position, and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729–1817) sprang into focus in 1843, when Berlioz wrote his first remarks on him in the form of an enthusiastic review of Le Déserteur on 12 November. Berlioz never mentioned Nicolas-Alexandre Dezède (1740–1792), for example, even though in his teens he liked Blaise et Babet (1783) sufficiently to copy and perhaps arrange the guitar part of its bewitching romance ‘Lise chantait dans la prairie’.12 He mentions Pierre Gaveaux (1760–1825) once, but only to ridicule him,13 and Jean-Pierre Solié (1755–1812) receives similar treatment;14 the latter’s Le Diable à quatre is deemed ‘far inferior to Grétry’.15 The prolific and skilful Henri-Montan Berton (1767–1844), who was no idle enthusiast of romances, is sedulously ignored, save for mention of his role as a typical type of composer in the genre during the course of an important 1836 essay on opéra-comique as national genre and performing institution.16 Nicolò Isouard (1775–1818, known generally by his first name) remained the object of indifference or disdain until 1842, when suddenly Berlioz discovered that Jeannot et Colin deployed music ‘as fresh as though it had been composed yesterday’, with an ‘attractive innocence’: the duo (no. 7) felt ‘completely authentic’.17 Dominique Della-Maria’s (1769–1800) entry into the Critique musicale is auspicious: Berlioz was captivated by an unnamed romance sung in an 1834 concert by Ponchard, and this review fixes some very important criteria regarding the way a truly ‘great singer’ (as Berlioz calls him) captures ‘the art of interpreting the composer and bringing out his ideas by means of intelligent phrasing, pure diction and impeccable pronunciation, never disfigured by added ornaments’; but the composer then vanishes from Critique musicale.18 Against such a background, the role played by Berlioz in the Grétry revival becomes all the more fascinating. At a time when Grétry’s works were almost out of favour, to the point where even in his 1836 essay Berlioz judged them ‘à peu près impossible’ – that is, impossible to be staged – he came riding to the defence of Richard the following February in an extended essay on that score,19 NBE, 22b, pp. x, 22–3. CM, 3 (2001), p. 199. 14  CM, 4 (2003), p. 199. 15  CM, 2 (1998), p. 145. 16  An estimate of this essay forms the thread of my ‘Opéra-comique: Identity and Manipulation’, in Roger Parker and Mary Ann Smart (eds), Reading Critics Reading: Opera and Ballet Criticism in France from the Revolution to 1848 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 13–45. 17  ‘partition … aussi fraîche que si elle eût été écrite hier’; ‘naïveté gracieuse’; ‘plein de naturel’. CM, 5 (2004), p. 127. 18  ‘l’art d’interpréter le compositeur et de mettre en relief sa pensée par une phraséologie intelligente, une diction pure, une prononciation irréprochable, sans la défigurer jamais par des ornements…’. CM, 1, p. 228. 19  CM, 3, pp. 29ff. 12  13 



Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

furthermore berating the director of the Opéra-comique for neglecting it. It is in this review, plus two earlier but significant reviews of Zémire et Azor, that Berlioz’s special criteria of appreciation are laid out.20 Already by 1834 the first Zémire et Azor reviews threw Berlioz’s hat into the ‘early music’ supporters’ ring, along with his firm belief that there were perennially valid qualities in the best earlier music, such as Grétry’s, which could move audiences of a later age.21 Louis Ponchard (who participated in the 1834 performances seen by the composer) again facilitated the process. This opera, Berlioz writes, has made the biggest impression on him of any he has seen in the last six months: ‘Human nature does not alter and … every artist capable of speaking the language of the heart in one era is certain to be able to be understood in another’.22 The cause Berlioz gives for weeping in the Trio (‘magic picture’) scene was its rare quality of finding simply the right good, original music to match the stage situation via ‘such true, expressive melody’ (‘ces chants si vrais, si expressifs’). Across various different reviews, in fact, Berlioz developed the term ‘expression’ to apply to such a type of successful, well-placed music, which impressed him in a direct way, on a naïve rather than a complex level. He recognizes this as a quality in Bellini too: Grétry, like Bellini, had ‘a most precious quality [that] redeemed his structural shortcomings … that quality is expression’.23 Zémire et Azor contains ‘several numbers [that] are masterpieces of expression … a score replete with emotion … the most touching inspirations, the most delicious melodies’.24 Dalayrac It is however with Dalayrac’s music that Berlioz most conspicuously advertised his attachment to this repertory; and Dalayrac’s melodic and other qualities that he sought to analyse, seeking to describe their unique effect on his sensibility. Therefore his vocabulary, and indeed the music he admired, should give significant information regarding the now-forgotten models (conscious or unconscious) lying behind Berlioz’s own works. The latter confessed in 1844, ‘I admit my partiality for Dalayrac’s music’,25 but the positive review of Gulistan which follows this opening pronouncement formed but one of a series of commentaries: Une Heure CM, 1 (1996), p. 478; 2, pp. 145–6. These topics are set out in Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834–1880 (Cambridge, 1995), Chapter 3, and also in her Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-century France (New York, 2005). 22  ‘la nature humaine ne change pas et … tout artiste qui aura su parler la langue du cœur dans un temps est sûr de pouvoir se faire entendre dans un autre’. CM, 1, pp. 478–9. 23  ‘une qualité bien précieuse [qui] rachetait ce défaut d’organisation … cette qualité est l’expression’. CM, 2, p. 295. 24  ‘plusieurs morceaux [qui] sont des chefs-d’œuvre d’expression … une partition remplie de sentiment … les pensées les plus touchantes, les plus délicieuses mélodies’. CM, 2, pp. 145–6. 25  ‘J’avoue mon faible pour la musique de Dalayrac’. CM, 5, p. 535. 20  21 

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song



de mariage in 1835,26 Adolphe et Clara in 1838,27 and Camille in 1841.28 Azémia was no longer staged, but the 1822 letter already quoted had demonstrated the later composer’s particular response to ‘that aria which is beyond description: “Ton amour, ô fille chérie”. I felt almost the identical response to that which I felt at the Opéra when listening to [Méhul’s] “Versez tous vos chagrins dans le sein paternel”.’29 ‘Ton amour’ stands as the opera’s opening rondo-form aria sung by Edouin in full-blooded sentimental mode as he apostrophizes his daughter Azémia, the only object of value he could rescue after being wrecked on the desert island where the action takes place. Example 1.1  Dalayrac, ‘Ton amour, ô fille chérie’ from Azémia30

Berlioz comments: His melodies are fresh, suave, expressive, touching and devoid of either the commonplace, or affectation; his harmony is clear, yet sometimes displays sophistication and forcefulness … And then Dalayrac incorporates, to the highest degree, one priceless quality: that profound sensibility, that knowledge of the human heart that … also lay behind the poetic genius of Weber. 31

Dalayrac’s particular gifts, he concludes, were apt for the expression of ‘the unblemished loves and the idealized sorrows of adolescence’ (‘les fraîches amours et les tristesses romanesques de l’adolescence’). The 1838 notes on Adolphe et Clara admire ‘his melodies, only slightly ornamented’, devoid of linear ‘contortions’ and appoggiaturas, but nevertheless with ‘great truthfulness … in the interpretation of feelings, whatever their diversity, CM, 2, p. 143. CM, 3, p. 518. 28  CM, 4, p. 523. 29  ‘… cet air auquel on ne peut point donner d’épithète: “Ton amour, ô fille chérie”. C’est à peu près la même sensation que celle que j’ai éprouvée à l’Opéra en entendant dans Stratonice celui de “Versez tous vos chagrins dans le sein paternel”.’ CG, 1, p. 39. Cf. CM, 5, p. 536, 22 years later: ‘I therefore persist in awarding Dalayrac a higher position … between Méhul and Grétry’ (‘Je persiste donc à chercher pour Dalayrac une place plus élevée … entre Méhul et Grétry’). An engraving from Azémia and some other details are in my Grétry and the Growth of Opéra-comique (Cambridge, 1986), chapter 32. 30  Dalayrac, Azémia ou Les sauvages (full score) (Paris, n.d.), p. 13. Note the composer’s juxtaposed ‘p’ and ‘R’ (rinforzando) marks matching each phrase. 31  ‘ses mélodies sont fraîches, suaves, expressives, touchantes, exemptes de vulgarisme autant qu’afféterie; son harmonie est claire et quelquefois très savamment énergique … Et puis Dalayrac possède au degré le plus éminent une qualité sans prix … cette sensibilité profonde, cette connaissance des choses du cœur, qui … ont produit le génie poétique de Weber’. CM, 5, p. 535. 26  27 

10

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

or however finely nuanced’.32 (Such qualities connect well with Julian Rushton’s observations on Berlioz: how complexity in his melody was a consequence of verbal meaning – he ‘was gripped … by the need to bring out what [Antoine] Reicha called the “syllabe logique” … to create from each song a unique poetical and musical persona’.)33 These qualities, claimed Berlioz, existed independently of Dalayrac’s capacity to evoke in him personally the years of his youth.34 The melody from this opera that he uses as example is ‘Aimable et belle’, another extended rondo-form aria. Example 1.2  Dalayrac, ‘Aimable et belle’ from Adolphe et Clara35

Such categories of criteria, which are found repeated in various parts of Critique musicale, suggest a concept of apparent naturalness, producing an unselfconsciousness of effect through melody. By implication, it is melody redolent of the rural culture in which Berlioz grew up, though it may be mentioned that Dalayrac’s origins at Muret, just south of Toulouse, were geographically distant from Berlioz’s at La-Côte-St-André, between Lyons and Grenoble. It is therefore interesting to recall, whether or not Berlioz mentions it, that the opéra-comique tradition was steeped in oral tradition. This is a more familiar quality in the pre1750s repertory, which relied on so many tunes from the public domain. But even after the profound changes in the genre after 1752, we can find evidence of twofold directions in melodic transmission, that is, first the presence of published melody using traditional (folk) sources, and second the notion of published melodies reentering oral culture. Peter Van der Merwe placed such principles more widely around 1790, but his account of them is apt here: Between it [lowbrow music; ‘parlour music’] and folk music lay a wide territory where folk and commercial popular music interacted: a world of itinerant semi-professional musicians, rustic dance-bands, broadside ballads and the like. Scholars now point out that much of ‘folk music’ really belonged to this world … They cite the ballad singer who refreshed his memory with a printed or handwritten text, the supposedly naïve folk artists who were actually sophisticated performers, and the many commercially composed songs in the repertories of folk singers.36 32  ‘ces mélodies si peu ornées’; ‘une grande fidélité … dans l’interprétation des sentiments, quelles que soient leur variété et la finesse de leurs nuances’. CM, 3, p. 518. 33  Rushton, The Music of Berlioz, p. 167. 34  CM, 3, p. 518. 35  Dalayrac, Adolphe et Clara ou Les deux prisonniers (full score) (Paris, n.d.), p. 43. 36  Peter van der Merwe, Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-century Popular Music (Oxford, 1989), p. 17.

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song

11

Thus regional music from the public domain appears as a model for opéra-comique strophic melody within the 1762 Annette et Lubin, an influential work using both new and borrowed music.37 This was still being given through the Revolution years.38 The first case, ‘Il était une fille’, cast as a narrative romance, was shown by Tiersot to derive closely from ‘La Pernette’, an old melody particular to the south-east and also the mountainous central regions of France.39 In the second case, the graceful melody ‘Jeune et novice encore’ was taken from Jean-Benjamin de La Borde’s ‘Il est donc vrai, Lucile’, which he labelled ‘Pastorale’ in his third book of Chansons in 1757.40 But since La Borde’s Essai sur la musique (1780) prefers to print the same melody under the rubric ‘Chanson languedocienne’, in with other regional and ancient melodies, it appears that this too had its roots in popular culture.41 Example 1.3  ‘Chanson languedocienne’ used in the Favarts’ Annette et Lubin42

Musical exchange of this type, in action, is captured in an extraordinary, intimate anecdote that has survived from just before mid-century, showing that cultivated musical enthusiasts really did collect, preserve and discuss orally transmitted melody. The extract below is from a private letter by the Comte de Clermont; when not commanding in battle, he was well known as director of his own private theatre, complete with orchestra, for the performance of the latest smaller-scale operas, some composed by his employee, the flautist Michel Blavet.

37  Marie-Justine and Charles-Simon Favart, Annette et Lubin (Paris, 1762), full and reduced scores issued in 1762 (note that this work is often catalogued under the name of its musical arranger and composer of just a few of its set pieces, Adolphe Blaise). 38  At the Ambigu-Comique, the Délassements-Comiques, the Opéra-comique, Théâtre des Jeunes-Artistes and Théâtre du Marais – 122 performances logged altogether; see Emmet Kennedy et al., Theatre, Opera and Audiences in Revolutionary Paris: Analysis and Repertory (Westport, 1996), p. 159. 39  Julien Tiersot, ‘Le Lied “Ein Mädchen, das auf Ehre hielt” et ses prototypes français’, Zeitschrift der internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft 12 (1910–11): 222–6. Thomas Betzwieser kindly drew my attention to this. The melody in its operatic guise is reproduced in full in Charlton, ‘The romance and its Cognates’. 40  Troisième Recueil de chansons avec un accompagnement de violon et la basse continue (Paris., n.d. [1757]). Date from François Lesure (ed.), Catalogue de la musique imprimée avant 1800 conservée dans les bibliothèques publiques de Paris (Paris, 1981), p. 355. 41  Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, ‘Choix de chansons’, in Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (4 vols, Paris, 1780), vol. 2, p. 159. 42  Recueil de toutes les ariettes d’Annette et Lubin avec accompagnement de Clavecin ou Violoncelle (Paris, n.d.), p. 57.

12

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies It was a few days ago that this charming shepherdess … began singing songs that she had composed. We hazarded an approach, and begged her to start her enchanting melodies again; but the nymph replied sweetly that we were surely mocking her and so, by Our Lord, she would not sing again in front of all and sundry. But we discovered how to soothe her feelings: we clubbed together to make her a nice half-crown, which encouraged the gentle shepherdess to sing the pretty songs that you find enclosed, and which she swore to be of her own invention. I hope you will be eternally grateful to me for having let you see them.43

For communicating new musical ideas and material, powerful men like Clermont and La Borde had immediate access to librettists and composers via their own invitation-lists, or their employed littérateurs, or in salon gatherings. One can also find evidence of the symbiotic functions of such ‘found’ music in the hands of Dalayrac. When the latter died in 1809 his biography was rapidly undertaken by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt (1773–1844), the theatre manager and melodrama author. In this text, the memorialist even appears to leave open the possibility that Dalayrac may have collected, as well as used, folk or traditional melody: ‘He was the one who preserved those gentle, melancholy tunes from all over France, which we call romances; they had been the exclusive property of the troubadours over several centuries before Dalayrac gave them voice in our theatres.’44 More certain is that Dalayrac’s and others’ songs circulated back from the theatre to the drawing-room: He certainly did not use any formula to compose [such melodies], or the infinite number of other charming romances that we never tire of hearing in the theatre, in our homes, and even in the streets, where they are repeated a thousand times daily by the barrel-organs of Savoyard itinerants.45 43  To his friend the Comte de Billy, 23 August 1749: ‘Il y a quelques jours que cette charmante bergère … se mit à chanter des chansons de sa composition. Nous osâmes l’aborder et la prier de vouloir bien nous recommencer ses chants enchanteurs; mais cette nymphe nous répliqua avec douceur, que nous nous fichions d’elle et que, vrandieu! elle ne chantoit pas comme ça devant le monde. Nous trouvâmes cependant le moyen de l’adoucir: chacun se cotisa, l’on fit un petit écu qui engagea l’aimable bergère à chanter les jolies chansons que je vous envoye, et qu’elle nous jura être de sa composition. J’espère que vous me saurez gré toute votre vie de vous les avoir communiquées.’ Jules Cousin, Le Comte de Clermont, sa cour et ses maîtresses : Lettres familières, recherches et documents inédits (2 vols, Paris, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 87–8. Other details in Lionel de La Laurencie, ‘Deux imitateurs français des Bouffons: Blavet et Dauvergne’, L’Année musicale (3 vols, Paris, 1911–13), vol. 2 (1912), 65–125. 44  ‘C’est lui qui a naturalisé dans toute la France ces airs tendres et mélancoliques, connus sous le nom de romances, et qui avaient été pendant plusieurs siècles l’apanage exclusif des Troubadours, avant que Dalayrac les eût faire entendre sur nos Théâtres’. René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt, Vie de Dalayrac (Paris, 1810), p. 66. 45  ‘Certes, ce n’est point avec des calculs qu’il a composé [ces mélodies] et une infinité d’autres romances charmantes, qu’on ne saurait se lasser d’entendre au théâtre, dans la société et même dans les rues, où elles sont répétées mille fois chaque jour par les orgues des Savoyards’. De Pixérécourt, Vie de Dalayrac, p. 66.

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song

13

In commemorating Dalayrac’s melodic genius, Pixérécourt employs epithets which are not far from Berlioz’s, but he goes further in explicitly linking their sentiment and style back to the middle ages: ‘In this style he was inimitable; here his music is filled with feeling, unselfconsciousness, charm, and above all that gentle ease, that delicious melancholy that he seemingly borrowed from Ovid and the provençal poets.’46 Berlioz’s Copying of Past Melody In his youthful manuscript containing guitar-accompanied melodies,47 compiled probably around 1820, Berlioz gives us a precious insight into his partaking of that circulation described above, between stage and home, and into his appropriation of certain opéra-comique and other collected romances – a process that must incarnate some, at least, of his tastes. Fifteen songs are from non-operatic sources, four of these being anonymous. The other ten are from opéras-comiques dating between Dezède’s Blaise et Babet (1783) and Boieldieu’s Le Petit Chaperon rouge (1818). Table 1.2 Opéra-comique Sources of Berlioz’s Guitar Arrangements (in Order of Copying)

Dalayrac Catrufo Dalayrac Boieldieu Della-Maria Berton Solié Dezède

Philippe et Georgette Félicie Gulnare, ou l’esclave persanne Le Petit Chaperon rouge L’Opéra-comique (two songs) La Romance (two songs) Le Jockey Blaise et Babet

The keys into which the music has been transposed are varied, as are the metres, the moods and opening outlines. But all are major-mode save two: Solié’s romance from Le Jockey starts in G minor, moving permanently to G major half way through, while Dezède’s ‘Lise chantait’ is in C minor. In general, the opening bars of all tend to exploit no more than the compass of a fifth; they ring the changes between triadic outlines (or triadic motifs) and, alternatively, 46  ‘… c’est [dans ce genre] qu’il est inimitable; il y est rempli de sensibilité, de naturel, de grâces, et sur-tout de ce tendre abandon, de cette tristesse délicieuse qu’il semble avoir empruntés d’Ovide, et des Poètes provençaux’. De Pixérécourt, Vie de Dalayrac, p. 68. 47  NBE, 22b.

14

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

sequential uses of a handful of stepwise pitches. Metrically, in compass and in outline, then, the second melody copied from Della-Maria’s L’Opéra-comique (see Ex. 1.4) would not appear to stand apart, except for the fact that Berlioz has omitted the composer’s four-bar introduction.48 As a result, the kinship between this tune and the ‘Paysans sous les tilleuls’ from Huit scènes de Faust looks all the more striking: Example 1.4  Della-Maria, ‘Que d’établissements nouveaux’ from L’Opéra-comique, copied by Berlioz49

Chromatic inflections are sometimes met with, chiefly auxiliaries to the mediant and the dominant degrees (in the works by Guillaume Gatayes, Berton, Antoine Romagnesi, and Lélu), but only one arrangement inserts a few Berliozian flatsixth elements into its accompaniment: ‘Minvane au tombeau de Ryno’ (no. 25), composer unknown, the last song to be copied. No significant qualitative difference would seem to divide the Dalayrac melodies from the rest. In fact no. 4 (Dalayrac’s ‘O ma Georgette’) places a rather decorative four-note semiquaver figure at the start, three of whose notes are slurred over a single syllable, which relates it to the category of a ‘melody only slightly ornamented’, defined above by Berlioz in 1838. By contrast, several melodies contain attractive, unadorned outlines, giving the performer maximum scope for interpretation. In the case of accompaniments provided, as here, by a guitar, few complementary individual interpretative traits were expected to accrue from the player. For the ten songs originally with orchestra, however, their original accompaniments frequently contained surprising quantities of imaginative detail. It is to this repertory that we must turn back in order to understand the sheer scale of the field of songs with orchestra, concealed within those many opéra-comique scores. Wider Characteristics What then were earlier songs and romances like? The best were above all memorable, always syllabically set to music, and often used regular four-bar phrase structures, depending on their precise dramatic function. Some retained three-bar phrase structures in the Bransle de Poitou tradition characteristic of older songs and romances. The preferred metre was 2/2, but it was certainly not the 48  49 

As explained by the editor of NBE, 22b, p. x. NBE, 22b, p. 15.

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song

15

only possible one, just as ‘romance’ was not the only generic title available. The theatre was full of experimental impulses, for example using the ‘gavotte’ style in the minor instead of the major mode. Although Grétry was the most prolific and successful of French opera composers working between 1769 and 1789, he did not actually favour strophic forms or romances: when he used them – for example in Richard’s ‘Une fièvre brûlante’ – it was for a special effect. But his reticence was compensated for by Dezède and Dalayrac. Given that librettists aimed to make their song texts sufficiently general in theme to be separable for domestic performance, a very wide range of poetic possibilities lay open for exploitation. In fact, the way that early romances were introduced into opéra-comique mirrored the great diversity of their precise dramatic contexts. Some operas contained as many as four strophic settings (either entirely solo, or sometimes for two alternating singers). Thus Dezède’s Les Trois Fermiers (1777) contains the romance ‘Faut attendre’; a strophic chanson immediately afterwards (‘Je le compar avec Louis’); and a romance en rondeau, ‘D’res l’instant’, all in the work’s first three scenes. As well as two strophic songs in the first act of Renaud d’Ast (1787), Dalayrac composed a set of couplets for Act 2, ‘Je suis un chasseur’. In his one-act La Soirée orageuse (1790), four strophic solos were incorporated, all very different in mood, proportion and form. Grétry played Dalayrac and Dezède at their own game in Le Rival confident (1788), which contains four strophic numbers; the music is very memorable, but unfortunately a poor libretto doomed the work to early oblivion in the theatre. In the 1790s, Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), Méhul and Jean-François Le Sueur (1760–1837) all took up the challenge of strophic solo song, often with two or more examples per opéra-comique, and added their own kinds of sophistication. Almost any of their works could be used to illustrate this fact equally well. Cherubini’s Eliza (1794), in two acts, contains three strophic settings. Berton’s Ponce de Lëon (1797) took in four strophic settings within three acts; Méhul’s Héléna (1803) has three. Many of these strophic settings, moreover, were employed in the drama in positions of considerable responsibility, sometimes in monologue scenes at emotionally important junctures, or as act expositions. Early song forms had only used either the major or the minor mode. Indeed, in the 1750s and 1760s the first operatic romances had followed one of two types of musical model, each of which was defined through the use of one mode or the other. As a rough rule, minor-mode romances evoked ‘archaic’ values (ultimately, the narratives of the middle ages), while major-mode ones evoked expressions of sentiment. The new minor-mode expressive development, actually begun by Dezède’s romance ‘Lise chantait’ (see previous section) seems to have flowered shortly after, starting with Dalayrac’s Les Deux Tuteurs (1784). In all these, minormode songs attain an outstandingly pathetic flavour, especially through the use of triple metre. Thus the advocate Mathieu remembers his late wife in Les Deux Tuteurs’s ‘Quand l’été’ (‘chanson’ in the libretto, ‘couplets’ in the score) in D minor. Dezède responded in Alexis et Justine the next year by beginning the opera

16

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

with a G minor 6/8 romance in the context of a scene in which the singer (Justine) is actually being urged to perform, by others on stage. Dalayrac replied soon after with a beautifully piquant 6/8 ‘Lento amoroso’ air in B minor, in La Dot, ‘J’allais lui dire que je l’aime’, where Colette is distressed at Colin’s absence, and she has been tormented by her mother.50 Thus minor-mode songs were undergoing expressive development just at the time when a related idea seems to have been introduced: the combination of major with minor in song form (‘differential modality’). The earliest example is perhaps Dalayrac’s ‘Vous me plaignez’ from La Soirée orageuse (1790). Minor–major settings were adopted by many others. Easily the most experimental successor was Phrosine’s ‘Ainsi d’un préjugé barbare’ from Act 1 of Mélidore et Phrosine (1794) by Méhul, a complex mingling of tonalities and modalities (the tonic is A major/A minor, but the song exploits C major, D minor, and even F sharp minor, while also mingling major with minor elements right to the end). In parallel with ‘Lise chantait’ and several other cases from the 1780s, Méhul’s strophic orchestral song, with its introductory ritornello, achieved sufficient maturity and artistic weight to act as the anchor for a whole opera. Empirical Conclusions We remember Berlioz as one who fiercely defended the right of composers not to have their works altered at all by later editors or performers. (Responding to the difficult questions raised by Adam’s reorchestrations of Richard Cœur-de-lion and Le Déserteur in the 1840s, Berlioz came firmly down on the side of noninterference.)51 But the cult of creative uniqueness hardly applies in the case of his song composition, an area in which Berlioz happily reverted to the idea of flexible identity. His songs, especially romances, functioned within an extended eighteenth-century economy, respecting rural conditions as well as urban. He would write them with piano accompaniment, then arrange and embellish them, sometimes with orchestra, and then, later still, make (or often rely on someone else’s) new piano re-arrangements of the embellished orchestral versions.52 But how far, as a composer, did Berlioz function within that model? That is, did he take Dalayrac’s melodic genius as a model as well? The first phase of Berlioz’s compositional expansion in song was defined by a generic one: by exploring new genres he escaped the weight of what had been 50  The siciliana rhythm that is used in this piece inevitably, for us, recalls contemporary quartet movements by Haydn and Mozart (such as the latter’s D minor finale of KV 421/417b, composed in June 1783). 51  CM, 5, p. 377. 52  This is readily seen for example in NBE, 15 and the five versions of ‘La Captive’, the last of which (1849) is an authorized published keyboard reduction by Stephen Heller of the (published) orchestral version of the song, issued at the same time (see NBE, 13: Songs for Solo Voice and Orchestra, ed. Ian Kemp (Kassel, 1975), p. 118).

Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song

17

achieved already. Thus he branched into ‘chant’, ‘légende’, ‘rêverie’, ‘ballade’, ‘orientale’, ‘boléro’ and ‘villanelle’. Simultaneously, he injected one or two romances like ‘Adieu, Bessy’ (1830) and ‘Je crois en vous’ (1834) with absolutely non-traditional elements – metrical, chromatic, harmonic, and rhetorical: he made their expressive language personal while retaining the fairly compact dimensions of tradition.53 But an essential ‘imaginative objectivity’ remained. The rhetoric is never that of a confessional, or an aria; a pose is struck, even while the poetry is at the same time interpreted in the music. Perhaps we can gauge the continuity and power of Berlioz’s response to the idea of ‘authentic’ melody in another way: by comparing his last two songs, around 1850. Usefully, he set the same words twice over, completely differently, first in D minor and then in F minor. ‘Le Matin’ is subtitled ‘romance’, but ‘Petit oiseau’ is a ‘chanson de paysan’, required furthermore to be sung ‘à pleine voix’ (stanza three, of four, is however omitted from the second song). The words form a firstperson address to the dawn-chorus: ‘Pour chanter le retour du jour / L’oiseau plus ne sommeille / Dès l’aurore il s’éveille / Pour chanter le retour du jour. / Sa voix douce et si pure, / Et l’onde qui murmure, / Raniment la nature.’ (For its welcome-song to the new day, the bird wakes at dawn. Its pure, sweet voice and the murmuring wave rekindle nature.) The final stanza is equally well-worn in thought: the poet feels encouraged to thank God for creating the landscape, and its bird-song too. In ‘Le Matin’ Berlioz’s light waltz-like accompaniment sets off a triadic, rising theme, so that piquancy is created from the mixture of extrovert rhythmic and social dance associations with the melancholic harmony. Perhaps this very juxtaposition recalled Dalayrac’s ‘J’allais lui dire’ in La Dot, mentioned in the foregoing section. The song’s eventual flowering into D major is built into a climacteric and determining musical image of positive joy and pleasure in nature. Its form spirals away from the simply strophic; word painting enters increasingly in. By contrast, ‘Petit oiseau’ has all the heaviness intrinsic to F minor, which moves to a tierce de picardie at the close of each stanza yet is dominated by an entirely different type of persona. A female singer is sanctioned, but the subtitle is simply ‘Chanson de paysan’. The rhythm is also heavy, with the accompaniment mezzoforte instead of piano as in ‘Le Matin’, and a large number of accompaniment chords are assigned to root position. Its tonality, repetitive figures and setting imaginatively approach the space to be occupied by Hylas in Les Troyens: Hylas is, after all, an ordinary sailor, also singing about the surrounding nature at dawn in his home landscape: ‘Vallon sonore, / Où dès l’aurore / Je m’en allais chantant, hélas!’ (Echoing vale, where I would walk and sing at dawn, alas!). But the hypnotic repetitions in ‘Petit Oiseau’ forbid formal development: this song remains, unlike its twin, strophic in character.

53 

Rushton explores this in The Music of Berlioz, pp. 176ff.

18

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

Example 1.5  Berlioz, ‘Petit Oiseau. Chanson de paysan’ (opening).54

In publicly admiring Dalayrac, even entering his aesthetic domain, Berlioz drew attention to their common ability to enter, then transmit, the imaginative truth of the individual situation provoking a song (‘great truthfulness … in the interpretation of feelings’), no matter how varied or subtle were the nuances required. This suggests the musical translation and transmission of an overall emotional ambience, not just the local response to words. To have set, and published, two settings of the same words therefore required imagining two different scenarios; the vocal skills and artifice of ‘Le Matin’ are countered by the resolutely traditional building-blocks of ‘Petit Oiseau’. The paradox of genius, however, saw that in the second song lay certain seeds of Hylas’ sublime and yet ‘antique’ version of the French romance, faithful to each line of poetry, with modal inflections as part of its local colour, and in effect reversing Dalayrac’s innovation of ‘differential modality’ (the minor/major romance pattern) into the A-flat major/F-minor plan of ‘Vallon sonore’. For all the formal and rhetorical sophistication of mélodie and opera, Berlioz never forsook the ideal of a simpler melody that belonged to the generality of the musical public. Perhaps he thought it could so ‘belong’ by virtue of its appeal to folk-like qualities: one would be justified in continuing to look for echoes of rural melody in Berlioz’s songs. Or perhaps he thought, like the Comte de Clermont, that an ideal melody, which should be preserved, might reside in the imagination and unaccompanied performance of real shepherdesses (or sailors). At any rate he arguably never tired of recreating a Dalayrac-like balance between ‘the interpretation of feelings’, avoidance of adornment, limited melodic compass, restrained use of chromatic notes, and classical patterns of modulation.

54 

NBE, 15, p. 258.

Chapter Two

Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz: Appreciation, Resistance and Unconscious Appropriation Benjamin Perl In Berlioz’s writings Mozart’s name figures as one of the four Great Masters, alongside Gluck, Beethoven and Weber, significantly all German/Austrian. This list served Berlioz as a foil against which the merit of modern composers was to be measured. But, while his admiration of the other three was wholehearted and unreserved, Mozart was never one of Berlioz’s idols, and his relationship to Mozart is more complex: a mixture of adoration, polite appraisal, reserve and antagonism. This antagonism is often partly disguised, but sometimes breaks out overtly and may take quite vehement forms. The frequent mentioning of Mozart and his works in Berlioz’s articles and reviews, and the wide range of his terms of reference to him, suggest that Mozart may have played an important role in his inner life and basic perception of music. A detailed survey of his utterances concerning Mozart, and an analysis of some, may reveal to us a supplementary facet of Berlioz’s colourful personality, highlight some aspects of his music, and show even Mozart’s music from a new, exciting angle. We may begin by asking to what extent Berlioz was acquainted with Mozart’s works, what was available to him, what attracted him and what, on the other hand, left him indifferent. Mozart was presumably unknown to Berlioz in his childhood at La-Côte-St-André, as his name is never mentioned in the early correspondence or in those chapters of the Mémoires dealing with his childhood. He came across Mozart’s music for the first time as a young man in Paris in the 1820s. This music was then still relatively new and largely unknown to Paris concert-goers. Some of the operas were performed at large intervals: Die Zauberflöte, in a disfigured version called Les Mystères d’Isis (from 1801 onwards, revived regularly for the next 25 years; only in 1829 could Parisians get to know the full original version); Don Giovanni in French (1805), then in Italian from 1811 onwards, and again in   This article is indebted to Hugh Macdonald’s ‘Berlioz and Mozart’ in Peter Bloom (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 211–22, but deals with the relationship between the two from a different angle. Some of the citations in Macdonald’s article appear in mine too, but are interpreted differently.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

French at the Odéon in 1827; Le Nozze di Figaro (1807); Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1801), and La Clemenza di Tito (1816). From the 1830s, a few excerpts from Idomeneo were performed from time to time. Mozart’s symphonies were as yet unknown, their regular performance in Paris starting only from 1828 (by the Société des concerts du conservatoire), and even then included only the last four. A small number of his piano concertos were rediscovered not earlier than the 1840s, and from the 1830s a small selection of chamber music was played in concerts. Thus, for the Parisian public in the 1820s, Mozart was at best a composer of five operas. Actually, a large amount of his instrumental music was published and available in French editions from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and apparently was played by amateurs, but this music seems not to have broken through into concert programmes and was not mentioned in the press, so amateurs might have assimilated it with the mass of other contemporary ‘easy’ music for home use with its distinction seemingly remaining unnoticed. In any case, Berlioz never mentions instrumental music by Mozart in his early years, and if he had known it at all, it seems not to have attracted his attention. There was, of course, the Requiem, which was performed rather frequently in churches as well as concert halls, and Berlioz was probably acquainted with it before his voyage to Italy at the beginning of the 1830s, because in his criticism he refers to an inadequate performance of it in Naples. To sum up, Mozart was known to Berlioz – even in his maturity – by no more than five operas, four symphonies, the Requiem and some other short choral works, a few chamber works and a few piano concertos (he came to know these rather late), which is less than an average modern concert-goer knows. Most of Mozart’s piano concertos and symphonies, all the violin and wind concertos, most of the chamber music, all the solo piano music, almost the entire output of church music, all the early operas, divertimentos, serenades, songs – all this was of no concern to Berlioz. He seems not to have gone out of his way to find the scores of these works and study them, as he did with Gluck and Beethoven. Berlioz was living in a transitional age as far as concert programming was concerned. Still, as with previous generations, the greater part of the programmes   See Belinda Cannone, La Réception des opéras de Mozart dans la presse parisienne (1793– 1829) (Paris, 1991).   See Serge Gut, ‘Die Bedeutung von François Antoine Habeneck für die Verbreitung der deutschen Musik in Frankreich während der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Christoph-Hellmut Mahling and Kristina Pfarr (eds), Deutsche Musik im Wegekreuz zwischen Polen und Frankreich: zum Problem musikalischer Wechselbeziehungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1996), pp. 121–34.   The representation of Mozart’s works in Parisian concert-life in Berlioz’s time is outlined in Jeffrey Cooper, The Rise of Instrumental Music and Concert Series in Paris 1828–1871 (Ann Arbor, 1983), pp. 182–3.   See Jean Gribenski, ‘Les Oeuvres pour piano de Mozart publiées à Paris, 1764–1815’, in Mozart: Les Chemins de l’Europe (Paris, 1997), pp. 169–78.   Hector Berlioz, La Critique musicale (CM), vol. 1 (Paris, 1996), p. 82. Founded by H. Robert Cohen and Yves Gérard, CM is now under the directorship of Anne Bongrain and Marie-Hélène Coudroy-Saghaï.

Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz

21

consisted of contemporary music, although the concept of the ‘Great Masters’ was already emerging, and a few composers of the past were achieving canonic status. For Berlioz, Gluck clearly belonged to this category, while Beethoven (at least in Berlioz’s early years) was still considered a contemporary; Beethoven was writing his ninth symphony and the last quartets while Berlioz was a student in Paris. Mozart was an intermediary case: he lived most of his life before the French Revolution, which was the demarcation-line between past and present for Berlioz’s generation, but on the other hand, his music – for the French public – had been relatively recently discovered, and it had some Romantic aspects that were avidly appropriated by ideologues of Romanticism like E.T.A. Hoffmann, so to a certain extent he was considered ‘one of us’ by Berlioz’s generation. On the other hand, for the French, Mozart was certainly not ‘one of us’ from a national point of view. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, before Berlioz’s time, some influential critics – for instance, Julien-Louis Geoffroy – rejected Mozart as a foreigner, considering his music ‘scholastic’, stressing his use of harmony over melody, and the dominance of the orchestra over singing in the operas – all these were considered negative features of ‘Germanic’ music. Nevertheless, the same critic recognized the synthesis of Italian and German elements in Mozart, while Berlioz claimed him as a representative of the Germanic peoples, totally ignoring Mozart’s enormous debt to Italian music (apparent above all in his three Da Ponte operas, a clear continuation of the eighteenth-century Italian opera tradition). Mozart’s Germanic patriotism, assumed by Berlioz, takes sometimes comic forms. Writing about a performance of Don Giovanni in the Théâtre Italien in March 1836 he asserts: ‘Mozart is the natural enemy of Italian powers’. In another case he blames Ludwig Lachnith for transcribing Die Zauberflöte for the libretto of Les Mystères d’Isis: ‘but how can a German, a man who out of natural pride should have venerated Mozart as a god, meddle brutally with such a masterpiece! How could he unashamedly mutilate, defile, insult it in every way!’10 We have to consider that, regarding music, Berlioz was never a French patriot. His venerated models were all German/Austrian, and the only contemporary Parisian composers he appreciated were the Italian Cherubini and the Jewish-German Meyerbeer. Nevertheless, his consistent hostility to Italian music seems to be a remnant of French nationalistic attitudes of the previous generation. Mozart’s rejection by the French establishment in 1778, when he spent a few months in Paris trying to secure a position there, is evoked repeatedly by   See Catherine Massip, ‘Berlioz and Early Music’, in Peter Bloom (ed.), Berlioz: Past, Present, Future – Bicentenary Essays (Rochester, NY, 2003), pp. 19–33.   Katharine Ellis cites the music critic Geoffroy in ‘A Dilettante at the Opera: Issues in the Criticism of Julien-Louis Geoffroy, 1800–1814’, in Mary Ann Smart and Roger Parker (eds), Reading Critics Reading: Opera and Ballet Criticism from the Revolution to 1848 (New York, 2001), pp. 64–6.   ‘Mozart est l’ennemi naturel des puissances italiennes’, CM, 2 (1998), pp. 439–40. 10  ‘mais un Allemand, un homme qui par orgueil national au moins, devait vénérer Mozart à l’égal d’un dieu, un musicien … oser porter sa brutale main sur un tel chef-d’oeuvre! Ne pas rougir de le mutiler, de le salir, de l’insulter de toutes façons!’ CM, 2, p. 458.

22

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

Berlioz.11 This event seems to arouse his deepest sympathy, Mozart figuring here as the undervalued genius whose greatness remained unrecognized by the French artistic authorities. Obviously Berlioz is here mobilizing Mozart on his own behalf, as he felt himself to be the victim of the same narrow-minded attitude of high-positioned people in Paris. Berlioz even repeats on several occasions an apocryphal story that happened allegedly after the fiasco of Alceste’s premiere in Paris: a small boy, none other than Mozart, fell into Gluck’s arms and consoled him, promising that his genius would shine forth in the days to come. This story cannot be true, of course, as the premiere of Alceste took place in 1776, when Mozart was 20 years old, and safely in Salzburg, far away from Paris. Again Mozart is drawn into a story about the misjudgement of genius by the Parisian public. In fact, Gluck and Mozart are often named together by Berlioz – comparing their achievements as composers. Berlioz is careful not to create a classification of rank between the two: ‘both [Gluck and Mozart] merit equal respect and admiration’,12 but Gluck is considered the true inventor of the dramatic language of music, Mozart only his follower. Time and again he shows how some of Mozart’s most powerful dramatic effects (like the rhythmic motive accompanying the monologue of the statue in Don Giovanni) have been borrowed from Gluck. The same is true of the art of instrumentation: it was Gluck who invented it, though admittedly Mozart carried it further. As a whole, Berlioz regards Gluck as a much more significant influence on Mozart than we would today. Berlioz detects it in the right places: in Idomeneo, written after Mozart’s stay in Paris where he became acquainted with Iphigénie en Tauride, and in the sublime gravity of the ceremonial scenes in Die Zauberflöte, which certainly owes something to Gluck’s style. But Berlioz lets himself be carried away by general statements such as the following: ‘but as to the general arrangement of the musical drama, the depth of expression with which each character is outlined and sustained, it must be admitted that he [Mozart] followed and accelerated the drift instigated in this respect by Gluck’s powerful genius.’13 As a rule we feel that Berlioz’s heart is on Gluck’s side, while Mozart is treated carefully and politely, in accordance with accepted views: ‘It is still accepted in society to only speak of him [Mozart] with reverence’.14 In what follows, I shall unravel the motives for this intuitive preference. When Mozart’s name is mentioned in association with Beethoven, however, Berlioz no longer shrinks from differentiation of grade: clearly Beethoven is superior. Speaking of Mozart’s ‘Prague’ Symphony (no. 38, K. 504), he grants it CM, 2, p. 381, and CM, 3 (2001), p. 78. ‘[Les] deux [Gluck et Mozart] … avaient droit à un hommage égal de respect et d’admiration’, CM, 3, p. 19. 13  ‘mais quant à l’ordonnance générale du drame musical, à la profondeur d’expression avec laquelle chaque caractère est tracé et soutenu, il faut bien reconnaître qu’il [Mozart] a suivi et accéléré le mouvement imprimé à l’art, de ce côté, par la puissance du génie de Gluck.’ CM, 2, p. 298. 14  ‘il est encore reçu dans le monde de n’en [de Mozart] parler qu’avec révérence’, CM, 3, p. 19. 11 

12 

Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz

23

some merit, but remarks that ‘it seems to us infinitely removed from Beethoven’s sublimities’.15 Mozart is ‘pleasant, gentle, graceful, witty’,16 but Beethoven ‘by his majestic stature … arouses respect not without some element of terror’.17 Berlioz is comparing here Beethoven’s second symphony with Mozart’s no. 40 (K. 550), both performed in the same concert. It is curious to note how Berlioz misses the magnificent dramatic effects of K. 550, such as the ‘dodecaphonic’ passage in the fourth movement,18 which are, in our view, much more terrorinspiring than anything in Beethoven’s second symphony. Obviously, Berlioz chose the symphonies, not the operas, for such a comparison. He would never proclaim Fidelio superior to Don Giovanni. Yet, he seems to overlook in Mozart’s symphonies the same dramatic force that moves him in Mozart’s operas. Most revealing in this respect are the passages in Berlioz’s criticism that compare Mozart to Haydn. For Berlioz, Haydn is manifestly beneath the level of the ‘Great Masters’. He is treated as ‘outdated’ and someone whose ‘boring … phrases … have tired rather than interested the public’.19 In his earlier critiques he takes care to stress the difference between the two: after commenting on Haydn’s obsolete style he speaks of Mozart as ‘full of passion and gloominess’.20 But later he tends to amalgamate the two into one entity, embodying all those features of scholarly Classicism that the Romantic spirit of Berlioz had sworn to overcome and to surpass. One passage of 1844 deserves to be cited here extensively: For a long while composers wished – and some do even now – to keep the symphony in the narrow framework outlined by Haydn. Mozart did not make the least effort to break out of it. For him, as for Haydn, it is always the same design, the same layout, the same succession of effects, always an allegro followed by an andante, by a minuet and then a lively and frisky finale. And in these four movements there is never anything but a more or less skilful sequence of pretty phrases, little melodic coquetries, smart and witty orchestral tricks; these compositions had no other purpose but to please the ear … Never is there the least tendency towards that level of ideas we call poetic … the musical note was all to them, it was the end and not the means. Their sense of expression was dormant, and seemed to come to life only when they composed for words. The symphonies followed each other and were all alike … so that it is indeed no exaggeration to say of the ninety symphonies written by Haydn and Mozart, that they are ninety variations on the same theme, for the same instrument.21 ‘elle nous semble à une distance infinie des sublimités de Beethoven’, CM, 4 (2003), p. 62. ‘aimable, doux, gracieux, spirituel’, CM, 2, p. 429. 17  ‘par la majesté de sa stature, imprime un respect qui n’est pas sans mélange de terreur’, CM, 2, p. 429. 18  Bars 125–32. 19  ‘âgé’ ; ‘ses … phrases en bonnet de coton ont plus fatigué qu’intéressé l’auditoire’, CM, 2, p. 64, p. 63. 20  ‘plein de passion et de mélancolie’, CM, 2, pp. 64–5. 21  ‘On a voulu très longtemps et quelques personnes voudraient encore retenir la symphonie dans le cadre étroit qui lui fut tracé par Haydn. Mozart ne fit pas la moindre tentative pour en sortir. C’était toujours, pour lui comme pour Haydn [my emphasis], le même plan, le même ordre d’idées, 15  16 

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

To sum up: Haydn and Mozart enjoyed playing with notes, but lacked poetic ideas. Their expressivity came to light only when it was aroused by words. This distinction between ‘notes for notes’ sake’ and ‘expressive’ or ‘poetic’ music is essential for understanding Berlioz’s way of thinking about music. The abstract combination of sounds, the purely ‘musical’ aspect of music, without forthright reference to feelings, events or images, leaves him indifferent. Thus most of the instrumental music of Mozart (and Haydn and Bach, for that matter) remains opaque to his eyes. Beethoven’s instrumental works were perceived differently, because they had, at least in the Romantic conception, a ‘poetic’ content. Let us turn now to a more detailed survey of Berlioz’s criticism of some specific works by Mozart performed in Paris in his time. Among those, the work that evokes Berlioz’s most enthusiastic acclamations is without doubt the motet Ave verum corpus (K. 618). The intimate and fervent religiosity of this short masterpiece seems to conform precisely to Berlioz’s ideal of religious music. ‘This is not just religious music, it is really divine and worthy of the dwellers of Heaven. It is the ideal manifestation of pious serenity, of mystical love, of ecstasy. God dictated it; an angel wrote it.’22 Another religious work, the Requiem, receives however a severe assessment. His words about this fragmentary and problematic work of Mozart’s last days are perhaps the most balanced and just of all of his criticism about Mozart. He considers most lucidly Mozart’s own attitude to this work, which was to be performed under somebody else’s name, a circumstance that might have induced Mozart to treat it with some reserve. He mentions of course Süssmayr’s part in the composition, and the diluted quality of Süssmayr’s contribution. He praises some of Mozart’s original parts (Rex tremendae, Confutatis, Lacrymosa) while others are censured, especially the Tuba mirum, where he rightly comments on the disappointing continuation of this aria after its powerful beginning by the consecutive solos of trombone and solo bass singer.23 We must bear in mind that la même succession d’impressions, toujours un allegro suivi d’un andante, d’un menuet et d’un finale sémillant et vif. Et dans ces quatre morceaux jamais autre chose qu’un enchaînement plus ou moins habile de jolies phrases, de petites coquetteries mélodiques, de jeux d’orchestre piquants et spirituels; ces compositions n’avaient pour but que de divertir l’oreille [original emphasis]… Jamais on n’y remarque la moindre tendance vers cet ordre d’idées qu’on appelle poétiques ... la note était tout pour eux, elle était le but et pas le moyen. Le sentiment de l’expression sommeillait chez eux et ne paraissait vivre que lorsqu’ils écrivaient sur des paroles. Les symphonies se succédaient et se ressemblaient toutes. …De sorte qu’il n’y a réellement point d’exagération à dire, au sujet des quatre-vingt-dix symphonies écrites par Haydn et Mozart, que ce sont quatre-vingt-dix variations sur le même thème pour le même instrument.’ CM, 5, pp. 600–601. 22  ‘C’est de la musique non seulement religieuse, mais vraiment divine et digne des habitants des cieux. C’est l’idéal du calme pieux, de l’amour mystique, de l’extase. Dieu le dicta, un ange l’écrivit.’ CM, 4, p. 478. 23  Remarkably, Berlioz mentions that in this aria the singer was accompanied by a bassoon, which he justifiably finds abhorrent. In fact, Mozart’s score demands the singer to be accompanied all through his solo by the trombone. This must have been a regrettable change introduced by the performers, perhaps motivated by the shortcomings of the available trombone player. Anyway,

Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz

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most critiques of Mozart’s Requiem by Berlioz appeared in 1834–35, a short while before his own Requiem was composed. There was not yet any direct competition, but the ideas of his personal exegesis to this text might have already been fermenting in his mind, and subconsciously influenced his reactions. He considers Cherubini’s Requiem, performed at about the same time,24 as a higher achievement than Mozart’s, as it was probably closer to his own conception of the picturesque and monumental character such a work must take. Actually, from Berlioz’s point of view we remain in the same sphere – religious music – when we move on to review his quite extensive pronouncements about Die Zauberflöte. It was a misunderstanding on his part, perhaps a fruitful one, to believe that Mozart’s aim in this opera was to resuscitate the religiosity of ancient Egypt: Listening to these sounds one feels suddenly transferred into these vast temples where the ancient Egyptians worshipped Isis; one breathes a cool and serene atmosphere; one perceives, through the dimly lit sanctuary, the abundant offerings of those priests who instructed Moses and Christ, of those wise men who initiated Orpheus into their mysteries.25

Modern research has shown that the plot of Die Zauberflöte was a symbolic representation of the Masonic initiation rites, Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder belonging to this congregation and wishing to propagate its views. Sarastro and his priests, the temple and its rituals, all had their parallels in Masonic functions and procedures. This meaning of the opera seems to have been understood even by the Viennese public at the numerous representations of the work in 1791–92, so it is astounding to observe how this reference to the Masons was completely lost some thirty or forty years later, when the work was performed in Paris. This may be due to the allegedly subversive character of the Masonic movement and its suppression in the Habsburg Empire and elsewhere from 1790 onwards. This suppression seems to have been marvellously effective, as in such a short time all traces of the opera’s original significance had been effaced. Even if Berlioz had been aware of the Masonic meaning, he is clearly more attracted by the picturesque aspects of the music, by its atmospheric power, than by any symbolic – let alone political or social – significance it might have. In this he does not differ from the majority of his contemporaries. On the other hand, a symbol, in order to be striking, needs to have an intrinsic suggestive power to enable it to exist on its own behalf independent on its reference to external ideas. Mozart’s music radiates an atmosphere of primordial wisdom and serenity that Berlioz was not familiar with the original score, and blames Mozart for the incompetent orchestration (CM, 1, p. 376). 24  He means Cherubini’s second Requiem, in D minor (1836). 25  ‘A de tels accents on se croit transporté tout d’un coup dans ces temples immenses où l’Égypte adorait Isis; on croit respirer une atmosphère fraîche et calme; on entrevoit, à travers le demi-jour du sanctuaire, les riches victimes de ces prêtres qui instruisirent Moïse et le Christ, de ces sages qui initièrent Orphée à leurs mystères’, CM, 2, pp. 405–406.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

has a direct appeal, even if we are ignorant of its intended subversive political message. Mozart’s music for Die Zauberflöte indeed persuasively evokes Egyptian antiquity, and listening to it we may forget its ideological portent. Berlioz was thus not totally mistaken in his judgement. Nevertheless, his view of the work is one-sided. Today, we tend to admire the multifaceted scope of this opera, its combination of idealism and utopianism, romantic love, fairy-tale and popular farce. Musically it joins the Italian seria and buffa traditions with the sacerdotal character of Gluck’s music and some aspects of the German-Protestant polyphonic style. Of all this Berlioz appreciates only the Gluckian, pseudo-religious aspect, and the brilliant overture, which bring forth his highest praise. But Tamino’s arias are mentioned only in passing, Pamina’s aria ‘Ach ich fühl’s’ is not considered at all, the Queen of the Night is dismissed on account of her roulades,26 and Papageno’s part is treated disparagingly. It is true that Die Zauberflöte elicits from Berlioz his most fervid expression about Mozart (‘the world’s greatest musician’),27 but yet he seems to have had only a partial view of the work.28 It is again the closeness to Gluck, and the revival of antiquity (here Greek), that attracts Berlioz to the music of Idomeneo, which he never saw in its entirety on the stage but knew only from fragments, which were performed from time to time in Habeneck’s concerts at the Société des concerts du conservatoire. He is most deeply impressed with the chorus ‘O voto tremendo!’ (Act III, no. 24) and Idomeneo’s aria that follows. Here again his admiration for Mozart is unrestrained: ‘What a miracle of beauty this music is! How pure! What a perfume of antiquity! It is Greek, decidedly Greek.’29 Nevertheless, for Berlioz, Mozart’s main achievement as an opera composer is Don Giovanni. Like other contemporary writers, he calls Mozart ‘l’auteur de Don Juan’. It is amazing, however, to observe his limited and one-sided view of this work, too. He wrote quite extensive reviews of Don Giovanni in 1834–35, when the opera was given for the first time at the Opéra (previously it was performed at the Théâtre Italien and at the Odéon), in a new French version by Deschamps and a musical adaptation by Castil-Blaze, which was an important event in Parisian musical life of the 1830s. This performance is described in detail in Katharine Ellis’s 1994 article.30 The music was transposed to suit Adolphe Nourrit (the great tenor singer of the day) in the role of Don Giovanni, originally a baritone part. Mozart’s two-act opera was divided into five, and the plot changed considerably: Anna commits suicide at the 26  This issue will be discussed below when Berlioz’s remarks on Donna Anna’s aria in Don Giovanni are raised. 27  ‘le plus grand musicien du monde’, CM, 2, p. 460. 28  See also the citations about the Magic Flute in Macdonald, ‘Berlioz and Mozart’, p. 216. 29  ‘Quel miracle de beauté qu’une telle musique! … comme c’est pur! quel parfum d’antiquité! C’est grec, c’est incontestablement grec’, CM, 2, p. 395. 30  Katharine Ellis, ‘Rewriting “Don Giovanni”, or “The Thieving Magpies”’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 119/ 2 (1994): 212–50.

Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz

27

end and Don Juan has a nightmare foretelling his own death. The ‘scena ultima’ was cut and the opera ended, after Don Giovanni’s destruction, with Anna’s funeral, to the sound of ‘O voto tremendo’ from Idomeneo and the ‘Dies irae’ from the Requiem. A ballet (with excerpts of other works by Mozart) was inserted into the ball scene, in accordance with the tradition of French grand opera. The changes in the libretto were influenced by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story Don Juan (1813): the narrator of this tale attends an imaginary performance of Don Giovanni and falls in love with the singer representing Donna Anna, who dies right after the performance. The story includes a romanticized interpretation of Mozart’s work, portraying Don Giovanni as an ideal character with sublime aspirations, who is truly in love with Donna Anna. She loves him in return, but denies her love because Don Giovanni has killed her father; she is supposed to die before marrying Don Ottavio.31 Of all these major transformations of the work, Berlioz’s criticism refers only to the musical insertions from other works by Mozart, to the additional ballet and to indiscreet changes in the orchestration. He seems not to be aware of the new interpretation of the plot intended by the Deschamps–Castil-Blaze version (indeed he may not have been familiar with Hoffmann’s story, although it was popular in Paris at the time) and does not respond to the extended part of Donna Anna.32 As to the music, his praise, here and elsewhere, is directed almost exclusively to the scene with the Commendatore in the Act II finale, which again resonates with his love of the picturesque, the terrible and the grandiose. Most buffa aspects of the opera are ignored, Masetto and Zerlina seem hardly to exist (not even the duet ‘Là ci darem la mano’ is mentioned), Elvira is ‘a character neglected by the librettist as well as the composer’.33 Again, this results in what to a modern point of view seems a rather restricted conception of the work. There is, however, one item in the opera that receives Berlioz’s disproportionate attention: Donna Anna’s aria ‘Non mi dir’ in the second act. This criticism appears, significantly, not in a newspaper critique, but in his Mémoires, written many years later.34 In Da Ponte’s text Anna tries here to console Don Ottavio, her fiancé, and explain her reserve towards him by her continuing grief about her murdered father. In the current Romantic interpretation, following Hoffmann’s story (and in Deschamps’s translation) Anna was actually expressing in this aria her unhappy love for Don Giovanni, and the insoluble conflict resulting from her love for her father’s murderer. It is indeed an exceptional piece of music, even by Mozart’s standards: the foregoing recitativo accompagnato already introduces the main 31  Ellis shows that Deschamps’s version was indebted also to two poems by Alfred de Musset that depict Don Juan-like characters. 32  Ellis cites other, more comprehensive, critical responses to the 1834 performance, but for some reason omits Berlioz’s criticism altogether. 33  ‘un personnage sacrifié par le poète et par le musicien.’ CM, 1, p. 195. 34  The Mémoires were written mostly in the late 1840s and early 50s. The final version was delivered for print in 1864, but appeared only posthumously in 1870.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

motive of the aria itself. The aria is made of a deeply expressive and mournful larghetto (in a major key) followed by an agitated cavatina, which is unusually not an Allegro, but an Allegretto moderato. This cavatina includes eight bars of coloratura, which arouse Berlioz’s wrath. In the Mémoires, this is the only case where he devotes almost a whole chapter (17) to a single composition – actually a short passage from one aria. In his own words: I refer to the allegro of the soprano aria (No. 22) in the second act. It is an aria of intense sadness, full of a heartbreaking sense of loss and sorrowing love, but towards the end degenerating without warning into music of such appalling inanity and vulgarity that one can hardly believe it to be the work of the same man. One has the impression that Donna Anna has suddenly dried her tears and broken out in ribald clowning.35

He is not content with this, but inflames his own anger more and more until, in a footnote, he reaches this outcry: ‘Even shameful seems to me too light a word. Mozart in this passage has committed one of the most odious and idiotic crimes against passion, taste and common sense of which the history of art provides an example.’36 Berlioz seems to mirror here an explanation expressed also by some other contemporary critics:37 that Mozart wrote this passage to satisfy the demands of an ambitious soprano of his day. Mozart actually admits to such a ‘crime’ in a letter concerning an earlier work, Die Entführung aus dem Serail: ‘I have sacrificed Constanze’s aria a little to the flexible throat of Mlle. Cavalieri’.38 Nevertheless, in his late operas Mozart is more intent on artistic integrity, and in this case there is no evidence that this passage was included for such a reason. Actually Berlioz’s interpretation is a misunderstanding that manifests the gulf separating his generation and its conception of music from Mozart’s: for Mozart and his audience, Anna’s coloraturas, being wordless melismas, were most probably viewed as an expression of deep, unutterable emotion, of unsatisfied cravings, and, we may add, perhaps even (in a Hoffmannesque interpretation) an unconscious wish for death. For Berlioz it was just ‘an unbelievable succession of runs in the worst style’.39 This may be another proof (if any was needed) that stylistic topoi are largely a matter of convention, and do not speak a language intuitively and universally understood. It is exactly in the same way that Berlioz misconceives the roulades in the second aria of the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte: what is meant as an expression of unrestrained anger and hate, too 35  Hector Berlioz, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, trans. and ed. David Cairns (London, 1969), p. 93. 36  Ibid. 37  For example, two excerpts from Le Courrier français and La Revue musicale cited in Belinda Cannone, La Réception des opéras de Mozart dans la presse parisienne (1793–1829), pp. 341–2. 38  ‘die aria von der konstanze habe ich ein wenig der geläufigen gurgel der Mad.selle Cavallieri aufgeopfert’, W.A. Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, eds Wilhelm A. Bauer and Otto Erich Deutsch (7 vols, Kassel, 1962–75), vol. 3, letter no. 629, lines 45–7, p. 163. 39  Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 93.

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strong to be expressed in words, is interpreted by Berlioz as an empty, ornamental virtuoso manifestation. But it seems insufficient to explain Chapter 17 of the Mémoires in terms of a misunderstanding. The animosity that breaks through in the extreme terms Berlioz uses here, and the disproportionate space allotted to it in his book, seem to point to some deeper problem Berlioz may have had with Mozart and his music, an issue to be tackled in the last part of this article. For the moment let us glance at Berlioz’s relatively few utterances about Le Nozze di Figaro. Unexpectedly, after his disregard of the buffa aspects of Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte, he finds here (some years later, in 1839) some words of warm appreciation for a pure opera buffa by Mozart (though its more serious implications seem not to concern Berlioz): ‘it has been a long time since we have heard at the Théâtre Italien, music so pure, expressive, witty, learned and natural as this. I have never so admired the creative power of Mozart’s genius, nor the ceaseless lucidity of his mind.’40 This admiration is, however, mitigated by what follows, where he refers to the ‘coldness’ of the subject matter. Having viewed Berlioz’s pronouncements about Mozart’s religious and dramatic music, we turn now to what he had to say about the instrumental works. We have already discussed Berlioz’s appraisal of Mozart’s symphonies – as being equal in stature to Haydn’s and inferior to Beethoven’s. Mozart’s chamber music receives very little attention in Berlioz’s critiques, although some of it was performed regularly in Paris from the early 1830s by the Baillot Quartet. Sometimes such performances are mentioned favourably, though often without even identifying the work performed. At other times, a specific work is named, as, for example, the piano quartet in G minor, K. 478, but Berlioz finds nothing to say about it in his review. Again, in a different mood, he may say: ‘The marvellous beauty of his quartets and quintets and of one or two of his sonatas was what first converted me to this celestial genius …’.41 This passage appears right after the violent outburst against Donna Anna’s aria in chapter 17 of the Mémoires, a proximity that undermines its credibility. Of the piano concertos I found only one mention, concerning a performance by the Rouennais pianist Méreaux of the concerto in D minor, K. 466, in London (1848): ‘Mr. Méreaux played simply, as was appropriate for such a piece, a piano concerto by Mozart with a most pretty andante.’42 In the outer movements of this concerto we may sense a very similar mood to the demonic scenes of Don Giovanni, but nothing of this seems to pierce Berlioz’s perception. Indeed, the accumulated impression we get from these citations is of a rather reserved, and for the most part undiscerning attitude to Mozart’s instrumental output. 40  ‘depuis longtemps on n’avait entendu au Théâtre-Italien de musique pure, expressive, spirituelle, savante et naturelle comme celle-là. Je n’ai jamais tant admiré la puissance créatrice du génie de Mozart ni la constante lucidité de son intelligence’, CM, 4, pp. 31. 41  Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 94. 42  ‘M. Méreaux a joué d’une manière simple, comme il convenait de faire pour une oeuvre de cette nature, un concerto pour piano de Mozart dont l’andante est très joli.’ CM, 5, p. 491.

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Our last specific inquiry concerns the place of Mozart in Berlioz’s Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration.43 Here the use of instruments in an orchestral context is demonstrated by music examples from different scores, some by Berlioz himself or by his contemporaries, others from the masters of the past. Out of 66 examples in the Traité, four are taken from Mozart (Gluck and Beethoven contribute 17 each). This number is surprisingly low, and not only by present-day opinion, which tends to hold Mozart as one of the great masters of instrumentation. Berlioz himself seems to consider him such since he describes ‘the instrumentation that he [Mozart] applied to the accompaniment of singing’ as having ‘that admirable acumen and that exquisite taste, which are the main features of his genius’.44 Right after this he gives a most fitting description of Mozart’s instrumental procedures: ‘Mozart has spread civilization in the orchestra. The inhabitants of his harmonious city do not include many outstanding figures, but they have generally a more cultivated attitude; richness and purity of language are most common among them.’45 Nevertheless, students of instrumentation using the Traité will come across very little of this. It is striking, too, to realize what Mozartian examples Berlioz actually selected for his Traité: the mandolin in Don Giovanni, the glockenspiel in Die Zauberflöte, the trombones accompanying the chorus in the same work, and the Ave Verum, for a demonstration of the equilibrium of choral voices. Three out of four are demonstrations of the use of exceptional instruments, which do not belong to the mainstream of orchestral usage. We have none, for example, of the felicitous employment of woodwinds in Mozart’s piano concertos or in the accompaniment of his arias, or the original octave doublings in some of the string parts. If judged only by Berlioz’s selections, one would get the impression that Mozart was a fan of exotic instruments and special effects, contradicting both the evidence and Berlioz’s own statement in the foregoing paragraph, where he praises Mozart for using all instruments in a balanced way. Thus, here again there seems to be some force at work that prevents Berlioz from acknowledging Mozart’s true merit. I will now try to illuminate this mental process by examining Berlioz’s writings about Mozart. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Berlioz’s admiration for Mozart, as in the above-mentioned passages about Die Zauberflöte, the Ave verum or Idomeneo. Mozart’s genius was evident to him, and at times, when his judgement was not swayed by other considerations, he could be deeply moved by it. Nevertheless, as we have shown above, this admiration admits only some aspects of Mozart’s achievement, and almost completely leaves out others, such 43  The New Berlioz Edition (NBE), Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes, vol. 24, ed. Peter Bloom (Kassel, 2003). 44  ‘l’instrumentation, qu’il [Mozart] appliqua à l’accompagnement du chant avec cette sagacité admirable et ce goût exquis qui forment les principaux traits de son génie’, CM, 4, p. 170. 45  ‘Mozart … a répandu la civilisation dans l’orchestre. Les habitants de son harmonieuse cité ne comptent pas beaucoup d’hommes de génie; mais ils ont, en général, l’esprit plus cultivé; la richesse et la pureté du langage sont, chez eux, le partage du plus grand nombre.’ CM, 4, p. 170.

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as Mozart’s art of characterization in the opera buffa, or the formal balance and richness of ideas in the instrumental works. Like many Romantics, Berlioz could perceive composers of the past only as forerunners, as torchbearers of Romantic ideals that would reach fulfilment later, in his own generation. Thus he appreciated Mozart mainly for his resuscitation of antique spirituality and for his terror-inspiring effects, which are actually only a peripheral phenomenon in his vast output. It was these facets that could serve Berlioz as a direct source of inspiration for his own compositions. As for the rest, he uses more polite and neutral epithets, such as ‘pleasant’ (aimable), ‘gentle’ (doux), or ‘graceful’ (gracieux), which have their ironic undertones. Generally speaking, a certain irony is unmistakable in some passages about Mozart, especially in the earlier writings. This irony may be explained by a certain reticence observable in Berlioz’s formulations about Mozart, especially in his early criticism, as if he would not dare to speak his mind fully about such an accepted object of veneration: ‘Some atheists never dare speak lightly about religious matters, because irreligiousness is in bad taste.’46 But later on this restraint disappears, and we come across such harsh pronouncements as those cited above about Mozart’s and Haydn’s symphonies, or the aria of Donna Anna. Kerry Murphy comments on Berlioz’s tone of self-righteousness when finding faults in the works of other composers, and cites in this context his criticism of the ‘Tuba mirum’ from the Requiem, and another passage about the choral ‘Splendete te’ from the incidental music for Thamos, K. 345.47 If we try to uncover the reasons for this animosity, which breaks through time and again, more evidence is needed. His late collection of articles A travers chants (1862) included a parody called ‘Beethoven dans l’anneau de Saturne’ describing a spiritualist séance where Beethoven’s spirit is evoked and dictates a perfectly banal new composition, conceived in the world beyond. Beethoven lives now on Saturn, and Berlioz explains why he chose that dwelling place. ‘Mozart, as everyone knows, lives on Jupiter, and one might have thought that the composer of Fidelio would have chosen the same planet for his new abode. Beethoven is known to be something of a recluse, not very sociable; perhaps he even harbours a secret aversion to Mozart’.48 To keep away from Mozart, therefore, Beethoven preferred to stay on a separate planet. Why should Beethoven have any aversion to Mozart? There is no evidence that he did. Actually, it seems that Berlioz is projecting onto Beethoven his own antipathie non avouée for Mozart. But at times he does avow it most freely: ‘There is something discouraging, even irritating 46  ‘Certains athées ne se permettraient jamais de parler légèrement des choses religieuses, parce que l’irréligion est de mauvais ton’, CM, 3, p. 19. 47  Kerry Murphy, Hector Berlioz and the Development of French Music Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1988), p. 159. See also CM, 2, p. 404. 48  Hector Berlioz, The Art of Music and Other Essays, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay (Bloomington, 1994) p. 54.

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about the unfailing beauty of this somewhat lengthy work, always so serene and full of self-assurance, obliging you to pay it constant homage from start to finish.’49 This utterance appears in a generally favourable criticism about a performance of Le Nozze di Figaro cited earlier in this article. So it is this so-called classical poise and tranquillity, attributed to Mozart, that irritates him above all. In the same vein he says on another occasion (in a letter to Mlle. Bertin, included in the Mémoires): ‘If you sat down at the piano to play me something from your favourite Mozart or Cimarosa, I might well peevishly interrupt you and announce that it was time to have done with this adulation of Mozart, with his operas that are all alike and his maddening imperturbability …’50 This attribution of imperturbability, again, from our perspective, results from a misunderstanding. Mozart as we see him today – revolting against the absolutist rule of Archbishop Colloredo, marrying into a dubious family against his father’s wishes, addicted to gambling, writing obscene letters to his cousin – is far from that imperturbable idealization that existed only in the imagination of the Romantics. This complexity of Mozart’s character is of course reflected in his works, and nowadays we tend to stress the experimental, unexpected, incongruous aspects of Mozart’s music at the expense of classical balance, which preoccupied researchers of the previous generation. James Webster justifiably suggests abandoning altogether the concept of the Classical style, and speaks of Haydn and Mozart as representing, rather, the ‘first Viennese modernism’.51 Obviously we cannot expect Berlioz to understand Mozart’s historical position from our standpoint today, but his insistence on Mozart’s classical imperturbability, and his intense aversion to it, seem to me to conceal a deeper concern of Berlioz with Mozart’s personality and music. I have the strong impression that Berlioz envied Mozart’s professional skill as a musician, and was conscious of his own inferiority. Despite the apologetic discourse of Barzun and other Berliozians, his shortcomings in harmony, counterpoint and formal organization are unmistakable even in his mature works. How could he, who grew up at La-Côte-St-André isolated from any serious music-making until the age of 18, receiving only a rudimentary musical education in his childhood and youth, never mastering an instrument, not encouraged by his family at any stage to undertake a musical career, compete with the child of Salzburg, son of a highly skilled musician who devoted his life to his son’s musical upbringing and who took him from early 49  ‘Il y a quelque chose de désespérant, j’allais presque dire d’impatientant, dans cette beauté inaltérable toujours calme et sûre d’elle-même qui vous oblige à un hommage incessant du début à la fin d’une oeuvre d’aussi longue haleine.’ CM, 4, p. 31 50  Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 317. 51  James Webster, ‘Between Enlightenment and Romanticism in Music History: “First Viennese Modernism” and the Delayed Nineteenth Century’, 19th-Century Music 25 (2001–2002): 108–126. Webster does not refer here to those proto-Romantic aspects in Mozart that attracted Berlioz and his contemporaries, such as the passionate minor moods or the picturesque and realistic sections in his operas, but rather to Haydn’s and Mozart’s complex techniques of thematic development and formal experimentalism – just those aspects that Berlioz totally ignored.

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childhood all around Europe to meet the greatest masters of his day? Berlioz must have felt this difference, and his often arrogant tone in discussing Mozart’s music seems barely to mask a deep-rooted sense of insecurity about his musical abilities. No one more than Mozart could embody for Berlioz the ideal of professional musicianship, so far out of his reach, and thus he remains the ultimate reminder of his shortcomings, and thus a permanent source of irritation. It is this recognition of Mozart’s superior mastery of compositional skills that lies behind Berlioz’s choice of words: ‘this unfailing beauty, always serene and self-assured’. Beethoven, of course, was a perfect musician too, but he had to work hard for it, while for Mozart, the myth had already taken root that his proficiency came with ease. This difference between the two was already evident to Berlioz’s generation, and thus Beethoven was conceived as more ‘human’, and Berlioz could feel closer to him. Gluck, on the other hand, who like Berlioz reached artistic ripeness at a relatively advanced age and whose contrapuntal skills were compared by Handel to those of his cook, was much easier to identify with than the ‘enfant prodige’ who grew up to become the emblem of perfection. There remains one last question to deal with: if, despite his deep-rooted antipathy to Mozart, Berlioz did actually appreciate the full stature of his genius, what did he learn from him? What marks of Mozart’s influence, if any, can be found in Berlioz’s music? In my view it is futile to look for any direct Mozartian reminiscences in works by Berlioz. Their music is worlds apart, and if we are to look for followers of Mozart in the nineteenth century, we should look instead to the works of Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Yet we may observe some impact of Mozart’s ideas on Berlioz at a more basic level. Here again its formulation may be found in Berlioz’s own words: ‘Moreover, Don Giovanni takes a share in the Romantic school, because of the drama’s subject matter and its Shakespearian conception’ (my emphasis).52 This remark remains unexplained, but we may guess that the ‘Shakespearian’ traits Berlioz discovers in Don Giovanni are probably the work’s discontinuous construction, leaving aside the traditional theatrical ‘unities’ of time and space, which were still the norm in the opera of Mozart’s time. Don Giovanni is in fact made up of a series of loosely connected scenes with no clear indication of the time that elapses between one and the next. The opera may be understood to be taking place within the span of one day and night, but just as easily (taking into account the building of the Commendatore’s monumental sculpture) some weeks may have elapsed between its introduction and the final scene. Another ‘Shakespearean’ trait he may be referring to is the mixture of genres – the comic and the tragic – in this opera. All this may, in Berlioz’s mind, have linked Mozart with Shakespeare,53 whose tendency to juxtapose scenes taking place at different places and sometimes 52  ‘Don Juan, en outre, a un parti dans l’école romantique à cause du sujet du drame et du système shakespearien dans lequel il est conçu’, CM, 1, p. 236. 53  Mozart and Shakespeare were related also in the view of Goethe, who saw in both (as well as in Raphael) a ‘natural’ genius whose achievements could not be fully explained by study or effort.

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considerably remote from each other in time was much discussed. A similar attitude to dramatic time and genre may be observed in Die Zauberflöte, though Berlioz does not mention it in this context. This observation about the ‘Shakespearean’ aspect of Don Giovanni shows not only Berlioz’s acute discernment, but it may give us a clue to a possible influence, even a profound and decisive one, of Mozart on Berlioz. In fact, a prominent feature of his own dramatic works is their ‘Shakespearean’ construction – by separate scenes without spatial or temporal continuity – as may be observed in almost all of his dramatic output, from Romeo et Juliet and La Damnation de Faust to Les Troyens. Thus there may be a direct line, though a hidden one, connecting Shakespeare, Mozart and Berlioz.54 Berlioz’s relationship to Mozart was affected by three factors. First, as one of the most clear-sighted and discerning musicians of his generation, Berlioz was profoundly aware of Mozart’s greatness. Second, as a child of his time and place, he was bound by a conventional and limited view of Mozart’s output. And third, he unconsciously saw Mozart as a threat to his self-assurance as a musician. These conflicting factors, as detailed in this study, may help explain the inconsistencies in Berlioz’s pronouncements on Mozart.

54  See also Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century (2 vols, New York and London, 1969), vol. 1, p. 300.

Chapter Three

‘Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker’? The Pre-history of L’Enfance du Christ Julian Rushton L’Enfance du Christ is the first dramatic work for which Berlioz wrote all the words, and it alone is not connected to any of his author-heroes. In contrast to the 40-year prehistory of Les Troyens, and the composer’s passions for Shakespeare and Goethe that preceded their full realization by many years, L’Enfance was started almost by accident, in a spirit of good-humoured raillery. The incident at the soirée at Duc’s is too well-known to repeat here. It yielded an organ piece that, with added text, became ‘L’Adieu des bergers à la Sainte Famille’. To this independently viable piece of four-part unaccompanied choral music, Berlioz added instrumental support and a frame in the style of Italian bagpipes. He composed a fugal overture, and with ‘Le Repos de la Sainte Famille’ completed a miniature trilogy, La Fuite en Egypte. This he published in 1850, but it was not performed in its entirety until 1 December 1853, in Leipzig, and thus in German. This performance inspired him to begin a sequel, eventually entitled L’Arrivée à Saïs. Last to be conceived was Part I, Le Songe d’Hérode, completing a symmetry around Part II and, indeed, around the original germ-cell, the ‘Adieu des bergers’. The whole oratorio was completed and performed in 1854 when – exceptionally for Berlioz – it was immediately enjoyed by the Paris public, and surely not just because the audience knew the story, as Théophile Gautier remarked.   I have been greatly assisted by audiences of versions of this paper presented at conferences and seminars. In particular I wish to thank Peter Bloom, David Chadd, James Deaville, Katharine Ellis, David Fligg, Francesco Izzo, Miriam Lensky, David Lloyd-Jones, Hugh Macdonald, Vivian Ramalingan, Jesse Rosenberger, John Warrack and Luca Zoppelli. Versions were read at the bicentennial conference Berlioz e la cultura del suo tempo (Siena, November 2003); the biennial conference on nineteenth-century music (Durham, July 2004); and the American Musicological Society (Seattle, November 2004).   Berlioz’s open letter to John Ella, reproduced in Les Grotesques de la musique (1859), pp. 168–71, trans. Alistair Bruce as The Musical Madhouse (Rochester, NY, 2003), pp. 106–9.   It was repeated on 10 December and performed under Seghers in Paris on 18 December. ‘L’Adieu’ had been heard in Paris in 1850 and ‘Le Repos’ in London and in four German cities during November 1853. See the New Berlioz Edition (NBE), vol. 11: L’Enfance du Christ, ed. David LloydJones (Kassel, 1998), Foreword, p. viii; D. Kern Holoman, Berlioz (Cambridge, MA and London, 1989), pp. 621–4.   Gautier’s review appeared in La Presse on 28 December 1854; see Théophile Gautier,

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Nominally an oratorio intended for concert performance, L’Enfance du Christ mixes non-theatrical components – a narrator, a choral epilogue – with dramatic representation. At an early stage in its genesis, the narrative ‘Le Repos de la Sainte Famille’ was subtitled ‘Légende et pantomime’. Parts of it resemble a sacred opera, and the libretto includes stage directions. Among the theatrical scenes are the ‘Marche nocturne’, interrupted by recitative; Herod’s monologue and his scene with the soothsayers; and the scenes in Egypt, where Mary and Joseph are twice rejected before a third door opens to welcome them. Nevertheless, Part III of L’Enfance also includes Berlioz’s only surviving chamber music – a trio for two flutes and harp. Berlioz’s ‘Sacred Trilogy’ was composed during the period of his closest involvement with Liszt’s circle in Weimar, members of which were present at the Leipzig premiere of La Fuite en Egypte. Richard Pohl later called it ‘Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker’; but a ‘musician of the future’ is surely a modernist, seeking new forms of music-drama, exploring new harmonies and new instrumental possibilities – Wagner is the inevitable paradigm. Berlioz’s musical language remained highly personal, but in L’Enfance he used formal patterns essentially unchanged over his lifetime: the choruses, recitatives, arias and instrumental pieces – overtures, interludes, marches – traditional in French dramatic music. There are none of his instrumental novelties, no unpitched percussion, and no brass after the mid-point of Part I. Even the horns are banished from the remainder, which is scored for a handful of wind instruments and strings except for the brief onomatopoeic intervention from the timpani (to represent Joseph knocking on doors). It concludes with music for unaccompanied chorus. French reaction, in marked contrast to Pohl’s, identified with the traditional elements. Those who liked it, having previously not much admired Berlioz, claimed that he had simplified his style. Berlioz insisted that he had only respected his subject-matter: ‘The subject naturally lent itself to a mild and simple kind of music … I should have written The Childhood of Christ in the same way twenty years ago’. It has been suggested that L’Enfance du Christ was a tribute to Berlioz’s teacher Jean-François Lesueur. But Lesueur died in 1837, the year of the Grande messe des morts, a work that surely owes more to his example. His oratorios, some of which Berlioz heard in the Tuileries chapel in the 1820s, are in Latin, and are either constructed around a liturgy or are based on Old Testament stories; they also lack the realism, and theatricality, of Berlioz’s. La Musique (Paris, 1911), p. 161. On the composition and reception of the oratorio see NBE, 11, Foreword, p. viii and J.-G. Prod’homme, Le Cycle Berlioz: L’Enfance du Christ (Paris, 1898), much of which is devoted to extensive quotation and analysis of the press reaction.   David Lloyd-Jones has pointed out (in a personal communication) that the pantomime (the long introduction) precedes the ‘Légende’ (narration).   Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century (2 vols, New York, 1969), vol. 2, p. 73.   Richard Pohl, Hector Berlioz: Studien und Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1884), p. 58.   Hector Berlioz, Memoirs, trans. and ed. David Cairns (London, 1969), p. 474. The claim was earlier made public by Gautier, whose writings reflect Berlioz’s views (La Musique, pp. 155, 161).

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Nevertheless, the public reaction was understandable; a later critic, Jacques Gabriel Prod’homme, concludes his discussion thus: ‘The alarming sceptic had reconstructed himself as a naive soul of olden times: an engraver, a stained glass painter in an ancient cathedral.’ Stained glass, pictures, manuscript illumination: these metaphors recur throughout the reception history of L’Enfance du Christ, and emanate from the composer himself. Under the impact of his first hearing La Fuite en Egypte in rehearsal, he wrote: ‘It’s really good, naive and touching (don’t laugh); rather like the illuminations in old missals’.10 Another member of the Weimar circle, Peter Cornelius, suspected that Berlioz’s inspiration owed something to pictures by Bonaventura Genelli, which they had viewed together, but Cornelius and Berlioz only met when the former reached Weimar in November 1853, too late to affect La Fuite.11 One could cite paintings of the Renaissance and later – many, however, the kind of art Berlioz would have classified, along with Michelangelo’s Last Judgement frescoes, as exhibiting ‘conventional beauty’.12 Perhaps, of all Berlioz’s works, L’Enfance du Christ is most open to the same charge, if only by virtue of its subject. Yet it is strikingly unconventional in musical expression and in its handling of sources, although neither Berlioz’s correspondence nor early press reception pay any attention to his departure from traditional narratives. The sources of Berlioz’s libretto are unclear, as they are not for his other large works, and he may have drawn more than usual upon his own resources of memory, and ideas from other people. Part I presents the most complex issues, as befits a pair of scenes contrasting the tyrannical Herod with the idyllic scene in Bethlehem. Here, and in Part II, Berlioz takes the normal liberty in retelling of Christmas stories: he merges the essentially incompatible narratives in the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke. From Matthew comes the massacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt, while from Luke comes the stable in Bethlehem, and the shepherds. The merger already forms the basis for traditions elaborated in the later evangelical writings known as ‘Infancy Gospels’ – the New Testament Apocrypha deemed uncanonical by the church.13 These narratives, probably dating from the second century of the Christian era, not only take features from both canonical narratives, but diverge in   ‘Le terrible sceptique s’était refait l’âme naïve des vieux tailleurs d’images, des vieux peintres verriers des cathédrales antiques.’ Prod’homme, Le Cycle Berlioz: L’Enfance du Christ, pp. 279–80. Gautier mentions medieval painters: Dürer, and painters of diptychs and triptychs such as Memling and Van Eyck; La Musique, p. 158. 10  ‘Vraiment c’est bien, c’est naïf et touchant (ne ris pas), c’est dans le genre des enluminures des vieux missels’. Letter to Adèle Suat, 30 Nov. 1853. Hector Berlioz, Correspondance générale (CG), vol. 4, ed. Pierre Citron, Yves Gérard and Hugh Macdonald (Paris, 1983), p. 408. 11  Peter Cornelius, Gesammelte Aufsätze Gedanken über Musik und Theater: Beiträge zu Mittelrheinischer Musikgeschichte, ed. Günter Wagner and James Deaville (Mainz, 2004), p. 557. 12  Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 255. 13  M.R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924); J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1993); J.K. Elliott (ed.), The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church (Oxford, 1996); Ronald F. Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas (Santa Rosa, CA, 1995).

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many particulars and fill in lacunae according to traditions consulted, or invented, by their authors. Part I came into being for practical reasons. Parts II and III are unequal in length and too short overall for a complete dramatic work, yet they are interdependent, not only because Part III continues the narrative of the flight into Egypt but because it begins with music taken from the overture to Part II. Two Englishmen, the publisher Frederick Beale and the man of letters Henry Fothergill Chorley, suggested to Berlioz that more was required to bring the work nearer to the dimensions London audiences would expect in an oratorio. Berlioz could have hoped for success in Britain with such a piece; and L’Enfance du Christ is his first work to lay out choral music in the four parts – soprano, contralto, tenor, bass – customary in Britain and Germany. But he may simply have been responding to a change in French customs, for this is already the vocal disposition of ‘L’Adieu des bergers’.14 The obvious topic for an extension of the oratorio was the scenes prior to the flight into Egypt. At the planning stage, Part I was entitled ‘Massacre of the Innocents’. Chorley, and possibly Beale, may have discussed its content with Berlioz; writing to Liszt, after referring to Beale’s proposal (not realized) to publish an English edition when three parts were completed, the composer continues: ‘I am beginning to see how the plan for the massacre will work out; Chorley has given me some ideas for this as well’.15 Discussions with Beale and Chorley presumably took place during Berlioz’s 1853 London visit, when he used Beale’s office as a postal address.16 Chorley is best known today for his work as a critic for the Athenaeum (including musical reviews, predominantly of opera).17 But he was also a poet, novelist and playwright. His response to Berlioz’s music was mostly unfavourable, but having failed to persuade Mendelssohn to accept one of his poems as the basis of an opera libretto, he may have hoped to collaborate with another composer of European stature. Chorley subsequently prepared an English translation of the whole oratorio, and may have expressed himself as willing to translate La Damnation de Faust.18 He did at least appreciate La Fuite en Egypte as Berlioz’s 14  See Hugh Macdonald (ed.), Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise: A Translation and Commentary (Cambridge, 2002), p. 248; Hector Berlioz, Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes, NBE, 24, ed. Peter Bloom (2003), pp. 357–8. 15  ‘Je commence à voir poindre le plan du massacre, pour lequel Chorley m’a donné, lui aussi, quelques idées’. Letter to Liszt, from Dresden, 14 April 1854; CG, 4, p. 515. The same day he wrote to Chorley: ‘J’ai fini l’oratoire L’arrivée à Saïs à l’exception d’un petit morceau que je n’ai pas encore trouvé. Maintenant je cherche la réalisation de votre idée pour le No.1 de la Trilogie, et je crois que j’en viendrai à bout’ (CG, 4, p. 515). The ‘aussi’ in the letter to Liszt makes it uncertain whether Beale produced ideas for Part I, or only insisted that the oratorio should be longer. 16  CG, 8, ed. Pierre Citron and Hugh Macdonald (2002), p. 360. On Berlioz’s connection with Beale in 1852–3 see also A.W. Ganz, Berlioz in London (London, 1950), pp. 121–75. 17  See Henry F. Chorley, Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections (2 vols, London, 1862). 18  Chorley’s biographer mistakenly states that Chorley wrote the words to the second part of L’Enfance du Christ. Robert Terrell Bledsoe, Henry Fothergill Chorley: Victorian Journalist (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 198, 327. Chorley’s English translation, together with the German translation

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‘most rational music’.19 It seems most likely from Berlioz’s comment, and from the fact that the scene in Bethlehem is directly derived from Luke’s gospel, that Chorley’s ideas concerned the treatment of Herod. Because reasons are given for his paranoia, this Herod is a little more human than usual; his superb aria in particular might attract sympathy to the mentally unstable and ruthless tyrant, otherwise depicted very much as he appears in the works of the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus.20 Friedrich Hebbel’s tragedy Herodes und Mariamne (1849), based on Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, was probably unknown to Berlioz and Chorley. Berlioz would have had no use for its account of Herod’s political difficulties and Othello-like jealousy, although Herod’s repentance after causing his wife’s death might have been an effective strand in his characterization. The play humanizes the tyrant without disguising his crimes, and it ends with him ordering the massacre at Bethlehem, an event not recorded by Josephus or any other historian.21 Prologue: The Birth of Jesus The opening of Part I presents the tenor soloist as both narrator and preacher. The crime of Herod is introduced by ‘Or, apprenez, chrétiens …’, implying complicity with the audience, whom Berlioz addresses in an exhortatory mode he seldom employed (another example is the brief epilogue to the scene in Hell in La Damnation de Faust). In the first century, the prophetic strain in Jewish scripture (taken over by Christianity as the Old Testament) remained strong enough to inspire the Jewish revolt suppressed by Titus. Christian traditions have identified various signs at the time of Christ’s birth, notably the star of Bethlehem. Berlioz’s narrator informs us that ‘no prodigy had yet made him known’ (‘nul prodige encor ne l’avait fait connaître’). This precedes some lines perhaps based on Chateaubriand’s Le Génie du christianisme, a favourite book of his youth. His chapter ‘De Jésus-Christ et sa vie’ begins: ‘As the time neared when the Redeemer would appear upon earth, the peoples awaited the arrival of some by Cornelius, is reprinted in the miniature score edited by Roger Fiske (London, 1971). On Chorley and Faust, see CG, 4, p. 511. 19  Bledsoe, Henry Fothergill Chorley: Victorian Journalist, p. 236, n. 25. 20  Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XV–XVII, trans. Ralph Marcus, ed. Allen Wikgren (London and Cambridge, MA, 1963), vol. 8, Herod’s illness and death, pp. 449–61. If Berlioz consulted Josephus, he must have been impressed by the description of Herod’s terror at a supernatural intervention when he attempted to rob the tombs of David and Solomon. 21  Hebbel’s play was performed in Vienna in 1849 and published there in 1850; Hebbel was not yet well known, and Berlioz could not read German. Hebbel’s chronology – the magi arrive shortly after the death of Mariamne in 29 BC – is considerably further awry than that of the Gospels. The description of these events in The Golden Legend combines Matthew’s story with material lifted from Josephus. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 1993), section 10, ‘Holy Innocents’.

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famous person … [who] would arise among the Jews and gain the empire of the world.’22 Chateaubriand gives as his sources Suetonius, Tacitus and Josephus, but not the poetic prophecy of Virgil, which Berlioz probably also knew, and to which the sceptical Renan was later to point.23 Berlioz’s recitative turns Chateaubriand’s curiously flat expression into poetry: ‘Et déjà les puissants tremblaient, déjà les faibles espéraient, tous attendaient’. A few years before, however, he had penned his own ironic commentary in the Mémoires: ‘During the months which preceded my birth my mother never dreamt, as Virgil’s did, that she was about to bring forth a laurel branch … I came into the world quite normally, unheralded by any of the portents in use in poetic times.’24 Herod’s Dream Dreams form a literary and mythical trope, much used in the Bible. But Berlioz replaced Joseph’s dream (in Matthew) by angels addressing both Joseph and Mary (awake), warning them to escape into Egypt. In Matthew, Herod learns from the magi of a ‘king’, a threat to his own dynasty; there is no reference to Herod dreaming. In Berlioz, Herod’s recurring dream has a probable literary source, Racine’s powerful Old Testament drama Athalie, which Chateaubriand called ‘the most perfect work of genius inspired by religion’, and which Berlioz certainly knew.25 In her dream, following a general warning from her mother Jezebel, Athalie has a vision of a child-priest armed against her. At the end of the play, he is revealed as the true King of Judah: she is overthrown and her life is ended. In Herod’s dream a solemn voice tells him: ‘Your time of glory is fading. A child has been born who ends your rule and power.’ But unlike Athalie’s, this dream is false; the new-born child posed no threat to Herod who, having collaborated with the dominant Roman power, died long before Christ’s ministry and the metaphorical kingdom to which the gospels looked forward. Berlioz departs from all known 22  ‘Vers le temps de l’apparition du Rédempteur sur la terre, les nations étaient dans l’attente de quelque personnage fameux … un homme s’élèverait de la Judée, et obtiendrait l’empire universel.’ François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, Le Génie du christianisme (Paris, 1966), vol. 2, p. 105. David Cairns calls this ‘livre pour lequel le jeune Berlioz se passionnait’ (‘Le sentiment religieux dans l’oeuvre de Berlioz’, in Pierre-René Serna and Christian Wasselin (eds), Berlioz (Paris, 2003), p. 174). See also Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century, 1, pp. 32, 63, 163; David Cairns, Berlioz, 1: The Making of an Artist, 1803–1832 (London, 1989), pp. 55–60. 23  Renan mentions Virgil (the Fourth Eclogue) and Tacitus. Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus (Paris, 1863), p. 18. The Eclogue anticipates a new and better order in lines beginning ‘Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas’. Most of Berlioz’s numerous citations of Virgil are from the Aeneid, but he occasionally cites the Georgics and Eclogues, although I have not found any explicit reference to the Fourth Eclogue. 24  Berlioz, Memoirs, p. 31. 25  Chateaubriand, Le Génie du christianisme, 1, pp. 271–2: ‘l’oeuvre le plus parfait du génie inspiré par la religion’. See Racine, Athalie, Act II, scene 5. Berlioz mentions Athalie in the Memoirs, p. 54.

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sources in that his Herod, again unlike Athalie, is visited with a false dream. In Matthew, reasonably enough, he consults the priests and scribes, who instruct him, on the basis of scripture, that the Messiah will be born in the city of David; Herod accordingly orders the death of new-born children in Bethlehem. The priests and scribes have no responsibility for this criminal action. Berlioz’s Herod consults Jewish soothsayers (devins juifs), who assert that the dream is true, and propose the massacre of innocents, not to eliminate the threat from the unknown child, but to propitiate the powers of darkness. Perhaps Berlioz, or Chorley, had in mind King Saul who summoned the witch of Endor, in defiance of his own laws, only for the dead Samuel to prophesy his own downfall (1 Samuel 28). But this led to no further crime. Berlioz’s soothsayers are false prophets; they call themselves ‘Les sages de Judée’ but they are not learned men, and admit that they know neither the name nor race of Herod’s new-born enemy; and they make no association between him and prophecies of the Messiah.26 Thus the murder of the children has no justification, even as the crudest of Realpolitik. The ‘cabbalistic dance’ of the soothsayers is one of Berlioz’s most exotic pieces, in septuple metre, based on an incessant rhythmic ostinato; the whining chromatic oboe melody, its last phrase doubled by flute and piccolo, belongs with other stylized evocations of the sinister East (as in Félicien David’s Le Désert). Thus marked with ‘otherness’, they are agents of darkness, not of wisdom. Berlioz uses this novel interpretation of the Bible story to emphasize Herod’s cruelty in ordering the massacre in Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem. The soothsayers join him in a short, vicious chorus, ending with near-atonal woodwind screams and brass fanfares. Berlioz then dismisses the brass, leaving the most characteristic sonority of L’Enfance: delicate upper woodwind (flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet) with strings. Luke’s Gospel supplied the manger in Bethlehem, and tradition renders the scene idyllic. The infancy gospels, locating the birth in a cave, diverge in other ways, representing the child as physically precocious; in visual art, both ‘high’ and popular, he is typically depicted as a chubby two-year-old, and in the 1850s devotional porcelain statues were widely manufactured for French parish churches.27 Mary’s words, in Berlioz, suggest a child already sufficiently coordinated to be able to offer food to the animals. Chateaubriand is again a possible influence; he waxes lyrical about this section of Luke’s Gospel, and makes much of the natural world as proof of the existence of God.28

26  Cornelius translated ‘devins’ as ‘Wahrsager’ and ‘Les sages’ as ‘Schriftgelehrter’, which perhaps distorts Berlioz’s intention. L’Enfance du Christ (Eulenburg edition), p. 44. 27  Ralph Gibson observes that ‘Saint-Sulpice art’ (so called after their place of manufacture, near the Paris church) is ‘still distressingly visible’ in French provincial churches. A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989), p. 54. 28  Chateaubriand, Le Génie de christianisme, 1, pp. 73, 364.

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Part II: La Fuite en Egypte The narrative of Parts II and III is a musical parallel to innumerable visual representations of the traditional story, including some from France: adoration of the shepherds, the holy family’s repose by an oasis, and the arrival in an Egyptian city. Some are illuminations, some altarpieces, and some, in the closest analogy to Berlioz’s work, are canvases for display in galleries.29 The journey and arrival scenes usually include a donkey – ‘in Old Testament times, the most important beast of burden of the East’.30 The animal conveniently mirrors the future ride of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. While Matthew is silent on the means and difficulties of the journey, the donkey appears in the infancy gospels and the apocryphal pseudo-Matthew.31 In what Berlioz would no doubt have called ‘conventional art’, beautiful scenery, lushly cultivated, reflects landscapes known to the painters, rather than those of Palestine and Egypt; they may also represent symbolically the transforming power of the Christ Child. In the journey through the pitiless desert (evoked by pseudo-Matthew) the child points to an oasis, and causes the palm trees to bend, bringing the fruit within reach, and the ground to yield fresh water (reminiscent of Moses in Sinai). If Berlioz consulted the infancy gospels, he rejected all these miracles, since in his version Mary points out the oasis. Given the pictorial tradition, Berlioz needed no other source for this scene. Part III: L’Arrivée à Saïs Berlioz departs from tradition in search of realism. Undernourished and exhausted, the donkey falls dead, and Mary completes the journey on foot, arriving in a debilitated condition. The donkey’s sacrifice contrasts forcefully with the comfortable animal scene in Bethlehem.32 The music of this narration returns to the fugato for the assembly of shepherds (overture to Part II, in F  minor), but the 29  For instance those of Jean-Honoré Fragonard whose religious paintings are among the figures de fantaisie and anecdotal scenes not commissioned by the Church or any other religious organization, and including Adoration of the Shepherds in the Louvre (1776); see Jane Turner (ed.), From David to Ingres: Early 19th-century French Artists (London, 2000), p. 169. 30  W.M. Clow (ed.), The Bible Reader’s Encyclopaedia and Concordance (London, 1962), p. 34. 31  ‘Pseudo-Matthew’ is largely based on the ‘Infancy Gospels’ (James, or Protevangelium, and Thomas), but adds some details. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 75. 32  A curious exception to the usual form taken by infancy art comes in drawings by the Barbizon artist Jean-François Millet (1814–1873), reflecting his interest in the realistic depiction of rural scenes. Two show Mary mounted, Joseph walking, but one has Mary also walking, with Joseph carrying the baby (Kenneth Clark, The Romantic Rebellion: Romantic versus Classic Art (London, 1973), p. 305). The probable date of these drawings is the early-to-mid 1860s; Berlioz had performed the whole of L’Enfance in Paris in 1859, and La Fuite in February 1863, and thus conceivably influenced Millet. Performance data from Holoman, Berlioz, pp. 626–7; on Millet see also Alexandra L. Murphy et al., J.F. Millet: Drawn into the Light (New Haven, CT, 1999).

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melody is squared into a march-like duple metre, and presented starkly by winds; the string fugato is transformed from tranquil melancholy to something more sinister by its faster tempo, and perhaps by using the rare key of G  minor.33 I have discovered no source for the scene in which the family is turned away by anti-Semitic Romans and Egyptians in Saïs, before being offered hospitality by an Ishmaelite family, who declare themselves cousins to the Hebrews. Berlioz leaves us in no doubt – contrary to much Christian illustration – that Jesus was Jewish.34 The three-fold organization of the scene may recall the first finale of Die Zauberflöte, when Tamino is twice rejected before the third temple opens, and the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which two socially established persons – priest and Levite – pass by an injured man before he is rescued by the charity of the person least able to afford it. Writing to his sister from Leipzig, Berlioz informs her: ‘I am now being urged to develop this work by writing The Holy Family in Egypt. I shall enjoy doing this, as the subject delights me, as soon as I’ve found the documents which I lack, concerning Christ’s period in Egypt.’35 He offers no hint as to what these documents might be.36 In his review of L’Enfance, Joseph d’Ortigue oddly mentions that ‘according to tradition, the holy family found asylum in the great city of Hermopolis’.37 This follows pseudo-Matthew: ‘They arrived at Hermopolis and entered a city called Sotinen’; Hermopolis is also named in The Golden Legend. Saïs lies on the road from Sinai to Alexandria, according to the Madaba Mosaic Map (sixth century CE), and is thus on the way to Hermopolis.38 A possible source for Berlioz’s choice of Saïs – a name that lends itself more readily to musical setting than Hermopolis – is a map in Charles Rollin’s history of the ancient world.39 More importantly, Berlioz continues to In his discussion of key-characteristics of violins, Berlioz calls F  minor ‘tragic, sonorous, incisive’, and G  minor ‘not very sonorous, sad, refined’, opposite to the temper of these passages which, however, also involve wind. Macdonald (ed.), Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise, p. 33; NBE, 24, p. 50. 34  Berlioz’s opposition to anti-Semitism is documented by Peter Bloom, The Life of Berlioz (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 180–84. 35  ‘l’on me presse de continuer cet ouvrage en faisant maintenant La Ste famille en Egypte. Je le ferai volontiers, car ce sujet me charme, quand j’aurai trouvé les documents qui me manquent sur le séjour de Jésus en Egypte.’ CG, 4, p. 408. 36  The angelic chorus could derive from the angels mentioned in the infancy gospels, although their music was composed before Berlioz’s remark about needing certain ‘documents’. 37  ‘la sainte famille … suivant la tradition, alla chercher un asile à Hermopolis la grande’. D’Ortigue’s first review, Journal des débats, 20 December 1854, in Prod’homme, Le Cycle Berlioz: L’Enfance du Christ, p. 197. 38  This city may be identified with Sin, mentioned in the horrific prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Egypt (Ezekiel 29–30; see 30: 15–16). It is also identified by the Greek name Pelusium (city of clay). See the website http://servus.christusrex.org/www1/ofm/mad/legends/ legends147.html (consulted 7 February 2004). 39  Charles Rollin, Histoire ancienne des Égyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Mèdes et des Perses, des Macédoniens, des Grecs (Amsterdam, 1730). This industrious history, shot through with piety, and often reprinted, was in Dr Berlioz’s library. Cairns, Berlioz, 1: The Making of an Artist, p. 49. 33 

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eschew the miracles wrought by the walking, talking infant. In pseudo-Matthew the family, knowing nobody in the town, enters a temple; the pagan idols prostrate themselves before the son of the true God. When the refugees are accepted into the Ishmaelite household, Berlioz’s purpose clarifies, even as his treatment confirms his active resistance to the early apocryphal writings. The Ishmaelite household is an example of disinterested human goodness. If there is a miracle, it is that beneath the ‘humble roof’ perceived by Joseph among the sycamores, there lives a considerable family with servants. But it is a concealed miracle, susceptible of naturalistic explanation. The Ishmaelite father expects Jesus to grow up as a helpful addition to his and Joseph’s trade; there is no acknowledgement of his divine nature until the epilogue.40 Was Berlioz a closet Jansenist, presenting a miracle in such a way that it could be thought to have come about naturally? There are certainly echoes of Pascal’s gloomy humanist fatalism in Berlioz’s unbelieving Weltanschauung.41 Or was he trying to emphasize that Christ’s experience on earth was indeed fully human, as popular carols (and some modern theology) assert, but as the infancy gospels seem concerned to deny? Berlioz tells us only a little of his own religious feelings; he disclaimed any intention to write confessions. Nevertheless it is apparent that at some point, and perhaps as early as the 1820s, he lost his faith. As he expressed it in the first pages of the Mémoires, written in 1848: Needless to say, I was brought up in the Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome. This charming religion (so attractive since it gave up burning people) was for seven whole years the joy of my life, and although we have long since fallen out, I have always kept most tender memories of it.42

The influence on Berlioz of his father, son of the Enlightenment, scientist and sceptic, is more open to exploration than that of his pious mother.43 In a recent summary, Jacques Barzun writes ‘His mother was a believer, his father an eighteenth-century “encyclopedist”’: Barzun develops his commentary only with respect to the father.44 But mothers are just as likely to influence their children – including their sons – in the first years of life, perhaps for longer than the seven years Berlioz alludes to.45 If so, then L’Enfance has a longer, if less specific, 40  It is not absolutely clear, but Berlioz’s text implies that the family stayed in Egypt some ten years, more than is implied in Matthew, the infancy gospels, or The Golden Legend, which has seven years. 41  On Pascal and Jansenism, see Edward John Kearns, Ideas in Seventeenth-century France (Manchester, 1979), pp. 19, 94–9, 107. 42  Memoirs, p. 31. 43  For example Cairns, Berlioz, 1: The Making of an Artist. 44  Jacques Barzun, ‘Berlioz as Man and Thinker’, in Peter Bloom (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (Cambridge, 2000), p. 11. 45  Citron suggests that he refers to the seven years between his first communion (1812) and his departure for Paris (1819). ‘Religion’, in Pierre Citron, Cécile Reynaud, Jean-Pierre Bartoli and Peter Bloom (eds), Dictionnaire Berlioz (Paris, 2003), p. 459.

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prehistory even than Les Troyens, for it may be traced in the state of the Catholic religion in early nineteenth-century France, and through musical influences – especially, though not exclusively – in those parts composed, apparently without lengthy premeditation, in 1850. Berlioz’s upbringing within the Church must have exposed him to preaching, of which one strand would consist of injunctions towards pious devotion. But Berlioz’s vision at his first communion, of ‘a Heaven of love and pure delight’, produced, significantly, ‘my first musical experience’ – musical, not religious.46 During the nineteenth century the cult of the Virgin, and thus the importance of motherhood, developed rapidly. The vision of Bernadette at Lourdes, four years after the first performance of Berlioz’s oratorio, was not the first, but only the most celebrated appearance of Mary to simple Catholic folk.47 Although Berlioz at 50 was a sophisticated townsman, he maintained contact with his place of origin. Marian cults have their roots in the infancy gospels where she, rather than Joseph, is represented as the biological link with David, surpassing her husband in importance: ‘The motive for writing Pseudo-Matthew seems to have been to further the veneration of Mary.’48 It may be noted in passing that Mary is the only singing role Berlioz composed for a mother. Another strand that surely impressed Berlioz beyond the date when he effectively left the Church was hell-fire preaching. Although ‘in France, in the course of the nineteenth century, the earlier Catholic obsession with hellfire and damnation was decisively weakened’,49 it was eighteenth-century Catholicism that was revived following Napoleon’s Concordat with the pope. The Bourbon restoration would only serve to strengthen traditional religious rhetoric. Gibson bases his observations on Périgueux, but there seems no reason to suppose that Dauphiné, still further from Paris, would not be similarly preoccupied with such unsophisticated religious teaching early in the century. Enlightenment, outside large towns, was for the educated few, like Dr Berlioz. Hellfire preaching, flourishing in the provinces, is identified by Gibson as a ‘pastorale de la peur’.50 Religious beliefs regarded as superstitious by the Church were suppressed only gradually, and largely as a result of social changes, including industrialization. Small wonder that, in his Messe solennelle of 1824, Berlioz extended the section concerned with the Last Judgement (‘Et iterum venturus est’) to a liturgically inappropriate length. The Herod scene aside, the immediate appeal of L’Enfance du Christ is a simplicity and charm thought to be lacking in Berlioz’s earlier works. D’Ortigue Memoirs, p. 32. Indeed, the first of these important Marian visions (that of St Catherine Labouré) took place not in the country but in Paris, in 1830. Coincidentally, 1854, the year Berlioz’s oratorio was completed, was also the year in which Pius IX proclaimed the doctrine of the immaculate conception. 48  Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 85. 49  Ralph Gibson, ‘Hellfire and Damnation in Nineteenth-century France’, Catholic Historical Review 74 (1988): 383. 50  Gibson, ‘Hellfire and Damnation in Nineteenth-century France’, p. 391. 46  47 

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suggested that Berlioz had studied Saboly’s seventeenth-century collection of Noëls.51 The fictional Pierre Ducré to whom Berlioz attributed La Fuite en Egypte would have been the contemporary of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, who worked Noëls instrumentally as well as in his Messe de minuit. But Berlioz’s knowledge of French carols surely began in childhood, and certainly no later than the 1820s. His teacher Jean-François Lesueur used Noëls in some of his liturgical music, most pertinently in his Oratorio de Noël. Berlioz hardly needed Saboly, therefore, to compose ‘L’Adieu des bergers’. It was the third movement of La Fuite, ‘Le Repos de la Sainte Famille’, whose immense success in London and Germany stimulated the development of the remainder of the oratorio. No doubt d’Ortigue, an expert on plainchant, appreciated its flexibility of line; and a resemblance to a traditional liturgical melody has been noticed.52 Like a number of other exogenous allusions in Berlioz’s work, it is not a quotation, but it surely conveyed to the audience a sense of familiarity, notwithstanding characteristic elements of asymmetry in the development of the material (note, for example, the inexact sequences in the refrain). There is hardly any modulation throughout ‘Le Repos’, but there are unpredictable alternations of minor and major modes, and Berlioz varies the normal tonal treatment of the minor by use of the flattened 7th, as he does throughout most of the fugal overture, where he spells out in the score ‘E natural, not E sharp’. The use of modes neither major nor minor in L’Enfance affects its overall character, and was remarked upon by the composer, as if to pre-empt criticism; his often-cited rebuttal of any scholarly intention may be mildly disingenuous. He does not attribute the modes he uses to plainchant, which indeed he was prone to exclude from the larger category of ‘music’: ‘Music can produce the effects of plainsong whenever desired, while plainsong is of course incapable of producing those of music.’53 For him the scale ‘Fa dièze mineur sans note sensible’ of the Overture to La Fuite is a mode which is no longer modish, but which resembles plainchant, and which the experts will tell you derives from one of the Phrygian or Dorian or Lydian modes of ancient Greece. This has absolutely has nothing to do with the point, but is evidently the source of the melancholy and slightly homespun character of popular laments of old.54 51  Prod’homme, Le Cycle Berlioz: L’Enfance du Christ, p. 208. Saboly’s work was republished in 1856, but Berlioz could have seen one of the many earlier editions. Gautier attributes Berlioz’s manner to ‘la naïveté des Noëls bourguignons’ (La Musique, p. 159). 52  Cairns, ‘Le sentiment religieux dans l’oeuvre de Berlioz’, p. 174, alluding to the chant ‘O filii, o filiae’. 53  ‘Elle [la musique] produira d’ailleurs les effets du plain-chant tant qu’elle voudra, quand le plain-chant demeurera forcément incapable de produire les effets de la musique.’ Review of d’Ortigue: La Musique à l’église, Journal des débats (7 January 1862), reproduced in A travers chants, ed. Léon Guichard (Paris, 1971), pp. 277–8; trans. and ed. Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay, The Art of Music and Other Essays (Bloomington, 1994), p. 175. 54  Grotesques, trans. Bruce, The Musical Madhouse, p. 108.

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He dismisses plainsong as a source for Herod’s aria, with its flattened second degree as well as seventh: the aria of Herod’s insomnia is written in G minor on this scale, classified by I know not what Greek name in plainchant: [he writes out the Phrygian scale on G, with A flat and F natural]. This produces especially dark harmonies and cadences of a particular character, which seemed to me suited to the situation.55

Berlioz thus attributes his interest in modality to expressive ends alone. JeanPierre Bartoli is surely correct, however, to draw attention to the historicist nature of Berlioz’s practice; and Catherine Massip suggests that the oratorio might be taken as ‘something of an homage to the music of the past’.56 The oratorio evokes not the mythical past of Les Troyens, nor a medieval world that never was, as in Faust, but an historical epoch; nevertheless Berlioz treats his material as another ‘légende dramatique’. Through free use of modes, he evokes a remoteness from our own time that is also implicit in the use of the narrator. In ‘Le Repos’ and the beginning of Part III, the narrator is simply telling a story. The long isolated notes, separating the scene in Saïs from the epilogue, serve to modulate, not in the tonal sense, but in time, and from a narrative mode to a resumption of the exhortatory mode of the prologue. One might ask what ancient modes have to do with ‘Music of the Future’.57 It was part of the ‘Zukunftsmusik’ project to ground dramatic works in their legendary or historical eras – something it shared, curiously enough, with the French Grand Opera Wagner affected to despise. Plainsong grounds Liszt’s Christus and St Elizabeth in a Catholic ambience; chorales ground Wagner’s Die Meistersinger in sixteenth-century Lutheranism. No more than the exoticism of the cabbalistic dance do Berlioz’s modes resemble actual Roman, Jewish, or early Christian music. The most accurate evocation of an ancient music is the Italian bagpipes that frame ‘L’Adieu des bergers’, a device consistent with the connection Berlioz makes between modes and folkloric, rather than Church, music, and more generally with painters’ use of local (often Italian) landscape as a background to biblical illustration. Even in the pieces most dependent for their expressive colouring on modes, Berlioz characteristically applies these inflections inconsistently, alongside authentic tonal cadences. 55  ‘l’air de l’insomnie d’Hérode, est écrit en sol mineur sur cette gamme, déterminée sous je ne sais quel nom grec dans le plain-chant: [music] Cela amène des harmonies très sombres et des cadences d’un caractère particulier qui m’ont paru convenables à la situation’. Letter to Hans von Bülow, 28 July 1854. CG, 4, p. 559. 56  Jean-Pierre Bartoli, ‘Historicisme, éclectisme et modalité dans L’Enfance du Christ d’Hector Berlioz’, Musurgia 8/3–4 (2001): 7–31. Catherine Massip, ‘Berlioz and Early Music’, in Peter Bloom (ed.), Berlioz: Past, Present, Future (Rochester, NY, 2003), p. 31. 57  The incidence of modality is highest in L’Enfance du Christ, but not peculiar to it: there are touches of modality in Benvenuto Cellini and La Damnation de Faust, passing inflections typical of Berlioz’s developed style. See Bartoli, ‘Historicisme, éclectisme et modalité dans L’Enfance du Christ d’Hector Berlioz’, and Julian Rushton, The Musical Language of Berlioz (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 45–51.

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L’Enfance du Christ is one of many fine nineteenth-century religious compositions by unbelievers. The religious commentator Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly concludes his discussion of Berlioz on a note of hope: ‘Perhaps he never thought of God except when composing L’Enfance du Christ, that gentle masterpiece. And who knows? Perhaps God too, in his goodness, may have taken it for a prayer!’58 Deep down, in other words, he hoped that Berlioz shared his mother’s beliefs, rather than his father’s. Church music flourished in mid-nineteenth-century France, ranging from simple, practical compositions to elaborate mass settings. The simpler works may have owed something to the influence of the German-based Cecilian movement, and to the revival of plainchant and music of the Renaissance that was associated with the cult of Palestrina. Antoine Elwart conducted Saint Cecilia concerts in Paris, and in 1855 he won a prize for his Messe de Sainte Cécile; in that year Gounod – like Elwart and Berlioz, a student of Lesueur – also wrote a St Cecilia Mass. In evoking aspects of ‘early music’ in a religious work, albeit within his very personal language, Berlioz seems unexpectedly in tune with the spirit of an age that produced the German artists called Nazarenes, among them the uncle of Peter Cornelius, and the pre-Raphaelite movement, founded late in 1848 – a year much of which Berlioz had spent in London.59 A musical work based on a sacred subject, like a work of visual art or a poem, is best conceived – if it has no practical or liturgical function – as an act of devotion. Barzun defines Berlioz as religious in essence but not in belief: ‘The contradiction between heretical thought and religious feeling is a fact of the [nineteenth] century’ [original emphasis].60 In this Barzun connects Berlioz to other artists, including Delacroix, of whom Kenneth Clark said he was ‘the only great religious painter of the nineteenth century’, adding ‘He was not himself a believer, but certain elements in the Christian story moved him deeply’ – something one could equally say of Berlioz.61 But these artists and men of letters were not among Berlioz’s closest circle of friends. A more orthodox piety was to be found within his surviving family and some intimate friends, including Humbert Ferrand (with whom he corresponded for most of his adult life), d’Ortigue and Liszt, who was promoting Berlioz’s music in Weimar at the time of composition of L’Enfance du Christ. A motive not acknowledged for composing such a work could be to please these people, as much as the Paris public. The view of art as devotion took root well before the nineteenth century, perhaps even before the counter-reformation, which held that ‘religious art 58  ‘Peut-être ne pensa-t-il jamais à Dieu qu’en écrivant L’Enfance du Christ, ce doux chefd’oeuvre. Et qui sait? Peut-être aussi, dans sa bonté, Dieu l’a t’il pris pour une prière!’ Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Les Oeuvres et les hommes : Sensations d’art (Paris, 1886), pp. 181–94. 59  See Hugh Honour, Romanticism (London, 1979), especially chapter 8 (‘The Mysterious Way’), pp. 277–318. For Gautier, Peter von Cornelius (1783–1867) ‘peut être considéré comme le chef de l’école allemande’. See Gautier, L’Art moderne (Paris, 1856), pp. 238. 60  Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century, 2, p. 95. 61  Clark, The Romantic Rebellion: Romantic versus Classic Art, pp. 218–20.

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should combine a devotional image with believable humanity’.62 According to the New Catholic Encyclopaedia, the practice of devotion arises from ‘The need to concretize the spiritual in the sensible’; Jesus, as man or child, occupies the central place in devotion: ‘devotions centred on the humanity of Jesus Christ have a greater normal appeal than devotions centred on the godhead’.63 This humanity is often represented by an image in which, halo apart, Jesus appears as a normal man. Such images, of which the earliest have been traced to the fourth century, represent a marked divergence from the prohibitions of Jewish religion, and, periods of iconoclasm aside, also differentiate Christian practice from that of Islam. The same encyclopedia asserts that a devotion must be ‘grounded in solid theology’; but ‘sound dogmatic teaching does not necessarily make a good devotion … it must have an appeal to souls’.64 Devotion as a concept can help reconcile the generic mixture of Berlioz’s oratorio: opera, in the recitative and aria of Herod, the duets and action choruses of Parts I and III; the oratorio-style use of a ‘covert’ narrator, analogous to an evangelist, who is outside the action;65 the evocation of the ancient world – the streets of Jerusalem, the desert, the bustling household at Saïs – and, most explicitly devotional, the Bethlehem scene of Part I, and the whole of Part II. If in the eyes of the Church a work of art cannot actually be a devotion, it surely can be one for artistically inclined individuals who experience a sense of religious insight from, say, Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s Passions. Even a more austere view should allow that a work of art can be, and often is, a metaphor for devotion, and the difference in spiritual and emotional richness between it and ‘pure’ devotion might be difficult to measure. The representation of Herod’s massacre (also a well-known subject in visual art) is an anti-devotion, emphasizing a hate figure in such a way as to enhance, by contrast, the sensitivity of attention to an object of devotion. In the final scene in Saïs, devotion may be enhanced by empathy with the trials of the holy family, but also their mitigation, prolonged by the instrumental trio before the explicitly contemplative and devotional final chorus. Pace Richard Pohl, L’Enfance du Christ has little to do with the modernist projects of the 1850s. Pohl’s epithet is better applied to Christus, or to Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, acclaimed as progressive by Richard Strauss. Berlioz’s oratorio, like his other works, must be taken on its own terms: a sentimental – in the best sense – and nostalgic vision. The opening paragraphs of the Mémoires suggest that any attempt to interpret it as a tribute to the Catholic religion must take into account the composer’s advanced sense of the ironic. But we may 62  My wording is taken from a notice in Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, on an Adoration of the Shepherds by Mattia Preti (1613–1699), painted in the 1670s. 63  The New Catholic Encyclopaedia (New York, 1967), 4, p. 834 (this material did not reappear in the second edition). 64  Ibid. 65  See Charles Edward McGuire, Elgar’s Oratorios: The Creation of an Epic Narrative (Aldershot, 2002), p. 46ff.

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nevertheless receive that word ‘charming’ without irony, if we recall another religious epiphany, Faust’s reaction to the Easter Hymn. Berlioz composed the hymn for his Huit Scènes de Faust, reworked it for La Damnation, and finally imposed upon his choral setting some impassioned lines for Faust, evoking childhood memories, a revival of faith under the impact of music, a recollection of childhood and the sweetness of prayer.66 There is no irony in this, unless it be dramatic irony (Mephistopheles enters shortly afterwards). Perhaps the prime motivation of L’Enfance du Christ was nostalgia for childhood, part of a more general cultivation of nostalgia (the ‘Swiss disease’) that has been identified in the mores of the period, especially for those, like Berlioz, brought up in the country and removed to the city in pursuit of a career.67 Berlioz’s birthplace, La Côte-St-André, is not far from Switzerland; it is ringed with hills, and the beginnings of the Alps are just visible. Produced after one of Berlioz’s periodic renunciations of composition, L’Enfance du Christ looks back to mother-nurture: perhaps a case of ‘reculer pour mieux sauter’ before turning to Les Troyens, based on the Virgilian values inculcated by his father. It is also a devotion to the concept, damaged in his personal life, of family; and the incompatibility of human affection with doctrines of eternal damnation. The end of the Herod scene, dying in silence before the recovery of sound – an entirely new sound – for the scene in Bethlehem, might be considered the last spluttering of hellfire in Berlioz’s work (scenes of disaster in Les Troyens, no less forceful and no less modernistic in technique, have no such associations). Did he know that the Archbishop of Rheims (formerly Bishop of Périgueux, Thomas Gousset) promoted the idea that hellfire was only a metaphor?68 Emphasis on God’s love and a growing ‘sentiment de la famille’ mean that loved ones cannot be allowed to burn.69 Devotion to the Holy Family is not only nostalgic; it is an antithesis of hellfire religion. And the devotional consequence is that kind of religious identification, transcending the mundane, that we look for in sacred works by believing composers (Bach, Haydn) as well as by those of more doubtful faith (Verdi, Fauré, Elgar, Wagner). After a performance of L’Enfance du Christ at the Lower Rhine Festival in 1863, Berlioz wrote to Ferrand of the impression made by the ending: ‘This really was the religious ecstasy which I imagined when composing.’ Incidentally, although we think of L’Enfance du 66  ‘O souvenirs! O mon âme tremblante! … La foi chancelante Revient, me ramenant la paix des jours pieux, Mon heureuse enfance, La douceur de prier’. These lines are Berlioz’s own, though closely based on Goethe’s Faust: Eine Tragödie, erster Teil, ‘Nacht’, lines 771–84, in the translation by Nerval; the following recitative is by Almire Gandonnière (see La Damnation de Faust, NBE, 8b, ed. Julian Rushton (1986), p. 501). 67  See Benjamin Walton, ‘Looking for the Revolution in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell’, Cambridge Opera Journal 15 (2003):127–51. Walton cites an identification of nostalgia as ‘the Swiss illness’, relates it to the ‘Ranz des vaches’ (a term, though not a musical style, used in Symphonie fantastique), and locates its origins in homesickness (see p. 138). 68  Gibson, ‘Hellfire and Damnation in Nineteenth-century France’, p. 391. 69  Gibson, ‘Hellfire and Damnation in Nineteenth-century France’, particularly pp. 393, 400.

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Christ as small in scale, on this occasion there were some 450 performers, mostly choral singers.70 Despite Berlioz’s lack of faith, L’Enfance du Christ represents a metaphorical form of Catholic devotion – albeit one with a ready appeal to Protestants. The whole oratorio was intended for public performance, but La Fuite en Egypte he wrote for himself, to satisfy something internal, and without that, he would never have written the rest. It is also a work of idealism, which embodies something necessary to the human psyche. We do not require belief from its creator to be moved by a work of art, and for the duration we – surely like the composer – suspend our own disbelief. It is even possible that a non-believing artist may draw a more persuasive image of a devotional nature than a devout one. For the believer, belief is a given; the music can accordingly be functional, as it is not required to be persuasive. For the aesthete and atheist, artistic choices are directed towards forming a ravishing image – in this case, of Jesus’ humanity and the beauty of a story in which, perhaps, the hearer would have liked to believe. And this leads to a simple conclusion: L’Enfance du Christ speaks to us today not because it was the oratorio of a musician of the future, but because it is a masterpiece emphatically of its own time.

70  ‘C’était bien là l’extase religieuse que j’avais rêvée et ressentie en écrivant’. Letter to Ferrand, CG, 6, ed. Pierre Citron, Hugh Macdonald and François Lesure (1995), p. 463: the final chorus produces a wonderful effect: CG, 6, pp. 467, 482 (Berlioz claims 8,000–8,500 in the audience: CG, 6, pp. 467, 469).

Chapter Four

A New Source for Berlioz’s Les Troyens Hugh Macdonald Berlioz began drafting the libretto of Les Troyens in April 1856 after many months of intensifying interest in the subject. The idea of an opera about the Trojan War and its aftermath can be traced back to his father’s readings of Virgil when the composer was a boy, and from about 1850 there is an increasing stream of hints and mentions that betray the direction of his thoughts. During the silent years 1850–53, when composition played almost no part in his life, Berlioz was nonetheless pondering the huge opera, which was begun in 1856 and completed in April 1858, just two years after the real work began. The source situation of the opera is relatively simple, since the autograph full score is admirably complete and clear, and a vocal score, of which fifteen copies were privately printed in 1861–62, agrees with the autograph in almost all respects. The division of the opera into two parts, La Prise de Troie and Les Troyens à Carthage, was imposed on the composer in 1863 and is reflected in the separate vocal scores published by Choudens in that year. The several stages of composition are most clearly set out in Berlioz’s copious correspondence with family and friends during the period of composition, from which much information about ideas that came and went through his mind, sometimes fitfully, may be gleaned. Two complete scenes that were removed from the definitive version – the scene for Sinon in Act I and the original ending of the opera – have survived. Both are published in Volume 2c of the New Berlioz Edition. Traces of other abandoned elements can be found here and there, usually in pages covered over in the autograph. Finally, there are abundant musical sketches, more than for any other Berlioz work. The recent recovery of the solo and orchestral material used at the Théâtrelyrique in 1863, and of an additional copyist score of Act III, does not materially   For details of Les Troyens sources, see my edition of the opera in volumes 2a–2c of the New Berlioz Edition (NBE) (Kassel, 1969–70).   See Hector Berlioz, Correspondance générale, vol. 5, ed. Pierre Citron, Hugh J. Macdonald, and François Lesure (Paris, 1989). All citations from Berlioz’s letters are taken from this volume under the appropriate date. For a detailed account of the genesis of the opera see my articles, ‘Composition’, in Ian Kemp (ed.), Hector Berlioz: Les Troyens (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 45–66, and ‘La genèse des « Troyens »’, L’Avant-scène Opéra, 128–9 (February–March 1990): 16–24.

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alter our knowledge of the work or its origins. The situation with libretto sources is less comprehensive, since we have no libretto drafts equivalent to the musical sketches. But the discovery of a previously unknown manuscript libretto of the complete opera has opened a few windows on the process of composition that enhance our understanding of the composer at his desk. This document, which must represent the second stage in Berlioz’s drafting of the libretto, belongs to the archives of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels. It was presented to the theatre by a retired member of the chorus, but its earlier provenance is obscure. The text has been written out on recto pages by a copyist who was presumably instructed to make a presentable copy of Berlioz’s own manuscript, the messy result of two months’ work between the middle of April and 26 June 1856, the day on which he declared the libretto to be finished. Within a few days of completing the text he sent a copy to the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein in Weimar for her comments, asking her to return it within a few days. This was in all probability the manuscript now in Brussels, which she sent back after making extensive comments. It was then revised at many points by Berlioz as composition proceeded, so that a substantial part of the present document is in his own hand. All such entries in Berlioz’s hand point to revisions made during the course of composition of the music. The manuscript is clearly earlier than other known manuscript librettos. The ‘Stoltz’ libretto is entirely autograph, a fair copy made by Berlioz himself, possibly directly from this Brussels manuscript and incorporating almost all its revisions. He inscribed it to the singer Rosina Stoltz on 12 August 1859. Two further manuscript librettos were made by professional copyists, probably using the Stoltz libretto as their source, one now at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra and the other divided between the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where Acts I and II are bound in with the autograph full score of those acts, and the Archives nationales, Paris, which hold the copy of Acts III–V submitted to the Inspecteur des Théâtres before the performances in 1863. These librettos have been corrected to incorporate later changes, and, in the case of the last of them, to show the division into two separate operas, La Prise de Troie and Les Troyens à Carthage. The first major revision shown in the Brussels libretto concerns the scenes following the Cassandre–Chorèbe duet in Act I. This duet, ‘Quitte-nous dès ce soir’, can safely be identified with the lost final portion of the duet for Agnès   The Macnutt Collection at the Bibliothèque nationale de France includes a copyist full score of the Prologue of Les Troyens à Carthage and Act III of Les Troyens, as well as copyist chorus parts of Les Troyens à Carthage. The roles and orchestral parts of Les Troyens à Carthage are at the Bibliothèque nationale, Fonds de l’Opéra-comique, Mat. F.1245bis.   I am most grateful to Mr Jan van Goethem, the Monnaie’s archivist, for bringing this document to my notice and for his assistance in deciphering it.   Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, Paris, Rés. 589.   A facsimile of the title page is shown in NBE, 2c, p. 783.   Rés. 807.   BnF MS 1161 and AnF F18 737.   NBE, 2a, p. 72.

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and Rodolphe in Act I of La Nonne sanglante,10 and the decision to salvage this piece was evidently taken early, since there is no sign of any alteration at this point in the new libretto. The next sequence of scenes, however, is in Berlioz’s hand. These include the Marche et Hymne (no. 4), the Combat de ceste (no. 5), and Andromache’s scene, the Pantomime (no. 6). Originally, as we know from Berlioz’s letter of 14 November 1856 to the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, Berlioz proposed two ballets between the processional entries (no. 4) and the Sinon scene.11 With the processional Hymne, these would have filled a single page of the copyist libretto. Deciding to scrap one of the ballets and insert the scene for Andromache instead, Berlioz replaced this page with two pages in his own hand. His draft for this scene reads as follows:

cassandre (passant au fond du théâtre pendant cette scène) Garde tes pleurs, veuve d’Hector !



le chœur

Andromaque et son fils !

cassandre Hélas, tu dois encor A de nouveaux malheurs bien des larmes amères ! le chœur Les épouses, les mères Pleurent à leur aspect. Ô destin ! Ces clameurs De la publique allégresse Et cette immense tristesse, Et ces gémissements et ces pleurs ! (Les jeux recommencent. – Des soldats s’avancent traînant un captif en haillons, à l’aspect misérable et les mains liées derrière le dos.)

These lines, which closely match the text given in the letter of 14 November 1856, all survived in the final version, but in a different order, a correction effected in the manuscript with a collette. The ballet then resumed between Andromache’s exit and Sinon’s entry. Berlioz’s stage directions for Andromache and Astyanax were almost exactly copied in when these two pages were newly written out. Sinon’s scene is included in full, for it was not excised until much later. Much revision went into the text of the chorus that precedes the Marche troyenne, beginning ‘A cet objet sacré’,12 but neither of the two earlier drafts, covered by collettes, are legible. In the Marche itself Cassandre’s early exclamations ‘De mes sens éperdus … Est-ce une illusion ? Les chœurs sacrés d’Ilion !’ were inserted later than the original draft. One of the remarkable features of this scene as we now have it is that Berlioz does not intend that the horse itself should be seen. 10 

p. 316. 11  12 

See Hector Berlioz, Incomplete Operas, NBE, 4, ed. Ric Graebner and Paul Banks (2002), The discarded Sinon scene is found in NBE, 2c, p. 875. NBE, 2a, p. 154.

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No modern production has been able to resist the opportunity to present a horse in some form or other, varying widely in size and realism. But for reasons he never explained, Berlioz prescribed that the horse should be out of sight, and that the audience should only observe its passing into the city from the reports of bystanders and from the exclamations of Cassandre herself. Perhaps he felt that no staging could do it justice; more probably, in my view, he saw the scene so vividly and intensely in his imagination that he felt any physical representation would be supererogatory. But the horse was certainly visible in his first version. The chorus approached and sang at least as far as ‘Des muguets du printemps’ at bar 140.13 At this point ‘Les chants cessent brusquement. Le cortège s’arrête et regarde en avant avec inquiétude’. Cassandre responds with alarm: Jupiter ! on hésite ! Et la foule s’agite ! On s’arrête ! Ô dieux ! si …

The cortège then resumes and the horse appears: Le cheval gigantesque paraît et traverse le théâtre. Il est traîné par une multitude de cordages couverts de banderoles de diverses couleurs et que tire la foule. On brûle des parfums aux autels portatifs. Les chants recommencent avec plus d’éclat qu’auparavant.14

As the procession fades in the distance, Cassandre has two lines more before the curtain falls: Ils entrent ! c’en est fait, le destin tient sa proie ! Sœur d’Hector, va mourir sous les débris de Troie !

There was thus a moment of hesitation and doubt before the appearance of the horse itself, but no noise of armour from within. Cassandre’s closing lines were brief. In the next version Berlioz altered the sequence. The procession becomes visible earlier, after singing ‘Te porte nos pieux concerts !’ at bar 114,15 followed immediately by the horse. It is dragged in as before, with incense burning, and the additional detail of musicians playing the lyre, flute and trumpet while marching with the procession. At bar 157, when the music abruptly stops, the crowd now reports the sound of armour within the beast’s flanks. Cassandre’s cries are unheeded and the procession resumes. This time she has a much longer stream of despairing lines, beginning ‘Arrêtez ! arrêtez !’ – everything now contained within bars 180–205. Berlioz reported the addition of these lines in a letter to the Princess on 24 March 1857. NBE, 2a, p. 189. ‘The immense horse appears and crosses the stage. It is hauled by a multitude of ropes covered in many-coloured streamers, pulled by the crowd. Incense is burning on portable altars. The singing begins again with even more enthusiasm than before.’ 15  NBE, 2a, p. 183. 13  14 

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His decision to remove the horse from view dates from three or four years later. In the libretto now attached to the autograph full score the stage direction concerning the entry of the horse is crossed out, and the words ‘invisible au spectateur’ firmly written in to modify the word ‘cortège’. The scene was never staged in Berlioz’s lifetime, so he never had the opportunity to judge the rightness of his own decision. The new libretto confirms elements of the original text that we otherwise know only from Berlioz’s correspondence, and has a few extra details to add. In Act II, for example, the text of no. 13, ‘Récitatif et Chœur’, shows some additional lines as Énée begins to grasp the horror of the Trojans’ situation. As the boy Ascagne (on a monotone) reports the destruction of Ucalegon’s palace,16 Énée interrupts him with the instruction: Suis le digne Panthée, Ascagne, et ne crains rien. (à Panthée :) Tu sais la route détournée Qui mène au bois sacré d’Apollon Pythien. Vas-y cacher nos dieux et mon fils. (Il remet à Panthée les dieux et [a few words illegible here]. (Ascagne et Panthée sortent.)

This passage was removed soon after, so Ascagne and Panthée remain on stage to hear Chorèbe’s report. To his original draft Berlioz added the choral lines: Entendez-vous L’écroulement des tours ? … la flamme dévorante ? … Les hurlements des Grecs ? … toujours leur foule augmente ! … Marchons ! le désespoir dirigera nos coups.

And it may have been the addition of these lines that prompted him then to remove Chorèbe’s speech about exchanging shields with the Greeks. He reported this passage in a letter to the Princess of 3 September 1856: ‘I could not resist the episode in Virgil’: Mutemus Clypeos, Danaumque insignes aptemus ! Dolus, an virtus, quis in hoste requirat ?

Berlioz’s version is: chorèbe Quarante Dolopes surpris par nous Au seuil de ton palais viennent de tomber tous, Leurs cadavres sanglants en encombrant la porte ; Prenons leurs boucliers ! chœur et énée De nos vils ennemis Oui, revêtons les insignes ! Qu’importe Ruse ou valeur, contre eux tout est permis. 16 

NBE, 2a, pp. 226–7.

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The libretto has ‘Dolopes’, the name of a people from Thessaly mentioned by Virgil, but no doubt Berlioz thought better of this obscure reference and replaced it, in the letter of 3 September 1856, with ‘Grecs’. In a letter to his sister of 4 August 1857 Berlioz wrote: A few days ago, as I was sleeping beneath a beech tree in a field (like Virgil’s shepherd) I had a brilliant idea for the staging and the heightened intensity of my finale with Cassandre and the Trojan women. I had to write a few lines of verse, changing barely anything in the music. I cannot help telling you that it has a radiant classical beauty.17

My supposition, which I put forward many years ago, that this referred to the introduction of the Chef Grec in the final scene of Act II as the women sing their fervent hymn,18 is confirmed by the new libretto, since the Chef’s words are clearly a later addition to the document, in fact Berlioz at the same time added the following choral verses, which immediately precede the Chef’s entry. Ouvre-nous, noir Pluton Les portes du Ténare ! Fais retentir, Caron, Ta funèbre fanfare !

Berlioz’s delight in Virgil’s world is palpable as he evokes one classical allusion after another. In Act III the new libretto completes an original text of which we knew only a portion from Berlioz’s correspondence. On 12 August 1856 he wrote to the Princess: As for the scene between Didon and her sister, where you thought Didon was referring to Énée in advance, I can’t explain how you misunderstood this. I was almost angry that you should attribute such an absurdity to me. Oh yes, no doubt the queen would have needed lynx’s eyes to see the Trojan chief on his ship at sea during a stormy night. But there’s no question of that, I never had that idea. What I imagined was a simple mirage of love, as a way of avoiding the eternal classical dream scene. Didon is prey to insomnia like that so well described by Bernardin [de St-Pierre] in Paul et Virginie. She goes up to the topmost tower of her palace to dream, facing straight into the raging storm. Then her volcanic passion induces a trembling heart and she thinks she sees far off a stranger of noble bearing; it is hallucination. She has not in fact seen anything and she knows she has seen nothing.19 17  ‘Il y a quelques jours, en dormant dans un pré sous un hêtre (comme le berger de Virgile), j’ai trouvé une idée ravissante pour la mise en scène et la poétisation de mon final de Cassandre avec les Troyennes. Il a fallu écrire quelques vers, et cela ne changera presque rien à la musique. J’ai la force de te dire que c’est d’une beauté antique, radieuse’. Hector Berlioz, Correspondance générale (CG), vol. 5, ed. Hugh Macdonald and François Lesure (Paris, 1989), p. 477. 18  NBE, 2a, p. 282. 19  ‘Quant à la scène entre Didon et sa soeur, où vous avez cru voir que la reine parlait d’ Énée par avance, il m’est impossible de m’expliquer votre méprise. Et je vous en ai presque voulu de m’avoir attribué une aussi colossale absurdité. Oh ! sans doute, il eût fallu des yeux de lynx à la reine, pour apercevoir en mer pendant une nuit d’orage le chef troyen sur son vaisseau; mais il n’est pas question

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Berlioz then quotes part of the text, all of which is to be read under a collette in the libretto: Chère Anna, je souffrais. Hier pendant l’orage, Perdue en mes pensées, du sommet de la tour Je croyais voir au loin et voguant vers Carthage Un étranger au fier visage. J’ai peine à l’avouer, un indomptable amour A son approche envahissait mon âme, Mon être entier sur des ailes de flamme Semblait voler à lui. Jusqu’au lever du jour J’ai versé de brûlantes larmes, En proie à cette illusion Sans pouvoir me soustraire aux charmes De la cruelle vision.

When the music for this scene came to be composed a year later, this passage disappeared, to be replaced by the section beginning ‘Une étrange tristesse’.20 The arrival of the Trojans later in Act III is accompanied by the Marche troyenne in the minor mode, preceded by Didon’s lines Qui connut la souffrance Ne pourrait voir en vain souffrir.

which Berlioz was proud to have paraphrased from Virgil’s hexameter Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.

There followed, in the original draft (as the new libretto reveals), a considerable speech for Iopas, describing the arrival of the Trojans on Carthaginian shores, of which Berlioz’s correspondence and the other sources have left no trace: iopas Au temple de Junon ces naufragés pieux Sont entrés. En voyant les tableaux merveilleux Dont l’art des Tyriens sut orner l’édifice D’un douloureux étonnement Tous ont paru frappés au même instant. « Grands dieux ! S’écriait l’un, je reconnais Ulysse ! « C’est Priam, disait l’autre, et son fils Troïlus ! « Andromaque ! Pâris ! Déïphobe! Hélenus ! « Hector ! Hector ! Les pieds percés d’une courroie, « Autour des murailles de Troie « Par Achille traîné !» Et l’un d’eux, à l’aspect de ce corps profané, de cela, je n’y ai jamais pensé. C’est un simple mirage d’amour que j’ai imaginé, pour ne pas faire intervenir encore l’éternel songe classique. Didon est en proie à une insomnie semblable à celle que Bernardin a si bien peinte dans Paul et Virginie, elle va rêver au sommet de la tour de son palais, offrant sa tête et sa poitrine embrasées aux rafales de la tempête, puis son volcan d’amour amène un tremblement de coeur, elle croit voir au loin un étranger au fier visage, c’est une hallucination. Mais elle ne voit rien en réalité, et elle sait bien qu’elle n’a rien vu’. CG, 5, p. 351. 20  NBE, 2b, p. 369.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies Avec un cri laissant tomber ses armes, S’est couvert le visage en répandant des larmes. anna Quelle est donc leur patrie ? iopas On l’ignore. didon Iopas, À les conduire ici ne tarde pas. (Iopas sort.) (à part) J’éprouve une soudaine et vive impatience De les voir, et je crains en secret leur présence.

Unfortunately, no sketches survive for this part of the opera, so the musical setting of this speech, if it was ever made, is unknown. The last two lines survive in Didon’s telling aside during the entrance of the Trojans. In the big ensemble that closes the third act, Berlioz’s original text was simpler: Sur les barbares Africains Marchons, Troyens et Tyriens ! Volons à la victoire ensemble ! C’est le dieu Mars qui nous rassemble.

This was greatly enhanced by the words ‘cette horde immonde’ to replace ‘les barbares’ and by the addition of the strong lines drafted in the margins of the Brussels libretto: Comme le sable emporté par les vents Chassons dans ses déserts brûlants Le Numide éperdu ! qu’il tremble !

The Chasse royale et orage was composed in March 1857, and its extensive programme, reproduced at the beginning of the scene in the New Berlioz Edition score,21 is found entirely in Berlioz’s hand in the Brussels manuscript. This leaf seems to be a replacement of an earlier, shorter version; perhaps its detail was derived from the music, as it began to cover the pages of the score, rather than the other way round. The Anna–Narbal duet (no. 30–31) was in the plan from the beginning, despite suspicions that have been raised that it was a later addition. Berlioz’s plans for ballets at this point in the act were vague. He wrote simply ‘Danses d’esclaves Nubiennes, d’Almées d’Egypte, etc’, which he later amplified in a letter to his sister Adèle on 25 February 1857, although the music itself was probably not composed until after the rest of the opera was done. In Iopas’s song (no. 34), which follows the ballet, the libretto shows the extra strophe beginning 21 

NBE, 2b, p. 443.

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Le beau papillon, L’humble grillon …

which is abruptly interrupted by Didon, who tires of his song. This was set to music22 but deleted from the full score – as it also was from the Brussels manuscript – probably to allow a full close and the opportunity for applause. At the time the manuscript was copied the quintet (no. 35) was perhaps still a quartet and the septet (no. 36) was still a sextet. The heading ‘Quintette’ is a correction in Berlioz’s hand, although five participants were given words to sing by the original copyist. In his letter of 12 March 1857 he still refers to it as a quartet. It seems that Berlioz proposed to end the movement without Didon’s barely audible musings at bar 89 and Énée’s monotone ‘Didon soupire’ at bar 101, perhaps even without the return of the main refrain at bar 98. The stage direction at bar 6523 precisely reflects the scene in Guérin’s painting Énée racontant à Didon les malheurs de la ville de Troie in which Ascagne is embraced by Didon’s left arm so that he can draw Sichée’s ring from her finger. This was copied into the document at the beginning, although an earlier stage direction placed before Iopas’s song,24 which suggests a different blocking, was later dropped. In this version, Énée vient, après le chant d’Iopas, s’asseoir à ses pieds en face d’elle. Ascagne appuyé sur son arc et semblable à une statue de l’amour, se tient debout au côté de la reine. Anna inclinée appuie son coude sur le dossier du lit de Didon. En face d’Anna, Narbal et Iopas debout.25

‘Septuor’, no. 36, is not shown. Furthermore, the episode was not part of the original draft. The stage direction at bar 65 has been inserted in the libretto with a collette. Berlioz reported this new idea in a letter to his sister on 12 March 1857. Dido is not included in the ensemble that follows, labelled ‘Sextuor’. It is not clear when Berlioz decided to add her somewhat florid line to the group, but the problem he had in finding space for it in the autograph full score evidently caused him to have these pages replaced by copyist’s work, for they have now disappeared. The conclusion of Act IV gave Berlioz some trouble, as we know from layers of revisions in the autograph full score. On that evidence it was possible to include a fragmentary two-bar passage of the original ending in the New Berlioz Edition.26 The libretto manuscript now gives us the text of the complete ending: Au moment où les deux amants, qu’on ne voit plus, finissent leur Duo dans la coulisse, les ombres d’Hector et de Cassandre sortent de terre et s’avancent NBE, 2c, p. 939. NBE, 2b, p. 559. 24  NBE, 2b, p. 543. 25  ‘After Iopas’s song [Énée] goes to sit at her feet, facing her. Ascagne leans on his bow like a statue of Cupid, standing next to the queen. Anna leans and rests her elbow on the back of Didon’s couch. Narbal and Iopas are standing opposite Anna.’ 26  NBE, 2c, p. 943. 22  23 

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies à pas lents vers le point où Didon et Énée sont sortis de la scène, au côté gauche du spectateur. Hector s’approchant d’une colonne tronquée où sont suspendues les armes d’ Énée, y prend l’épée, la tire du fourreau, et frappe du pommeau deux coups sur le bouclier. Le bouclier rend un son lugubre et prolongé. Les deux ombres tournées vers le côté gauche et étendant le bras droit vers le côté opposé, répètent d’une voix grave: Italie ! Italie ! Italie ! et s’abîment rapidement.27

This was replaced by the stage directions now in the score at bar 136, with a nice detail not copied elsewhere: ‘Il est clair que le centre du bouclier doit contenir un tamtam.’ In the Brussels manuscript the whole of Act V as far as Énée’s air ‘Inutiles regrets’ (no. 41) is in Berlioz’s hand. It now seems clear that his original plan was to begin the act with this monologue for Énée. The manuscript originally headed this as ‘Scène 1ère’. Then, in September 1856, after the manuscript had been sent to the Princess in Weimar, he added two ‘useful and curious’ scenes, one of which involved two Trojan sentinels on guard. It was to have been a march in 3/4 time, but the idea was soon dropped, and the other scene, for Panthée and the soldiers (now no. 39), became ‘Scène 1ère’ instead. This page is also usefully annotated ‘Musique commencée le 14 Décembre 1857’. In February 1858 Berlioz told his sailor son Louis that he had added a new ‘morceau de caractère’ for the beginning of Act V and wrote out the words of Hylas’s song ‘Vallon sonore’ (no. 38). These were also written into the libretto on the verso opposite Panthée’s entry, which was now changed to ‘Scène 2ème’. At a much later stage the idea of a duet for two sentinels was restored, for Berlioz wrote it into the libretto on the verso of Panthée’s scene in an unusually hasty hand. He also added the sentinels’ intrusive comments in Hylas’s song in the margin at the appropriate place. The heading of Énée’s monologue was changed once again, from ‘Scène 2ème’ to ‘Scène 3ème’, and then to ‘Scène 3ème bis’. The sentinels’ scene also appears as a later addition in the Stoltz libretto, so its inclusion may have been as late as 1859. The late introduction of this scene means that it can easily be excised, as Berlioz proposed in his list of (un)acceptable cuts.28 The arrival of the ghosts (no. 42) was slightly modified insofar as the original four ghosts were not identified by name. It was evidently Legouvé who advised Berlioz not to introduce the ghosts of Hector and Cassandre at the end of Act IV, so they were replaced by Mercury, and the four ghosts who appear to Énée in Act V were now identified as Chorèbe, Hector, Cassandre and Priam. Berlioz has attached the necessary collettes to make this change. 27  ‘Just as the two lovers finish their duet in the wings, now out of sight, the ghosts of Hector and Cassandra rise up from the ground and move slowly forward to the place where Dido and Aeneas left the stage, on the left side (as the audience sees it). Hector goes up to a broken column on which hang Aeneas’s arms; he takes the sword, draws it from its scabbard and strikes two blows on the shield with its hilt. The shield gives out a long, gloomy sound. The two ghosts turn to the left and hold out their right arms in the opposite direction, repeating in a low voice: Italy ! Italy ! Italy !’ 28  See NBE, 2c, p. 834.

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Most surprising is to find the text of the Didon–Énée duet, no. 44, in the Brussels manuscript, since it was certainly not written until well after the opera was completed, probably after 1859, since it does not appear in the Stoltz libretto. Here, in the Brussels libretto, it has been squeezed untidily onto the verso of the scene that follows the appearance of the ghosts (no. 43), which suggests that Berlioz was still making changes in this copy in later years, especially if the Stoltz libretto had already passed out of his hands. I have always argued that the addition of this scene weakens the effect of the ghosts, whose mission is to prop up Énée’s wavering resolve. Reminded by them of his higher mission he sets sail at once with the Marche troyenne ringing in his ears and without confronting Didon. The duet also weakens the dramatic effect of the following scene, where Didon is evidently still meekly hoping that Énée will stay in Carthage. When Iopas reports that the Trojan fleet has sailed, her response is immediate and desperate. This makes less sense if after their vitriolic duet she has already seen Énée depart and has already delivered her terrible curse. The scene in Didon’s apartments, no. 45, was originally longer. One of the chief revelations of the Brussels manuscript is an extended part of the scene crossed through and never set to music. After ‘De Jupiter braverait l’anathème’ (bar 45),29 the libretto originally continued as follows: didon Et qui me prouve encor que cette voix Du ciel ait une seule fois Parlé ? va, ce ne sont que contes populaires, Vains songes, rumeurs mensongères. Mais j’ai fait consulter l’oracle de Pluton ; Voici Narbal. Scène 7ème narbal, anna, didon narbal Ne doutez plus, Didon ; L’oracle dit : « Énée en Italie Doit régner ! » didon Et le nom de celle que les Dieux Lui donnent pour épouse ? … narbal (hésitant) Répondez ! 29 

didon

NBE, 2b, p. 684.

Ô reine … Je le veux,

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies narbal Lavinie. didon Lavinie ! En mon cœur je sens déjà la mort Verser son noir poison ! la force m’abandonne, Et le coup qui moissonne Ma dernière espérance a décidé mon sort. anna Dieux ! Je vois sur son front l’empreinte de la mort ! narbal Puis une faible voix jusqu’à moi parvenue A dit ces quatre mots d’une langue inconnue: « Surgit Roma, victus amor. » didon (après un silence) Eh bien, Narbal, humblement je l’implore ; Tous deux, pour qu’il m’accorde encore Quelques jours seulement, allez le supplier. Ce que j’ai fait pour lui … Pourra-t-il l’oublie ? Et repoussera-t-il cette instance suprême De vous, sage Narbal, de vous Anna, qu’il aime ?

The last few lines were preserved in the final version where Narbal is present from the beginning of the scene, not brought in midway. The reference to Lavinia, one of Berlioz’s favourite Virgilian characters not mentioned elsewhere in the opera, is remarkable. As the final act proceeds we become more and more aware of Berlioz’s preoccupation with the aftermath of the story after Didon’s death, with the destiny of Énée as the founder of Rome and the imperial glory of Rome in Virgil’s time, a preoccupation that gave him many a headache in devising the final scene. The removal of this passage from the earlier scene was probably the ‘large coupure’ in Act V that Berlioz reported to his son on 9 February 1858. In the finale there are numerous changes of detail, including a collette to cover Berlioz’s original lines that gave Didon a prophetic vision of French dominion in North Africa, replaced by the invocation of Hannibal’s name – a sensible substitution, we might think. Beneath the lines Il naîtra de ma cendre un glorieux vengeur … J’entends déjà tonner son nom vainqueur … Annibal ! Annibal ! … D’orgueil mon âme est pleine !

is an original text that seems to be Effroi des nations, grand, magnanime, ardent Un peuple d’occident Viendra lui succéder. D’orgueil mon âme est pleine !

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For the final part of the scene the libretto accords with the Epilogue, introducing Iris, the muse Clio, and the procession of Roman notables including Scipio, Caesar and Augustus. This scene was replaced in January 1860 by the much shorter ending found in all the printed scores.30 The only modification of this scene shown in the libretto is the removal of Julius Caesar’s entry; Clio has only Scipio and Augustus to greet. The libretto closes with the noble words Fuit Troja … Stat Roma. The documentation of Les Troyens is fuller than that of any other Berlioz work, for his correspondence gives us an extraordinarily complete picture of his ardent working life during the two years in which the main work of composition was done. The newly discovered libretto supplies a parallel glimpse of the composer at work, for it was transformed during the same period from a tidy professional copy of the complete libretto into a palimpsest in which Berlioz has recorded his many changes of heart and mind. It is a document of precious value.

30 

The Epilogue is set out in full in NBE, 2c, pp. 889–928.

Chapter Five

Berlioz and the Piano at the Great Exhibition: the Challenge of Impartiality Kerry Murphy In April 1851, in a letter to his brother-in-law Camille Pal, Berlioz dryly describes his invitation to join the French commission for the London Great Exhibition as a member of the Musical Instrument Jury: ‘I learned about my appointment in the newspaper; it is an honourable distinction and all my English friends are delighted by it’. Despite the delay in receiving official details about the appointment, and the implication that perhaps it did not please some of his French friends, such an invitation was of significance for Berlioz. It was a position of responsibility, and an official recognition by the French of his expertise (even if it led nowhere). His recent visits to London had inspired in him a warmth and respect for the English, and he realized that London offered greater possibilities than Paris for conducting and having his music performed. He would also have seen the appointment as an opportunity to strengthen earlier contacts. Berlioz listed the composition of the instrument jury as shown in Table 5.1. Berlioz’s writings on this London trip and on his experience as judge are sparse. There are the extremely well-known descriptions of the charity children’s concert and his early morning visit to the Crystal Palace (reproduced in Soirées de l’orchestre, chapter 21), and a few other articles. But these pale into insignificance when set against, for instance, the 21 lengthy, authoritative articles written for the Revue et gazette musicale by Fétis on his return to Paris from the exhibition.   ‘J’ai appris ma nomination par les journaux, c’est une distinction honorable et tous mes amis de Londres s’en montrent enchantés’, Correspondance générale (CG), vol. 4, ed. Pierre Citron, Yves Gérard and Hugh Macdonald (Paris, 1983), p. 52.   See Les Soirées de l’orchestre, ed. Léon Guichard (Paris, 1998), originally published in Journal des débats, 20 June 1851; and the Débats articles of 27 November and 30 December 1851 (see other passing references in articles of 31 May and 12 August 1851).   Fétis’s first article was published on 20 August 1851 and the last on 7 March 1852. Other French critics also covered the exhibition. For instance, there are a series of letters from London from Marie Escudier in France musicale, May–June 1851.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies Table 5.1  Musical Instrument Jury, Great Exhibition, 1851

Sir Henry Bishop, Président et Rapporteur, professeur de musique Angleterre. MM. Sigismund THALBERG, Vice-Président, professeur de musique Autriche. W. STERNDALE BENNETT, professeur à l’Académie royale de musique, à Londres Angleterre. Hector BERLIOZ France. J. Robert BLACK, médecin États-Unis. Chevalier NEUKOMM Zollverein. Cipriani POTTER, principal de l’Académie royale de musique, à Londres Angleterre. le docteur SCHAFHAUTL, professeur de géologie, etc Zollverein. Georges SMART, organiste de la chapelle royale Angleterre. Henry WILDE, professeur à l’Académie royale de musique, à Londres Angleterre. Source  Berlioz, ‘Rapport sur les instruments de musique’. Taken from the reproduction of the entire report on the Hector Berlioz website, edited by Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin: www.hberlioz.com/London/Berlioz1851.html

Fétis’s articles constantly refer to the meticulous notes he made when he went around the exhibition and reveal that he also visited piano workshops (such as that of Broadwood). His articles give detailed historical information on each instrument group, indeed more detailed than the average reader would have wished. Berlioz, however, did publish an official report on the exhibition on his return to Paris, as required by the French government. In order to understand the significance of the Great Exhibition for Berlioz, it is essential to contextualize his experiences with other accounts. I shall be making reference to Fétis’s and other French accounts, and also to contemporary writings in the British press. Berlioz’s job was not easy. He had to maintain his desire to be impartial and objective, and to balance his already formed belief in French superiority in instrument construction with his desire not to offend the British. I suggest that despite the rhetoric of impartiality espoused at the Exhibition, in practice, faced with the strength of national rivalries, no one found impartiality easy to achieve – and Berlioz was no exception.   Published by the Imprimerie nationale in Paris in 1854, 1855; reproduced on the Hector Berlioz website, www.hberlioz.com, which also provides an excellent English translation of the text by Michel Austin. Austin points out that the final paragraph of Berlioz’s report is repeated almost word for word in his chapter on new musical instruments in his Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes, NBE, vol. 24, ed. Peter Bloom, (Kassel, 2003).   Articles have been surveyed in the Illustrated London News, the Times, the Musical World, the Spectator, the Athenaeum, and Frazer’s Magazine for Town and Country.

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Much has been written about the 1851 Great Exhibition, its aims and impact, and its role as a cultural and economic marker. In reading through primary documentation of the event two points of general agreement converge in the accounts of the musical instrument judging. First is the sense that the works at the exhibition represented a highpoint in the linear progression of Western civilization. This is found in the rhetoric leading up to and surrounding the musical instrument judging, in the general report of the musical jury (most strikingly in Thalberg’s comments) and also in Berlioz’s individual report. Second, there is the constantly recurring issue of British–French rivalry. The British journalists were eager to point out that they could put on a decent, if not better, exhibition than the French. But rather inconsistently with this view, they were also optimistic about the possibility that the exhibition could break down former hostilities and rivalry. However, rivalry between the French and British broke out in a major way when the council medal for piano was awarded only to Erard. The two British firms of Broadwood and Collard, backed up by the British press, lodged an appeal. A brief description of the exhibition’s two-tier medal system is needed at this point. The prize medals were awarded by a professional jury (for instance, professional musicians) wherever a standard ‘of excellence of production or workmanship had been attained’ and ‘utility, beauty, cheapness, [and] adaptation to particular markets [could be] taken into consideration’, whereas the council medal was only given for ‘some important novelty of invention or application’. Council medals were awarded by a committee consisting of the chairmen of all the professional juries, on a nomination from a professional jury. The council medals, despite their deliberately ambiguous label, were the most prestigious, and were the equivalent of what was previously called the ‘Great medal’. I would like to start by looking more closely at the issue of French–British rivalry. Articles that appeared in the London press at the opening of the Exhibition present a vivid picture of some of the social expectations that were expected to flow from such a great event, where industrial progress could potentially lead to closer ties – if not worldwide, then at least between the French and the British. On the British side, an article in early May discusses how recent developments with railways, steamships, and the electric telegraph have shown how the   See for instance Tobin Andrews Sparling, The Great Exhibition: A Question of Taste, with contributions by Laura C. Roe (New Haven, 1982), John R. Davis, The Great Exhibition (Stroud, 1999), Jeffrey A. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven and London 1999), and Hermione Hobhouse, The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition: Art, Science, and Productive Industry: A History of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (New York and London, 2002).   See minutes of the archives of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, 12 May 1851, quoted in John R. Davis, The Great Exhibition, pp. 162–3.   The system of allocating the medals, and the titles of the medals, was criticized at the time and after the exhibition. As a critic for Frazer’s Magazine wrote in 1852, ‘The council knew just as well as the musical jury, for instance, that if a … council medal was intended to indicate what would be called at Oxford a first class degree of merit, Broadwood’s pianos were quite as well entitled to it as Erard’s’, 46 (9 November 1852): 493.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies practical annihilation of space and time …[has] made us all understand one another better than we did before; broken down the ancient barriers of jealousy and exclusiveness; obliterated the rancorous remembrances of bygone wars, softened the lingering asperities of traditional hatreds. Who shall say, if we had had a railroad system pervading Europe in 1780 … whether Napoleon Buonaparte might not have become a great sculptor or a great cotton-spinner in 1810?

A critic for the Spectator, although claiming that the present exhibition surpassed in every way the French model, continues that this is because the British exhibition ‘embraces the whole civilized world’ and ‘France needs not be ashamed to be outdone by the world’. Continuing his discussion of the global significance of the exhibition, he claims, ‘We have not nations pitted against each other but a conspiracy of influences drawn from the elements of civilization, worthy of the Congress of the world, but never thus allied before.’ 10 Another article suggests that with the more ‘intimate knowledge of the English’ produced by the exhibition, a whole host of errors, misconceptions and prejudices ‘bid fair to be driven for ever out of the heads of our nearest neighbours’: John Bull is no longer an ogre, but a genial and courteous gentleman. The old joke about the gloom, smoke and dirt of London, and the austerity, inhospitality, and semi-lunacy of the English character has been dissipated, and our Parisian friends confess that the ‘sombre’ city has produced the gayest, most fairy-like, most beautiful and original building in the world, and that these gloomy English people are positively well-dressed, as pleasureloving, as agreeable and as polite as the French themselves.11

Chorley in the Athenaeum remarks how ‘many amongst us, not yet old, can remember a time when it was taught in our schools and on our hearths as a creed that Frenchmen were our born enemies’ … [but the exhibition shows that] ‘the real cause of progress and civilization is not selfish and isolated, but general and allembracing’.12 The critic of the Spectator also commented that some ‘old fallacies of the one Englishman to three Frenchman order’ have been swept away.13 Or as the Illustrated London News critic stated, perhaps a little more philosophically, ‘the old days of mutual hatred, because of mutual ignorance, are speeding fast down the rolling stream of time. Why should we detest each other? … Because where our neighbours say “oui”, we say “Yes”? Another most logical argument. Because they choose a republic, and we prefer a monarchy? Chacun à son goût. Let us agree to differ.’14 Despite such potential for goodwill, things did not start well when the French, for no particular reason, arrived late to the exhibition. French critic Jules Janin,   10  11  12  13  14 

Illustrated London News 18/481 (3 May 1851): 343. Spectator, 3 May 1851, p. 419. Illustrated London News 18/485 (17 May 1851): 423. Athenaeum, 9 August 1851, p. 854. Spectator, 3 May 1851, p. 419. Illustrated London News 18/485 (17 May 1851): 436.

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employed by the Illustrated London News to cover the exhibition, had claimed confidently that despite the absence of the French presence early on in the exhibition they would ‘be ready tomorrow [since] … This is our strength. And it is our motto, ‘Toujours prêts!’15 However, comments the scornful Spectator critic, while ‘Distant India was quite ready; [and] slow Turkey was on the spot’, ‘everpromptitude was certainly not the quality displayed by J. Janin’s countrymen at the Exhibition’.16 They did not have the excuse of the Russians, who had to wait for the ice on the Baltic sea to melt before their ships could forge their way to Britain; they were just simply late. The genial benevolence of the Illustrated London News writer immediately dissolves as he comments, only a week later, that the French ‘accepted our invitation without being prepared for our punctuality or powers of display’; they no doubt felt, he avers, that ‘if they were not ready for England, why England must wait for them’.17 Yet, he concludes, ‘[the exhibition] would have been just as successful if a temporary curtain had been drawn over the space assigned to France’.18 I mention this relatively minor incident as an indication of how near the surface rivalry and hostility clearly must have been. It was never far from the surface during the piano awards. I shall now return to look more closely at the music jury and the conflict about the piano awards. The piano controversy was about ‘invention’, and in particular about which country, France or Britain, could claim to have had the most impact on contemporary piano construction and thus deserved the coveted council medal. Well before the jury’s decision, the controversy was stirred by the critic J.W. Davison. In early May Davison wrote an extended article in the Times on recent developments in piano manufacture, in which he gave credit for the major innovations in nineteenthcentury piano design to Erard and unequivocally to the French.19 One cannot but wonder whether Davison’s article was intentionally provocative. All his writings on the music at the Great Exhibition basically reflect boredom with the instruments and a desire that more actual music be performed in the exhibition space, preferably British music.20 Early in 1851 he wrote in the Musical World, ‘What will the Great National Exhibition do for music? What will it do for 15  Spectator, 10 May 1851, p. 443. Janin was one of a number of French journalists employed by the Illustrated London News to contribute to an issue entitled the Illustrated London News en Français, with the aim ‘to help Frenchmen to know what England really is, and not what she has been reported to be’. It was suggested, ‘England and France have only to become enlightened acquaintances to remain firm friends’. See discussion in the Illustrated London News 18/485 (17 May 1851): 436. 16  The Spectator, 10 May 1851, p. 443. 17  Illustrated London News 18/488 (24 May 1851): 455. 18  However, he does concede later in the article to deriving a certain amount of pleasure from the items of French manufacture that were finally being put on display. 19  Pierre Erard had in fact also been manufacturing pianos and harps in London since early in the century, and there was a certain amount of confusion among some, whether this made his instruments French or British: in fact his instruments appeared in the exhibition in both countries’ displays. 20  He felt that British composers should take advantage of the presence of visitors in town and put on concerts to demonstrate their skills.

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English music? What will English musicians do for the Great national exhibition? … In as much as music is concerned, purely as an art, we doubt, indeed, if it can do anything at all. We are sure, in fact, it will and can do nothing’.21 Again very provocatively, he decries the appointment of Henry Bishop as chairman of the jurors since, ‘with no knowledge or love of the present style of music, his natural impulse would warn him to distrust innovation, [and] to regard the signs of progress with indifference’.22 Davison’s article in the Times provoked a spate of well-bred stiff letters in the daily and musical press from the firms of Broadwood, Stodard and Collard.23 These letters all focused on, and made various claims for, the use of metal tension bars in piano construction (something especially mentioned by Davison) in British pianos well before they were adopted by Erard, and maintained that Britain, not France, was the leader in piano manufacture. In a very conciliatory letter, Pierre Erard replied publicly, claiming that in all fairness ‘the principles of their construction are completely different’, and that his uncle’s inventions preceded all the others.24 At the end of May the piano debate took on an interesting new slant when it turned to examine which pianists played the respective instruments, noting, for instance, that Thalberg and Liszt played only Erards but J.B. Cramer and Sterndale Bennett played only Broadwoods.25 This developed into the notion that French pianos were not really suitable for the performance of canonical masterpieces, with the implication that Liszt and Thalberg play only on Erards because their type of ‘inferior’ music sounded best on such an instrument. For instance, in an open letter to the Musical World, the composer Edward J. Loder wrote that ‘the preference shown by MM Liszt and Thalberg for the pianos of Erard, in their public performances, is derived materially from the peculiar character of their music, which, in many particulars, differs altogether from that of the “classical masters”, as they are termed. The works of Handel, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn &c … depending less on mere brilliancy and dry feats of manual dexterity, which you will own, Sir, can scarcely be placed amongst the higher qualities of artistic expression, are better suited to instruments which promote facility by the singing quality of their tone’.26 Unsurprisingly, this facility was generally considered to be the hallmark of the British pianos. Davison, who at this stage was also editor of the Musical World, is clearly delighted by all the controversy created by his initial article, and inserts mischievous little notes urging other British piano manufactures to enter the fray Musical World, 11 January 1851, p. 17–19. Musical World, 11 January 1851, p. 18. 23  First in the Times, letter from Matthew Stodart, published 10 May 1851, letters from John Broadwood and Sons, published 10 May and 12 May; and then the Musical World, 17 May 1851. 24  Musical World, 17 May 1851, p. 307. Sebastian Erard had made significant advances in instrument construction earlier in the century, and Pierre’s innovations were based on the earlier work of his uncle. 25  See letter by John Broadwood, Musical World, 17 May 1851, p. 307. 26  Musical World, 31 May 1851, p. 340. 21  22 

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for the ‘honour’ of English manufacture. Yet on 31 May he stated that he had ‘received so many letters on the subject’ that he was ‘compelled to decline their insertion, unless the names of the writers be appended’.27 These articles were all written before the deliberations of the jury and the awarding of the council prize to Erard alone (as it turned out, not for the use of metal bars but for his repetition, or double escapement, action, which he had patented in 1822 based on an early patent of his uncle of 1808). The uproar over the jury’s decision can be imagined. Many articles suggested that the council jury, composed of non-musicians, simply did not know what they were doing.28 The professional music jury in fact wrote a formal letter of protest about the result, both to the Royal Commissioners of the Great Exhibition and to His Royal Highness Prince Albert, saying that their original recommendation had been to award a council prize to Broadwood and Stoddard as well, but their recommendation had been overturned. Their letter was widely reproduced in the press.29 Berlioz did not sign the letter. He would have been back in Paris by this stage, yet even if he had been in a position to be a signatory, I doubt that he would have signed. Before turning to examine Berlioz’s position I must mention that there were a few British critics who were not aggressively in favour of Broadwood. The critic for the Athenaeum, for instance, refers to the controversy in a calm and even-handed manner, concluding, ‘As regards result, it will be found hard to surpass the evenness, force, sweetness and brilliancy of tone of MM Erard’s newest instruments’.30 He also comments very favourably on the decorative design on the cases of the Erards and states that with the British ‘somehow the prejudice remains, that over elaboration of the case of the piano is apt to detract from its beauty of tone’. So he implies a possible bias on the part of some of the British critics. One of the most discreet and veiled criticisms of the exhibition’s criterion for excellence is found in an article by Edward Holmes for Frazer’s Magazine of April 1851, entitled ‘Mozart’s Pianoforte’. This article starts by condemning the modern style of piano playing, or ‘bashing pianos’ as he calls it, and the two brands of pianos he uses in his example of ‘the knocking to pieces of [a piano]’ are a ‘Broadwood or an Erard’. This is surely not an innocent choice of brands. He mocks the ‘modern’ desire for gimmicks in invention, but implies that this fits well with the ‘Grand Exhibition’ aims. The article then proceeds to give an extended, nostalgic recreation of a few scenes from Mozart’s time, in which he laments a past age and a past way of appreciating and performing music. The Musical World, p. 341. See, for instance, the article in the Illustrated London News, supplement 19 (8 November 1851): 577. 29  See Open Letter to Commissioners, Musical World, 18 October 1851, p. 659 and in Illustrated London News 19/526 (21 October 1851): 530, and Open Letter to Prince Albert, Musical World, 15 November 1851, p. 725 and Illustrated London News, supplement 19 (15 November 1851): 586. 30  Athenaeum, 17 May 1851, p. 526. 27  28 

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article’s implied message is that true musical values are being overrun by the push for invention, although he claims that ‘our desire in these pages has by no means been to curb the powers of invention; but as we are still asking for more keys to the pianoforte … it seems not ill-timed to interpose a few words on the true nature of musical cultivation, lest pleasure should be omitted in it’. 31 Berlioz had been a champion of Erard well before the exhibition. Just before it he wrote an extensive homage to Erard’s instruments in the Journal des débats.32 Moreover, in both his correspondence and the Journal des débats articles written during the exhibition, Berlioz comments repeatedly on the superiority of Erard pianos. As he writes to Joseph d’Ortigue in reference to Erard, Adolphe Sax and the stringed-instrument-maker Vuillaume, ‘It’s France that leads the way with no other comparison, over all Europe’.33 It was surely not accidental that in Berlioz’s wonderful article on his early morning visit to the Crystal Palace, where he walks amid the quiet, stilled fountains but upon hearing everything stir into motion, becomes suddenly overcome with tiredness and collapses, it is onto an Erard grand piano that he falls.34 Pierre Erard valued Berlioz’s Journal des débats articles on his instruments and wanted them to be translated into English, clearly seeing them as being of promotional value; yet this never came about.35 However, Berlioz did realize that he had to express himself with circumspection in his public writings about the British instrument makers. For instance, he belatedly realized that an article he had sent to the Journal des débats on the exhibition needed amendments in this regard, and he sent a letter to the editor Bertin asking him to make some alterations, though unfortunately he was too late. The alterations included deleting the passage in which he said that the ‘English instrument makers, with two exceptions are of little importance’.36 Berlioz also mentions to Bertin that the British Commission, worried about the bad feeling that would be created in Britain if they were put in the second or third rung, were arguing that no prizes at all be awarded in the musical instrument section. 31  Frazer’s Magazine for Town and Country, 43 (April 1851): 462. I am grateful to Leanne Langley for alerting me to this review. 32  13 April 1851. This is discussed in a letter by Berlioz to Erard, 10 February 1851, CG, 4, p. 28. Footnote 2, p. 29 suggests that the article was perhaps written as a form of gratitude to Erard for having sent him a magnificent present (maybe a piano?) after Berlioz had published in the Journal des débats a lengthy ‘éloge’ on the death of Gasparo Spontini (Erard’s father-in-law). Berlioz’s letter of 10 February shows that he was clearly perturbed by the gift (although appreciative of it) since he felt that no gratitude was needed – indeed Berlioz’s admiration for Spontini was well known. Berlioz refers to Erard’s instruments in a number of his reviews. 33  ‘C’est la France qui l’emporte, sans comparaisons possibles, sur toute l’Europe. Erard, Sax, Vuillaume’, CG, 4, 21 June 1851, p. 73. 34  Chapter 21, Les Soirées de l’orchestre. See n. 2. 35  The possibility of English translation is mentioned in a letter to Erard of 29 December 1851, CG, 4, p. 95. 36  ‘Des facteurs d’instruments de musique anglais n’ont, à deux exceptions près, que peu d’importance. Ceci est de trop, car, commercialement parlant, leurs travaux ont de l’importance.’ Letter to Armand Bertin, between 26 May and 2 June 1851, CG, 4, p. 65.

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Such concerns on the part of the British were perhaps not ill founded. In the early stages of the exhibition there were lengthy articles in the British press outlining the superiority of British pianos over all others, with comments such as ‘in regard to the foreign pianofortes, we may safely say without any undue assumption of national superiority, that they by no means rival the productions of English skill and industry’.37 It should be said that all the literature on the musical instrument exhibit (French as well as British) represents the piano as being the most significant instrument. To quote again from the Illustrated London News, the ‘piano is the most important [instrument], whether we consider its capabilities (being almost an orchestra in itself); its adaptation to all purposes of musical representation, its universal use in every family as an indispensable requisite for amusement and instruction, or its consequence as a branch of manufacture, employing a large amount of capital and skilled labour’.38 The final jury’s report on the exhibition even contained a special expanded section on the piano written by Thalberg,39 who writes most passionately on the great social importance of the piano, saying: Many a man, engaged in commercial and other active pursuits, finds the chief charm of his drawing room in the intellectual enjoyment afforded by the piano … In many parts of Europe this instrument is the greatest solace of the studious and solitary. Even steam and sailing vessels for passengers on long voyages are now obliged, by the fixed habits of society, to be furnished with pianofortes.

Thalberg continues, ‘By the use of the piano many who never visit the opera or concerts become thoroughly acquainted with the choicest dramatic and orchestral compositions’.40 Berlioz also stresses the great importance of piano manufacturing in his report.41 It was only well after the event that Berlioz commented on the controversy over the piano medals. In the Journal des débats of late December 1851 he mentions again the English desire not to rock the boat by not awarding any medals (he refers directly here to the chair of the music jury, Bishop), and then when this was overruled, to award a number of medals rather than just one, also with the aim of 37  ‘Musical Instruments in the Great Exhibition: First article-Pianofortes’, Illustrated London News 18/488 (24 May 1851): 457. 38  Ibid. 39  The final report was an official register of the jury’s deliberations written under the general direction of Bishop, the jury’s reporter, with contributions from individual jurors, none of which are signed except for the one by Thalberg. 40  See report reproduced in Peter and Ann Mactaggart, (eds) Musical Instruments in the 1851 Exhibition: A Transcription of the Entries of Musical Interest from the Official Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Art and Industry of all Nations, with Additional Material from Contemporary Sources (Welwyn, 1986), p. 97. 41  ‘… [les]pianos … par l’usage qu’on en fait dans tous les coins du monde où la civilisation a pénétré, sont devenus l’objet d’une branche si importante de commerce’, Berlioz, ‘Rapport sur les instruments de musique’, www.hberlioz.com/London/Berlioz1851.html.

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avoiding offence. The final decision of the higher juries to award the council medal for piano only to Erard was in fact perfectly explicable, and virtually self-evident to Berlioz. The council medal was for merit in invention, and this clearly went to Erard who, as Berlioz was to say in his later final report, ‘developed, perfected and completed the mechanism of the piano’.42 In the Journal des débats article Berlioz stated that the vote taken on offering council medals to Broadwood and Collard had not been unanimous, only a majority, unlike the votes for Erard, Sax and Vuillaume, all of which had been unanimous.43 Still, he inserted a placatory sentence saying that he nevertheless felt that the Broadwood and Collard pianos had musical value and were excellently manufactured.44 Berlioz’s final report mentioned Erard and Sax as standing out in particular ‘in the first rank of inventors’. He concluded that ‘the best piano makers today are those who imitate … [Erard’s] instruments the most faithfully’. Yet he also claimed in this final report that after Erard’s, the pianos of Broadwood and Collard were obviously the best that were heard at the exhibition. These two claims are actually not consistent, since Broadwood and Collard saw their pianos as being very different from Erard’s, which suggests that Berlioz added this sentence only to be conciliatory. Berlioz’s critical colleague Fétis is curious in his coverage of the controversy. He first stated that he did not want to discuss the opinions of the jury, but to base his opinions on unbiased personal observation. Throughout the five articles he devoted to pianos at the exhibition, he was very diplomatic, claiming, for instance, that it didn’t really matter who invented what, but whether the results were significant. He went into great detail regarding all the British piano manufacturers as well as the German, Swiss and Belgian. By the time we get to the fifth article, however, he quietly inserted the statement that ‘at the moment the French manufacture of pianos is more advanced than the English’.45 So in the final analysis he agreed with Berlioz. It could be said that Berlioz arrived at the exhibition already convinced of the superiority of the instruments of Erard, and indeed of Sax, and maybe of Vuillaume’s stringed instruments as well, and was fully prepared to take up arms on their behalf. In the letter to Camille Pal cited at the beginning of this article, Berlioz stated that his role on the jury was ‘to defend the interest of the French exhibitors in London’.46 An official letter to the minister of agriculture and commerce states the same, although he added the cautious proviso, ‘as much as 42  ‘les meilleurs fabricants de pianos, aujourd’hui, sont ceux qui imitent les siens le plus fidèlement’, www.hberlioz.com/London/Berlioz1851E.html. 43  Journal des débats, 30 December 1851. Berlioz withdrew his vote for Broadwood and Collard when it was made clear that the medal could only be awarded for invention. 44  He also gives the impression that he found Bishop’s machinations about the awards foolish and overbearing. 45  ‘Il est vrai de dire qu’en ce moment la facture française des pianos est, en général, plus avancée que la facture anglaise,’ Exposition universelle de Londres (cinqième lettre) Revue et gazette musicale, 3 October 1851, p. 323. 46  ‘Chargé de défendre les intérêts des exposants Français à Londres’, CG, 4, p. 51.

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the interest of art and justice … permits me to do so’.47 In a letter written during the exhibition, Berlioz reassured D’Ortigue that he had submitted a favourable report on the French organ maker Ducroquet, and noted that Ducroquet had reason to be pleased with him.48 This suggests that he had been encouraged (perhaps directed?) to support Ducroquet. On the other hand, Berlioz clearly attempted to keep his mind open and not to be biased in any way, and was at pains to tell people this. For instance in his final report he wrote ‘a scrupulous and, I believe, completely impartial examination, led me to the conviction that France nowadays holds the first rank in the art of making musical instruments in general … [and] the French jury should not feel in any way embarrassed in recognising the vast superiority of the French exhibits in a competition that was open to all nations’.49 Yet I would suggest Berlioz was not as impartial as he imagined himself to be, and he was lucky that, because his views were by and large confirmed by his fellow jurors, he didn’t really have to go into battle. Despite the fact that he did not like Bishop’s machinations during the judging, and rightly thought the committee was unfairly stacked with English jurors, he did not express his views in public on this until the last day of the year, after most of the heat of the piano controversy had died down. His dissatisfaction was also chiefly directed towards Bishop (although he never used his actual name) rather than ‘the English’; indeed he approves of the action of the English grand jury.50 In Berlioz’s final report the controversy was not even mentioned. Berlioz did however rail against the French government for the shabby way in which they treated their jurors, in particular the way the music juries’ subvention for their accommodation and food supposedly ‘ran out’ two weeks before the end of the judging. This meant that if they wanted to stay in order to do their job properly, or as Berlioz puts it, ‘protect the interests of the French’, they were forced to pay their own way.51 He comments, ‘Oh! How such a procedure is worthy of France! How this will inspire artists, scholars, and industrialists with the love of their country and respect for its institutions! And what confidence foreigners are going to have in our economy’.52 ‘Autant que les intérêts de l’art et la justice … me le permettront’, 20 April 1851, CG, 4, p. 55. ‘J’ai déjà fait un rapport en faveur de M. Ducroquet; ainsi il a tout lieu d’être content de moi’, 21 June 1851, CG, 4, p. 72. Berlioz was not known for his extensive knowledge of the organ; see Guy Warrack ‘Hector, Thou Sleep’st’, Musical Times 104/1450 (December 1963): 896–7. 49  See Michel Austin translation of report on www.hberlioz.com/London/Berlioz1851E.html. Such views, it should be said, were commonly expressed in the French press – for instance, Escudier in La France musicale (18 March 1851) commented ‘je ne crois pas que, pour la facture instrumentale, la supériorité sur toutes les autres nations puisse nous être contestée,’ p. 155 and J. Louy in Le Ménestrel, 15 June 1851, comments smugly ‘La facture française … se contente d’être d’un goût parfait, d’une élégance incomparable et d’une qualité à toute épreuve’, p. 114. 50  The emphasis on design and invention in fact benefited the French (and other foreign manufacturers) more than it did the British, whose strength was in manufacturing output. In the final tally of medals, taking into account ratio of exhibitors to medals, France came out on top. See Davis, p. 165. 51  See Journal des débats, 30 December 1851. 52  ‘Oh! Comme un tel procédé est digne de la France! comme cela est fait pour inspirer aux 47 

48 

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Despite all the squabbles and drudgery of the job as juror – and Berlioz gives a vivid picture of the long hours, the amount of unpleasant noise he had to listen to, in particular from out-of tune brass instruments, and the alarming number of ‘automatic’ instruments (barrels organs and musical boxes) he had to judge – despite all this, there was also a sense of excitement, a sense of being at the crossroads of a new era in instrument making, and one led by France. An article in the Illustrated London News in early May commented on the exhibition as marking a highpoint of cultural civilization. Employing a metaphor of manufacture, with Newtonian overtones, the article referred to ‘the ball of improvement [which] has rolled with accelerated velocity, increasing its impetus as it … [goes].53 In his section in the official jurors’ report, Thalberg presented a clear picture of what he saw as the advance and progress made in music, and music-making, over the ages. He extolled the piano as the most important instrument of the day, socially, musically and economically (for the number of workmen employed in its construction). As he commented, ‘in all the cities of the civilised world there are numerous makers of [pianos]’.54 Berlioz also mentioned in his report that pianos were now used ‘in every corner of the globe where civilisation has penetrated’. He acknowledges that, historically, progress in instrument construction was uneven – with stringed instruments, for instance, reaching perfection early on while percussion instruments still had much room for improvement – yet he also emphasizes the great progress made in the art of instrument-making in the present day. In doing so, he conveyed a feeling of a barbaric past pitted against the current age of civilization. Berlioz made only passing reference to non-Western instruments exhibited at the exhibition. He commented at greater length on the various non-Western musics he encountered casually in his travels around London, and these descriptions, which he obviously valued as of historical importance, are reproduced in the Soirées de l’orchestre. Berlioz, no doubt correctly, gauged that his readers would enjoy his encounters with the exotic music, and he wrote vividly and colourfully of its strangeness. Maybe, for the sake of his audience, he exaggerated how dreadful he thought the music sounded, since he is also at pains to point out that the music was, contrary to what some ‘so-called’ scholars had claimed, still basically tonal to his ear, and transcribable. However, the adjectives he used to describe the music are consistently ones like ‘childish’, ‘horrible’, and ‘ridiculous’; to give a few quotations: ‘the Chinaman’s voice … I may without too much exaggeration compare to the sounds a dog makes when after a long sleep it stretches its limbs and yawns’; ‘the Orientals … give the name of music to what we should call a din’.55 Berlioz described the Chinese and Indian instruments that he saw at the artistes, aux savants, aux industriels l’amour de leur pays et le respect de ses institutions! Et quelle confiance les étrangers vont avoir dans notre commerce …’, Journal des débats, 27 November 1851. 53  Illustrated London News 18/481 (May 3 1851): 343. 54  Peter and Ann Mactaggart (eds), Musical Instruments in the 1851 Exhibition, p. 96 (my emphasis). 55  Evenings with the Orchestra, transl. and ed. Jacques Barzun (New York, 1956), p. 247.

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exhibition as childish and primitive, and the products of a people ‘still plunged in the dark depths of barbarism, and in a childish ignorance where one can hardly detect some vague and impotent instincts’.56 Berlioz’s comments have to be seen in the context of someone who at the same time is examining what he sees as some of the most dramatic advances in musical-instrument construction in history. For him, the instruments of these other nations obviously fit back into the stage of the primitive origins of music. An interesting contrast can be found in Fétis’s comments on non-Western instruments.57 Fétis comments on a variety of instruments, and with each one, seemingly in an attempt to help the reader visualize the instrument, he makes a comparison with a Western equivalent. The Australian didgeridoo, for instance, he compares to an organ pipe. However, he unfortunately gives inaccurate information on the didgeridoo; he described a valve at the top of the instrument which he thought enabled it to change octave (there is none) and claimed its place of origin as Tasmania (didgeridoos come from central Australia). But inaccurate factual information aside, what is of interest here is that Fétis has little of the value-laden judgement of Berlioz. He describes the instruments as different, but not necessarily inferior.58 In conclusion, although Berlioz claimed to approach his job as juror with an impartial eye, he came also to ‘defend the French’, and this was clearly not an impartial aim. Fortunately he had an easy task, since it was one that involved no moral or artistic compromise. On the other hand, one gets the feeling that despite his irritation with certain elements in Britain for attempting to manipulate the medals, he did not wish to be too critical, and had nothing to gain by being so, since the result had already come out in France’s favour. For this reason, perhaps, he tempered his comments – something that as a critic he had plenty of experience at doing. The British were, after all, to provide him with employment for much of the first half of the following year. Postlude Looking at the bigger picture of the exhibition, goodwill between the French and the British was in fact considerably strengthened during the exhibition by a dramatic gesture from Louis Napoleon who, on behalf of the city of Paris, invited the Exhibition Royal commission, executive committee, and Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London to Paris for a week-long fete in August (with banquets, receptions, visits to the theatre and so on). Evenings with the Orchestra, p. 252. 20 August 1851, p. 273. 58  Fétis did however see a link between musical sophistication and brain capacity, and believed the ability to progress in music was a reserve of the Aryan race. See Jann Pasler ‘The Utility of Musical Instruments in the Racial and Colonial Agendas of Late Nineteenth-Century France’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 129/1 (2004): 26. 56  57 

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The visit aroused some humorous commentary in the British press, much of it extremely snobbish, suggesting, for instance, that while the French thought they were inviting important people, they did not realize that ‘the grandees of London, its great merchants and bankers, keep aloof from the Municipality; its senate is filled with fussy traders and parish men’.59 These traders and parish men lost their luggage on the way to Paris, and lost their ‘clothes cut according to their own particular symmetry’. The critic for the Spectator, in a disparaging comment on his countrymen, says that ‘they could not speak French and would not speak English’, looked dreadful in their French clothes, and made naïve mistakes such as confusing gendarmes for Napoleon’s generals.60 Many similar comments can be found. Not all were so cynical, however, and probably just as many critics, both French and English, thought the visit significant of greater issues. As a critic commented in the Athenaeum, ‘The peaceful rush of French and English, arm in arm, into the gilded chambers of Versailles is suggestive of striking contrasts’.61 And the critic for the Illustrated London News likewise enthused that ‘France and England have shaken hands and sworn themselves brothers’. ‘Many antipathies have been removed, many prejudices dispelled, many errors corrected, many enmities ended, and many friendships cemented’.62 Maybe the last word should go to Léon Escudier, who commented in La France musicale, ‘Let us be unified, let us embrace one another. Let us dance, make music, and let the arts grow under the wing of liberty. We prefer the noise of violins to the butts of rifles.’63

‘Fetes in Paris’, Spectator, 9 August 1851, p. 757. Ibid. 61  Athenaeum, 9 August 1851, p. 854. 62  Illustrated London News, supplement 19 (9 August 1851): 201; 204. 63  ‘Unissons-nous, embrassons-nous. Qu’on danse, qu’on fasse de la musique, que les arts s’agrandissent sous l’aile de la liberté. Nous préférons le bruit des violons à celui des cosses de fusil’, Léon Escudier, 10 August 1851, p. 253. 59  60 

Part Two

Debussy and His Contemporaries

Chapter Six

Taming Two Spanish Women: Reflections on Editing Opera Richard Langham Smith When François Lesure first entrusted me with the task of reviving Debussy’s unfinished opera Rodrigue et Chimène I had no idea what a profound effect this would have on my musicological activities. This article is in recognition of Lesure’s faith in my ability to restore Rodrigue, not so much to chart the processes of revival, but more to establish editorial principles with regard to two disparate operas on Spanish themes—the other being Bizet’s Carmen. At first sight, the demands of Carmen and Chimène could hardly have been more different: there are countless editions of Carmen, an opera that has few rivals as far as popularity is concerned. Rodrigue has been examined by less than a handful of scholars, and been the subject of only a couple of articles and a passing mention in a few biographies. It was entirely unedited and unperformed. For Carmen, the problem for the editor is that there are too many sources and too many decisions to be made, mostly about ordering and cuts. For Rodrigue, the reverse is true: there is but one manuscript source and no separate libretto. The single source has missing pages, myriad missing accidentals, messy layers, decaying paper, bleeding ink, sloppy notation where it is impossible to know whether notes are on lines or in spaces, key signatures forgotten by Debussy, illegible pencil corrections and lacunae in both text and music. In short, it is an editor’s dream. Despite their differences, the two operas share several important elements, the most important being that they are both concerned with Spain, and together take their place in swelling the tide of hispanicism in nineteenth-century France. Furthermore, both Carmen and Rodrigue, however much they represent a French   At the time of writing this article, my edition of Carmen for Peters Edition is available on hire, having been used for the Chandos recording of the opera, in the ‘Opera in English’ series. A vocal score will be published shortly.   See Richard Langham Smith, ‘Rodrigue et Chimène’, Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 3 (London, 1992), pp. 1369–70 for a list of previous works that have, to some extent, dealt with this opera.   Claude Debussy, Œuvres complètes, série 6: Œuvres lyriques, vol. 1: Rodrigue et Chimène, ed. Richard Langham Smith (Paris, 2003).

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construct of Spanish stereotypes, touch upon elements that are (or were) deeply embedded in the history and psyche of Spain and its people: such things as the centrality of the bullfight in Spanish culture; the issue of machismo – also a major strand, incidentally, in the libretto of Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole – notions of honour; regional and racial differences; and in Carmen, the character of the Spanish gypsy. In broader terms, both operas evolved out of a fascination for Spain that perhaps partly resulted from French interest in this country Tra los montes, catalysed by the migration northwards of many cultured Spaniards displaced in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, and in particular the Battle of Trafalgar. Essentially, both operas are born out of a sequence of literary responses that, for the would-be editor, require a toothcombing of the contextual imperatives, essential not only to a fuller understanding of what the two operas are about, but even to the editorial process itself. Context and the Editor A chronological trawling of contextual sources is an essential cornerstone for an understanding of the genesis of both these operas. Broader points form tableaux as a framework for the opera; details form a filigree of cumulative references. In Rodrigue, one such example that could be easily overlooked is a passing reference to adolescent bravery. In fact this is a central issue in Spanish culture: not only is the myth of El Cid deeply embedded, but it resonates further in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century fascination with teenage bullfighters (Joselito, for example). Another Spanish idiosyncrasy is the insult given by the hidalgo: a gentlemanly way of insulting an enemy or rival by a slap with a glove – a detail emphasized in the libretto for the version of the Cid myth fashioned by Catulle Mendès, which ended up, albeit reluctantly, in Debussy’s hands. The libretto in the Œuvres complètes edition was not annotated with such interpretative contexts – though perhaps it should have been; ‘reading’ the libretto will have to be left to others.   I have retained the word ‘gypsy’ throughout, as it was the term universally used at the time. Moreover, it reflects the etymological link between the word gypsy (in French, English, Italian and Spanish) and Egyptien(ne), which many of the early reviews of Carmen mention. We now know that this ethnic group is likely to have originated in India rather than Egypt, and they are referred to today as Roma.   See Montserrat Bergadà, ‘Musiciens espagnols à Paris entre 1820 et 1868: état de la question et perspectives d’études’, in La Musique entre France et Espagne: interactions stylistiques, ed. Louis Jambou (Paris, 2003), pp. 17–38.   Joselito was perhaps the most celebrated teenage bullfighter. The son of a famous torero, he was born in Gelves in the province of Sevilla in 1895 and made his debut in the ring in Cadiz in 1908, at the age of 13—precisely the age of El Cid when he first went off to battle. See José Mariá Martínez Parras, Principios básicos de la fiesta de los toros (Seville, 2002), p. 121.

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In Carmen the unfolding of the plot through an exploitation of supposedly Spanish eccentricities is even richer. Throughout its cumulative exploration of the character of the Andalusian gypsy, many of their customs are explored in some detail, for example: the issue of female smoking; the stereotypical Spanish venta or tavern; the habits of the bandits and smugglers who roamed the hills of Andalusia; and finally the traditions of the bullfight. Broadly speaking, each of the four acts of the opera is centred on a different Spanish topos. The way in which these contexts infiltrate the various scenes in the opera is shown in an evolving table related to the various sources behind the opera (Table 6.1, overleaf), some injected only at the stage of the mise-en-scène. An example of a particular detail added by the librettists, which becomes a fateful moment in the plot, concerns Escamillo’s promise to pronounce Carmen’s name as he kills one of the bulls in the forthcoming corrida, and his implicit invitation to her to attend. Escamillo se trouve près de Carmen ESCAMILLO : Dis-moi ton nom, et la première fois que je frapperai le taureau, ce sera ton nom que je prononcerai. CARMEN : Je m’appelle la Carmencita …

Tell me your name, and the first time I hit the bull it will be your name that I will utter. My name is Carmencita …

This exchange, it should be noted, was not in Mérimée’s original nouvelle on which the opera was based. In fact Escamillo did not figure in the original at all, although there is a vague and undeveloped mention of Carmen having a flirtation (or maybe a little more) with a picador called Lucas. Interpretations of this sort, it would seem, are of sufficient importance to claim them as essential to an understanding of the opera, and therefore fall into the terrain of the modern-day editor attempting to present what might be considered as ‘the work’ to a twentyfirst-century reader. The editor must thus take stock of the increasing literary interest in the subject matter and local colour of both the Cid legend and Carmen, which suddenly seemed to reach a volatility in the 1870s that caused both themes to burst into flame as operatic ventures – almost as in a process of spontaneous combustion. And while elements of the sources behind both librettos can be glimpsed in the final products, conversely there are elements in the literary sources that didn’t make it into the librettos, but that are nonetheless crucial to a full understanding of the operas. To a certain extent it is the role of the ‘production’ to put these back in, since it is highly probable that at least some of the audience would have brought prior knowledge of Mérimée to their experience of the opera. For those, one of the tasks of the production was to jog their memory of the details of the novella.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies Table 6.1 The Sources of Bizet’s Carmen Literary/Musical/Theatrical Sources Actualities/Topologies/Mythologies

1810

Select influences on Mérimée:

A possible influence on Mérimée:

1840

Théophile Gautier: Voyage en Espagne, Paris, 1843. Passages in Mérimée’s novella are modelled on this.

Heinrich Grellmann: Histoire des bohémiens, tableau des mœurs, usages et coutumes de ce peuple nomade, Paris, 1810 (translated from German edition of 1787).

George Borrow: La Bible en Espagne, Paris, 1845 (translated from the English edition, 1841). Cited in Mérimée’s fourth chapter to Carmen, added to the second edition. 1845

Prosper Mérimée: ‘Carmen’, Revue des deux mondes, 1 October 1845. Later published in book form with a fourth chapter on gypsies.

1860

Topologies feeding into libretto: The tobacco factory The Guardia Civil Parody of the English The Spanish venta (tavern) Banditry and smuggling Tauromachic elements (bullfight) (Possible source: Baron Jean-Charles Davillier: L’Espagne. Published in Le Tour du monde in 1862–73, and in book form in 1874 with over 300 illustrations by Gustave Doré.)

1874–75 Meilhac and Halévy libretto: published 1875 just before the premiere of the opera. Bizet: Manuscript full score Published vocal score Full score used at the OpéraComique and orchestral parts Opéra-comique Livret de mise-enscène. (Livret: production book interleaved with annotated pages from libretto. Mise-en-scène: prose description of staging, reproduced for use by regional opera houses).

Direct influences from Mérimée novella on details in staging manuals.

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Such a detail is the stage direction at Carmen’s first entry, which stipulates that she must have ‘absolument le costume et l’entrée indiqués par Mérimée’ [‘exactly the costume and the manner of entering indicated by Mérimée’]. The indication explicitly draws the nouvelle into the proceedings, and the producer who goes to Mérimée’s original to find out what the librettists had in mind will find several pages of detailed description of the eponymous heroine ranging from a gloating over the holes in her red stockings to her alluring gait: She was wearing a very short red skirt which gave a glimpse of her white silk stockings which had more than one hole in them and was wearing cute little Moroccan leather shoes laced up with flame-coloured red ribbons … She still had the cassia flower in the corner of her mouth, and she walked, swaying her hips like a prize filly from a Cordova stud-farm.

On seeing her for the first time, says the narrator in the nouvelle, ‘any man would have immediately crossed himself’. Here, if anywhere, are details in the primary source that can be interpreted—and possibly were interpreted—in the original staging. But for Carmen, contextual studies lead to sources even further back. In particular, the tangential fourth chapter on gypsies, later added by Mérimée to the book version of the nouvelle, explores the mythologies of gypsies and their mores prevalent in the early nineteenth century. One study of particular interest is by the German writer H.M.G. Grellmann, first published in German and reprinted in a French translation in 1810. This book may well have been used by Mérimée, who concocted his Carmen from a plethora of sources (including Cervantes and the French writer Théophile Gautier, who had travelled to Spain in the early 1840s, immediately prior to Mérimée’s writing of Carmen). Mérimée virtually plagiarizes passages of Don Quixote, Gil Blas and also Gautier’s Voyage en Espagne.10 Grellmann’s stereotypical account of gypsy women sometimes reads like a blueprint for the libretto of Carmen. Subtitled ‘tableau des mœurs, usages et coutumes de ce peuple nomade’, the study is an extremely detailed slant on all aspects of gypsy life. To give just a few examples, in a passage on gypsy eating habits we read that ‘gypsy manners do not include using a knife and fork to eat, they don’t even think a table or a dish – meaning main meal – is necessary, and sometimes they even dispense with plates.’11 Grellmann’s remarks remind us of   ‘Elle avait un jupon rouge fort court qui laissait voir des bas de soie blancs avec plus d’un trou, et des souliers mignons de maroquin rouge attachés avec des rubans couleur du feu … Elle avait encore une fleur de cassie dans le coin de la bouche, et elle s’avançait en se balançant sur ses hanches comme une pouliche du haras de Cordoue.’ Prosper Mérimée, Carmen (Paris, 1945), section 3.   It may be observed that Galli-Marié’s costume hardly resembled Mérimée’s description.   H.M.G. Grellmann, Histoire des bohémiens (Paris, 1810). 10  Jean Pommier, ‘Notes sur Carmen’, Bulletin de la faculté des lettres de Strasbourg, April 1930, p. 213. The author also cites plagiarisms of Gautier’s description of the tobacco factory (p. 211), leading one to believe that Mérimée may not have visited such a factory himself. 11  ‘La politesse des Bohémiens ne consiste point à faire usage d’un couteau et d’une fourchette pour manger ; ils ne croient pas même qu’une table ou un plat soient nécessaires, et se passent souvent

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the scene in the libretto when Carmen is treating José to a meal in Pastias’s tavern. Carmen brings in a lot of little things to eat: not a proper meal (in the French sense), nor even little plates of tapas. The dialogue scarcely hides José’s disappointment: after all, he has been in prison and could do with a hearty dinner. José remarks to Carmen that ‘Tu croques les bonbons comme un enfant de six ans …’ (‘you eat sweets like a six-year old child’). On the one hand he is attracted by this childlike trait in her: the jouissance of her delirious pleasure in eating sweets; on the other his comment demeans the status of a gypsy adult in terms of the maturity of her eating habits. How you eat, for the French, is and was a crucial yardstick in the perception of adulthood, or even one’s level of ‘civilization’. Further details of this sort are implicit in the déroulement of the opera. In another passage, Grellmann goes on to stress the gypsy love of intoxicating themselves to the point where they scream and shout, dance and sing. Strong drink is the first passion he explores (although it is eau-de-vie he mentions rather than Manzanilla) and claims that their tendency to abuse alcohol is modest in relation to their love for tobacco, which they not only smoke but chew. Is it perhaps farfetched to suggest that these facets of gypsy pleasure – enjoyed, according to Grellmann, even more by gypsy women than their men – lay behind the tranceinducing ‘Chanson Bohème’ that begins Act II, and the heady female Paean of praise to the intoxicating weed in the first Act of Carmen?12 The texts for both these numbers stress delirium and inebriation, in the first case by a combination of music – of the gypsy kind – alcohol and dance (and probably also tobacco); and in the second by tobacco alone. The list could be prolonged, especially in relation to the lasciviousness of the gypsy woman and the magic powers she exerts through her dancing. Grellmann continues: ‘Nothing can exceed the unrestrained depravity of manners, existing among these people. I allude particularly to the other sex. Unchecked by any idea of shame, they give way to every desire. The mother endeavours, by the most scandalous arts, to train her daughter for an offering to sensuality, and this is scarce grown up, before she becomes the seducer of others.’13 Suffice for now to add one other crucial aspect isolated by Grellmann: that of gypsy music. It is in music, he claims, that the gypsies excel above all other arts. ‘They even compose, but it is in the oriental manner, that is to say it is improvised.’14 Far-fetched though d’une assiette.’ Grellmann, Histoire des bohémiens, p. 70. 12  ‘ce ne sont pas … seulement les hommes qui en jouissent, les femmes les surpassent souvent en cela’ (‘it is not only the men who enjoy it, for often the women have even more of a taste for it’). Grellmann, Histoire des bohémiens, p. 72. 13  ‘Rien ne peut être comparé aux mœurs dépravées de ces vagabonds, mais surtout de leurs femmes, qui, n’étant retenues par aucune idée de pudeur et de honte, se livrent à toute la fougue de leurs passions. La mère emploie les moyens les plusscandaleux pour faire de sa fille une victime de la sensualité ; et à peine celle-ci est-elle élevée qu’elle cherche, à son tour, à en pervertir d’autres.’ Grellmann, Histoire des bohémiens, p. 166. 14  ‘ils composent même, mais à la manière des Orientaux, c’est à dire à l’impromptu’. Grellmann, Histoire des bohémiens, p. 160.

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it would be to suggest any direct influence of Grellmann’s stereotyping of gypsy mores, it is notable that Bizet’s search for a style with which to represent gypsy music uses many effects that suggest improvisation: the ‘amours’ of the passersby during Carmen’s ‘Habanera’, and the ornaments of the ‘Chanson bohème’ and the ‘Séguidille’, to name a few. A second burrowing into the testimonies of travellers to Spain was clearly undertaken by the librettists Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac when they fashioned their libretto for the opera in the mid-1870s. Here is not the place for a detailed comparison of nouvelle and libretto; it suffices to remark that while the librettists softened Mérimée’s original in many ways – such as the removal of Carmen’s one-eyed, murderous husband – they developed details in other ways, quite apart from their addition of the characters of Micaëla and Escamillo, and of several ranks of soldiers. For example, their detailed research into the formation of a typical cuadrilla – the procession that precedes a bullfight – is complemented by many other accurate details. Some of these accretions may have been suggested by another source, this time both literary and visual. This was a sumptuously produced book on Spain by the Baron Charles Davillier, copiously illustrated with no fewer than 236 illustrations by Gustave Doré, previously serialized in a widely disseminated travel magazine titled Le Tour du monde and published in large-format book form in 1874 (the very year in which the libretto was being fashioned). Some of the tableaux in the opera may have been suggested by Doré’s striking images, in particular those of the smugglers trekking through the mountains (reflected in the long first chorus in Act III) and the scene where Escamillo and José duel with navajas (double-edged knives particularly associated with Spanish bandits).15 These are merely a few examples from the plethora of travelogues on Spain that satiated the French taste for ‘tales of the other’ in the nineteenth century.16 A reading of the copious contextual sources for Carmen reveals deeper interpretative layers, for while in the late nineteenth century the norm of productions would have been to have portrayed José as an unquestionably honourable soldier at first, subsequent interpretations, informed by the details of Merimée’s nouvelle – in which he murders Carmen’s husband as well as her – may portray him for what he is: a hot-headed murderer who once killed a rival merely over a game of pelota, and who ended up in the army not for any reasons of patriotism, but as a way of escaping imprisonment, if not capital punishment. As for Carmen, few will be unfamiliar with interpretations that stress her strength in comparison to José: both operatic stagings and film versions of the opera had reinterpreted the story along these lines long before academics got to work on it. Jean-Charles Davillier, L’Espagne (Paris, 1874). A further suspect is the American diplomat and writer Washington Irving, whose books on Spain were popular in French translations between the late 1820s and the 1840s (for example: Contes d’un voyageur (1825); Les Contes de L’Alhambra (1832); and Contes, morceaux et anecdotes (1840)). 15  16 

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

Before Rodrigue, the complex lineage of the El Cid myth had been developed in the nineteenth century in various ways. First there was a trend for unveiling the sources before Corneille, to peel away accretions and get back to the original anonymous epics prior to the version by Guilhem de Castro. The overriding aim seems to have been to represent these in ways that were accessible to the nineteenth-century French reader, mainly through translations into modern French (in one case with parallel text). Second, there were some serialized and popularized versions of the myth, and several staged versions. Third, there was a series of librettos based on Le Cid in various ways, preceding the Mendès version that ended up in the hands of Debussy. In chronological order, these were the libretto by Moritz Hartmann for Théodore Gouvy’s Der Cid of 1863, which was overshadowed by Peter Cornelius’s opera of the same title, to his own libretto, first given in Weimar in 1865. After this, Bizet’s own incomplete Don Rodrigue of 1873, which had a fully fledged libretto by the celebrated team of Gallet and Blau, was on the drawing board. And as is well known, the race for getting the Cid epic to the operatic stage was won by Massenet in the early 1880s, so a further libretto was added to the list, a reworking of the version supplied to Bizet by Gallet and Blau, but with the name of d’Annery added as a third librettist.17 Meanwhile, Mendès was working on his libretto, advertised as unique because it claimed to go back to the ‘original legends’, bypassing the intervention of Corneille.18 A comparison of the approaches of the five main nineteenthcentury Cids would provide a useful insight into nineteenth-century operatic transformations, but to my knowledge such a study has not been attempted.19 This overview of literary developments may seem beyond the remit of the opera editor whose task could be construed as being restricted to a marshalling of the notes in the score. But on the contrary, such contexts are central to an understanding of these operas, and in turn, an understanding of the opera on the editor’s drawing-board is central to the editor’s work. In the case of Rodrigue, a study of the literary sources strongly implies that despite a chain of perfect cadences at the end of the third act of the manuscript, with Rodrigue going off to fight the infidel, a further act was probably intended, but to our knowledge never attempted, and its libretto now lost. It could also be posited, taking account of nineteenth-century genre in Grand Opera, that two further acts were intended, for there is plenty of scope in Mendès’s livret for a full-scale Act IV ballet: the Filles de Bivar in the first Act have already participated in an See Dennis Libby, ‘El Cid’, New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992), p. 862. A false claim! See Richard Langham Smith, ‘“La Jeunesse du Cid”: A Mislaid Act in Debussy’s Rodrigue et Chimène’, in Richard Langham Smith, Debussy Studies (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 201–228, and the prefatory material in the Œuvres complètes edition. 19  Two articles from L’Avant-scène (1994): Massenet: Panurge, Le Cid are pertinent here. JeanClaude Yon: ‘Les avatars du Cid’ pp. 112–119 traces theatrical presentations, and François Lesure : ‘Massenet, Debussy et la compétition du Cid’ pp. 120–125 traces the usurping of Mendès’s libretto in the process, and also the other composers he approached, long before the project fell into the hands of Debussy. I have revisited this question in my ‘“La Jeunesse du Cid”’ pp. 201–228. 17  18 

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extended choral tableau: and after all, in French opera the tutu-clad corps de ballet was inevitably waiting in the wings. Certainly, Debussy’s Rodrigue was not an opéra-comique. Mendès’s emphasis on going back to the ‘Romancero, and to La historia del muy noble y valorosa caballero el Cid Ruy Diaz’ in a news item in the 1878 Journal de musique – where he also claims to have ‘combined the strange and powerful local colour and all the unique atmosphere of Castillian and Moorish customs’ – also has a profound effect on the editing process in this idiosyncratic case.20 For although Mendès underplayed his debt to Corneille, his libretto goes out of its way to distil local colour, forming the work into a series of tableaux. His manifestos for his El Cid libretto – published in various issues of the Journal de musique – date from some ten years before this ‘white elephant’ libretto fell into Debussy’s hands, but there can be little doubt that Mendès would have reiterated his aims to Debussy, challenging him to capture in music this Spanish local colour. The medieval setting of the opera ruled out any following of the formulas of Bizet’s Carmen, with its borrowings from Andalusian and nineteenth-century Spanish popular musics, even though Debussy was a lifelong fan of Bizet’s masterpiece.21 It was only later that Debussy tried his hand at such aspects of Spanish music, in pieces such as ‘La Soirée dans Grenade’, ‘La Puerta del Vino’, Lindaraja and the orchestral Ibéria. In Rodrigue, Debussy clearly decided to evoke the local colour in other ways, namely through extended passages using synthetic modes, often incorporating flattened supertonics and tritonal inflections. This results in one of several styles in Debussy’s music found nowhere else in his œuvre. It is possible that for these styles – he was self-confessedly lacking in inspiration while composing Rodrigue – he may have turned to another work of Bizet, his short opera Djamileh of 1871. This is arguably the most distilled oriental opera of the later nineteenth century, extreme in its use of synthetic modal melodies cleverly combined with underlying tonal harmonies that manage to unfold in unconventional, pseudo-oriental ways. A biographical link between the two composers who are the focus of this article is to be found in the figure of Ernest Guiraud, close friend of Bizet, teacher of Debussy and a composer in his own right. With several oriental pieces of his own to his credit, he would surely have pointed Debussy towards the music of Bizet. Although we have no record of Debussy’s knowledge of Djamileh, there is a striking similarity between a passage in Rodrigue and one in this, Bizet’s most overtly oriental (and hence also Moorish) opera. A passage based on a synthetic 20  ‘il [Mendès] pourra y joindre une étrange et chaude couleur locale et toute la pittoresque singularité des vieilles mœurs castillanes et mauresques.’ Anon., ‘Nouvelles de partout’, Journal de musique, 21 December 1878. 21  René Peter recounted an episode where Debussy, having read Nietzsche’s Der Fall Wagner, sang the flower song from Carmen from memory, his eyes full of tears. René Peter, Claude Debussy (Paris, 1931) p. 63.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

scale that opens the second tableau from Act II in Rodrigue is particularly reminiscent of the synthetic modes of such numbers as the Danse et chœur ‘L’Almée’ from Djamileh.22 Example 6.1  Bizet, ‘L’Almée’ from Djamileh, bars 1–10

Piano

1 2 4

-

-

E5 : 5 !5 : 5 5 55 5 5 5 pp     5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 55 55 55 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 Andantino quasi andante q = 63

G

0

0

0

G E5 : 5 5:!5 5 5 5 5 5 5   55 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

1 5: 2 5:

-

 55

pp

7

Froide Gli -

G

E5 :

 5 5 5 5

1 5: 2 5: 9

-

Et La -

G

E5 : 5 !5 :

 5 5 5 5 22 

et ding

5 !5 :

5 !5 5 5

les zi -

5

5

5 E5 5 5!5 5 5 5 5  5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

5

 55 5 5 5 5

 55 =

te, Iy.

len cold-

55

5: 5:

In Wri -

5 E5 :

5 5 5 5 5 5 55

55

yeux ly

5 5 5 5 5 5 55

55

 55

 55

len bold -

3

=

te, ly,

5 5 : !5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 !5 5

5

55

55

as her

5 5 5!5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

5 !5

55

do thing

 5 55

55

BB

Basses

0

E5 : 5!5 : 5 5 55 5 5

55

5

5  55

0

55

 55 =

55

sou eyes

55

pis, close.

5 E5 5 5 !5 5 5 5 5 5 !5 5 5 5 !5 5

5 3

55

55

 55

Rodrigue et Chimène: Act II, tableau 2, p. 155.

5

5

5

5

55

55

Taming Two Spanish Women

-

93

' ' '

5: G ' ' '

-

602

G

M M M M 5 5 5 5 B ' '

I I 5 5 5

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5

M 5

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pp

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598

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très lointain

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-

pp

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Piano

G 

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593

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Example 6.2  Debussy, Rodrigue et Chimène, Act II, tableau 2, bars 593–606

 '5 : E5 5 5 5 '5 : 5 5 5 ' ' ' '

' '

   5: 5 5 5 5 5: 5 5 5 ' '

  5: E5 5 5 5 ' ' '

se rapprochant

5 5 B '

5 5

' '

    5': 5 5 5 5 5':  5 5 5

The two not only share a key but also use a similar scale – with, in particular, a flattened as well as a perfect fifth in the scale, as Examples 6.3a and 6.3b illustrate. Example 6.3a  Bizet: ‘L’Almée’ from Djamileh

G G

B B

B B

!B !B

B B

B B

EB EB

B B

!B !B

!B !B

Example 6.3b Debussy, Rodrigue et Chimène, Act II, tableauB 2

G G

B B

B B

B B

B B

B B

!B !B

!B !B

EB EB

B

EB EB

B B

B B

Ontologies of Operas and Editions How happy the editor who contributes to a monumental edition with firm and incontrovertible principles pre-established! Thus Rodrigue can be dispensed with

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relatively quickly, the single genre-question – as to whether it was intended to be a five-act Grand Opera – posed but unresolved unless further sources come to light. As for its edition, the Debussy Œuvres complètes has evolved a series of criteria built upon the established principles of similar (mainly German) twentieth-century complete editions. The major problems of restoring Rodrigue have nothing to do with either ontology or genre, but are almost entirely to do with the restoration of missing accidentals: a problem that has already been addressed in the edition itself, and elsewhere.23 More fundamental is the question of whether the edition should attempt to provide a completion of the lost passages. As a percentage of the extant music in Rodrigue these passages are relatively slight: certainly less than five per cent. Just as in editions of Schubert’s unfinished piano sonatas and piano duets, for example, missing passages were editorially restored so that the piece is at least playable throughout – a principle that could not be extended to La Chute de la maison Usher, where the complexity of the sources and the high proportion of incomplete material resulted in the Œuvres complètes volume restricting itself to realized, extant extracts, leaving reconstructed performable versions to others.24 Had a completion of Usher been attempted within the Œuvres complètes, editorial material might have outweighed the original. A copious commentary on variants is de rigueur in such monumental editions: the formula is well-proven, with material ranging from introductory context to detailed remarks on editorial choice. Even though in the case of Rodrigue the question of production was irrelevant – since there had been none – the policy of complete editions of operas is usually to ignore, or at least severely limit, anything to do with production. But the contextual material for Carmen, and knowledge of the way the work was conceived, and the lumbering process by which it reached the operatic stage, caused me to reflect upon whether these established, but text-centric, editorial principles were the only way in which operatic editions could operate. No such comfortable, pre-existent format was in place for the new Peters edition of Carmen (except that the value-loaded word Urtext was deemed necessary for a German-based publisher whose light-green covers have become synonymous with urtextual authority). But for both works, the age-old problems of establishing a ‘reading’ from a series of conflicting sources was still essentially there. For Rodrigue, although there is but one single source, there are several pages where the composer has superimposed revisions and alterations, even complete reworkings. On occasion there are whole rethinkings very hastily sketched in, and while the editor may share the composer’s dissatisfaction with the original layer, there may be insufficient detail or legibility in the top layer to 23  Richard Langham Smith, ‘Rodrigue et Chimène: genèse, histoire, problèmes d’édition’, in Cahiers Debussy 12–13 (1988–1989): 67–81. 24  Claude Debussy, La Chute de la maison Usher, in Œuvres complètes, série 6, vol. 3 : Œuvres lyriques inachevées, ed. Robert Orledge (Paris, 2006).

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realize the composer’s last thoughts on the matter. The editor’s ‘reading’, just like the historian’s ‘writing’ of history, remains a personal view, however much the packaging suggests authority. With Carmen, ‘readings’ are less problematic, for the differences between the sources are less to do with notes than with cuts, the original orchestral matérial in particular showing that many excisions were made and restored at different times. So much for detail. Inevitably the editor is thrown back to the two overarching points that must be confronted: first, what is opera? And second, what is an edition? The first question may be refined. Is there such a thing as an ‘opera’? Or are there only ‘productions’ or ‘interpretations’? As for editions, the questions are to do with their remit and aims. What is it that an opera edition is attempting to ensnare? At least in the case of Carmen, the question of genre makes these ontological questions somewhat easier to handle: the question to be asked was no longer ‘what constitutes an opera?’ but could be whittled down to ‘what constitutes a mid- to late-nineteenth century opéra-comique?’ Scores, librettos, what Hervé Lacombe has called ‘les voies’ – ‘the little ways’ – of opera, productions and dissemination all need to be considered in any attempt to answer this question.25 Starting from the finished product and the way it was disseminated, curiously enough, provided the most valuable key in defining and identifying the nature of the French opéra-comique, in turn affecting the ontological questions about the nature of an edition. Research into the dissemination of the nineteenth-century opéra-comique, including Carmen, necessarily begins in the collection of the Association de la régie théâtrale (ART), a well-documented collection of materials pertaining to the staging of both plays and operas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – note ‘staging’ rather than ‘production’: Régie means ‘staging’ and a régisseur is a stage-manager.26 The ART dossier on Carmen contains two invaluable documents relating to its staging, essentially two different types of mise-en-scène. The first is an exercise book or cahier into which a printed libretto has been cut up and interleaved.27 Letters marked by hand on the pages of the libretto refer to descriptions of stage action in the cahier. This version, which looks more modern than the second source, is partly typed and partly written in a neat script, which also appears in several other items from the collection (See Figure 6.1).

25  Hervé Lacombe, Les Voies de l’opéra français au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2002). This has been translated as The Keys to French Opera – not as accurate as ‘little ways’, though I see that this wouldn’t make a good title for a book! 26  The operatic part of the collection has been documented and set in context in H.R. Cohen and M.-O. Gigou, Cent ans de mise en scène lyrique en France (1830–1930) (New York, 1986). 27  Bibliothèque de la ville de Paris, ART C27 I: livret de mise-en-scène.

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Figure 6.1 A page from the livret de mise-en-scène to Carmen, recopied and interleaved with pages from the printed libretto.28 28  Note the numbers 1–6, which correspond to cues clearly marked in the libretto pages. Staging diagrams such as the one indicating José are typical of this source (item C27 I of the collection of the Association de la regie théâtrale). Reproduced by kind permission of the Bibliotheque de la ville de Paris.

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The second source has been examined and illustrated in an article by Evan Baker, and is more like a prose description of the action, with diagrams of stage movements woven in.29 It appears to be handwritten, in what looks like a French equivalent of copperplate, but it is in fact reproduced by some sort of nineteenthcentury reprographic system, and several identical copies are preserved in the collection. It has been bound in an ornate cover with the title in an ornate typeface, looking rather like the cover for a vocal score. Its function is indicated in a medium-sized font at the bottom: ‘mise en scène’ (see Figure 6.2). Together these documents teach us many things. The first document, which according to the curator of the ART archives (verified by my own perusing of other mises-en-scène in the collection) is a recopied version of a previous document that had decayed with use, suggests that the formula of a dismantled printed libretto bound into a cahier was standard practice, and that these were heavily used, being sent out, along with copies of the ‘reprographic’ mise-en-scène, to regional (and perhaps foreign) theatres along with all the musical materials.30 What was thus being disseminated was not only the music, but also two mises-en-scène (not to call them ‘production-books’) from which its staging could be ascertained and reproduced. Furthermore, some details in the mises-en-scène are to be found nowhere else, explaining elements of the opera that neither the scores nor the libretto revealed. In particular there is the question of the ‘Scène et pantomime’ contained in the first vocal score and printed libretto, but omitted from all subsequent early printed scores. The first of the ART sources combines two stagings, with red ink being used to indicate the earlier version, referred to as the ‘Ancienne mise-enscène’. This source refers to the ‘Scène et pantomime’ as the ‘Scène de l’anglais’, implying that it in some way involved an Englishman. This is not the place to pursue this detail, but this reference, among several others, confirmed that these mises-en-scène contained information that is not only crucial to an understanding of the opera, but which is part of the opera: essential texts that must figure in some way in any edition.31 There was one more crucial message that these sources – and the way they were employed – conveyed, suggesting a concept of operatic presentation entirely different from our present-day idea. In the way opéra-comique was first disseminated there was no concept of a ‘production’ – the work of someone other than composer or librettist who imposed an interpretation of a piece. There was only the régisseur and his team, who followed the ART texts in order to put the 29  Evan Baker, ‘The scene designs for the first performances of Bizet’s Carmen’, 19th-Century Music 13/3 (1990): 230–42. The source is Bibliothèque de la ville de Paris, ART C27 IV. 30  For this information I am indebted to Marie-Odile Gigou of the Bibliothèque de la ville de Paris, curator of the ART collection. 31  In my new Peters edition (forthcoming) they are incorporated on the page as footnotes throughout and introduced and commented upon in the preface, where I will also deal with the question of the Scène de l’anglais.

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Figure 6.2 Cover-page for the mise-en-scène of Carmen (Association de la régie théâtrale)

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work on stage. Exported stagings, the methods of dissemination suggested, were thus immanent in the work concept. The point is crucial: the lesson the editor had to learn was that if a score was to present ‘the work’, these texts must figure, and figure large. Thus it was decided that the aim of the new edition was to be a reassembly of the spoken text, not only with the music but with the materials pertinent to the staging, including material from the mises-en-scène but also variants from the stage directions in the various printed and manuscript scores. The overall objective was to present a picture of ‘what was done in the first run, after the performances had matured a little’, and to capture this idea the term ‘performance Urtext’ was decided upon, as a way of redefining the Urtext. Trying to fix a definitive version of a work in constant evolution might be compared to trying to cut up a blancmange on a rickety table. The Scores Themselves The first vocal score of Carmen produced by Choudens gave no idea of how the transition from spoken dialogue to musical number occurred. To reveal this, several sources have to be reunited, including the ART materials. The case of Carmen was not atypical. Shortly before the première, a libretto would be published and a vocal score produced, the latter giving only the last lines of each section of dialogue as cues (répliques) printed on the top of the page of each new number. Orchestral scores would at first be in manuscript, as would the matériel (the set of orchestral parts) until the popularity of the work justified engraving. For Carmen, parts were not printed until the 1890s: before this a continually replenished set of matériel, copied by hand, was used. At some point, though precise dating is difficult, the mise-en-scène was engraved. To date, two modern scholarly editions attempting the reunification of text and music have been published. First, there is Fritz Oeser’s edition of 1964, published by Alkor-Edition, and second, Robert Didion’s edition of 2000, published by Schott, Mainz. Each approaches the work from a different angle. Oeser’s ‘Kritische Ausgabe nach den Quellen’ (Critical edition after the sources) is a monumental edition with a separate ‘Vorlagenbericht’ of approximately 150 pages aiming to present all the variants of each number, including both the recitative and the spoken-dialogue versions­ – either in the main text or in the appendices – and has copious critical notes. This means that to perform the opera from this score, or indeed to gain any insight into what was done in the early performances, passages must be jumped, pages pinned together, and the German-only text of critical notes needs to be scrupulously read: finding a route through the material is thus a complex process. Didion’s version, on the other hand, takes a simpler approach, which commentators have requested for some years: it follows the first published vocal score, which has never had a published matching orchestral score, since by the

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time Choudens, the original publishers, got around to the orchestral score, the order had been considerably tampered with, numbers had been excised and altered, and in some cases ballet music having nothing to do with Bizet’s opéra-comique had been added. The precious first vocal scores, published around the time of the first performance on 3 March 1875, have the authorial stamp of approval in that Bizet is credited with having produced the excellent piano reduction, and a few pages of very carefully marked proofs still exist, showing attention to detail and suggesting that this score demonstrated his last thoughts on the piece, although they differed from his original intentions as shown in the mainly autograph full score, which is still extant.32 A composer’s ‘last thoughts’ on a piece drive Didion’s thinking: and this approach has been a major preoccupation of Urtext-minded editors during the latter part of the twentieth century. Carmen presents a particular problem in this respect since Bizet died only three months after the first performance, while it was still changing shape. The case for considering the ART materials has already been put forward, and this is the principal way in which the Peters ‘performance Urtext’ will differ from Didion’s. His highlighting of the ‘sanctioning by the authors’ is, in my view, problematic because it is clear that the ordering of the opera, as it was done, did not follow the vocal score exactly. This leads to a further ontological problem: the question of what a nineteenth-century vocal score of an opéra-comique actually was. Certainly we can be clear as to what it wasn’t: in no sense was it an attempt to ‘ensnare’ the opera as a whole. For example, it is clear from the orchestral parts and the performing full scores that various mélodrames (in this sense, a passage of music over which speech occurred) were included in the action of Carmen. For a long time these were omitted from performances, particularly when the recitative version was in fashion. Why, it might be asked, were these not included in the first vocal score? Their omission seems to me to cast light on what a vocal score was: they were omitted simply because they were not sung passages, and a vocal score (a piano-chant) was thus essentially a ‘set of parts’ – matériel – for the singers, rather than the more recent conception of the vocal score as a complete rendition of the work in piano reduction. Over-reifying the vocal score as a source for the whole work is thus dangerous, despite Bizet’s authorial contribution. Opera is surely a continually evolving process in which improvements are made – especially in first runs – as the work is put to the test. Unlike a purely instrumental score, the relationship between staging and music may necessitate changes – a point of which, as a seasoned operatic composer, Bizet would have been fully aware. The view that an edition should somehow crystallize composerintention at the point of death – the ‘last-thoughts’ approach – is for an opera surely a somewhat romantic one. Bizet’s overriding main intention, it might be suggested, was that Carmen should succeed – and not least so as to make 32  This score was used extensively as a conducting score; consequently some pages have been recopied, mainly at the beginning, and bound in. The few extant pages of proofs of the vocal score are to be found in F Pn: Fonds du conservatoire, Rés 2694.

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him (and perhaps his heirs) a lot of money. He would doubtless have expected tightenings to have been made, and perhaps a few bars to be repeated here and there if the staging required such minor modifications. To search for an Urtext by damming the ever-flowing stream of an opera’s evolution thus seems to me somewhat blinkered. And to isolate Bizet’s death as a turning point overestimates his status among the three collaborators, although it is hard to know to what extent its librettists were involved. 33 The Future for Carmen and Chimène Whatever the debates concerning orchestration and production, the première of Rodrigue et Chimène in Lyon in 1993 gave us an opportunity to evaluate it as a stage work. A consensus of reviews agreed that there is beautiful music in Debussy’s score, but it is not really an opera in its present form. There are many such works in the operatic wastepaper basket, and Rodrigue must join them, perhaps to be given an occasional outing in concert extracts. Maybe it merits a more Debussian orchestration – something that its orchestrator Edison Denisov was in no way aiming for. As for the other ‘Spanish Lady’, her future is of course secure. Any production of Carmen that attempts to recapture something of the subtlety of the opéracomique version is to be welcomed, and the Grand Opera transformation is not to be eschewed just because Bizet didn’t do it himself, but rather because it nullifies that sharp interaction of speech and music that librettists, composer and the mise-en-scène so cleverly effected. Its librettists packed the dialogue with action propellants, thematic exploration and, most importantly, some humour, in a way that the version encumbered throughout with music could not hope to match. For while on one level the music in opera is the primary propellant, in a stage play, and hence in moments of opéra-comique, it may become a diluent. Indeed, musical cuts in opera are often made for this very reason. Two examples may point to the future as far as Carmen is concerned. First, there is the previously mentioned illumination that the ART sources provide regarding the meaning of the abandoned ‘Scene and Pantomime’ in Act I. This is the subject of another article on the opera (not yet written), which will reveal many sources about this movement. It is a humorous moment recorded several times but so far not reassociated with its original meaning. It made the first act too long and was dropped around the time of Bizet’s death, some say with his approval. Maybe it will come back; certainly it was a part of the work, at least for quite a time. A second problem is more acute for the editor, and concerns the nature of the genre that we have identified as an opéra à numéros that transforms into a through33  Correspondence between Bizet and Halévy was unnecessary since the two men lived in close proximity. In addition, for some reason Halévy destroyed the passages relating to Carmen in his copious cahier.

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composed work. In the matériel for the opéra-comique performances it is clear that one of Guiraud’s recitatives was used in later opéra-comique performances as a matter of course, replacing the spoken dialogue. This is the section in Act III where Micaëla comes to find José in the hills to inform him that his mother is dying. At some point, probably in the second run, her spoken dialogue was replaced by Guiraud’s recitative. But why? And should this be included in a performance Urtext aiming to capture what was done at the Opéra-comique? My decision that it should – of course as an option – was made on the basis of genre. Opting for recitative instead of speech at this point in the work perhaps strengthened the through-composed trajectory of the latter part of the work, avoiding interruption by a relatively short and uninformative piece of speech. In this way it strengthened the hybrid form of Carmen by grafting the scion of a through-composed ending onto an opéra-comique rootstock. Performers have the option at this point of choosing the Guiraud recitative. On only one or two other occasions is a choice offered to the performer in my edition – unlike Oeser’s, in which performers must make a myriad of choices. I learnt a lot from what amounts to Oeser’s abnegation of responsibility as an editor. This article has deliberately avoided a tour of the marshalling yard that is the essential workplace of the editor: where he or she shunts the notes around, pushing them over the hump to arrive in the right place in the score. These details have been discussed elsewhere (or, in the case of Carmen, will be). One thing is for sure: neither of the Spanish ladies will have been tamed forever. Their musical strengths – and their Spanish temperaments – will ensure that.

Chapter Seven

Grieg, the Société nationale, and the Origins of Debussy’s String Quartet Michael Strasser In 1948, in the preface to a collection of essays devoted to Edvard Grieg and his music, Gerald Abraham suggested that Debussy’s String Quartet might have been modelled on Grieg’s First Quartet. ‘True’, Abraham writes, ‘there is no obvious Griegishness in the Debussy Quartet, but the most casual study of the parallels between Grieg’s G Minor Quartet of 1878 and Debussy’s G Minor Quartet of 1893 shows that the one was modelled to some extent on the other, or at least that it was written with the other in the composer’s conscious or sub-conscious mind’. We can quickly summarize the evidence that led Abraham to this conclusion. Each quartet is built around a motto theme, and both motto themes begin with the same four pitches. After the initial presentation of the motto, the first movement of each quartet breaks into a quicker tempo, pianissimo, and concludes with rapid passages in which the motto, broken into repeated quarter-notes (crotchets), is played by all four instruments in octaves. Both finales begin with the motto theme in a rather slow duple metre, then break into a quicker compound metre (6/8 or 12/8); the final section of Debussy’s movement recalls the character of Grieg’s Saltarello. Each quartet ends in the tonic major, presto (or très vif in the case of the Debussy), with a rapid ascent in the final measures to concluding fortissimo chords. And there are pages where the scoring of the two quartets shows remarkable similarities. In 1968, following up on Abraham’s observations, Arnfinn Stölen thoroughly investigated the two works and concluded that Grieg’s quartet served as a model for Debussy in its radical breaking with traditions. In it Debussy recognized many stylistic traits that were also his own: freedom and new colour in harmony, melody, handling of instruments, and form. He found much of his own way of melodic expression in Grieg’s motto theme. The road lay open for an expansion of the chamber music idiom. Gerald Abraham (ed.), Grieg: A Symposium (Norman, OK, 1950; reprint, Westport, 1971), p. 8. Compare, for example, page 6 of the Peters miniature score of the Grieg Quartet to page 7 of the Durand miniature score of the Debussy Quartet.   Arnfinn Stölen, ‘Debussys strykekvartett I g-moll op. 10 og ei jamføring mellom denne og Griegs strykekvartett I g-moll op. 27’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Oslo, 1968). Quoted in Finn Benestad  

 

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Finn Benestad and Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe, in their survey of Grieg’s chamber music, further contend that ‘Grieg’s use of an advanced harmonic style, with its pronounced employment of modality, passages of tonal ambiguity, extensive successions of dissonant chords in unconventional connections … point toward a tonal language not far removed from that of Debussy’. While the idea that Debussy drew inspiration from Grieg’s quartet seems to be gaining currency, there has been, to my knowledge, no examination of the circumstances through which Debussy might have come to know Grieg’s work, and no rationale as to why he might have followed it so closely in composing his own. As we shall see, Grieg’s music enjoyed a brief but intense period of popularity with at least some French musicians, critics, and audiences in the 1880s and early 90s. Debussy acknowledged this phenomenon in a February 1894 letter to Pierre de Bréville, noting dispassionately that some Grieg songs he had heard contained ‘a little of the soul of Norway’, and adding parenthetically, ‘you know how much that’s enjoyed in France’. Yet there is no documentary evidence that he shared in the enthusiasm. Indeed, Debussy’s recorded statements about Grieg and his music are conflicted, at best. In 1906 Magnus Synnestvedt testified that Debussy had saluted Grieg as a precursor to his own harmonic audacities. And in 1914 Emile Sjögren wrote to Grieg’s widow of Debussy’s participation in a performance of Grieg’s Violin Sonata, Op. 13, assuring her that Debussy expressed ‘profound love’ for the compositions of her late husband and ‘considers Grieg as one of those rare composers who has opened up new paths’. But it should be noted that, in both these cases, Debussy was speaking to a Scandinavian, and his statements (if indeed they have been reported accurately) might well have been coloured by a desire to be polite. On other occasions his comments about Grieg reflected a different attitude. Charles Koechlin once recalled that in an 1894 conversation, during the course of which several contemporary musical figures were discussed, ‘I heard [Debussy] pronounce severe judgement on Grieg, then at the height of his celebrity.’ And on the few occasions when Grieg is mentioned in Debussy’s writings, one finds the tone decidedly negative. In a 1903 review of a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, for example, Debussy asks sarcastically, ‘Has anyone noticed how awful people from the north become when they try to be Mediterranean?’ He sneered that the pianist who performed the work had more and Dag Schjelderup-Ebbe, Edvard Grieg: Chamber Music (Oslo, 1993), p. 106.   Arnfinn Stölen, ‘Debussys strykekvartett I’, in Edvard Grieg: Chamber Music, p. 106.   ‘… un peu de l’âme de la Norvège. (Vous savez comme c’est goûté en France.)’ Claude Debussy, Correspondance 1884–1918, François Lesure (ed.), (Paris, 1993), p. 95.   Harald Herresthal and Danièle Pistone (eds.), Grieg et Paris: Romantisme, symbolisme et modernisme franco-norvégien (Caen, 1996), p. 30.   Harald Herresthal and Danièle Pistone (eds.), Grieg et Paris, p. 51.   ‘… je l’entendis émettre des jugements sévères sur Grieg, alors à l’apogée de sa célébrité …’ Charles Koechlin, Debussy (Paris, 1927), p. 20; quoted in Roger Nichols, Debussy Remembered (London, 1992), p. 99.   ‘… a-t-on remarqué comme les gens de Nord deviennent insupportables quand ils veulent être

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talent than Grieg, ‘who seems to me to abuse his Norwegian birthright’.10 Later that same year, in a review of a Colonne concert devoted to Grieg’s music and conducted by the composer, Debussy concluded his remarks by noting that we can regret that [Grieg’s] stay in Paris taught us nothing new about his art; he remains a sensitive musician when he concerns himself with the folk music of his country, although he is nowhere near as effective in his use of such music as MM. Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov are in their use of Russian folk music. Apart from this, he is nothing more than a clever musician, more concerned with effect than with true art.11

Of course, Debussy’s opinions about certain composers or works changed over time, and the two reviews quoted above were written after Grieg had castigated France over its handling of the Dreyfus Affair;12 nevertheless, one must remember that the conversation with Koechlin in which Debussy dismissed Grieg’s talents occurred less than a year after the completion of his quartet. Should this fact cause us to re-evaluate the possibility that he might have been drawn to the work of the Norwegian composer as he set out to compose his quartet? Or should we instead view Debussy’s negative comments about Grieg in the same light in which we view his condemnations of Wagner – as an attempt to distance himself from a composer whose influence he felt all too keenly? In seeking to answer this question, I would suggest that we remember that Debussy wrote his string quartet for performance at the Société nationale de musique which, I believe, might have provided the point of contact between Debussy and Grieg, with important consequences for the shape of Debussy’s work. Debussy joined the Société nationale in January 1888. This was less than two years after Vincent d’Indy and his fellow Franckists had consolidated their control over the organization. Although they had exerted increasing influence since 1881, it was in 1886 that they proposed to include music by non-French composers on programmes of the Société’s chamber concerts. The passage of this controversial measure resulted in the resignation of Romain Bussine and Camille Saint-Saëns, the principal founders of the Société, and the elevation of César Franck to the du Midi?’ Claude Debussy, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, ed. François Lesure (Paris, 1971; 2nd edn 1987), p. 127. 10  ‘… qui abuse un peu du droit d’être norvégien’. Claude Debussy, Monsieur Croche, p. 127. 11  ‘… on peut regretter que son séjour à Paris ne nous ait rien appris de nouveau sur son art; il reste un musicien délicat, quand il s’assimile la musique populaire de son pays, quoiqu’il soit loin d’en tirer le parti que MM. Balakirev et Rimsky-Korsakov trouvent dans l’emploi de la musique populaire russe. Ceci ôté, il n’est plus qu’un musicien adroit plus soucieux d’effet que d’art véritable.’ Debussy, Monsieur Croche, p. 156. 12  Indeed, Debussy began his review of the Colonne concert with some ironic comments about Grieg’s criticisms of France. See Debussy, Monsieur Croche, p. 153. For more information on Debussy’s views on the Dreyfus Affair, see Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind, vol. 2: 1902–1918 (London, 1978), p. 75n.

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position of president (although it must be said that Franck was never more than a reluctant figurehead; it was actually d’Indy who ran the organization after 1886).13 D’Indy and his compatriots rapidly set about reshaping the Société nationale according to their artistic beliefs. Their conception of the Société as a showcase for those French musicians exhibiting the most ‘advanced’ tendencies, which in their minds meant those associated with Wagner and Franck, seemed at first glance to be at odds with the professed goal of the original founders who, in 1871, had conceived of an organization where, as Saint-Saëns once wrote, both ‘classic reactionaries and advanced Wagnerians’ could come together in pursuit of a common goal: the creation of a ‘serious’ style of French music.14 Yet from its earliest days the Société had received its primary impetus from those who had stood in the vanguard of musical development. If there was a difference after 1886, it was that d’Indy now wished to make the organization more restrictive, weeding out those who had been described by Saint-Saëns as ‘classic reactionaries’. The perception that the Société nationale was home to the most forward-thinking composers on the French musical scene, as the Franckists/Wagnerians surely were at that time, undoubtedly played an important role in attracting ambitious young composers such as Debussy, whose interest in Franck’s teaching had led him to enrol in the organ class at the Paris Conservatoire in 1880. Both Léon Vallas and Edward Lockspeiser imply that Debussy’s interest in Franck’s class stemmed solely from a desire to study organ.15 Yet several of Franck’s pupils remembered the class as dealing more with composition than with organ technique, and it was undoubtedly this aspect of the composer’s teaching that most interested Debussy.16 There may have been another factor that helped draw the young Debussy into both Franck’s organ class and, later, the Société nationale. The majority of la bande à Franck, as the master’s disciples were commonly described, came from upper-class, even aristocratic, backgrounds. Vallas noted the profound effect this fact had on perceptions of Franck’s pupils at the Conservatoire, and his description could just as easily be applied to the Société in the years after the Franckists consolidated their control. They very soon imprinted their aristocratic seal on [Franck’s] organ class; through their birth and the culture they attained they imposed upon their 13  For a detailed account of the events surrounding the Franckists’ ascendancy at the Société nationale, see Michael Creasman Strasser, ‘Ars Gallica: The Société Nationale de Musique and its Role in French Musical Life, 1871–1891’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1998), pp. 369–466. 14  Camille Saint-Saëns, ‘La Société Nationale de Musique’, in Harmonie et mélodie (Paris, 1885), p. 213. 15  Léon Vallas, Claude Debussy: His Life and Works, trans. Marie and Grace O’Brien (London,1933; reprint, New York, 1973), 11; and Lockspeiser, Debussy, vol. 1: 1862–1902 (London, 1978), p. 33. 16  Vincent d’Indy, César Franck, trans. Rosa Newmarch (London, 1910; reprint, New York, 1965), p. 244; and Pierre de Bréville, ‘Les Fioretti de père Franck’, Mercure de France 262 (1 November 1935): 252–4.

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comrades … a stamp of elegance, of attractive distinction … Out of Franck’s classroom there emanated a kind of superior and condescending aura which diffused itself about the other teachers and pupils, especially those concerned with the writing of cantatas, who were considered to belong to a lower class of society altogether.17

Soon after the Franckists took control of the Société, critics began to complain of the atmosphere of self-righteousness and exclusivity that now seemed to pervade the organization. In a review of the February 1889 concert at which Debussy’s name first appeared on a Société nationale programme, Camille Bellaigue complained that the organization, which under the direction of Saint-Saëns had been ‘an enlightened church’, could now best be described as ‘an obscure chapel’ led by ‘mysterious doctrinaires and hoaxers’. After recounting the abuse the Société’s new leadership had heaped upon Saint-Saëns, Bellaigue concluded that ‘nothing equals their contempt for the talent of M. Saint-Saëns and many others; nothing except their esteem for their own talent’.18 Debussy was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a social climber, always evincing a desire to mingle with the upper crust of society. It seems likely that the elevated social status of the Franckists played a role in Debussy’s interest in associating with them, and equally likely that the rarefied atmosphere that prevailed at the Société after 1886 might have both attracted and challenged him. During his first years as a member of the Société, Debussy contributed very little to the programmes. Two of his Ariettes were heard on 2 February 1889, about a year after he joined. We next encounter Debussy’s name on a Société programme a little over a year later, on 21 April 1890. It was on this occasion that Debussy’s Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra was scheduled, and then hastily withdrawn by the composer when he learned that only the first movement would be performed. Thus, it was only in 1893 that a second work by Debussy was heard at a Société concert, when La Damoiselle élue received its premiere at the orchestral concert of 8 April. By this time, Debussy had begun work on his string quartet. It comes as no surprise that he would turn his attention to such a work at this time. From its origins, the Société nationale had promoted the composition of chamber music, which in the founders’ eyes epitomized the ‘serious’ music they wished to promote. It was partially due to the lack of interesting new chamber music that the Franckists had proposed, as early as 1881, that foreign works be included on the Société’s chamber concerts.19 In order to fill the organization’s programmes with worthwhile new music, composers were sometimes approached with Léon Vallas, César Franck, trans. Hubert Foss (London, 1951), p. 258. ‘Rien n’égale leur mépris pour le talent de M. Saint-Saëns et de bien d’autres; rien, sinon leur estime pour leur propre talent’. Camille Bellaigue, ‘Revue musicale’, La Revue des deux mondes 59 (15 March 1889): 458–9. 19  The vast majority of the Société’s concerts could be classified as chamber concerts, and were held at the Salle Pleyel. There were usually ten to twelve concerts per season; only one or two of these were devoted to orchestral music. 17  18 

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requests to submit new works. In 1881, for example, Vincent d’Indy wrote to Paul Lacombe to urge that he compose a ‘large’ chamber work for inclusion on a Société programme, explaining that, as there was a need to revive interest in the chamber concerts, ‘we are requesting works from authors who we like, and in whom we have confidence’.20 While it is very likely that such requests continued throughout the decade (indeed, it is intriguing to speculate that the Société’s need for new chamber music might have provided the impetus for such masterworks as Franck’s Violin Sonata and String Quartet) there is no indication as to whether Debussy received such an informal commission. But like any other aspiring young member of the organization, he undoubtedly knew that new chamber works had a much better chance of receiving performances than orchestral scores. And he would have been very much aware of the exalted status that chamber music held in the eyes of the Société’s leadership. If Debussy were motivated to write a chamber work, why did he decide specifically to cast that work as a string quartet? After all, the most popular genre of chamber music among French composers of the time was the piano trio, and piano quartets and quintets were also found frequently on programmes of the Société throughout the first two decades of its existence, as can be seen in Table 7.1. Indeed, Debussy’s first attempt at a chamber work was a piano trio, which he completed in 1879, long before he joined the Société nationale. Marcel Dietschy speculates that the idea for writing a string quartet might have occurred to Debussy after the April 1890 premiere of Franck’s Quartet, which was said to have made a great impression on him.21 While it is possible that Franck’s work might have fired Debussy’s imagination, there were other, more practical considerations that might have played a role in his decision to compose a string quartet in the early 1890s. Table 1 shows that the number of string quartets performed at Société concerts was relatively small during the 1870s but increased dramatically after 1881. The presence of works by foreign composers after 1886 inflates the figures somewhat: there were three performances of Beethoven quartets during the years from 1886 to 1891, as well as performances of three quartets by contemporary foreign composers. Even after eliminating these six works, however, the upsurge in the number of quartets found on Société programmes is significant, and provides compelling evidence of the extent to which practical considerations often influenced the compositional choices made by the Société’s members. Before 1881, composers were responsible for securing performers for their chamber and solo works programmed by the Société. The difficulties involved in arranging for an appearance by one of the city’s established quartets, or of assembling four busy independent musicians for rehearsals and performances, undoubtedly discouraged composers from writing string quartets for performance 20  Letter from Vincent d’Indy to Paul Lacombe, 7 June 1881. Lacombe archive, Bibliothèque municipale de Caracassone. 21  Marcel Dietschy, A Portrait of Claude Debussy, ed. and trans. William Ashbrook and Margaret G. Cobb (Oxford, 1990), p. 76.

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Table 7.1 Number and Types of Chamber Works Appearing on Société nationale Programmes, 1871–91

Type of Chamber Work Piano trios Piano quartets Piano quintets String quartets String quintets Miscellaneous ensemble pieces Sonatas for solo instrument and piano Miscellaneous solo pieces

1871–81 1881–91 20 23 7 11 7 6 7 21 1 1 7 29 20 14 41 48

81–86 14 8 5 9 0 11 8 26

86–91 11 6 5 13 1 18 8 25

Note  In addition to a comparison of the first and second decades of the Société’s history, this table offers a further breakdown of the 1880s plus the following two years into the periods before and after d’Indy and the Franckists assumed formal control over the organization.

at Société concerts. (A piano trio obviously involved fewer performers, and the composer himself often played the piano part at Société concerts, further reducing the number of performers the composer needed to engage.) This situation changed when the Société struck a deal with the Marsick-Delsart Quartet to perform at all its chamber concerts in the 1881–82 season, and for at least the rest of the century the Société engaged a resident quartet at the beginning of every season. The regular presence of one of the city’s finest quartets encouraged the production of works for this most venerated of chamber combinations, and one can speculate that it played into Debussy’s decision in 1892 to write a quartet, even though the premiere was given by the Ysaÿe Quartet, which was not under contract to the Société. After the Franckists finally succeeded in opening the Société’s doors to chamber works by foreign composers, they wasted no time in implementing their new policy. Indeed, as if to highlight the change in programming philosophy, they decided to conclude the first concert of the 1886–87 season with such a composition. The work they selected for this honour was the String Quartet in G Minor by Edvard Grieg. Over the next five years works by Grieg were heard in no fewer than eight Société concerts. As can be seen in Table 7.2, these included a number of songs, piano works, arrangements, and the Violin Sonata in G Major. Interest in Grieg’s music was not restricted to the Société nationale. The Norwegian’s Piano Concerto was performed for the first time in Paris at a Pasdeloup concert in 1878, and was periodically heard at concerts of the city’s orchestral societies during the next two decades. One reviewer remarked in 1885

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies Table 7.2  Works by Grieg Performed at Société nationale Concerts, as Listed in the Programme

Date 8 Jan. 1887 19 Feb. 1887 5 March 1887

Concert no. 166 169 170

7 Jan. 1888 31 March 1888

177 183

16 March 1889 13 April 1889

193 195

28 Dec. 1889 26 Dec. 1891

197 216

20 Feb. 1892

220

18 Feb. 1893 17 March 1894

229 239

Works performed Quatuor pour instruments à cordes Feuillet d’album 3 Lieder de Grieg, transcrite pour 1 fl. alto, 2 gr. fl., harpe, piano et quatuor à cordes par Claude Blanc Danses Norwégiennes, à 4 mains Prélude [paired with an ‘Esquisse’ by Baeker Grøndahl] 2 Mélodies Sigurd Jorsalfar, 3 pièces pour piano à 4 mains [d’Indy on one piano] Sonate en Sol majeur pour piano et violon [See Table 7.3] Romance et variations, pour 2 pianos [d’Indy and Fauré] Sigurd Jorsalfar: Rève de Borghild, Marche [Bordes, Chausson] Ballade 3 Mélodies: Gutten, Våren, Ragnhild

Note  The concert of 13 April 1889 marks the first occasion when two or more substantial works by a foreign contemporary composer were performed at a Société nationale concert.

that a young pianist had enjoyed great success with a performance of Grieg’s work, ‘which is decidedly fashionable at the moment, and which one always hears with pleasure’.22 Two other Grieg compositions for string orchestra were performed at Colonne concerts in October 1887 and February 1889. In 1886 Oscar Commetant, one of Paris’s most influential critics, announced the organization of a two-concert series devoted to Scandinavian music, at which Grieg’s music was featured. In its review of the first of these concerts, Le Ménestrel noted that listeners had been able to hear ‘the productions of what is assuredly one of the most interesting schools in Europe’.23 A short follow-up in the next issue 22  ‘… qui est décidément à la mode et que l’on entend toujours avec plaisir’. Henri Barbedette, ‘Nouvelles diverses’, Le Ménestrel 51/11 (15 February 1885): 88. 23  ‘… les productions d’une des écoles musicales assurément les plus intéressantes d’Europe’. ‘Nouvelles diverses’, Le Ménestrel 53/7 (16 January 1887): 55.

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proclaimed that the concert ‘was at the same time a great artistic success and a great curiosity’.24 The enthusiasm shown for Grieg’s music by Parisian audiences of this time was later characterized by Romain Rolland as ‘an exaggerated infatuation’, which he attributed to a desire to find an attractive alternative to Wagner.25 The fascination of Parisian audiences with Grieg’s music reached a peak in December 1889, when the composer visited Paris in the midst of a successful European tour that also took him to London and Germany. He conducted Colonne’s orchestra in performances of several of his works on two consecutive Sundays, prompting enthusiastic responses from many Parisian critics.26 Shortly after Grieg arrived in Paris in early December, he received a letter from d’Indy inviting him to attend a Société nationale concert. I write in the name of the Committee of the Société nationale de musique, an association of French composers of which you have perhaps already had the occasion to hear bad things said, because it always walks in front down the path that it has marked out for itself without occupying itself with interests that are foreign to art. I request that you do us the very great honour of attending our gathering of Saturday evening, December 28, Salle Pleyel, where we plan to perform your superb quartet. You will find yourself in the midst of artists eminently sympathetic to you and your works and, as for me, I will consider myself very happy to thus make the acquaintance of a colleague whose productions I profoundly and sincerely admire. Would it be too indiscreet to ask you if you would have our friend de Greef, or if you would yourself play, one of your latest works for piano or one of your charming suites for four hands? Pardon our audacity and our indiscretion, kind sir, but the brotherhood of Art excuses many things, and please accept the expression of our great sympathy and of our sincere admiration.27 24  ‘… a été à la fois un grand succès d’artiste et un grand succès de curiosité’. ‘Nouvelles diverses’, Le Ménestrel 53/8 (23 January 1887): 63. 25  Romain Rolland, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1908; reprinted 1947), p. 217. 26  The first of these concerts, held on 22 December 1889, featured performances of the Mélodies élégiaques, the Piano Concerto, and Peer Gynt. The following Sunday, the melodrama Bergliot was substituted for the Mélodies élégiaques. For critical response to Grieg’s music, see Camille Bellaigue, ‘M. Edvard Grieg’, La Revue des deux mondes 97 (1 February 1890): 672–81. See also ‘Nouvelles diverses’, Le Ménestrel 55/52 (29 December 1889): 412–13, and ‘Nouvelles diverses’, Le Ménestrel 56/1 (5 January 1890): 5. 27  ‘Je viens, au nom du Comité de la Société nationale de musique, association de compositeurs français dont vous avez peut-être déjà eu l’occasion d’entendre dire du mal, parce qu’elle marche toujours en avant dans la voie qu’elle s’est tracée sans s’occuper des intérêts étrangers à l’Art, je viens vous prier de nous faire de très grand honneur d’assister à notre audition du Samedi soir 28 Décembre, salle Pleyel, où nous comptons donner votre superbe quatuor. ‘Vous vous trouverez au milieu d’artistes éminemment sympathiques à vous et à vos œuvres et, pour moi, je m’estimerai personnellement très heureux de faire ainsi connaissance avec un confrère dont j’admire profondément et sincèrement les productions. ‘Serait-ce trop indiscret de vous demander si vous voudriez bien faire jouer par notre ami de Greef, ou jouer vous même une de vos dernières œuvres pour piano ou encore une de vos si charmants suites

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The Société planned a veritable Grieg festival for its concert on 28 December. In addition to the quartet, the programme included five songs by the Norwegian composer as well as unnamed pieces for both solo piano and piano four-hands (the programme is reproduced in Table 7.3). Unfortunately, Grieg did not attend this gala event. Henri Gauthier-Villars (known as Willy), writing in a cryptic ‘telegraphic’ style in the pages of Art et critique, blamed Colonne for his absence. ‘Grieg, timid Norwegian, did not come in spite of promise, ‘influenzed’ [sic] by Colonne, opposing the exhibition of his composer on any stage other than that of Châtelet.’28 Julian Tiersot, a Société member who reviewed the concert for Le Ménestrel, was more oblique in his criticism, but nonetheless noted Grieg’s absence with a tinge of reprobation, revealing in his comments something of the haughty selfrighteousness that critics of the Société found so annoying. Regrettable circumstances prevented the Norwegian composer from lending his support to this evening, even though he had first promised and had clearly demonstrated the desire to do so: unfortunately, it turned out that some engagements that were more demanding than he had foreseen prevented him even from attending this gathering, given in his honour by a society of French musicians whose only preoccupation is the cult of art and that, for a long time, had introduced his works to its regular audience. If we were generally not very surprised, we were at least sincerely distressed: we regretted it even more because it prevented M. Grieg from finding himself, for the first time since he arrived in Paris, in a hall completely and brilliantly decorated in his honour, before an enthusiastic public that was apt to understand him. We know, moreover, that M. Grieg is truly himself only in chamber music and intimate music; consequently the programme of the Société nationale gave a much more complete and favourable idea of his talent than the two orchestral concerts presented elsewhere.29 à 4 mains? Pardonnez notre audace et notre indiscrétion, cher Monsieur, mais la confraternité en Art excuse bien des choses, et veuillez agréer l’expression de notre grande sympathie et de notre sincère admiration.’ Letter from Vincent d’Indy to Edvard Grieg, 6 December 1889. Vincent d’Indy, Ma vie: journal de jeunesse, correspondance familiale et intime 1851–1931, ed. Marie d’Indy, (Paris, 2001), pp. 428–9. 28  ‘Grieg, norwegien craintif, pas venu malgré promesse, influenzé [sic] par Colonne, s’opposant à l’exhibition de son compositeur sur une autre estrade que celle de Châtelet.’ Jim Smiley [Henri Gauthier-Villars], ‘Partie musicale’, Art et critique 2/32 (1 January 1890): 9. 29  ‘Des circonstances regrettables ont empêché le compositeur norvégien de prêter son concours à cette soirée, bien qu’il l’eût promis d’abord et en eût manifesté clairement le désir: par malheur, il s’est trouvé que des engagements dont il n’avait pas prévu toutes les rigueurs ne lui ont même pas permis d’assister à cette séance,donnée en son honneur par une société de musiciens français dont la seule préoccupation est le culte de l’art, et qui, dès longtemps, avaient fait connaître ses œuvres à leur auditoire habituel. On en a été généralement, sinon très surpris, du moins sincèrement peiné: on l’a regretté d’autant plus que cela a privé M. Grieg de se trouver, pour la première fois depuis sa venue à Paris, dans une salle complètement et brillamment garnie en son honneur, devant un public enthousiaste et apte à le comprendre. L’on sait d’ailleurs que M. Grieg n’est véritablement lui-même que dans la musique de chambre et la musique intime; aussi le programme de la Société nationale donnait-il une idée beaucoup plus complète et plus heureuse de son talent que les deux séances d’orchestre données d’autre part.’ Julien Tiersot, ‘Revue des grands concerts’, Le Ménestrel 56/1 (5 January 1890): 5. The

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Table 7.3 Programme for Concert No. 197 of the Société nationale (28 December 1889)

Composer Edv. Grieg Edv. Grieg Edv. Grieg Edv. Grieg A. Vinée P. Vidal G. Fauré V. d’Indy

Work Quatuor pour 2 violons, alto et violoncelle 3 Mélodies: ‘Je t’aime’, ‘Un cygne’, ‘Promenade dans la forêt’ Pièces pour piano seul Pièces pour piano à 4 mains 2 Mélodies: ‘Première rencontre’, ‘Ton conseil est parfait’ Adagio et Scherzo pour quatuor à cordes (1re audition) Sonnet mystique (1re audition) Lied (1re audition) Élégie pour violoncelle 6 Pièces pour piano, extrait de ‘tableau de Voyage’ (1re audition)

Grieg responded directly to Tiersot’s criticism in a letter written to d’Indy on 15 January 1890.30 He protested that as he had suffered such an irreparable loss when he had been unable to attend the Société’s concert, it seemed more than unjust that the reasons for his absence had now been called into question. It had not been other engagements that had prevented his attendance, but simply a bout of illness. He asked d’Indy to explain this to the membership and lodge a protest with Le Ménestrel ‘in the name of truth’. Two days later, d’Indy answered Grieg’s letter, expressing regret that Tiersot’s comments had led him to think badly of the Société. He assured the composer that the committee had nothing to do with the content of the article but defended Tiersot, saying that he probably thought Colonne had prevented Grieg from attending the Société’s concerts because that very thing had happened the previous year with Tchaikovsky.31 In fact, there is no evidence that such an event had occurred: the Société certainly had not scheduled a concert weighted with Tchaikovsky’s works comparable to that planned for the Norwegian composer, and it is probable that d’Indy was engaging in a little artful deception in order to deflect Grieg’s anger.32 two orchestral concerts referred to were, of course, the Colonne concerts at which Grieg conducted his own works. Colonne had conducted the Société’s orchestral concerts from the early 1870s, but he and the organization had acrimoniously parted ways in 1885 (see Strasser, Ars Gallica, pp. 193–205.) Tiersot’s comment can be perceived as manifesting a certain amount of jealousy, and suggests that the bitter feelings that had led to the break in relations between the conductor and the Société had not subsided. 30  Letter from Edvard Grieg to Vincent d’Indy, 15 January 1890. D’Indy, Ma vie, p. 430. 31  Letter from Vincent d’Indy to Edvard Grieg, 17 January 1890. D’Indy, Ma vie, p. 430. 32  D’Indy’s response gives further indication that the Société’s leadership may now have considered Colonne, who had done so much to support the organization’s growth in its early years, as something of an enemy.

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Works by Grieg were scheduled by the Société on several occasions during the early 1890s before fading from the programmes for good after 1894. Harald Herresthal and Danièle Pistone speculate that the composers of the Société nationale, who had once been so enthusiastic about Grieg and his music, were now more aware of his weaknesses, especially the difficulty he had in composing large-scale works. They also suggest that there might have been a tinge of jealousy directed towards the Scandinavian, who remained popular with audiences even as the ardour of the critics cooled noticeably.33 Whereas Parisian critics had once gushed over the originality found in works by Grieg and other Norwegian composers, now the character of their work seemed less inviting. In an 1894 review of yet another Parisian performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Henri Barbedette observed that ‘the artists of the North have an ideal apart; it seems that they are only illuminated by the light of twilight, they are surrounded by a horizon of ice, there is something mournful and nervous in them. Their note is persistent and lacking in variety.’34 There can be no doubt that d’Indy’s early enthusiasm for Grieg was later replaced with disdain. According to Louis Laloy, ‘he condemned Grieg with such severity [in his lectures at the Schola Cantorum] that perhaps he exaggerated by design, fearing that this musician who was all inspired whim and incapable of logic might serve as a bad example … I suffered as from an injustice, to hear him deny all talent in this way.’35 The startling reversal in d’Indy’s attitude concerning the man for whom he had once professed such respect and admiration was probably due at least as much to extra-musical factors as to any change in his opinion regarding Grieg’s compositional style. In 1899 Colonne invited Grieg to return to Paris to conduct some of his works. Angry over the verdict in the second Dreyfus trial, which had been announced the same day he received Colonne’s invitation (Dreyfus had been found guilty again, though he was pardoned shortly thereafter by a new government, and completely rehabilitated in 1906), Grieg declined the offer in an open letter that was published in newspapers throughout Europe. This act earned him the lasting enmity of French nationalists. Henri de Rochefort, the editor of the staunchly anti-Dreyfusard L’Intransigeant, promised that ‘the French public will remember this grotesque impertinence’ and advised Colonne not to programme works by ‘this Scandanavian croque-notes’.36 There can be no doubt Herresthal and Pistone, Grieg et Paris, p. 26. ‘Les artistes du Nord ont un idéal à part, il semble qu’ils ne soient éclairés que par des lueurs crépusculaires, un horizon de glace les entoure, il y a quelque chose de douloureux et d’énervant en eux. Leur note est persistante et dépourvue de variété.’ H. Barbedette, ‘Revue des grands concerts’, Le Ménestrel 60/4 (28 January 1894): 29. 35  ‘Il accablait Grieg d’une sévérité que peut-être il exagérait à dessein, par crainte du mauvais exemple que pouvait nous donner ce musicien tout en trouvailles et incapable de logique; ... je souffrais, comme d’une injustice, de lui entendre ainsi refuser tout talent.’ Louis Laloy, La Musique retrouvée 1902–1927 (Paris, 1928), pp. 85–6. 36  ‘Le public français … rappellera cette grossière impertinence’. Quoted in Herresthal and Pistone, Grieg et Paris, p. 27. Grieg was later astonished to receive from Rochefort a copy of 33  34 

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that the opinions of d’Indy, who was staunchly anti-Dreyfusard, were profoundly affected by this incident. But these events lay in the future. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, it is clear that the leadership of the Société nationale was intrigued by the music of Edvard Grieg: his works were featured at Société concerts much more often that those of any other contemporary foreign composer, and the String Quartet in G Minor, which with its two performances in 1887 and 1889 became the only extended work by a contemporary foreign composer to receive multiple hearings at the Société nationale, was particularly admired by the leadership of the organization. Debussy, a young composer just beginning to find his identity in the late 1880s, was undoubtedly attracted by the rarefied musical and social environment of the Société nationale. It seems likely that his decision to compose a string quartet resulted directly from his membership in the Société, and that he would have been at least partially motivated in that decision by the desire to compose a work that would gain the approval of the leadership, which included his friend Ernest Chausson. (In this light, one should remember Debussy’s wellknown response to Chausson’s criticisms of the Quartet … he promised to write another that would be more to Chausson’s liking.)37 It does not require too much of a stretch to imagine that Debussy just might have seen some value in modelling his own quartet on that of Grieg. This is not necessarily to imply a cynical attempt to curry favour on Debussy’s part; he might well have been attracted to Grieg’s harmonic language and formal design, which seemed more in line with his own predilections than those exhibited in, for example, Franck’s quartet. But the enthusiasm for Grieg’s music displayed by Debussy’s older, more experienced colleagues at the Société could only have piqued his interest, and might have provided further motivation to look more closely at the Norwegian’s quartet as he set out to write his own. There is no definitive proof that the similarities that Abraham and others have noted between the two works resulted from Debussy’s desire to please the Société’s membership and audience, but there is strong circumstantial evidence of a link. If nothing else, the connection between Grieg and the Société nationale provides an intriguing new twist to the story of how Debussy came to compose one of his first masterworks.

L’Intransigeant addressed to ‘the Jewish composer Edouard Grieg’. See Paul de Stœcklin, Grieg (Paris, 1926), p. 54. 37  See Debussy, Correspondance 1884–1918, pp. 96–7.

Chapter Eight

Symbolism as Compositional Agent in Act IV, Scene 4 of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande Marie Rolf Introduction Debussy’s intersection with the Symbolists, especially the literary writers associated with that movement at the end of the nineteenth century, was a subject dear to François Lesure’s heart. As a scholar, Lesure became increasingly aware of the significance of Symbolism in Debussy’s artistic growth; working with Guy Cogeval, he co-curated an exhibition on Debussy e il simbolismo in Rome in 1984, and eight years later he published Claude Debussy avant Pelléas, ou les années symbolistes. Many of the primary sources that he uncovered in Italy – documents from Debussy’s Prix de Rome years – informed the latter biographical study. Together with Stefan Jarocinski’s book, Debussy: Impressionism and Symbolism, in particular, Lesure’s work presents convincing evidence of Debussy’s immersion in Symbolism during the decade following 1885. The poets Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, would serve as powerful catalysts in the development of Debussy’s unique compositional voice. Most of the 14 Verlaine poems set by Debussy between 1882 and 1891 reflect small nuances of his evolving compositional style – elements such as increasingly flexible rhythms within an arabesque-like melody (often contrasting triplets and duplets); improved prosody; more frequent employment of recitative; less reliance on musical sequences;   I wish to thank colleagues Robert Bailey, Richard Langham Smith, Ralph Locke, Ciro Scotto, Logan Skelton, Robert Wason, and especially David Grayson for their invaluable advice in the preparation of this article. In addition, I am grateful to Christopher Winders for his skilful rendering of the musical examples.   François Lesure, Claude Debussy avant Pelléas, ou les années symbolistes (Paris, 1992).   Stefan Jarocinski, Debussy: Impressionism and Symbolism, trans. Rollo Myers (London, 1976).   See especially pp. 12–14 of Marie Rolf, facsmile edition, transcription, and essay on Claude Debussy’s ‘Les Papillons’ (New York, 2004) and pp. 227–33 of Marie Rolf, ‘Debussy’s Settings of Verlaine’s “En sourdine”’, Perspectives on Music (Austin, TX, 1985), pp. 205–33.

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greater independence between voice and accompaniment (and fewer octave doublings); a growing preference for odd-numbered bars within a phrase (reflecting Verlaine’s fondness for l’impair); the inclusion of musical motifs as symbols that often undergo a variational or transformational process that implies tonal areas rather than clearly stating them; shifting underlying harmonies while retaining the same melody (even at the same pitch level), and a propensity for superimposing non-tonal materials upon a fundamentally tonal structure. Debussy’s settings of the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1887–9) reflect his preoccupation with Wagner in the late 1880s. Mallarmé provided the impetus for Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), in which many of the same elements developed in the earlier Verlaine songs emerge as characteristic compositional traits, including more flexible rhythmic values, a reliance on musical symbols to suggest the sensations of the poem, the implication of multiple tonal areas, the reharmonization and shifting orchestral accompaniment beneath a single-voice melody (often repeated at the same pitch); and the superimposition of pentatonic and whole-tone materials on what is basically a tonal structure. Debussy’s wholehearted embrace of the Symbolist aesthetic reached its culmination in his interaction with Maurice Maeterlinck. The philosophical ideals of the playwright and the composer – coincidentally born within a week of each other – seemed so perfectly attuned that their collaboration was destined to produce the quintessentially Symbolist masterpiece, Pelléas et Mélisande. Suggestion rather than description, ambiguity rather than assertion; these were the watchwords of the Symbolists. Mallarmé eloquently expressed their values when he wrote,   See Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner (London, 1979), pp. 42–9 and David Michael Hertz, The Tuning of the Word (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1987), pp. 86–103. Debussy made pilgrimages to Bayreuth in 1888 and 1889, and was active in disseminating Wagner’s music in Parisian circles as well. For example, Debussy participated in a performance of Das Rheingold at the Paris Opéra, accompanying six soloists in excerpts that he and Raoul Pugno played on two pianos; the event was introduced by Catulle Mendès, a writer who had known and admired Wagner and whose own libretto for Rodrigue et Chimène was set by Debussy.   While Debussy acknowledged his intent merely to prolong ‘a general impression of the poem’ (‘l’impression générale du poëme’, see letter of 10 October 1895 from Debussy to Henry GauthierVillars, cited in Claude Debussy, Correspondance, 1872–1918, ed. François Lesure and Denis Herlin (Paris, 2005), p. 278), other authors, notably Arthur Wenk (in his Claude Debussy and the Poets (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 148–70) and David Loberg Code (in his article ‘Hearing Debussy Reading Mallarmé’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 54/3 (2001): 493–554), have speculated that Debussy’s work followed Mallarmé’s poetic structure much more literally, the 110 lines of alexandrine verse being replicated in the 110 bars of Debussy’s composition.   It is difficult to ascertain an implied harmony beneath the opening, unaccompanied melody of the Prélude, beginning on c 2 and descending a tritone to g-natural1. Once the melody returns to c 2 and then moves through d 2 to e2, followed by an arpeggiation to g 1 and b1, one might expect a harmony of E major; however, at the moment that the melody turns from b1 back to c 2 and then a 1, we are thrown off guard once again, especially by the ambiguous diminished-seventh sonority beneath the a 1. Furthermore, this sonority ‘resolves’ to a B  7 chord, both harmonies distantly related to the anticipated harmony of E major.

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To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment of a poem, enjoyment meant to develop gradually; but to suggest it – that is the ideal. To make perfect use of this mystery is the function of the symbol: to evoke gradually an object in order to show … and to release from it a state of mind … 

The poet also referred to a method of evoking, ‘in deliberately shadowy terms, an un-named object, using only allusive, never direct, words, the equivalent of silence’. Debussy articulated principles uncannily similar to those of Mallarmé in October 1889, when asked by his composition teacher Ernest Guiraud what type of poet would furnish the ideal text for musical setting: He who, by leaving some things unsaid, will allow me to graft my dream on his; he who will create characters who belong to no particular time or place; he who will not tyrannically force me to compose a big scene ‘for effect’ and who will leave me free, here and there, to allow my art to take precedence over his and to complete his work.10

And in a letter to Pierre Louÿs written on 17 July 1895, Debussy lauded the expressive potential of silence: ‘Silence is a fine thing and God knows that the empty bars in Pelléas bear witness to my love for that kind of emotion.’11 Maeterlinck’s views of silence as ‘an essential component to love’, as well as its qualities of passivity and relation to destiny or death, were clearly attractive to Debussy.12 Indeed, Maeterlinck’s play seemed to have been tailor-made to Debussy’s wishes. As a group, the Symbolists were keenly aware and appreciative of Richard Wagner’s compositions and ideology. La Revue wagnérienne, published in the mid-1880s under the direction of Edouard Dujardin, was in large part a Symbolist mouthpiece.13 Scholars David Grayson, Robin Holloway, Carolyn Abbate, and   ‘Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite de deviner peu à peu: le suggérer, voilà le rêve. C’est le parfait usage de ce mystère qui constitue le symbole: évoquer petit à petit un objet pour montrer … et en dégager un état d’âme …’ Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1945), p. 869. All translations are my own.   ‘Evoquer, dans une ombre exprès, l’objet tu, par des mots allusifs, jamais directs, se réduisant à du silence égal.’ Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, p. 400. 10  ‘Celui qui, disant les choses à demi, me permettra de greffer mon rêve sur le sien; qui concevra des personnages dont l’histoire et la demeure ne seront d’aucun temps, d’aucun lieu; qui ne m’imposera pas, despotiquement, la «scène à faire» et me laissera libre, ici ou là, d’avoir plus d’art que lui, et de parachever son ouvrage.’ Maurice Emmanuel, Pelléas et Mélisande de Debussy : Etude historique et critique, Analyse musicale (Paris, 1926), pp. 35–6. 11  ‘Le silence est une belle chose et Dieu sait que les mesures blanches de Pelléas témoignent de mon amour de ce genre d’émotion.’ Claude Debussy, Correspondance de Claude Debussy et Pierre Louÿs (1893–1904), ed. Henri Borgeaud (Paris, 1945), p. 56. 12  For a fuller discussion of Maeterlinck’s views on the expressive power of silence, see pp. 22–4 of Richard Langham Smith’s chapter entitled ‘The Play and its Playwright’ in Roger Nichols and Richard Langham Smith, Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–29. 13  The Symbolists’ fascination with Wagner was not always based on a clear and accurate understanding of his work, however. For a discussion of their distortion of Wagner’s ideas, see

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Richard Langham Smith have all commented on Debussy’s complex response to Wagner’s music.14 Debussy’s vociferous objections to Wagner’s ‘characterleitmotifs’ and his symphonic developments will be explored later in this chapter. However, there can be no doubt that the ‘ghost’ of Wagner loomed large in Debussy’s own opera. Our understanding of how Debussy’s musical response to Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play took on greater depth and subtlety will be facilitated by a brief review of the background surrounding both Maeterlinck’s and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Published in 1892,15 Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande was first performed in Paris on 17 May 1893 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-parisiens. Debussy attended the première, and was immediately taken with the work; by the end of that year, he had received Maeterlinck’s permission to use his play as the basis of a libretto, and he had already undertaken the composition of his opera.16 Beginning with Act IV, Scene 4, Debussy continued with Acts I, III–V, and II of Pelléas, completing a draft of the entire work by summer 1895. As was his habit, the composer painstakingly revised, refined, and eventually orchestrated his score, and Pelléas was finally performed in April 1902 at the Opéra-comique. Not surprisingly, Act IV, Scene 4 underwent more changes than any other scene. The transformation from its origins to the version as it was published in 1902 can be traced through four major sources: the Meyer, Lehman (formerly Legouix), Bréval, and Koch (formerly New England Conservatory) manuscripts.17 Although Andrew G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France, 1885–1895, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1968), pp. 194–247. 14  See especially the chapter entitled ‘Pelléas and the “Wagnerian Formula” in the Light of Source Evidence’ in David Grayson, The Genesis of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (Ann Arbor, 1986), pp. 225– 75, as well as pp. 50–59 of Holloway. Carolyn Abbate, in ‘Tristan in the Composition of Pelléas’, 19thCentury Music 5/2 (Fall 1981): 117–41, concludes that Debussy ‘received from Wagner certain lois, but used allusion to the operas which were the source of that technique to fashion an interpretation of Maeterlinck’s text, and to comment on his own musical reading of that drama’ (p. 141). 15  Maurice Maeterlinck, Pélléas et Mélisande (Brussels, 1892). Debussy owned a copy of this edition; note that Pelléas was spelled with two accents aiguës. See Nichols and Langham Smith, Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, p. 198. 16  Debussy’s recollections of his initial work on Pelléas, made in 1907, are cited in Oswald d’Estrade-Guerra, ‘Les manuscrits de Pelléas et Mélisande’, La Revue musicale 235 (special issue) (1952): 7. The manuscript sources indeed corroborate the fact that Debussy was busy working on his opera that autumn. In November he had travelled with Pierre Louÿs to Ghent in order to obtain Maeterlinck’s permission to make cuts from the play for his opera libretto (see his letter to Ernest Chausson in Debussy, Correspondance, 1872–1918, ed. Lesure and Herlin, pp. 175–6). Other pertinent letters regarding the compositional progress of Pelléas have been collected by François Lesure in his preface to the facsimile edition of the Meyer and Bréval manuscripts; see François Lesure (ed.), Esquisses de Pelléas et Mélisande (Geneva, 1977), pp. 11–16. 17  These manuscripts are located respectively in the André Meyer collection, Ms. 20631, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Robert Owen Lehman deposit in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Mus. ms. 1206 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; and the Frederick R. Koch Collection on deposit in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Published source studies include Oswald d’Estrade-Guerra, ‘Les manuscrits de Pelléas et Mélisande’, pp. 1–24; James R. McKay, ‘The Bréval Manuscript: New Interpretations,’ Cahiers Debussy, nouvelle

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a full account of the successive alterations made is beyond the scope of the present study, a partial demonstration of how they reflect Debussy’s increasing sensitivity to the opera’s Symbolist foundation will be given later. It is no mere coincidence that most of Debussy’s early compositions were based on literary texts.18 To a great extent, they reflect his budding artistic identification with both Symbolist and Wagnerian ideals, and also demonstrate the composer’s consistent dependence on a literary framework to define and govern his musical structure. Debussy’s prolonged and persistent search, via such literary models, for a novel means of expression, for a new and distinct musical vocabulary, and for a unique approach to structural organization was eventually fulfilled in his Pelléas et Mélisande.19 Act IV, Scene 4 warrants our special attention since it was the portion of the opera to which Debussy initially responded musically, and since he obviously cared enormously about this scene by continually refining it. As the climax of the entire opera, the scene embodies a wide range of emotions, and hence of compositional techniques; thus, it offers an ideal prototype for study, manifesting a musical form and coherence that emanates largely from Maeterlinck’s Symbolist text. After a brief overview of the dramatic structure of the scene, we will examine specific compositional techniques developed by Debussy in response to Maeterlinck’s Symbolist text. These govern both local events and largescale structure. Later, we will show how Debussy’s increasing sensitivity to the ambiguity and symbolic images in Pelléas evolved over time, as documented in his working-draft manuscripts of the work. Structure of Act IV, Scene 4 From a dramatic as well as a musical point of view, Act IV, Scene 4 divides into four major sections (see Example 8.1). The orchestral interlude and entrance of Pelléas, who struggles between his urgent duty to leave and his passionate yearning to see Mélisande again, together comprise an introduction that anticipates the first série 1 (1977): 5–15; Abbate, ‘Tristan in the Composition of Pelléas’; Robert Orledge, Debussy and the Theatre (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 48–101; David A. Grayson’s seminal study; and Nichols and Langham Smith’s Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande. 18  During his formative period from 1880 to 1895, the composer wrote far more text-based music than purely instrumental works. Compositions based on a text comprise some 68 songs (including the Ariettes oubliées, the first series of Fêtes galantes, the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire, and the Proses lyriques), about 12 choral compositions (including L’Enfant prodigue and La Damoiselle élue), and work on two operas. The primary instrumental works composed during this time are the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (itself based on Mallarmé’s poem), the String Quartet, approximately 15 short piano pieces (including the Suite bergamasque and the Images [oubliées]), about eight works for piano four-hands (including the Petite Suite), and an early trio as well as a piece for cello. 19  Debussy abandoned most of his other early dramatic attempts, such as his opera Rodrigue et Chimène, apparently because he must have felt thwarted in achieving these compositional goals.

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Example 8.1 Dramatic and Musical Structure of Act IV, Scene 4

Introduction Orchestral interlude Pelléas: ‘C’est le dernier soir’ Part 1 Mélisande enters in silence Pelléas: ‘Viens ici … dans l’ombre du tilleul’ Mélisande: ‘Laissez-moi dans la clarté’ Mélisande’s account of leaving the castle Reminiscence of former meeting by the well Pelléas: ‘Sais-tu pourquoi je t’ai demandé de venir ce soir?’ Mutual confession of love in silence Part 2 Pelléas: ‘On dirait que ta voix a passé sur la mer au printemps’ Mélisande: ‘Je ne mens jamais, je ne mens qu’à ton frère’ Pelléas rhapsodizes on Mélisande’s beauty Pelléas: ‘Je l’ai trouvée’ Pelléas: ‘Viens … dans la lumière’ Mélisande: Je suis plus près de toi dans l’obscurité’ ‘Je suis heureuse, mais je suis triste’ Part 3 Castle gates close Animé Pelléas: ‘Il est trop tard’ – Mélisande: ‘Tant mieux’ Pelléas: ‘Tout est perdu, tout est sauvé’ Embrace in silence Modéré Pelléas: ‘Ah! qu’il fait beau dans les ténèbres’ Part 4 Animé Mélisande: ‘Il y a quelqu’un derrière nous’ Modéré Pelléas: ‘Je n’entends que ton cœur dans l’obscurité’ Animé Mélisande: ‘Ah! Il est derrière un arbre’ Pelléas: ‘Il nous tuera’ – Mélisande: ‘Tant mieux’ Pelléas: ‘Toutes les étoiles tombent’ Golaud stabs Pelléas and Mélisande flees large section of the scene. Significantly, part 1 is framed by silence at both its beginning and end. Mélisande enters in absolute silence, unaccompanied;20 she then calls Pelléas by name and he in turn acknowledges her, also unaccompanied. Just before the end of part I, they confess their mutual love, once again softly 20  It is most interesting to note that in the earlier drafts for this passage, up to and including the Lehman draft, Mélisande enters with orchestral accompaniment; this accompaniment is scratched out in the Bréval manuscript. Debussy’s strategic use of silence was thus an idea that evolved over time.

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and without orchestral support. The dialogue that is sustained between these two moments may be subdivided by several events: Pelléas’s invitation, ‘Viens ici … dans l’ombre du tilleul’ (‘Come here … in the shadow of the trees’), and Mélisande’s reply, ‘Laissez-moi dans la clarté’ (‘Let me stay here in the light’); Mélisande’s account of leaving Golaud in the castle and Pelléas’s response; the lovers’ recollection of a former time when they had met by the well; and Pelléas’s explanation for his sudden plans to depart, leading to their mutual declaration of love. Part 2 opens with Pelléas’s famous song, ‘On dirait que ta voix a passé sur la mer au printemps’. This ‘aria’ is interrupted by a momentary dialogue in which Mélisande confesses enigmatically, ‘Je ne mens jamais; je ne mens qu’à ton frère’ (‘I never lie; I only lie to your brother’). Pelléas continues to rhapsodize on Mélisande’s attributes, concluding with a second exhortation to ‘Viens’, this time ‘dans la lumière’ rather than ‘dans l’ombre’. Ironically, while in part 1 Mélisande preferred to remain ‘dans la clarté’, she now claims to be closer to Pelléas ‘dans l’obscurité’. She expresses her emotional confusion at the end of this section, declaring that she is ‘heureuse’ but at the same time ‘triste’. Parts 3 and 4 flow together dramatically and musically, sharing some motivic material. Beginning with the abrupt clank of the closing gates, part 3 reintroduces the restless triplet motif stated by the orchestra during the introduction of the scene. It builds in dynamic intensity to forte, followed by a full-bar rest, which coincides with the climactic embrace of the lovers. Their subsequent expressions of ecstasy are heard at a dynamic level of pianissimo. Golaud enters in part 4, which alternates between his menacing, staccato motif, accompanied in the score with a tempo marking of ‘animé (sombre et inquiet)’, and a sweeping ‘modéré’ theme representing the lovers’ rapture. The sforzando climax of this section occurs when Golaud strikes Pelléas with his sword, and the remaining bars serve as denouement, balancing structurally the opening introduction of the scene. Compositional Techniques Before examining the structural interdependence of the music and the Symbolist text within larger portions of scene 4, it will be useful to isolate several representative compositional techniques used by Debussy on a phrase-to-phrase level that simultaneously enhance the drama and provide structural cohesion. The first involves a process of additive variation that introduces new material in successive bars while retaining elements of the original material; gradually, the original material is stripped away, and the new material is combined with other events, resulting in a continuous transformation of ideas. Thus, each bar is generated by the previous one, and in turn generates the next.21 Traditional 21  To my knowledge, the term ‘additive variation’ has not been used by other analysts of Debussy’s music, though the concept of a small, musical cell producing ‘inexhaustible variants’, or

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techniques such as repetition and sequence further facilitate this continuum.22 Debussy employs these techniques to underscore the dramatic action. Observe, for example, the way in which he sets Mélisande’s account of her departure from the castle in part 1 of the scene (see the 1907 Durand vocal score, henceforth abbreviated as VS, pp. 238–41). The conversational tone of this passage gradually shifts in character from Mélisande’s relatively factual narration of her hasty exit to a more intimate exchange between the two lovers, ending in Pelléas’s emotional outburst, ‘Il y aurait plutôt de quoi pleurer’ (‘Surely there’s more to weep for than to smile for’). Debussy reflects this transfer of focus by employing additive variation in sequence, gradually ascending in pitch and increasing in intensity, and culminating on F , a tritone from where the excerpt had begun (C). By the end of the passage, on Pelléas’s words ‘Il y aurait plutôt de quoi pleurer’, the musical material has been completely transformed not only in its pitch focus, but also in motif, rhythm, texture, tessitura, and dynamics; Example 8.2a isolates the melodic line carried by the orchestra in this passage, illustrating the increased rhythmic motion as well as the rise in tessitura and dynamics. Furthermore, while these bars are in one sense the goal of the preceding bars, they also introduce ‘new’ material – a motif that is connected with the character of Pelléas throughout the opera (labelled ‘Pelléas motif’ in the last two bars of Example 8.2a). The schema in Example 8.2b illustrates more graphically how the additive variational process unfolds in this passage. Motivic cells with identical contours and pitch content (or intervallic content) are aligned vertically; one can view at a glance the rhythmic variants as well. Notice that the rhythmic tail of the motif in bars 1–2 begets the new gesture in bar 3, whose prime form is equivalent to the prime form of the four-note set heard in bars 1–2. In turn, the e–f  tail of this second gesture in bars 3–5 becomes the head of the third gesture, which begins at ‘endless variation’ has been discussed by authors such as Herbert Eimert (‘Debussy’s Jeux’, Die Reihe 5 (English edition) (1961): 3–20). The basic notion of additive variation is subsumed by Schoenberg’s more general concept of ‘developing variation’; see Walter Frisch, Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (Berkeley, 1990), especially p. 9. In their semiotic approach to Debussy’s music, analysts such as Ruwet and Nattiez identify the smallest distinctive units possible in a work; for example, see Nicolas Ruwet, ‘Note sur les duplications dans l’œuvre de Claude Debussy’, Revue belge de musicologie 16 (1962): 57–70, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Musicologie générale et sémiologie (Paris, 1987). See also antecedents of these ideas in the discussions of the ‘arabesque’ and ‘structural metamorphosis’ by Françoise Gervais in ‘La Notion d’arabesque chez Debussy’, La Revue musicale 241 (1958): 2–33 and in ‘Structures Debussystes’, La Revue musicale 258 (special issue) (1964): 77– 88, respectively. André Fontainas, in his Mes souvenirs du Symbolisme (Paris, 1928), pp. 92–3, recalled Debussy’s self-professed attempt to write ‘a music … formed from a single, continuous motif which nothing interrupts and which never repeats itself [my emphasis]. Thus there would be a logical, tight, deductive development …’ (‘une musique … formée d’un seul motif contenu, que rien n’interrompt et qui jamais ne revienne sur lui-même. Alors il y aura développement logique, serré, déductif …’) 22  In general, Debussy relies on these traditional compositional techniques of repetition and sequence more often in the earlier drafts of Act IV, Scene 4, up to and including the Lehman manuscript. In fact, one entire passage in the Lehman manuscript, following Mélisande’s remark that she is at the same time ‘heureuse’ and ‘triste’ and leading up to the closing of the castle gates, is based almost exclusively on repetition and sequence; this passage is absent altogether from the Bréval manuscript.

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Example 8.2a Additive Variation

bar 9. And so on. As each new cell is added, the former cells gradually drop out, creating a continuous melodic transformation, as illustrated by the basic shape of Example 8.2b. Even though elements of the newly transformed motifs can relate all the way back to an early motif (see Example 8.2c), the point is that these new motifs are generated through the process of additive variation. Debussy’s manipulation of dyadic pitch-class sets displays this transformational property as well (Example 8.2c). The first eight bars of this passage are generated from cycles of [0235] at t7 (the transposition level of 7 half-steps is derived from alternating t3s and t4s, as shown in the first line of Example 8.2c). Notice that the first two pitches of the third cycle (e–f ) combine with the last two pitches of the fifth cycle (c –d ) to form yet another [0235] set, this time presented in inversion. Note also the [0246] sets that connect the [0235] cycles; their wholetone character is not fully expressed at the compositional surface until bar 7, with a brief preliminary hint in bars 4–5.

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Example 8.2b  Motivic and Rhythmic Variants

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Example 8.2c Transformation of Intervallic Content

The passage becomes more fragmented beginning in bar 9. Now the [0235] set becomes embedded within the sequence of dyads (see the second line of Example 8.2c), while the [0123] and [024] sets predominate at the musical surface. These dyads are connected by t1 and t2 transpositions, which combine to form the t3 and t4 transpositions that generated the cycles in bars 1–8. Thus, the fragmentation of the tetrachords accompanies a compression of intervals (from [0235] and [0246] to [0123] and [024]) as well as a compression of time for each dyad to unfold (from one dyad per bar in bars 9, 10, and 11 to two dyads per bar in bars 12–16, as shown in Example 8.2b) and increased surface rhythms, higher tessitura, and dynamics; employed in combination, these elements enable Debussy to achieve a stunning musical transformation in this passage. A second procedure that Debussy typically uses to help propel the action– both dramatic and musical – forwards is to truncate events successively, juxtaposing them at closer and closer intervals of time (a process noted in bars 9–16 of Example 8.2). This technique, termed foreshortening (after the art-historical concept) by Alfred Brendel in his discussion of Beethoven’s frequent use of it in his piano sonatas, may be applied to virtually any parameter of the musical structure.23 It operates in melodic-rhythmic terms in the passage shown in Example 8.3, where four-beat units are foreshortened into two-beat units in the third bar. Quaver (eighth-note) offbeats in the accompaniment subsequently give rise to semiquaver (sixteenth-note) offbeats in bar 3, which are sequenced at t3 in bar 5. The increased 23  Alfred Brendel, Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (London, 1976), pp. 42–3, 50–51, and 154–61. Brendel’s foreshortening technique is not unlike Arnold Schoenberg’s concept of ‘liquidation’, treated in his Fundamentals of Musical Composition, eds Gerald Strang and Leonard Stein (New York, 1970), p. 58ff.

Example 8.3  Foreshortening

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rhythmic activity finally peaks in bars 6 and 7 with a tremolo, which incidentally has been prepared in an additive way by the trill that runs through bars 3 to 5. The unison and octave doublings in bars 6 and 7, along with the tenuto accents on each beat in the flutes and clarinets in the orchestral score, now reinforce each individual crotchet (quarter note). Thus, Debussy’s use of foreshortening not only unifies this passage motivically, reflecting Pelléas’s single-minded preoccupation, but it builds in intensity to the last two bars, underscoring Pelléas’s exclamation, ‘on dirait par moments qu’il y a cent ans que je ne l’ai plus vue’ (‘At times you would think it was at least a hundred years since I last saw her’). Additive variation and foreshortening techniques are combined with that of abrupt interpolation to prolong and sustain a passage of gradually mounting anticipation.24 In part 4 of scene 4, when Pelléas and Mélisande realize that Golaud is behind a nearby tree, armed with his sword, and that they are trapped without chance of escape, Debussy’s music echoes the lovers’ increasing alarm mixed with reckless passion (Example 8.4). In each case, the musical interpolations temporarily hold in check the ever-agitated surface motion and pull back the expanding dynamic levels to piano or pianissimo.25 Example 8.4 shows the interaction of all three processes – additive variation, foreshortening and interpolation; letters A–G indicate the motivic (pitch/rhythm) content that is subject to additive variation (when the motif is inverted, so are the descriptive letters), while the numbers bracketed above the system refer to the foreshortening scheme. Two 2-bar units, E and F, function as interruptions in this excerpt, both within chromatic passages labelled as ‘C’ material. The same principles operate over longer portions of scene 4, inextricably linking the music with the dramatic action. For example, parts 3 and 4 display a continual alternation between the lovers’ fear of being confronted by Golaud and fear of death on the one hand, and their profession of passionate love and ecstasy on the other. The rather close juxtaposition suggests aspects of impetuosity and even violence that these turbulent emotions have in common. A sense of urgency builds gradually in waves, eventually precipitating the final rush to the climax at the end of the scene, when Golaud stabs Pelléas with his sword. Debussy’s music 24  Traces of Debussy’s compositional thinking are evident, of course, in his manuscripts. The concepts of sequencing two-bar units while employing an additive-variation process, as well as the principle of foreshortening, may be observed in the Meyer manuscript (see Lesure (ed.), Esquisses de Pelléas et Mélisande, pp. 55, 57). Debussy labels the bars as follows: 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 5 6 – – 7 8 7 8 – – 9 10 9 10 (note that foreshortening occurs in the bars labelled 9 and 10). For a fuller discussion of these and other processes evident from Debussy’s manuscripts, see Marie Rolf, ‘Orchestral Manuscripts of Claude Debussy: 1892–1905’, Musical Quarterly 70/4 (1984): 538–66. 25  Both Laurence D. Berman, in ‘Debussy, “Jeux de vagues”’ (unpublished response to a paper by Douglass M. Green, AMS national meeting, Washington, D.C., 3 November 1974), and Roy Howat, in Debussy in Proportion (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 110–135 discuss a similar ‘alternation of impediments and forward impulses’ (Howat, p. 114) in Debussy’s ‘Jeux de vagues’ movement from La Mer. Berman’s article (‘Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Jeux: Debussy’s Summer Rites’, 19th-Century Music 3/3 (March 1980): 225–38) treats the surface interruptions in both Faune and Jeux as textually derived phenomena.

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Example 8.4 Additive, Foreshortening and Interruption Procedures

continued

Act IV, Scene 4 of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande Example 8.4  concluded

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correspondingly shifts between sections indicated animé (sombre et inquiet), portraying the sensations of hate or fear and characterized by syncopated and dotted rhythms and chromatic or whole-tone passages, and sections generally marked modéré, which portray love or ecstasy through music more lyrical, rhythmically regular, and diatonic in nature. The fact that the alternating passages in parts 3 and 4 occasionally (though not usually) share derivative melodic material underscores the mutual elements of the two, seemingly dissimilar emotions (Example 8.5). Example 8.5 Shared Material in the Modéré and Animé Sections

Finally, the acceleration of the action to the climax is enhanced musically by profuse sequential treatment and a continuation of the animé tempo throughout the lovers’ final expression of rapture to the end of the scene (refer back to Example 8.1). Leitmotifs Throughout his opera, Debussy linked certain motivic formulae with corresponding dramatic elements, lending structural unity to the work. This technique smacks of Wagner’s use of the leitmotif, in spite of Debussy’s public disclaimers of the principle. In an interview in Le Figaro from 16 May 1902, about two weeks after the première of his opera, Debussy stated that Certainly, my compositional process, which consists above all of dispensing with compositional processes, owes nothing to Wagner. In his work, each character has, one might say, his ‘calling card’, his photograph, his ‘leitmotif’ which always precedes him. I confess that I consider this method to be rather crude.26 26  ‘Certes, mon procédé, qui consiste surtout à me passer de tous les procédés, ne doit rien à Wagner. Chez lui chaque personnage a pour ainsi dire son ‘prospectus,’ sa photographie, son ‘leitmotif’

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Privately, however, in a letter to his friend Ernest Chausson of 2 October 1893 – around the time of the opera’s inception – he confessed that he had destroyed much of what he had already written because ‘the ghost of old Klingsor, alias R. Wagner, appeared at the turning of one of the bars’.27 In fact, the sources show that Debussy did indeed eliminate many leitmotifs in his initial revisions of Pelléas, but that he subsequently added new ones, especially for purposes of foreshadowing and reminiscence, eventually employing them more consistently throughout the entire opera.28 Louis Laloy wrote that Debussy’s objections to Wagner’s use of leitmotifs were based on his preference to associate his motifs with inner feelings and sensations, or states of being, rather than with the character, places, or objects themselves.29 For example, the dotted rhythmic motif, associated by many authors with the character of Golaud, is perhaps less a depiction of the man than of the distrust and anxiety that he carries with him. Similarly, the melody linked with Pelléas (see the last two bars of Example 8.2a) is less a description of him than of a melancholy gentleness that permeates his existence. In each case, the purpose of Debussy’s leitmotifs is to suggest rather than to describe, to reveal the unconscious rather than to announce the obvious. In fact, the leitmotif’s potential for expressing ambiguity in the Symbolist sense is a principal feature of Debussy’s opera, and one that we shall examine shortly. The composer’s second reservation concerning Wagner’s leitmotifs involves their developmental qualities. In the same interview from Le Figaro cited earlier, Debussy asserted that ‘the symphonic development that [Wagner] introduced into opera seems to me to conflict continually with the moral argument in which the characters are engaged, and with the play of passions, which alone is important’.30 Instead, Debussy questioned, would it not be better that music should by a simple means – a chord? a curve? – endeavor to render the successive impulses and moods as they are produced, without don’t il se fait toujours précéder. J’avous estimer cette méthode un peu grossière.’ Claude Debussy, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, ed. François Lesure (Paris, 1971), p. 271. Debussy expressed similar sentiments with regard to the characters in Wagner’s Ring in an article in Gil Blas, published on 1 June 1903; see Debussy, Monsieur Croche, p. 173. 27  ‘le fantôme du vieux Klingsor, alias R. Wagner, apparaissait au détour d’une mesure’. Debussy, Correspondance,1884–1918, ed. Lesure, p. 88. 28  In his final chapter, Grayson discusses Debussy’s revisions to his leitmotifs in the various drafts of Act IV, Scene 4. 29  A musicologist and close friend of Debussy, Laloy was one of the first critics to compare Debussy’s use of leitmotifs with that of Wagner; see his ‘Le drame musical moderne. IV: Claude Debussy’, Mercure musical 1/6 (1 August 1905): 233–50, especially pp. 241–44. His explanation of Wagner’s use of the leitmotif as a mere label for a character or place is oversimplified, ignoring the subtleties of Wagner’s approach, which had obviously attracted Debussy. Richard Langham Smith cites Debussy’s reliance on the ‘idea-leitmotif’ or ‘psychological’ leitmotif (see his chapter on ‘Motives and Symbols’ in Nichols and Smith, Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, pp. 79–80). 30  ‘le développement symphonique qu’il a apporté dans le drame lyrique me paraît contrarier continuellement le conflit moral où sont engagés les personnages, l’action passionnelle qui seule importe’. Debussy, Monsieur Croche, p. 271.

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Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies making laborious efforts to follow a symphonic development, foreseen, and always arbitrary, to which one will necessarily be tempted to sacrifice the emotional development.31

Simply put, Debussy developed a musical syntax quite different from that of Wagner in order to accomplish his aesthetic goal, which was to reveal the states of his characters’ souls. To that end, he typically employed flexible, arabesquelike motifs, generally shorter than Wagner’s, yet which, like Wagner’s leitmotifs, could imply and accommodate different harmonic backgrounds.32 Observe the vastly differing harmonic accompaniments to just three presentations of the motif often associated with Pelléas’s emotion in part 1 of Act IV, Scene 4. Its first appearance in the opera is in Act I, Scene 2, when Pelléas is introduced, and is supported by E9 and D9 sonorities that resolve to a C+6 (Example 8.6a); note that the text indicates that Pelléas has been weeping. At the beginning of Act IV, Scene 4, the motif accompanies his ambivalent plaint, ‘Je vais fuir en criant de joie et de douleur’ (‘I shall flee with a cry of joy and a cry of pain’), this time within a quasi-whole-tone context (Example 8.6b). The harmonic support beneath Pelléas’s outburst, ‘Il y aurait plutôt de quoi pleurer’, is further varied, as a C  extended-dominant sonority (see the end of Example 8.2a), and the motif reappears soon thereafter on his words, ‘Il faut que je m’en aille pour toujours’ (‘I must go away forever’), now supported with a poignant appoggiatura and a halfdiminished-seventh chord, replicating Wagner’s Tristan chord (Example 8.6c).33 Thus, the simple ‘curve’ representing Pelléas’s spiritual state is masterfully woven into various orchestral fabrics, each quite different from the other (and with one of them containing a latent external reference). 31  Letter from Claude Debussy to Edwin Evans, Jr., published in ‘The curtain falls on Claude Debussy’, New York Times, 5 May 1918, pt. 4, p. 7. The original letter is dated 18 April 1909, and may be consulted in the Frederick R. Koch Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. J. Rigbie Turner has graciously provided the following transcript: ‘Il vaut peut-être mieux que, par des moyens simples, – un accord? une courbe? – la musique s’essaie à rendre les états d’ambiance et d’âme successifs, cela à mesure qu’ils se produisent, sans s’astreindre à suivre, péniblement, une trame symphonique prévue et toujours arbitraire, à laquelle on sera nécessairement tenté de sacrifier la trame sentimentale[.]’ See Claude Debussy, Correspondance (1872–1918), ed. François Lesure, Denis Herlin and Georges Liébert (Paris, 2005) p. 1170. 32  Several authors have illustrated various harmonic contexts for Wagner’s leitmotifs, among them the Viennese theorist Ernst Kurth who, in his Romantisch Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagner’s ‘Tristan’ (Bern, 1920), examines reharmonizations of melodic motifs from Tristan, and the English musicologist Deryck Cooke, who in his essay ‘Wagner’s Musical Language’ in The Wagner Companion, Peter Burbridge and Richard Sutton (eds) (London and Boston, 1979), pp. 225–68, explores Wagner’s development (in the Beethovenian sense) of a given leitmotif within a single work and even between his operas. 33  For this and other quotations of Tristan in Pelléas, see Holloway, pp. 76–135 and Abbate, pp. 138–40. The well-known reference to Wagner’s Tristan chord on Mélisande’s words, ‘je suis triste’ was a refinement that Debussy added much later; the half-diminished-seventh chord is not apparent in the Lehman manuscript, nor is it in the Bréval draft, although the musical passage beneath this text is scratched out in Bréval, showing that Debussy was rethinking his setting of these words.

Example 8.6a Pelléas’s Motif, Act I, Scene 2

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Example 8.6b Pelléas’s Motif, Act IV, Scene 4

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Example 8.6c Pelléas’s Motif, Act IV, Scene 4

Similarly, the qualities of anxiety and fear often associated with Golaud are reduced to a mere dotted rhythm, first heard in Act IV, Scene 4 when Mélisande speaks of him, with Pelléas’s response that ‘Il faut prendre garde’ (‘We have to be careful’; see Durand VS, p. 238, bars 2–4). Dotted rhythms colour Mélisande’s account of her hurried departure from the castle, but become especially prominent in parts 3 and 4 with the actual closing of the gates and the lovers’ detection of Golaud’s presence behind a tree; in this passage, Debussy employs dotted rhythms in combination with the techniques of sequence, additive variation, foreshortening, and interpolation to tremendous dramatic effect, creating a sense of mounting terror not only in the hearts of the characters on stage but in those of the audience as well. A ‘curve’ – a simple rhythm, even a single chord or instrumental effect – can render a particular sensation or image in Debussy’s opera. The grace notes that underscore Mélisande’s remark about the clear water of the well in Act II, Scene 1 now return in Act IV, Scene 4 as she reminisces, ‘Nous sommes venus ici il y a bien longtemps’ (‘We came here a long time ago’; Example 8.7).34 The grace-note motif reminds us not only of the well and its former mysterious powers of healing the sight of the blind; it also recalls the natural, unaffected attraction between Pelléas and Mélisande in their previous encounter by the well, and the contrastingly awkward meeting between Golaud and Mélisande in the forest, ironically also near the water. The ambiguous juxtaposition of these two relationships is ingeniously encapsulated in a simple grace-note figure. 34  The grace-note reminiscence is absent from the early sources for Act IV, Scene 4. Its first statement in the opera – in Act II, Scene 1 – of course was not even composed until after the first draft of Act IV, Scene 4 was completed; the insertion of the grace-note motif into the Bréval manuscript of Act IV, Scene 4 thus demonstrates Debussy’s concern for motivic unity over the course of the entire opera.

Example 8.7 Grace-note Motif of the Well

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Debussy was surely attracted to the leitmotif’s capacity for expressing such ambiguities inherent in Maeterlinck’s play. The composer carried this principle to its Symbolist extreme in his conscious and judicious use of silence to represent the ultimately equivocal emotion, the inexpressible.35 In the same letter to Chausson in which Debussy wrote of ridding himself of Klingsor’s ghost, he reported that he had instead ‘made use, quite spontaneously at that, of a medium which seems rather rare to me, that of Silence (do not laugh!) as an expressive agent! and perhaps the only means of pointing out the emotion of a phrase’.36 He proceeded to contrast his use of silence with that of Wagner, who, he felt, applied it for melodramatic effect rather than for understated, expressive purposes. In Act IV, scene 4, moments of silence not only portray the inexpressible passion of Pelléas and Mélisande; as we have already seen to some extent, they also mark important structural points in the scene. Recall the beginning and ending of part 1 of this scene, delineated by silence (refer back to Example 8.1). The musical preparation for each of these moments is strikingly similar, motivated to a large degree by the textual parallel; in the first instance, Pelléas feels compelled to tell Mélisande all that he had previously left unsaid, while in the second passage he actually confesses his love to her. Mélisande’s entrance, anticipated so keenly by Pelléas, is preceded by a sequential passage in which foreshortening abounds (Example 8.8a). Further, the dynamic level and tessitura continually rise, creating a sharp and dramatic contrast with the ensuing silent pause, followed by the soft, unaccompanied words of Mélisande and Pelléas. The same foreshortening technique combined with sequence, additive variation, and increasing dynamics prepares the silent moment of the lovers’ reciprocal confession of love at the end of part 1 (see Example 8.8b). Incidentally, in the bar preceding this excerpt, Mélisande addresses Pelléas as ‘tu’ for the first time in the scene, subtly signalling and precipitating their intimate exchange eight bars later; that sense of urgency is enhanced musically by the sequenced foreshortening shown in Examples 8.8a and 8.8b. The only full-bar, tutti rest in Act IV, scene 4 occurs in part 3, after the gates have closed and the lovers realize that they can no longer return. Debussy’s music once again builds in intensity by increasingly louder dynamics, higher pitch, greater rhythmic motion, and even faster tempo, and then stops abruptly, throwing into relief the full bar of silence. At this point, the lovers embrace for the first time in Scene 4. Their physical passion is as momentous as their verbal declaration of 35  Téodor de Wyzewa went so far as to claim that an ideal art would involve ‘a new music … written, not played, suggesting emotion without the intervention of heard sounds, thus rendering it in a better and more intimate way’. (‘Une musique nouvelle … écrite, non jouée; suggérant l’émotion sans l’intermédiaire de sons entendus, la suggérant ainsi meilleure et plus intime.’) See his ‘Notes sur la musique wagnérienne’, La Revue wagnérienne 2/6 (July 1886): 187. 36  ‘Je me suis servi, tout spontanément d’ailleurs, d’un moyen qui me paraît assez rare, c’est-àdire du Silence (ne riez pas!) comme un agent d’expression! et peut-être la seule façon de faire valoir l’émotion d’une phrase.’ Debussy, Correspondance, 1872–1918, ed. Lesure and Herlin, p. 161.

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Example 8.8a Part 1 of Act IV, Scene 4 (beginning)

Act IV, Scene 4 of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande Example 8.8a  concluded

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Example 8.8b Part 1 of Act IV, Scene 4 (end)

continued

Act IV, Scene 4 of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande

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Example 8.8b  concluded

love at the end of part 1, and Debussy correspondingly underscores this moment with his most potent means of expression: silence.37 Pitch/Tonal Centricity The composer’s manipulation of pitch materials and tonal focus similarly mirrors the dramatic structure of Pelléas. On a local level, diatonicism is often associated with straightforward, frank communication, while chromaticism is reserved for moments of dramatic tension or anticipation. Compare, for example, the C-major diatonicism of Pelléas and Mélisande’s declaration of love for each other (see the last three bars of Example 8.8b) with the highly chromatic idiom of the opening of scene 4, where Pelléas anxiously awaits Mélisande (Example 8.9). Occasional non-functional passages lend colour to a basically functional tonal structure. For instance, whole-tone material typically supports text depicting blindness, uncertainty, or confusion, such as in part 2, when Pelléas describes his long search for beauty (Example 8.10). He first remarks on Mélisande’s beauty, on C, then describes his search, in a whole-tone context, and finally his discovery, on F . Significantly, the shift of these tonal foci appears only in a later developed draft for this passage.38 Debussy’s harmonic organization over larger spans of his composition also reflects the dramatic structure. Following an established operatic tradition of featuring tonal areas a tritone apart, specifically C and F ,39 Debussy plays on 37  Sketches for the significant moment of silence in this passage are found already in the Meyer manuscript; see Lesure (ed.), Esquisses de Pelléas et Mélisande, p. 56. 38  The juxtaposition of C, then whole-tone, then F  first appears in the Bréval manuscript, on pages that were excised from the earlier Lehman draft. The original Meyer manuscript lacks tonal specificity for this passage. 39  The tritone C to F  plays a crucial associative role in other operas based on Maeterlinck’s texts,

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Example 8.9  Beginning of Act IV, Scene 4 (Pelléas’s entrance)

the inherent tension between these two foci for powerful dramatic effect. In particular, Scene 4 of Act IV revolves around the continual juxtaposition of C (and its subdominant, F) with F  (and its dominant, C ). The most tonally stable portion of Scene 4, heard during part 2 in Pelléas’s song (‘On dirait que ta voix a passé sur la mer au printemps’), is cast in F .40 Part 1 is less stable harmonically, beginning with an f  beneath a c–d pedal (see end of Example 8.9) and rapidly alternating pitch foci, following the dialogue of Pelléas and Mélisande. C and F  receive more equal weight in parts 3 and 4 as well, where they are continually juxtaposed, producing a harmonic tension analogous to the dramatic action. The act ends in F minor; just prior to the final cadence, however, Debussy inserts an extended f  pedal, highlighting the tonal (and emotional) conflict. Associative tonality in Pelléas has been discussed by others,41 so we shall not dwell on it here except to point out that the shift of C/F with F /C  interprets musically the contrasting, symbolic images of light vs. darkness, vision vs. blindness, and truth vs. deception that permeate Maeterlinck’s play.42 Two parallel such as Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, and in other Symbolist-inspired works like Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Antecedents for this procedure may be found already in Weber’s Der Freischütz and in Wagner’s Ring. Debussy experimented with juxtaposing C and F  already in his earlier opera Rodrigue et Chimème; see Richard Langham Smith’s chapter ‘Tonalities of Darkness and Light’ in Nichols and Smith, Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, pp. 138–9. 40  The key of F  was especially significant for Debussy as it was the key he chose for many of the early songs he composed for his muse, Mme Marie-Blanche Vasnier. For a detailed discussion of the associations he held with this key, and his frequent reliance on it, see Marie Rolf’s facsimile edition, transcription and essay of Claude Debussy: ‘Les Papillons’, p. 12. 41  In ‘Tonalities of Darkness and Light’, pp. 113–39, Langham Smith makes a case for F  serving as the key of light and C the key of darkness. See also Abbate’s interpretation of keys in ‘Tristan in the Composition of Pelléas’, p. 135. The present study offers substantial evidence for some of her earlier hypotheses, based on a source (the Lehman manuscript) which she had not consulted. At the same time, it develops further her claim that Debussy’s initial response to Maeterlinck’s symbolic text resulted in a rather simplistic approach to tonal design, and that his subsequent revisions were intended to ‘[obscure] the traces of the system’; see Abbate, pp. 134–6. Rather than merely covering his tracks, Debussy’s revisions reveal his increasing awareness of the potential for realizing the textual ambiguities in the tonal structure of his music. 42  Maeterlinck’s text is replete with ambiguities and reversals. At the beginning of Act IV, Scene 4, Pelléas cries out of ‘joy and pain’ (‘joie et douleur’); he later tells Mélisande, ‘I am not laughing; or

Example 8.10 Part 2 of Act IV, Scene 4 (Pelléas’s Search for Beauty)

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Example 8.10  concluded

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passages in part 1 illustrate this idea; Pelléas’s entreaties to Mélisande to come first into the shadow (part 1) and then into the light (part 2) are accompanied respectively by a suspended dominant-ninth sonority on D , or C  enharmonically (see Durand VS, p. 236, bars 6–7), and by a sequential passage that eventually settles on C (see Durand VS, p. 252, bar 3 to p. 253, bar 1). Interestingly enough, this dichotomy of pitches was an idea that Debussy seems to have consciously worked out over time, as it is not present in the earliest developed drafts (Lehman for part 1 and Bréval [folios lifted out of the original Lehman draft] for part 2) for these bars; both passages initially centred squarely on C, the revisions being apparent in the Bréval draft. To each invitation, Mélisande responds contradictorily. When Pelléas urges her to come into the shadow of the linden tree, she begs to be left in the light; but in part 2 when he asks her to come into the moonlight, she now prefers the darkness. This enigmatic reversal captures the essence of Maeterlinck’s Symbolist drama, and Debussy masterfully reflects this shift with his juxtaposition of pitch foci a tritone apart. Such ironic twists are featured back-to-back, especially in parts 3 and 4 of the scene. The inextricable intertwining of images and meanings is perhaps summed up in Pelléas’s two cries of alarm, first ‘Il est trop tard’ (‘It is too late’) and then ‘Il nous tuera’ (‘He’ll kill us both’), to which Mélisande retorts each time ‘Tant mieux’ (‘Let him’). Not coincidentally, her first response is supported by V/C (see Durand VS, p. 257, bars 1–3) and the second by a pedal on F  (see Durand VS, p. 264, bars 5–8), epitomizing the crux of the conflict. Once again, the Lehman manuscript lacks the C/F  juxtaposition. Thus, the sources demonstrate that Debussy grew increasingly attentive to the Symbolist qualities of irony and ambiguity in the opera; or, perhaps more likely, they show that he had seen the full realm of complex associations inherent in Maeterlinck’s play early on, but succeeded in creating a musical means for their expression only over a period of time. Summary Jean-Joël Barbier wrote that ‘Debussy is perhaps the only musician who belongs as much to the domain of poetry as to that of music’.43 Certainly, in composing Pelléas, Debussy’s intent was, first and foremost, to transfer the essence of Maeterlinck’s Symbolist language and aesthetic into a musical construct. To that end, he allowed himself to be guided by the dialogue on a phrasal level, rather I am laughing out of joy without knowing it … There would be more reason to weep …’ (‘je ne ris pas; ou bien je ris de joie sans le savoir … Il y aurait plutôt de quoi pleurer …’). Other enigmatic contradictions of this kind are mentioned throughout this study. 43  ‘Debussy est peut-être le seul musicien que appartienne autant au domaine de la poésie qu’à celui de la musique.’ Jean-Joël Barbier, ‘Notes sur Debussy’, La Revue musicale 258 (special issue) (1964): 102.

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employing techniques such as sequence, additive variation, foreshortening, and interpolation to echo the dramatic action. His use of leitmotifs in the Symbolist sense similarly linked specific melodies, rhythms, instrumental effects, and even silence with particular images or emotions, paralleling the textual references within the scene. But it also reached beyond the surface, revealing the ironic twists and multifaceted interpretations inherent in Maeterlinck’s symbols. Similarly, Debussy’s harmonic organization is textually founded, skilfully shifting from one pitch focus to another in its reflection of the text’s ambivalence. Yet it too penetrates the deeper ambiguities of Maeterlinck’s work while at the same time providing overall direction and coherence to the scene. Debussy’s miraculous mastery of his task, one which was never repeated by him or by anyone else, was perhaps best acknowledged by Maeterlinck himself, who wrote after hearing Debussy’s opera for the first time, ‘I had sworn to myself never to see the lyric drama, Pelléas et Mélisande. Yesterday I violated my vow and I am a happy man. For the first time, I entirely understood my own play.’44

44  Maeterlinck wrote these words as a compliment to Mary Garden in a letter to her dated 28 June 1920, two years after Debussy’s death; see Mary Garden and Louis Biancolli, Mary Garden’s Story (New York, 1951), p. 116. Had he been more kindly disposed personally towards Debussy, Maeterlinck might likely have seen the opera much sooner, and might have expressed this sentiment directly to the composer.

Chapter Nine

A Sociology of the Apaches: ‘Sacred Battalion’ for Pelléas Jann Pasler 28 April 1902 It was like any other day. One left one’s apartment, one’s head still buzzing with the nothingness of daily affairs, saddened by female betrayals (who cares?), crushed by wounds of friendship (so cruel). Crossing the swarming boulevard, one entered a theatre full of the babbling gossips who attend afternoon dress rehearsals. High-necked dresses, drab jackets, pince-nez and bald heads always seemed the same. Someone was selling programs with a plot summary of the new opera we’d all come to see, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. But people reading it were laughing, some calling it Pédéraste et Médisante [Pederast and Slanderer]. Why, I asked myself? The only performance of Maeterlinck’s play almost ten years ago by the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre was practically a dramatic rite. Maeterlinckophilia has become a religion and more intolerant than any other cult has ever been … Critics told us in advance that we were not capable of understanding Maeterlinck’s genius and, if we wouldn’t admire without understanding, we were simple idiots. Well! I think I understood Pelléas quite well! But now Maeterlinck is acting like a perfect fool. Only two weeks ago he wrote to Le Figaro disassociating himself from the work because Debussy made ‘arbitrary and absurd cuts that rendered the work incomprehensible.’ We know he was upset because the composer refused to cast his full-voiced girlfriend as Mélisande. All this even though he gave Debussy carte blanche with the work 10 years ago. Was it Maeterlinck who wrote this absurd parody of the libretto? Who knows? There was also some talk about how difficult Debussy’s music was supposed to be – evidently the musicians had a devil of a time in rehearsals; Debussy had hired an inexperienced neighbour to copy parts and they were full of errors. Once in the Opéra-comique, the audience finally quieted down. After a prelude in ‘subdued tones’ (I’m alluding not, of course, to my personal impressions, but to those expressed by the majority of the public already resolutely forewarned), the curtain went up. A plaintive recitative arose resembling the faltering speech of a precocious child, and a charm emerged

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from the enchanted forest. Who was this blond Mélisande in tears next to the fountain? Who was this tough huntsman? No one knew. The continuing recitative led us to the sombre chateau … All of a sudden, I heard two spectators behind me whispering. The one, who had only just arrived, asked the other: – Well, how is it? – It’s vague. – Yes, just as I supposed. And to think that it’s so nice out today! The curtain went down. Moderate reception. Applause from several invited guests plus excessive, rowdy clapping by the Debussysts. I had to leave for a while but when I returned in the second act, the audience was in a state of delight. Poor Mélisande couldn’t answer without causing a crescendo of laughter. ‘Je ne suis pas heureuse.’ Ah, very funny, her English [sic] accent. The guy behind me late arriving no longer regretted having come. ‘This is worth it!’ he exclaimed, ‘We’re having as much as fun as with Feydeau!’ One could hardly hear any music. And the scene with petit Yniold at the window spying on the couple for the jealous husband! Some were shouting ‘petit guignol’ [little clown]. But why all this disruption? Certainly there were a few awkward things in the story that lent themselves to parody. But, Genevieve! Golaud! We have already seen these people in Geneviève de Brabant! And it’s clear that the subject is none other than that of the love of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini which Dante rendered famous in his Divine Comedy. Moreover, recently we had the pleasure of seeing Francesca da Rimini represented at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre. During the last intermission, I took refuge in an obscure corner. I tired of the cries, ‘monotone psalmody’, ‘absolute lack of any power’, ‘nothingness’. People were proclaiming a total absence of the holy trinity – melody, rhythm, and harmony – as if rhythm, melody and harmony were independent of the artistic creator’s individuality and not the most intimate expression of his creativity. To tell the truth, the poetic conception and musical realization of this lyric drama differed too much from what the public was accustomed to as musical theatre. As an artistic manifestation, the theatre in our time is at least an anachronism. It implies a preconditioned and perfect communion of sensitivities almost impossible outside the popular and unanimous faith of an undisputed religion … Today, for a true work of art, contact with the masses is almost a profanation.

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Of course, these words are not, could not be my own, though I am responsible for an occasional connective. They were written by theatre and music critics who attended the dress rehearsal and first performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande: Willy (alias Henry Gautier-Villars), Jean Marnold, Pierre Lalo, Debussy’s friend René Peter, and ‘Un monsieur de l’orchestre’ who wrote for Le Figaro, among others. The scandal caused by the opera is clear from their reactions. Surprise, laughter, and hostility characterized the initial public reception of Pelléas, but there was no intervention by the police or any interruption of the music during the dress rehearsal. In order that the first performance two days later go more smoothly, however, Debussy agreed to several changes in his work – the omission of the scene with Yniold and the sheep and, at the demand of the undersecretary of state for fine arts, four bars in the scene in which Yniold spies on Pelléas and Mélisande, thereby deleting any reference to their proximity to the bed. (The former cut was reinstated for the performance of 30 October 1902, the latter not until the Geneva production in 1983.) Debussy’s problems did not end after these changes. The first performance was still not well received – the laughter continued – and the work itself was in danger of being cancelled by the departure of its conductor André Messager, who had to leave after the fourth performance because of a commitment at Covent Garden. (His replacement, the choral director Henri Busser, was hardly an experienced conductor.) For any work to stay in a theatre’s repertory, it needed to appeal to snobs and be in demand. The development of such an audience not only assured the work’s success, but also turned Pelléas into an event of significant social and cultural importance. Pierre Veber, author of the novel Chez les Snobs (1896), defined snobs as those who follow the latest fashion, who want to understand everything or at least seem to, who only value the rare and the precious. These chercheurs de l’inédit (seekers of the novel), the bourgeois gentilhommes of aesthetics, sometimes fall into the extravagant and scorn all tradition. Snobs were responsible for public opinion and everyone either made fun of them or revered them. Jean Lorrain called the particular snobs who attended Debussy’s opera ‘Pelléastres’, and he described them in a novel with that name. According to him, many came from the Théâtre de l’oeuvre premieres where Maeterlinck’s play was given. These aesthetes (dandys who loved their mothers, composed Greek verse, and were good musicians) together with their mistresses (beautiful, useless, concerned about intellectuality, and scornful of the masses) turned Pelléas into a religion and the Salle Favart took on the atmosphere of a sanctuary. By 1903, this group outnumbered the boulevard types, the Wagnerians, the professors of harmony, the reactionary musicians, and the conventional opera subscribers, all of whom Pierre Lalo described as the first   This collage opened my paper, ‘A Sociology of the Apaches: “Sacred Battalion” for Pelléas’ at the National Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Philadelphia (27 October 1984).   See Jann Pasler, ‘Pelléas and Power: Forces behind the Reception of Debussy’s Opera,’ 19thCentury Music, 10/3 (Spring 1987): 243–64.

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enemies of the work. And as Debussy’s reputation grew, these same snobs helped make Debussy’s music fashionable, especially among women. Such a public, paying high prices to sit on the main floor and in the first tier of boxes, did not always comprehend what they heard. The young composer/critic Emile Vuillermoz considered their response a kind of ‘hallucination’ and called for another public ‘worthy of it’. This he found in the roof-top seats, the ‘paradis – young students, young painters, writers keenly interested in music’, and a few young composers. During the first few weeks of its performances, these advocates congealed into a ‘sacred battalion’: fifty young people, the fifty red shirts of this new battle of Hernani, who were like fighting cocks, ready to assail any philistines who might be tempted to lack respect for the work of art. Their devotion was not useless … for the incomprehension and irony of the majority of the public would have rendered the exploitation of the work impossible if this ‘sacred battalion’ had not come to each and every performance during long months to insure there were police in the hall and to keep an atmosphere of infectious enthusiasm up until the moment when the opera could, without danger, pursue its career alone.

René Peter recalls that ‘each of us, the young people, in shaking friends’ hands during the intermissions, felt that he was defending something other than a work by one of us; each of us had the impression of fighting for himself’. To defend the opera against its adversaries and allow time for its innovations to penetrate, this ‘sacred battalion’ organized their operations on three fronts. First, although a small minority, they constituted a solid block, returning night after night to the same seats for the ‘cause’ as much as for the music. The young violinist and future conductor Désiré-Emile Inghelbrecht remembers that, to be at each performance, he had to find someone to replace him in his orchestra and ‘those who really could not scrape together the five francs … came when the theatre let out, eager to hear how the performance had gone’. Second, they immobilized the opposition with their enthusiasm. Vuillermoz, ‘in the first row, surrounded by a party of staff-officers that seemed to become more imposing with each act’, looked upon them as ‘troops marshalled’ to keep order in the Emile Vuillermoz, ‘La Musique,’ La Revue dorée (August 1902): 180. ‘cinquante jeunes gens – les cinquante « gilets- rouges » de cette nouvelle bataille d’Hernani – étaient là, comme des coqs de combat, prêts à assaillir les Béotiens qui seraient tentés de manquer de respect au chef-d’œuvre. Leur dévouement ne fut pas inutile … mais l’incompréhension et l’ironie de la majorité du public auraient rendu l’exploitation de l’ouvrage impossible si ce bataillon sacré n’était pas venu, à chaque représentation, pendant de longs mois, assurer la police de la salle et y entretenir un climat d’enthousiasme communicatif jusqu’au moment où la pièce put, sans danger, poursuivre seule sa carrière.’ Emile Vuillermoz, Histoire de la musique (Paris, 1973), pp. 378–9.   ‘Chacun de nous, les jeunes, en serrant les mains amies pendant les entr’actes, sentait qu’il défendait autre chose que l‘oeuvre d’un des nôtres; chacun de nous avait l’impression de combattre pour soi-même.’ René Peter, Claude Debussy (Paris, 1944), p. 181.   ‘Ceux qui n’avaient absolument pas pu trouver chez eux les vingt sous nécessaires … venaient à la sortie se faire raconter comment ça avait marché.’ D.E. Inghelbrecht, Mouvement contraire (Paris, 1947), p. 275.    

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theatre. Inghelbrecht and the poet Léon-Paul Fargue recount how they ‘battled vigorously’ against the ‘army of dolts’. Third, they campaigned for converts. All felt compelled to bring along someone new. The future Opéra choral conductor Marcel Chadeigne brought Inghelbrecht for the first time. After performances, Inghelbrecht remembers, ‘we met at each other’s homes and we played it over again for ourselves, some of us at the piano, some singing …’ One night, after leaving a performance and walking up the rue de Rome towards Paul Sordes’s studio, this rowdy group who didn’t miss one of the first 24 performances of Pelléas ran into a newspaper boy selling L’Intransigeant. ‘Attention les Apaches!’ he cried. The expression amused not only Vuillermoz, Inghelbrecht, Chadeigne, and Fargue, but also the composers Maurice Ravel, Maurice Delage, Paul Ladmirault, and Déodat de Séverac, the poet/composer Tristan Klingsor (Léon Leclère), the pastel painter and amateur pianist Sordes, the decorative artists Edouard Bénédictus and Emile-Alain Séguy, the critic/Russian music expert Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, and the pianist Ricardo Viñes. These friends decided to keep ‘Apaches’ as a nickname for their circle.10

In 1976, thanks to François Lesure (and a relative of Maurice Delage, who had just brought the proofs of Stravinsky’s Petrushka to him for the Bibliothèque nationale [BN]), I was introduced to this little-known group of music enthusiasts while working on my dissertation. With Lesure’s generosity in providing me with contact information on contributors to the BN’s Ravel exhibition in 1975,   Vuillermoz, in ‘La Bataille de Pelléas,’ in Pelléas et Mélisande, L’Avant-scène 9 (March–April 1977): 23.   Germaine and D.E. Inghelbrecht, Claude Debussy (Paris, 1953), p. 158; Léon-Paul Fargue, Refuges (Paris, 1942), p. 194.   ‘on se réunissait les uns chez les autres et on se le rejouait, les uns au piano, les autres chantant …’ Inghelbrecht, Mouvement contraire, p. 275. 10  Delage, Fargue, Viñes, and Klingsor agree they were jostled by a newspaper vendor on the rue de Rome. According to Delage, ‘the word delighted Viñes who then launched “Apaches” into eternity’ (‘le mot enchanta Viñes qui lança ce jour-là l’Apaches dans l’Eternité’). See his ‘Les Premiers Amis de Ravel,’ Ravel par quelques-uns de ses familiers (Paris, 1939), p. 99. For discussion on three possible immediate sources for this nickname – the Native American people, a Belleville street gang discussed in the press from early January through spring 1902, and artistic anarchists wanting to revolutionize art – see my ‘La Schola Cantorum et les Apaches: L’enjeu du pouvoir artistique ou Séverac médiateur et critique,’ in La Musique: du théorique au politique eds Hughes Dufort and Joël-Marie Fauquet (Paris, 1991), pp. 318–23.

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over the span of a decade I conducted over thirty interviews with close family members and friends of these Apaches and consulted a wealth of documents in private collections. It is always difficult to understand the private world of friends, especially the Apaches, who were unknown to the public and whistled the theme from Borodin’s second symphony to gather members after a concert.11 Whereas the world of public institutions is recorded in documents and commented upon in the press, one has to glean the content of private gatherings and the nature of personal relationships from diaries, correspondence, memoirs, and the products of collaborations. The Apaches thus presented a fascinating challenge to understand the role such a group might have played in the musical world of Paris. As with other artistic coteries, the Apaches came together gradually, between 1902 and 1903. Most were about the same age, with Ravel and Viñes born in 1875, Fargue and Chadeigne in 1876, Calvocoressi and Ladmirault in 1877, Vuillermoz and Bénédictus in 1878, and Maurice Delage in 1879. Ravel, Schmitt, Ladmirault, and Vuillermoz knew one another from Gabriel Fauré’s composition class at the Conservatoire. Inghelbrecht and Chadeigne shared the harmony class, Ravel and Viñes Charles de Beriot’s piano class. Viñes and Ravel had been friends since they met in 1888. Calvocoressi had known Ravel since 1898. Séverac met Viñes in 1900 and joined the Apaches in April 1902.12 The artists may have met at the École des beaux-arts or in Salon exhibitions.13 The lithographer/engraver Léon Pivet perhaps knew Viñes from the Nabi painters with which they both associated, or through Maurice Denis, whom both befriended.14 A friend of Vuillermoz, Edmond Maurat, remembers a precedent for the Apaches: every week in 1901 Vuillermoz hosted musician friends, Ladmirault and Inghelbrecht among them.15 On 22 January 1903, Viñes’s diary first refers to Sordes, a friend of Ravel, at whose studio (39, rue Dulong, a few blocks from Debussy’s) they soon began to meet.16 That spring there are references to Fargue, Sordes, and Séguy, and to an evening at Sordes’ with Inghelbrecht, Séguy, and Ravel. The group also spent 11  Borodin’s music was in their ears in spring 1904. Viñes heard his Second Symphony on 3 January and performed a piano transcription of his First Symphony for the group at Sordes’s house on 16 January. According to Calvocoressi, Ravel chose this tune to bring them together. See Malou Haine, ‘Cipa Godebski et les Apaches’, Revue belge de musicologie 60 (2007): 221–66. I am grateful to Malou Haine for having read my text and shared her own before publication. 12  Pierre Guillot, ed. Ecrits sur la musique (Liège, 1993), p. 27. 13  In ‘Cipa Godebski et les Apaches’, Haine suggests that those who would become Apache artists began to gather in the 1890s just as the future Apache musicians began to meet. 14  Fargue called Pivet ‘the man who, with Maurice Denis, has done so much to revive colour lithography’. André Beucler, Poet of Paris (London, 1955), p. 100. 15  Edmond Maurat, Souvenirs musicaux et littéraires, ed. Louis Roux (Saint-Etienne, 1977), p. 20. 16  All citations from Viñes’s diary are from the unpublished manuscript translated from the Spanish into French, Nina Gubisch Collection, Paris. Michel Duchesneau is currently preparing a French translation of Viñes’s Journal complet (1887–1915) for the Presses de l’Université de Montréal. It is also discussed in Gubisch’s unpublished dissertation, ‘Mémoire de musicologie du Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris’, (1971) extracts from which may be found in her ‘Le Journal inédit de Ricardo Vines’, Revue internationale de musique française 1/2 (June 1980): 154–248.

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evenings at Chadeigne’s, Séguy’s, and Calvocoressi’s apartments, where they also ‘made music and discussed it’. Viñes first mentions ‘the whole band, Ravel, Fargue … until 2 AM’ on 19 September 1903. After they attended the reprise of Pelléas, on 7 November he tells how Tristan Klingsor and Paul Ladmirault joined them. In December Fargue brought along Maurice Delage, who apparently developed a passion for music only after hearing Pelléas.17 By 16 January 1904 the group had become, in Viñes’s words, ‘very large and included many new people’. They also met at the apartment of the engineer Pierre Haour, who helped Fargue publish his first works. There on 15 February 1904 they made a recording of Jeux d’eau and, as a joke, a parody of Fargue’s Nocturnes. On Thursday, 24 March, ‘all the band’ gathered at Delage’s for the first time and laughed a lot at Ravel and Delage’s parody of Pelléas et Mélisande. Delage already sensed a touching ‘spirit of unity’ among them. In early spring 1904, the group adopted its name, the Apaches, around the same time as Delage rented a ‘wigwam’, a small detached wooden dwelling in a garden near Auteuil at 3, rue de Civry. They reached it by taking the little beltway train from the Gare Saint-Lazare. 18 Delage was the perfect host: amiable, welloff from his father’s shoe-polish factories, generous, and extremely musical; he studied composition privately with Ravel. There, able to play music all night long, the Apaches gathered on Saturday nights beginning on 2 April. Some say these evenings were inspired by Fauré’s composition class at the Conservatoire, where lessons ‘often turned into conversations about artistic problems rather than professional analysis of student works’.19 In 1905, after sharing his Oiseaux tristes (which, at first, only Viñes seemed to appreciate), Ravel dedicated the five movements of Miroirs to his Apache friends: Viñes, Fargue, Calvocoressi, Sordes, and Delage. Eventually the group grew to include the composer Florent Schmitt, the percussionist Charles Sordes, the Opéra’s set-designer Georges Mouveau, Partington y de Carcer, and the Norwegian law student Magnus Synnestvedt, whose mother was French. After 1907 there was also the Opéra chaplain/ literature professor Abbé Léonce Petit, Manuel de Falla (introduced by Viñes), occasionally Albeniz and André Caplet, Lucien Garban (who worked for Durand), Félix Augustin (who helped execute Mouveau’s designs), and the aviator Marcel Tabuteau. Intrigued with the new music coming out of Russia, they were the first in Paris to welcome Igor Stravinsky, who became the last new member to join, in 1910.20 According to Viñes’s diary, although Apaches also frequented the homes M.D. Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery (London, 1933), p. 61. In an interview with the author (Sept. 1985), Roger Haour, son of Apache Pierre Haour, proposed that ‘Apache’ also referred to the Latin expression apud, followed by an H (ap.H), which meant chez Haour or at Haour’s place. The entries in Viñes’s diary show that beginning on 15 February 1904 the group also met occasionally on Tuesdays chez Haour. 19  Alfredo Casella, Music in My Time, trans. Spencer Norton (Norman, OK, 1955), p. 59. 20  See Maurice Delage, ‘Les Premiers Amis’, pp. 97–113, my ‘Stravinsky and the Apaches’, Musical Times (June 1982): 403–7, and my entries on Delage, Florent Schmitt, and the Apaches in the 17  18 

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of Jean Marnold, the Godebskis, Bénédictus, Laloy, and Morland, members apparently used their nickname specifically to refer to those who regularly assembled at Delage’s wigwam. Intimate Exchanges Viñes’s diary documents what transpired in the private enclave of Apache meetings and the interests that brought them together. Most often, they gathered to share what they were working on – whether finished pieces, rough drafts, or fragments. The diary gives a chronology of what the composers gave Viñes to work on, when he began to study works, and when he played them for the group. Some were performed for the Apaches as works in progress, but were never completed. On 18 April 1905, for example, Viñes notes that Séverac played excerpts from a beautiful Elégie sur la mort de Gauguin that he never published. The encouragement they offered to one another undoubtedly served as an important stimulus. As Fargue recalls, the Apaches shared many tastes – ‘Chinese art, Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, Cézanne and Van Gogh, Rameau and Chopin, Whistler and Valéry, Debussy and the Russians’.21 First and foremost was the music of Debussy. The composer kept his distance from the group, never attending an Apache gathering. However, Fargue had met Debussy through Pierre Louÿs in 1895 and saw him occasionally. Séverac met him in 1899. Ravel, who made fourhand transcriptions of his Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and a two-piano one of Nocturnes, went several times to his apartment with Viñes. Viñes saw him most often through a working relationship that began in 1901. According to Viñes’s diary, Debussy was impressed by the sonority of his playing. On 11 January 1902, Debussy told him it was ‘impossible to play better’ than him.22 Thereafter he saw Debussy regularly. His diary documents when he played Debussy’s music for him, and which works, as well as the Ravel pieces he shared with Debussy (on 3 February 1906, for example, he played both Images and Miroirs). It also notes what Debussy he played for the Apaches, including the four-hand transcriptions of Debussy’s music he played with Ravel such as La Mer on 16 October 1905 and the Quartet on 13 June 1906. With this intense inter-generational collaboration through Viñes, it should be no surprise that the group was sometimes thought of as ‘Debussystes’, and that the public might focus on similarities in the music of Debussy and Ravel. Still, there were important differences in attitudes towards form and language between the two, and Ravel’s Jeux d’eau predates some of New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition. Despite what has been asserted elsewhere (such as at www.artsalive.ca/en/mus/greatcomposers/ravel.html), I have found no reference to Erik Satie, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, Paul Valéry, Nijinsky, or Diaghilev being members of the Apaches. 21  ‘l’art chinois, Mallarmé et Verlaine, Rimbaud … Cézanne et Van Gogh, Rameau et Chopin, Whistler et Valéry, les Russes et Debussy’. Léon-Paul Fargue, Maurice Ravel (Paris, 1949), p. 57. 22  Cited in Viñes’s diary, 11 January 1902.

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Debussy’s exploitation of similar pianistic timbres. When, with his Histoires naturelles, Ravel was denounced as a Debussy imitator, the Apaches leapt to his defence.23 Second only to Debussy among the group’s interests was their passion for Russian music. Besides working on numerous Debussy and Ravel premieres and giving performances of others’ work at the Société nationale – ‘out of friendship’ if not necessarily love for the music (11 June 1908) – Viñes and other Apaches spent considerable time listening to and performing Russian music. Viñes had visited Russia in 1900. For him, Russia and his native Spain were like ‘two sisters for the depth of sentiment’ in their music (5 November 1901). Performing this music frequently for friends allowed him to develop interpretations before he played works in public. Such performances also provided friends with opportunities to compare French and Russian music, perhaps implanting seeds of influence on Apache composers, especially Ravel. From October 1902 through June 1903, for example, Viñes performed numerous times Balakirev’s Islamey and Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, two virtuosic works that play with the boundaries between timbre and rhythm. The Apaches also got to know Russian orchestral music through fourhand transcriptions. Viñes and Ravel performed them repeatedly alongside French music. On 7 November 1903, for example, the group could compare Russian and French notions of musical exoticism in the juxtaposition of Glazunov’s Fantaisie orientale with Ravel’s song cycle, Shéhérazade, the latter six months before its public premiere. On 16 January 1904 they heard a transcription of Borodin’s First Symphony between Debussy’s Estampes (which Viñes had recently premiered) and Séverac’s Le Chant de la terre. Later that July Viñes and Ravel played a transcription of Rimsky’s Shéhérazade alongside the Estampes, Islamey, and Chopin’s sixth Etude. Such performances undoubtedly encouraged discussions about what the French could learn from the Russians, and created a sympathetic, knowledgeable base upon which Diaghilev and Stravinsky could later draw. Third, poetry and Symbolist ideas fascinated the Apaches. In 1893 Ravel introduced Viñes to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, and in 1896 to Maeterlinck’s Serres chaudes and Rimbaud’s poetry. In London in 1895 Viñes purchased a copy of Bertrand’s Gaspard for Ravel, who found it ‘very rare’. In April 1901 Viñes initiated a project to translate Baudelaire’s poems into Spanish; he later arranged some translations of Edgar Allen Poe, an interest he shared with Ravel and Calvocoressi. In the next two years, he read monographs by Gustave Kahn and Léon Bloy. The two poets in the group, Klingsor and Fargue, a disciple of Mallarmé, shared their poems at Apache gatherings and were open to collaborations. Klingsor, a poet-composer, was particularly focused on music–text relationships and sought to apply the laws of harmony and counterpoint to the rules of prosody. Very careful with its ‘accents, silences, and syncopations’, he composed free verse while walking. On 7 November 1903 he read aloud his poems from Shéhérazade while 23 

Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery, p. 67.

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Ravel, who in 1899 had begun an opera inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, performed his musical settings of the Klingsor poems. This allowed listeners to compare the two versions. In his reading of ‘Asie’, for example, Klingsor lowered his voice three times in repeating its opening word, while Ravel set the word in an ascending direction. As Klingsor observed, Ravel, a ‘servant of the poet’, wanted to ‘exalt the inflections … and all the possibilities of the text without subjugating it’.24 Klingsor’s love for La Fontaine and Kipling may have influenced Delage to set their texts to music. Fargue, who dedicated his Nocturnes to Viñes and twice read these poems aloud to the group in December 1903, drew the Apaches’ attention to the poetry of everyday life and prose. His work may have encouraged Ravel’s experimentation with language in his Histoires naturelles, which Ravel both sang and played for them on 12 April 1907. Séverac too wrote poetry (for his Le Chant de la terre, for example), and Viñes composed sonnets, which he read to the Apaches. Fourth, many Apaches felt drawn to the visual arts. According to Viñes’s diary, it was through literature that he and Ravel became interested in painting in the late 1890s. Ravel was a great admirer of Odilon Redon, and introduced Redon to Viñes in 1896. Viñes and Redon, who shared an interest in theosophy and the occult with Sordes, frequently attended concerts in 1901. Maurice Denis introduced Viñes to other painters. In January 1901 he met Pissarro and a Van Gogh exhibition organizer, and the following month he met Bonnard. In June and November 1901 he went to Picasso’s home, where he was ‘terrified by the enormous talent’ of the young painter and impressed by the ‘variety of his palette’, perhaps an influence on his own concept of musical colour.25 In November 1902 he visited Redon’s home with Vuillard and Denis. This wide exposure to painting made him think about Turner when he was working on Debussy’s Pour le piano, to which the composer responded ‘that before composing them, he had spent a long time in the room with the Turners in London’.26 In 1904 Viñes also went twice to an exhibition of Japanese art – another fascination of many Apaches – and in 1905 to one on Gauguin, a possible stimulus for Séverac’s Elégie. Perhaps in part because his father and uncle were painters, Ravel too was sensitive to painting, and made some lovely drawings, as did Fargue. The presence of poets, painters, set-designers, and a lithographer among the Apaches made interdisciplinary exchange typical of their meetings. It is unfortunate that Viñes noted little detail of what they discussed.

24  ‘serviteur du poète … exalter les inflexions … [et] toutes les possibilités du mot, mais non le subjuguer’. Tristan Klingsor, ‘L’Epoque Ravel,’ Ravel par quelques-uns de ses familiers, p. 132. 25  ‘émerveillé … de l’énorme talent’, ‘quelle variété dans sa palette’, Viñes’s diary, 23 June 1901. He also visited Picasso that November. 26  ‘Avant de les composer, il avait passer un long moment dans la salle des Turner à Londres.’ Viñes’s diary, 4 July 1901.

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Public Advocacy While Apache gatherings were essentially private meetings of a group of friends to share and support one another’s deepest artistic passions, they served other functions as well: familiarizing members with new works before they reached the public and formulating a compelling aesthetic explanation. This was important since, with Pelléas, the Apaches had seen how easily a work of value could be misunderstood and discredited in the press. Several Apaches took on the challenge of music criticism, seeking to promote better public understanding of the music they loved and the musicians they admired. Klingsor wrote for La Vogue, Séverac and Calvocoressi for La Renaissance latine, Ladmirault and Calvocoressi for Courrier musical, Synnestvedt for a Norwegian journal, Schmitt and Vuillermoz for various newspapers such as La France and Le Temps. Vuillermoz, a music critic and composer who lived at 29 rue Lépic (Montmartre), perhaps best understood the potential power of their association and their ideas. Maurat called him the ‘great High Priest of the new orthodoxy’.27 His early criticism appeared in the small journal Messidor, where he reviewed Parisian concerts. In 1901 he published this ‘Chronique musicale’ in epistolary form, in this case an imagined correspondence between two German students: ‘Hans Burger à son ami Ludwig Holstein, élève au Conservatoire de Weimar’. Many critics at the time used pseudonyms and invented creative ways to distinguish their reviews from those of others (consider Debussy’s Monsieur Croche, modelled on Paul Valéry’s Monsieur Teste). Vuillermoz used Hans to speak to his readers in the familiar form, ‘tu’, perhaps wanting to gain their confidence and express his personal tastes. In Hans’s voice he vaunts his musical training to defend himself from the attack of incompetence levelled at most critics of the time. In irreverent attacks on the major composers, he promotes Fauré and his ‘Impressionist music’ as the ‘most perfect expression of contemporary art’.28 Debussy is the ‘adorable decadent’ next to the ‘Impressionist genius’ of Fauré. In this journal and its successor, La Revue dorée, in which he wrote through 1903, he formed his critical voice and developed a theory of musical Impressionism. Under such pseudonyms as Gabriel Darcy, Claude Bonvin, André Lang, André Berge, and E.V., he later occasionally wrote for and under the name of the popular critic Willy. As music was becoming increasingly complex, Vuillermoz served as musical adviser to Willy on technical matters. Willy, who called him his ‘musical secretary’, praised him for his ‘bold taste’ and ‘clear judgement’. By 1905 the Apache was writing under his own name for the prestigious Courrier musical and Mercure musical, and in 1912 became editor of the Bulletin français de la société indépéndente de musique (SIM).

Maurat, Souvenirs, pp. 20–21. ‘HANS’ [Emile Vuillermoz], ‘Chronique musicale: Hans Burger à son ami Ludwig Holstein, élève au Conservatoire de Weimar,’ Messidor 1 (January 1901): 36–9. 27  28 

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Vuillermoz’s confrontational style – Delage once called him ‘our combat musician’29 – is responsible for much of what we know about the avant-garde of this period, even if some of what he writes is exaggerated and his later histories are full of strategic manipulation.30 The targets of his criticism ranged from the ‘Pelléastre’ snobs to French composers whose music he found too conservative (e.g. Camille Saint-Saëns and Vincent d’Indy). When the taste for Debussy began to divide salons and incite attacks and counterattacks, in a fictional conversation with a pretty female snob over a cup of tea he compared the treatment of Achille Debussy to the persecution of Alfred Dreyfus. Here again he distinguished between Debussystes ‘with huge ties, long hair, and Spanish capes’ from those who knew Debussy before he became famous, including the unnamed ‘we others’ – ‘precious friendships that one should keep as secrets’31 (an oblique reference perhaps to Viñes, Ravel, and Fargue). Perched where he was, Vuillermoz gave important public support to the Apaches on three issues: not only the reception of Pelléas et Mélisande, but also the scandal surrounding Ravel’s exclusion from the final round of the Prix de Rome competition in 1905 and the founding of a new concert organization, the Société musicale indépendente (SMI), in 1909. In 1905, his connections helped create a press scandal about Ravel, resulting in perhaps more publicity than Ravel would have enjoyed in winning the prize. Then, when the Société nationale (SN), under the direction of d’Indy and his disciples, refused to program Delage’s Conté par la mer – a work the Apaches considered to be ‘very, very musical’,32 Vuillermoz and other Apaches led the effort to create the rival SMI.33 As Viñes put it in his diary a week later, after the organizational meeting of 22 January 1909, ‘we are simply going to render blow for blow’. In defending Ravel and the SMI, Vuillermoz led the charge against Vincent d’Indy and his Schola Cantorum in a harsh article, full of exaggerations.34 He claimed to have an ‘impassioned mission’ to defend Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel by clarifying their ‘still unformulated gospel’ and ‘preparing a way for them through the hostile crowd’.35 With his tactics of attack Delage, ‘Les Premiers Amis’, p. 98. In my article, ‘Bleu-horizon and Beyond: The Politics of L’Initiation à la Musique (1935)’, first presented at the conference Nation, Myth, and Reality in the 1930s (Royal Holloway, University of London, 24 October 1998), I examine how Vuillermoz, in his Histoire de la musique (1949) and elsewhere, used unconditional assertions to claim authority, elevating some composers and denigrating others as he rewrote history to promote a certain agenda. 31  Vuillermoz contrasts the ‘debussyte’ who ‘ira rejoindre les grosses cravates, les longs cheveux et les capes espagnoles’ with ‘“nous autres” il est des amitiés précieuses qu’il faut garder comme des secrets’. Emile Vuillermoz, ‘Une tasse de thé’, Mercure musical 1 (15 November 1905): 508–9. 32  Cited in Viñes’s diary, 15 January 1909. 33  In a letter of 22 April 1910 to Vuillermoz, Ravel, calling him the ‘protector of our little chapel’, explained: ‘It is especially to you and Mathot that we owe this triumph’. Harry Ransom Humanities Institute, Austin, TX. 34  Emile Vuillermoz, ‘La Schola et le conservatoire’, Mercure de France 20 (16 September 1909): 234–43. 35  Emile Vuillermoz, Gabriel Fauré, trans. Kenneth Schapin (London, 1969), p. 22. 29  30 

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and exclusion, Vuillermoz helped to unify and protect Apaches members, and began the process of canonizing this ‘trinity’ of composers – a musical analogue to Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud – a mission he continued after the war.36 Discussion about ‘petites chapelles’ and Vuillermoz’s contributions has given the impression that such a group embraced a clear position in the ideological battles of the times. However, as I attempted to define the group in applying analytical tools inspired by Howard Becker and Pierre Bourdieu, I was forced to come to grips with striking similarities between the Apaches and other ‘sects’, especially the Schola Cantorum.37 Even if the Apaches were unified in their defence and promotion of Debussy, one should not assume similarity, consistency, or homogeneity in their other attitudes. And with some coming from the Schola and others from the Conservatoire, Apaches represented a spectrum of political, social, religious, and musical differences. While Séverac, son of a baron, was a land-owning Catholic from the South, Fargue and Ravel, whose fathers were engineers, were anticlerical urbanites who sympathized with anarchists.38 If one compares the subtle and very French music of Ravel with the assertive and German-influenced music of Florent Schmitt (who admired the music of Richard Strauss), it is clear that even its Conservatoire graduates had varied tastes. Parisian musicians were less divided according to their backgrounds and training than we’ve been led to believe. Apache members, as diverse as they were, took part in a complex web of highly interconnected relationships and many of the networks of cooperation underlying the musical world of Paris. They enjoyed the benefits of meetings and collaborations without being constrained by an ideology. This suggests that, at least among the young, social, economic, and political differences did not interfere with musical friendships, and that in the private contexts in which composers conceived and created their music, musicians – who may have held different views on Dreyfus or the musical ‘gospel’ they espoused – often worked together. Five Apaches who had associations with the Schola complicate the notion that these two ‘chapels’, the Apaches and the Scholists, were uniformly adversarial: the poet/composer Klingsor, the composers Séverac and Ladmirault, the critic Calvocoressi, and the pianist Viñes. Klingsor studied composition with Pierre de Bréville, who taught counterpoint at the Schola from 1898 to 1902. And between 36  See Barbara Kelly, ‘Debussy and the Making of a ‘musicien français’: Pelléas, the Press and the First World War’, French Music, Culture and National Identity (Rochester, NY, forthcoming), n.p. 37  Jann Pasler, ‘Apaches in Paris: The Making of a Turn-of-the-Century Art World’, paper given at the National Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Cleveland, OH (8 November 1986) and ‘La Schola Cantorum et les Apaches’, pp. 313–43. 38  In his Musique et société du Second Empire aux années vingt (Paris, 1985), Michel Faure observes that Ravel considered himself a political anarchist because he read Le Canard enchainé and l’Humanité. But it is not known whether he read these papers before 1910, when they are first mentioned in his letters. According to Valéry, contemporary writers considered Fargue an anarchist; however it is not clear whether this was meant in the political sense. See Edmée de la Rochefoucauld, Léon-Paul Fargue (Paris, 1958), p. 42.

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1896 and 1907 (when he received his diploma) Séverac was a student at the Schola Cantorum, where he studied composition with Vincent d’Indy. He also wrote about Schola concerts for La Renaissance latine, and the Schola performed his music.39 An admirer of Debussy’s music, Séverac was also friendly with Viñes, who had premiered several of his piano works, and he shared the Apaches’ interest in poetry and painting. With the perspective gained from his allegiance to both the Schola and the Apaches, Séverac viewed the quarrel between the d’Indystes and the Debussystes with remarkable objectivity. In his final thesis devoted to a study of the conflict, his familiarity with the two groups allowed him to be critical of both. Another Apache composer, Ladmirault, also took classes at the Schola. With his focus on Brittany, he represented an interest in regional folk song that Vuillermoz, Inghelbrecht, Ravel, and Calvocoressi shared with Séverac and other Scholists.40 Like Vuillermoz, Calvocoressi worked principally as a music critic. Approaching his profession differently, however, he believed a critic should observe and comment, stimulate and provide information, more than pronounce judgement on its value. Among his earliest publications is a review of Pelléas in L’Art moderne (1902) and of Debussy’s criticism in La Renaissance latine, a journal that focused on promoting regionalism, a core interest of the Schola. There Calvocoressi split the job of reviewing Parisian concerts with Séverac. He also published some articles in the Schola’s journal La Tribune de Saint-Gervais, and in 1903–4 was editor-in-chief of their concert bulletin and calendar of internal events, Les Tablettes de la schola. At the Schola and elsewhere he occasionally gave lectures, often illustrated with musical examples played by Viñes.41 Unlike Vuillermoz, Calvocoressi did not reject d’Indy’s music, but instead published analyses of d’Indy’s L’Etranger in La Tribune (April 1903) and his Symphony in B  in Guide musical (8 and 15 May 1904). At the same time, he played a role in instigating Ravel’s Sonatine, Cinq chansons populaires grecques, and Daphnis et Chloé, suggesting Ravel write these works for specific contexts.42 Analogous to Charles Bordes, who led the Schola’s ‘propaganda’ outside Paris, Calvocoressi wanted to disseminate his ideas beyond the frontiers of France. He became the principal promoter of Apache interests abroad. Fluent in Russian and English, besides writing for the Parisian Comoedia illustré and Courrier musical, he published articles on Debussy, Ravel, Séverac, and others in the British Monthly Musical Record in 1906, the American New Music Review in 1910, and the Russian Apollon in 1911. In 1908 he wrote a biography of Mussorgsky replete with musical analyses. He served as an important musical liaison for Russians For a well-annotated edition of his critical writings, see Guillot, Ecrits. Albert Roussel, a professor at the Schola, occasionally attended Apache evenings. 41  Viñes notes that he accompanied Calvocoressi’s lectures on Russian music at the Université populaire in December 1905, the ninth arrondissement city hall in December 1906, and the Cercle musical russe in December 1910. 42  Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery, pp. 74–6. 39  40 

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who came to Paris, and as an adviser to Diaghilev, to whom he promoted the Apaches as collaborators. With his good command of Russian, he advised Ravel in negotiating an agreement concerning Fokine’s performing rights for Daphnis. He also aided Delage in negotiating with Edwin Evans in London for Kipling’s permission to set Les Batisseurs du pont to music, and with Diaghilev in Russia for a Ballets Russes performance of it. Calvocoressi also instigated his own collaborations with Apaches, proposing a ballet subject to Séverac in 1903 and others to Ladmirault in 1909 and 1914, as well as providing Schmitt with a scenario for a ballet, Urvasi, in 1909.43 Ricardo Viñes’s remarkable talent as a pianist provided another great service to, and articulation of, Apache ideals. Already in April 1904 Le Monde musical called him ‘one of most remarkable’ of young pianists, and ‘almost the appointed [attitré] pianist of the Société nationale, that is, the habitual and favoured interpreter of our young composers’.44 He combined the virtuoso technique of a Conservatoiretrained performer with the musicianship idealized at the Schola. Not surprisingly, Viñes premiered many piano works by Debussy (Pour le piano, Estampes, L’Isle joyeuse, Images I and II, selected preludes) and Ravel (Sites auriculaires, Jeux d’eau, Pavane, Miroirs), most of which he shared with the Apaches as he was working on them. He also promoted this repertoire through performances in the provinces and abroad. Although an Impressionist of the piano, Viñes also established strong connections with the Schola and its music. Despite not liking d’Indy’s music (in a diary entry of December 1903 he calls L’Etranger ‘truly very, very ugly’), he gave concerts at the Schola, including a four-hand arrangement of Debussy’s Nocturnes on 21 April 1904 and Séverac’s En languedoc on 25 May 1905. He also toured with works dear to Scholists, such as Franck’s Variations symphoniques, and the music of young Scholists, such as Henri Woollett. Alongside his devotion to contemporary music, like the Scholists he also loved Beethoven’s music, becoming known for his rendition of the Piano Sonata Op. 111. He also shared their enthusiasm for early music. In spring 1905 Viñes gave a solo recital of five concerts with music from various European traditions – 49 composers, 55 pieces, all played from memory, and some using early instruments. He began with Cabezon, Byrd, Frescobaldi, Rameau and Couperin, Handel and Bach. When it came to the more recent music in this series, he was equally inclusive, performing composers most Apaches did not appreciate – Saint-Saëns and Théodore Dubois – along with Grieg, Borodin, and a premiere by Cyril Scott. On the last concert, an all-French programme, he juxtaposed Franck, d’Indy, Fauré, Debussy, Séverac, 43  L.a. Séverac (20 Aug. 1903), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris (BN); l.a. Ladmirault, (29 March 1912), BN; Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery, p. 58. 44  ‘M.R. Viñes est devenu l’une des personnalités les plus marquantes des la jeune école du piano … Il est “francisé” à ce point, qu’il est devenu le pianiste presque attitré de la Nationale, c’est à dire l’interprète habituel et favori de nos jeunes compositeurs.’ A.M., ‘Salles Erard’, Monde musical (April 1902): 145.

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Ravel, and Chabrier. Calvocoressi argued for this as proof of Viñes’s ‘universal talent’ as well as his desire to interpret works ‘of diverse tendencies, even the most opposed … with equal conscience and equal sincerity’. He also pointed to the ‘modesty’ with which Viñes presented his concerts, without advance publicity vaunting his repeated ovations and encores – ‘an attitude worthy of a true, great artist’ and reflective of the subtle kind of impact the Apaches wished to have on the musical world. In renouncing ‘external effects’ and seeking to ‘render rather than interpret the work’,45 Viñes became the quintessential modernist performer, a great craftsman and the kind of artist d’Indy envisaged when he became director of the Schola in 1900.

Vuillermoz once claimed that a revolution is never the result of just one person. Debussy, a ‘decisive lightning bolt’, brought together all the ‘dreams, aspirations, and premonitions’ of the young musicians of his time.46 His opera stimulated the notion of concert attendance as ‘a way to serve’47 and attracted a broad range of artists and musicians. The Apaches help us to understand what is involved when a young generation, impassioned by the innovations of their immediate predecessors, wish to defend those innovations and explore their implications while clearing a space for their own creative experimentation. Examining them, we appreciate the value of minor artistic figures and their interdependence with major ones; we learn of the manifold supportive roles played by public figures such as Vuillermoz, Calvocoressi, and Viñes, as well as those in the shadows like Sordes and Delage; and we begin to understand the collaborative relationships between musicians, poets, and visual artists that helped propel music in new directions between Pelléas (1902) and Le Sacre du printemps (1913). 45  ‘M. Viñes a donné la meilleure des preuves de son très universel talent et de cette vive intelligence grâce à laquelle il peut s’identifier aux plus diverses inspirations et en interpréter les fruits avec une égale conscience et une égale sincérité … De même qu’il renonce aux effets extérieurs qui agissent si sûrement sur les auditoires, de même il s’efface devant l’oeuvre à jouer, qu’il cherche à rendre plutôt qu’à interpréter … C’est aussi la modestie dont il fit prévue tout en l’accomplissant: il ne la précéda point de retentissantes annonces, et s’abstint de faire proclamer, en de propices communiqués, les succès qu’il obtint … Voilà une belle leçon, une attitude digne d’un véritable, d’un grand artiste.’ M.D. Calvocoressi, ‘Concerts Ricardo Viñes’, Courrier musical (1 May 1905): 277–8. 46  ‘l’éclair décisif … tous les rêves, toutes les aspirations, tous les pressentiments …’. Emile Vuillermoz, ‘Maurice Ravel’, Revue musicale 187 (1938): 248–9. 47  Fargue, Ravel, p. 54.

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What began as casual gatherings after concerts evolved into a fascinating microcosm of the French avant-garde, a place ‘open to all the changeable winds of fashion, but firmly closed to pedants and spurious aesthetes’.48 Other groups during this period were also interdisciplinary and international; what made the Apaches distinct was their focus on musical innovation. Besides their concert attendance and mutual support, Calvocoressi’s lectures at the École des hautes études in November 1912 on Stravinsky, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, and Egon Wellesz; his articles defending Elgar and Schoenberg;49 Ravel’s attempts to get Pierrot lunaire performed in Paris; and Viñes’s performances of music by young composers representing diverse aesthetic tendencies and traditions exemplify the depth of the Apaches’ commitment to supporting the new in whatever form it might take. The group lasted until World War I because of the nature of its meetings. The Apaches did not convene in public places such as cafés or cabarets, where other musicians and artists often met. Like a salon, their gatherings were private. They offered a forum for discussion and a sympathetic alternative public for their work, but with no women, no codes, no structured or formal presentations, no special clothes or behaviour, no pressure to conform to the ideal of a certain patroness, nor any requirement to produce regularly and in the same manner. Delage wrote very little, and yet remained integral to the group. No one had to ‘leave one’s soul in the cloakroom together with one’s gloves and newspapers’, as in salons.50 Like Mallarmé’s Tuesdays in the 1890s, the group provided its members with a new kind of public, unlike that of the theatres or salons. Rather than seeking to impose their ideas and tastes, the Apaches sought to learn from one another, work out their aesthetic beliefs, and broaden their interests. They shared their most recent creations—compositions, poetry, or essays—in a friendly, receptive environment that nurtured its members, encouraged their efforts, and protected them from the hostility of the theatre and concert-going public. They also helped one another in practical ways: Delage recalls that they ‘often spent whole nights’ copying orchestral parts for the next day’s concert.51 Most significantly, even if members shared a common belief in Debussy as a musical prophet, unlike other ‘little chapels’, including Mallarmé’s, Apache meetings were non-hierarchical and promoted a spirit of independence. Vuillermoz may have depicted the Apaches as ‘the little cohort surrounding Ravel from the beginning of his career, who consoled him for his academic setbacks, jealously watched over his burgeoning fame … and played the role of a protective and

Roland-Manuel, Ravel (Paris, 1938), p. 33. Among Calvocoressi’s publications, see ‘Edward Elgar’, Courrier musical (15 January 1905): 42–8, and ‘The Classicism of Arnold Schönberg,’ Musical Times (1 April 1914): 234–6. 50  ‘l’âme … fait partie de ce qu’il faut laisser au vestiaire, avec gants, journaux et météores’. Fargue, Refuges, p. 95. 51  Delage, ‘Les Premiers Amis’, pp. 107–8. 48  49 

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beneficial silken cocoon’.52 And Ravel did ‘gain much intellectual benefit’ from the group, especially from Fargue, who was for him ‘an incomparable teacher of taste’.53 However, this could be said of other Apaches as well. Séverac and Schmitt certainly benefited from this cocooning before they became successful; Fargue and Klingsor appreciated contact with a music that preached freedom in form and in the expression of intimate emotions. Everyone benefited from the professional contacts and collaborations. Relationships between Apaches were almost certainly on a quasi-equal footing, and since Ravel ‘was concerned above all to bring others’ works to light’,54 they were not concentrically oriented around a single personality, especially after 1910 when Stravinsky joined them. No wonder musicians, poets, and artists representing a wide spectrum of differences found mutually beneficial reasons to be part of the Apaches. For Fargue, getting together with these friends was like ‘living twice’, the combination of friendship and care in their meetings rendering them ‘quite rare’.55 Fruitful interactions and mutual influence ensued because ‘each one of them knew, each one understood, day by day, what the others were thinking and doing’.56 Certainly we can judge the impact of their ideas by their public statements, actions, and works. However, in our effort to understand the forces underlying the renaissance in French music before World War I, perhaps we have been too quick to stop with these or take them at face value, ignoring what can be learned from the private side of musical life in Paris. On this the Apaches provide a very special window.57

52  ‘la petite cohorte d’artistes qui entoura Maurice Ravel dès le début de sa carrière, qui le consola de ses déboires scolaires, qui veilla jalousement sur sa gloire naissante et qui … joua le rôle protecteur et bienfaisant de l’enveloppe soyeuse qu’un vœu formel de la nature réserve à la transformation biologique de la chrysalide à la minute où elle va devenir papillon.’ Emile Vuillermoz, ‘L’Oeuvre de Maurice Ravel’, Ravel par quelques-uns de ses familiers, p. 33. 53  Vuillermoz, ‘L’Oeuvre de Maurice Ravel’, p. 32 54  ‘… il tenait surtout à révéler celles des autres’. D.E. Inghelbrecht, ‘Ravel et les russes’, Revue musicale 19 (December 1938): 120. 55  Fargue, Refuges, 93–4 and ‘Autour de Ravel’, Ravel par quelques-uns de ses familiers, p. 155. 56  ‘Chacun de nous savait, chacun de nous comprenait, jour par jour, ce que pensaient et faisaient les autres.’ Fargue, Ravel, p. 57. 57  The Apaches never reconvened after the war, in part because a number of them married. I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a grant supporting this research in 1988–89. I plan to consolidate this and my other essays on the Apaches into book form. The tiny images herein come at the end of essays on the literary critic, the author, and the music critic in Tristan Klingsor, Le Livre d’esquisses (Paris, 1902).

Chapter Ten

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences and Style Barbara L. Kelly Debussy’s death in 1918, as Paris was being bombarded by Big Berthe, the Germans’ long-range supergun, was seen as part of France’s national sacrifice. Jean Chantavoine’s obituary in La Revue hebdomadaire (May 1918) made the connection between Debussy, the war and ‘la patrie’. By 1920 Debussy’s achievements were revered in quasi-religious tones in all sectors of the press. His preoccupation with the French musical past of Rameau and Couperin, and his writings on tradition, had contributed to consolidating his heroic posthumous status.  His propagandist stance on the front page of L’Intransigeant, in which he insisted on a return to the French musical qualities of Rameau, lay alongside reports of German military treachery, thereby reinforcing the link between national musical values and the war effort. In the post World-War-I period Ravel was surely a principal candidate to fill the lacunae left by Debussy. He was offered recognition by the French state in the form of the Légion d’honneur in 1920, but he refused it. Although his patriotism was indisputable, given his wartime activities, he was wary of the wrong sort of nationalism and, unlike Debussy, Saint-Saëns and d’Indy, generally avoided pronouncing on issues linking music with nationalism. He only spoke out when chauvinism was in danger of clouding musical judgement, most notably when he refused to join the National League for the Defence of French Music in 1916. He also avoided too close an association with the musical establishment, declining to be involved with a reformed Société nationale in 1916, ‘fearing that this Society was too … national’. Ravel physically emphasized his isolation by moving 50 Jean Chantavoine, ‘Claude Debussy’, La Revue hebdomadaire 27/5 (May 1918): 112. Emile Vuillermoz, ‘Claude Debussy’, Le Ménestrel 82/24 (11 June 1920): 241–3 and 82/25 (18 June 1920): 249–51; special Debussy issue of La Revue musicale 1/2 (1 December 1920); Pierre Leroi, Le Courrier musical (15 February 1923).   For example, Debussy, ‘A la Schola Cantorum: Castor et Pollux’, Gil blas (2 February 1903); Debussy, ‘Enfin, seuls! …’, L’Intransigeant (11 March 1915); both reproduced in Claude Debussy, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, revised edn, ed. François Lesure (Paris, 1987), pp. 89–93, 265–66.   Arbie Orenstein, A Ravel Reader (New York, 1990), pp. 169–71 (hereafter RR).   Jean Michel Nectoux, ‘Ravel/Fauré et les débuts de la Société musicale indépendante’, Revue de musicologie 61/2 (1975): 308.    

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kilometres west of Paris, to ‘Le Belvédère’ in Montfort-l’Amaury. This chapter considers issues of distance and isolation in relation to Ravel’s musical activities and achievements, exploring his musical and aesthetic preoccupations in this postwar period. It touches on his complex relationship with Les Six, some of whom regarded him as outmoded and arriviste. Yet Ravel’s interest in contemporary musical and aesthetic debates deserves scrutiny. The extent to which he was able to dictate or respond to new artistic developments is vital in unravelling his position in post-war France. Paul Landormy reflected on Ravel’s potential leadership of new music in France in La Victoire in 1920. In his view Ravel prepared the way for Les Six, but was unable to maintain his position as an innovator: M. Ravel made his contribution to discrediting Impressionism and he prepared the arrival of a new school. But he no longer belongs to this school. He lacks assurance, vigour, application, the courage to say everything, crudely, if necessary, which characterizes the new comers. M. Ravel is distinguished by elegance, affectionate gentleness and even affectation, a taste that will go out of fashion. It is because, despite everything, he is bound quite closely to Claude Debussy. It is because he is a product of his time. It was important at least to underline the manner in which he foreshadowed a new era.

For Landormy, Ravel anticipated the move away from Impressionism but, lacking the necessary leadership qualities, remained rooted to his late-nineteenthcentury heritage. He identified other composers who anticipated the ‘decline of Impressionism’. He noted the vigour and counterpoint of Roussel, who, as an early supporter of the younger composers, defended them in print as they were emerging as a group. He also noted Déodat de Séverac’s sustained melodic writing and ‘horizontalism’, and singled out Florent Schmitt for his ‘male’ language. While all three arguably lacked Ravel’s stature, Landormy linked them with priorities that were important to the post-war generation, namely, counterpoint, melody and horizontal writing, and a masculine, vigorous art. Landormy also saw Ravel’s proximity to Debussy as an inhibiting factor in making him a suitable post-war musical figurehead, an issue this chapter will address.

  ‘M. Ravel a contribué pour sa part à discréditer l’impressionnisme et il a préparé l’avènement d’une Ecole nouvelle. Mais il n’appartient pas encore à cette Ecole. Il lui manque la fermeté, la vigueur, le trait appuyé, l’audace de tout dire, avec crudité s’il le faut, qui caractériseront les nouveaux venus. M. Ravel a pour la distinction, l’élégance, les douceurs caressantes et même pour la préciosité un goût qui va passer de mode. C’est en quoi, malgré tout, il se rattache assez étroitement à Claude Debussy. C’est en quoi il est de son temps. Il importait de souligner du moins de quelle façon il annonçait déjà des temps nouveaux.’ Landormy, La Victoire (10 August 1920). This quotation is almost identical to a passage from his article ‘Le Déclin de l’impressionnisme’, La Revue musicale 2/4 (1921): 101.   Landormy, ‘Le Déclin de l’impressionism’, p. 103; Albert Roussel, ‘Young French Composers’, The Chesterian 2 (October 1919): 33–7.   Landormy, ‘Le Déclin de l’impressionisme’, pp. 103–4.

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences, Style 169 Les Six, Ravel and the Issue of Authority Les Six appeared to reject Debussy and Ravel for their attachment to so-called Impressionism. Yet, despite some provocative comments about Debussy, their respect for him remained intact; they were much more dismissive of Ravel. In the early 1920s the more influential members of Les Six – Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric – regarded Ravel with disdain, criticizing his ‘outmoded’ aesthetic. Milhaud explained that as a conservatoire student he perceived a lack of depth in Ravel’s music; Milhaud also expressed his contempt for La Valse, describing it as ‘Saint-Saëns for the Russian ballet’.10 Certainly he and his colleagues were influenced by Erik Satie’s deteriorating relations with Ravel, which culminated in Satie’s famous statement in Le Coq: ‘Ravel refuses the Légion d’honneur but all his music accepts it’.11 That this view persisted is clear from Poulenc’s comment to Collaer when he broke from Satie in 1924: With regard to Satie, I’ll tell you frankly that I am delighted not to see him any more. I admire him as ever, but breathe a sigh of relief at finally not having to listen to his eternal ramblings on the subject of Ravel, Laloy etc.12

The issue of Ravel divided the young generation of French composers from the start. Louis Durey’s early resignation from Les Six was motivated largely by the crucial issue of authority in the post World-War-I period, between Ravel’s and Satie’s competing leaderships.13 Durey made his objection public in The Chesterian (1921) where he defends Ravel from criticisms by Satie, Auric and Jean Cocteau.14 He denies that Ravel is an Impressionist, a Romantic, or in Debussy’s shadow, describing his friends’ attitude as ‘an excuse for neglecting Ravel by considering him as the fag-end of an epoch, so as to find someone else to begin a new one’.15 Durey’s article challenges Satie’s role as figurehead by claiming that Ravel represents the way forward for the new generation:   Auric described the fascination with Debussy as the worst form of vulturism (‘necrophagie’), Auric, Le Coq 1 (1 April 1920): 1. 10  Milhaud, Ma vie heureuse (Paris, 1987) pp. 28–9; and Milhaud quoted in Nichols, Ravel Remembered, p. 114; Henri Sauguet, a member of L’Ecole d’Arceuil, described Ravel’s Tzigane (1924) as horribly antiquated and artificial in a letter to Poulenc of 16 October 1924, Poulenc Correspondance 1910–1963, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris, 1994), p. 241. 11  Satie, Le Coq 1 (May 1920): 1. Both the April and May issues of Le Coq were given the issue number 1. 12  Letter from Poulenc to Collaer (8 April 1924), Collaer, Correspondance, p. 180. 13  In a letter to Poulenc of 25 March 1921 Durey submitted his resignation: ‘J’annonce en même temps à Jean, comme à chacun d’entre vous, la décision que j’ai prise de me retirer du ‘Groupe des Six’ pour continuer ma route à l’écart.’ Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 121. 14  Durey, ‘Maurice Ravel’, The Chesterian 14 (April 1921): 422–6; Roland-Manuel prepared the way in an article on Durey in the February issue, in which he emphasizes Ravel’s interest in Durey. Roland-Manuel, ‘Louis Durey’, The Chesterian 13 (February 1921): 392. 15  Durey, ‘Maurice Ravel’, p. 422; Durey also contests Cocteau’s attitude, quoting from the lecture he gave on 19 December 1919 in Brussels at the launch of the group; he had been harbouring objections from the start. Durey, ‘Maurice Ravel’, p. 422.

170

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies At a time when there is such an outcry for ‘French music of France’, no composer seems to me better qualified to represent it than Maurice Ravel. Reserve, clarity and simplicity, are his chief qualities.16

He not only paraphrases Cocteau’s demand in Le Coq et l’arlequin,17 but also applies the term ‘simplicity’ to Ravel (a quality normally associated with Satie), stating his preference for Ravel’s brand. Alluding to Satie, he comments that ‘others, who, for fear of excess, prefer to keep to a too reposeful “simplicity”’.18 Durey was unable to reconcile his differences with the group and withdrew into relative obscurity. Germaine Tailleferre also had a high regard for Ravel, and was still seeking his approval of her work in 1921.19 Roland-Manuel’s unpublished article ‘Les Six devant Ravel’ (c. 1925) gives insight into why Les Six turned on Ravel.20 In his view, they marked Ravel out for attack because of his relative youth and potential importance for French music. Only later in their careers did they admit his significance: As is natural they [the young people] were concerned less with the dead than the living and less with the famous old generation than the men in the prime of age and talent. Debussy had just died. They displayed a kind of grudging enthusiasm for him and a moving respect for the great Gabriel Fauré. Their rival designate just had to be a musician who was rising to fame, still young and capable of new tours de forces. Maurice Ravel was precisely this musician.21

While understanding the need of the younger generation to attack the aesthetics and music of their immediate predecessors ‘in a spontaneous, inescapable and necessary way’, Roland-Manuel disagreed with their choice of Satie over Ravel.22 In his view Satie is ‘the origin of the anti-Ravel movement’.23 He pits the characters of the two men against each other; Satie’s political scheming (‘combinaisons politiques’) against Ravel’s ironic reserve and independence, and blames Ravel for neglecting his own public image: Durey, ‘Maurice Ravel’, p. 423. Cocteau, Le Coq et l’arlequin (Paris, 1979), p. 58. 18  Durey, ‘Maurice Ravel’, p. 424. 19  Letter from Tailleferre to Poulenc (August 1921), Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 135. 20  In 1919 Roland-Manuel was closely associated with the composers who would soon form Les Six but remained separate from the group because of Satie’s attitude to Ravel; he also failed to appreciate Satie’s Socrate. See Barbara L. Kelly, Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud (Aldershot, 2003), p. 3. 21  ‘Comme il est naturel, elle [la jeunesse] s’en prit moins aux morts qu’aux vivants, et moins aux illustres vieillards qu’aux hommes dans la force de l’âge et du talent. Debussy venait de mourir. Elle afficha pour lui une sorte d’enthousiasme réticent, et pour le grand Gabriel Fauré un respect ému. Son rival désigné devait être nécessairement un musicien qui touchait à la gloire, jeune encore et capable de nouveaux tours de force. Maurice Ravel était précisément ce musicien-là.’ Roland-Manuel, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, unpublished typescript. BNF Mus, 4 Vm˚, Pièce 369, c. 1925, p. 1. 22  Roland-Manuel, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, p. 1. 23  ‘l’origine du mouvement anti-ravelien’, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, p. 2. 16  17 

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences, Style 171 He is too highly principled to try to interest the public in his undertakings. Grand outbursts are not at all his thing. He is not readily encouraging, even less is he a flatterer. He lives in the country, at a distance from the Parisian tumult; he does not reply to letters; he doesn’t write articles; despairs of photographers and those in search of interviews; he neglects his interests and scarcely takes care of his reputation at all that he seems the least dangerous man in the whole world to attack. Fortunately, his music is of sufficient stature to take care of itself, which it does very successfully.24

In contrast to Milhaud, who not only excluded Ravel from his musical canon but preferred Satie to the enticements of Igor Stravinsky, Roland-Manuel cites Ravel as the most important representative of ‘notre genie national’.25 Importantly, Roland-Manuel argues that Ravel’s music realizes many of the ideals of Les Six: ‘So far, Ravel erects a calm façade in the face of accusations, which some of the young people would like to bombard him with in the name of an aesthetic which so far he is the only person to have exemplified properly: naked simplicity, art reduced to its essentials, the restoration of the cult of Gounod … [and] a new classicism.’26 We will consider these qualities in relation to Ravel’s musical output of the 1920s later in the chapter. In several respects Ravel shared a number of interests with Les Six. Firstly, they recognized the importance of Gounod and Chabrier, appreciating the need to find alternatives to Debussy within the French tradition.27 Secondly, they actively promoted foreign music, in particular Schoenberg’s music. In 1913 Ravel tried to secure a performance of Pierrot lunaire at the Société musicale indépendente (SMI), though without success, and he publicly defended Wiéner and Milhaud’s success in performing it in Paris in 1921 and 1922.28 While wishing to keep abreast of foreign musical developments, Ravel and Milhaud argued that they did so from the vantage point of their Latin (French) tradition; indeed, they both wrote about two parallel and distinct traditions – Latin and Teutonic.29 Yet their approach to 24  ‘Il est trop bien élevé pour tenter d’intéresser le public à ses entreprises. Les grands élans ne sont pas du tout son fait. Il n’est pas volontiers encourageant; encore moins flagorneur. Il vit à la campagne, à l’écart du tumulte parisien ; ne répond pas aux lettres; n’écrit pas d’articles; désespère les photographes et les quéandeurs d’interview; néglige ses intérets et soigne si peu sa renommée, qu’il semble l’homme du monde entier le moins dangereux à attaquer. Fort heureusement, sa musique est de taille à se défendre toute seule, et victorieusement.’ Roland-Manuel, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, pp. 2–3. 25  Barbara L. Kelly, Tradition and Syle, p. 18; Roland-Manuel, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, p. 3 26  ‘Jusqu’à présent Ravel oppose un front serein aux accusations dont quelques jeunes gens voudraient l’accabler au nom d’une esthétique qu’il est le seul à avoir illustrée valablement jusqu’à ce jour: la simplicité nue, l’art dépouillé … le rétablissement de culte de Gounod … un nouveau classicisme.’ Roland-Manuel, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, p. 3. 27  For Milhaud on Gounod and Chabrier see Barbara L. Kelly, Tradition and Style, pp. 36–7; for Ravel’s attachment to Chabrier see ‘Memories’, in Orenstein, RR, p. 394 and Barbara L. Kelly ‘History and Homage’ in The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer (Cambridge, 2000); for Ravel’s perspective on Debussy see interview with Olin Downes, New York Times, 7 August 1927, in Orenstein, RR, p. 451. 28  Orenstein, RR, pp. 135–6; 239–41. 29  Ravel, ‘Ravel and Modern Music’, The Morning Post (10 July 1922) and ‘An Interview with

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these concerns differed; while Ravel generally avoided attention from the press, Les Six courted it, adopting sometimes provocative language to drive home their points.30 Ravel, by contrast, appeared moderate in his views, seldom showing annoyance. Importantly, Ravel was careful to relate new developments to the recent past, revealing his attachment to late-nineteenth-century musical traditions. Milhaud followed suit from 1923, but unlike Ravel he traced a musical lineage that was highly selective, and decisively excluded foreign composers.31 Ravel on Les Six and Satie Ravel retained a keen interest in the music of Les Six, promoting it abroad, defending it from attacks in the press, and even justifying the group’s rejection of him with the comment, ‘if he [Auric] didn’t knock Ravel he’d be writing Ravel, and there’s quite enough of that!’32 He was particularly interested in Milhaud’s potential, describing him in his Rice Institute lecture of 1928 as ‘probably the most important of our younger French composers’.33 Defending Milhaud from Pierre Lalo’s attack on Les Malheurs d’Orphée, he described it as ‘a moving, magnificent work, Milhaud’s best, and one of the finest achievements that our young school has produced for a long time’.34 Ravel approved of Milhaud’s works that contained clear textures and careful instrumentation, and in which polytonality did not obscure the texture and the melodic line: [his] occasional use of polytonality is so intricately interwoven with lyric and poetic elements as to be scarcely distinguishable, while his acknowledged artistic personality reappears clothed with a certain clarity of melodic design altogether Gallic in character.35

Ravel’s assessment of Satie’s importance did not materialize until after Satie’s death. Freed from the complications of Satie’s personality, Ravel credited him as a pioneering experimenter and ‘the inspiration of countless progressive tendencies’, who had exerted an influence on most modern French composers, but who had Ravel’ La Revue musicale (March 1931) in Orenstein, RR, pp. 422, 470; Milhaud, ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’, La Revue musicale 4/4 (1 February 1923) and ‘The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and Vienna’, North American Review (April 1923). 30  Milhaud wrote ‘la jeunesse de 1919 réagit avec violence’ (‘the youth of 1919 react with violence’), ‘Claude Debussy’, unpublished, n.d., p. 14. 31  Barbara L. Kelly, Tradition and Style, pp. 34–44. 32  Jourdan-Morhange, Ravel Remembered, ed. Roger Nichols (London, 1987), p. 104. 33  Orenstein, RR, p. 42. 34  Roland-Manuel, ‘Maurice Ravel et la Jeune musique française’, Les Nouvelles littéraires (2 April 1927) in Orenstein, RR, p. 446. Milhaud thanked Ravel for his support in the quarrel with Pierre Lalo, adding respectfully: ‘Your voice alone had the authority necessary to put Mr Lalo in his place’ (‘Votre voix avait seule l’autorité necessaire pour remettre à sa place l’opinion de M. Lalo’) (2 February 1927), BNF musique, MS: l.a (5). 35  Ravel, ‘Contemporary Music’, The Rice Institute Pamphlet (15 April 1928) in Orenstein, RR, p. 43.

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences, Style 173 probably never ‘wrought out of his own discoveries a single complete work of art’.36 Ravel’s writings reveal that he acknowledged Satie’s influence and aligned himself with Satie’s move away from Impressionism, even associating himself with the post-war ‘reaction against [Debussy] in favour of the classics’.37 Defending the young musicians ‘of a rising generation’, he acknowledges that ‘we are approaching another epoch’.38 Clearly, Ravel saw himself as being actively engaged in the contemporary musical scene. Drawing selectively on his late works, this chapter considers the extent to which he participated in the new musical tendencies in post-World-War-I France. Ravel’s s Engagement with New Musical Developments Ravel was drawn to certain aspects of new classicism. He shared with Stravinsky, Satie and Les Six the ideal of dépouillement (economy of means). He insisted, though, on relating current preoccupations with older, enduring concerns. Ravel’s writings on this subject, and his musical practice, reveal the important distinctions between Neo- and French classicism; while Neoclassicism does not suggest allegiance to any particular national tradition, French classicism typically involves a sense of homage. In a New York Times interview (1927), Ravel spoke of a ‘reaction … in the direction of our oldest traditions’.39 In another interview he claimed credit for the contemporary interest in counterpoint, arguing that it was not as new as Stravinsky made it seem: After our extreme modernism, a return to classicism was to be expected. After a flood comes the ebb tide, and after a revolution we see the reaction. Stravinsky is often considered the leader of neoclassicism, but don’t forget that my String Quartet was already conceived in terms of four-part counterpoint, whereas Debussy’s Quartet is purely harmonic in conception.40

Stravinsky borrowed important ideas from French classicism, which lost their sense of national tradition in his hands. Les Six, eager to make their mark, initially overemphasized (with Cocteau’s help) the idea of reaction and novelty, only writing about tradition and homage from 1923.41 Although Ravel links Ravel, ‘Contemporary Music’, in Orenstein, RR, p. 45 Ravel, ‘Take Jazz Seriously’, Musical Digest (March 1928) in Orenstein, RR, p. 291; Ravel was keen to stress the differences between himself and Debussy in numerous post-war interviews and articles, for instance ‘Contemporary Music’ and ‘Memories of a Lazy Child’, in Orenstein, RR, pp. 45, 394. 38  Ravel, ‘Maurice Ravel, Man and Musician’, interview with Olin Downes, New York Times, 7 Aug. 1927 in Orenstein, RR, p. 451. 39  Olin Downes, ‘Maurice Ravel …’, Orenstein, RR, p. 451. 40  Unsigned Interview, ‘A Visit with Maurice Ravel’, De Telegraaf (31 March 1931) in Orenstein, RR, p. 473. 41  Milhaud, ‘The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and Vienna’ and ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’. 36  37 

174

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himself with Neoclassicism as a precursor, he remains separate from both the ‘revolution’ and the ‘reaction’. His expression of delight in the ‘return to pure forms, this Neoclassicism’ was due to his ability to approve this tendency, because he had never abandoned his use of traditional forms and classicizing titles.42 Scott Messing and others have argued that Ravel’s classicism, including his predilection for older dance forms and his evocation of the past, owes much to his immediate predecessors, and in particular to Chabrier, Fauré and Saint-Saëns.43 Yet it is undeniable that Ravel’s interest in achieving economy of means increased after the war, and in this respect he demonstrated his receptivity to new musical developments. The Sonata for Violin and Cello reveals a new austerity in Ravel’s writing that would have been unlikely before the war. In his ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ he admitted that this ‘Sonata marks a turning point in the evolution of my career. In it thinness of texture is pushed to the extreme. Harmonic charm is renounced, coupled with an increasingly conspicuous reaction in favour of melody.’44 Its musical references are rich, in that Ravel combines Saint-Saëns with traces of Stravinsky’s rhythmic drive, adopting a restraint that suggests both Fauré and more contemporary austere sonorities. In the opening of the first movement there is a switch in the normal balance, with the violin adopting a repetitive accompanimental figure and the cello taking the melody. This is reversed at rehearsal figure 1, and the interchange between the two instruments throughout indicates Ravel’s linear, contrapuntal thinking. In the second movement, Ravel consciously suggests localized bitonality, selecting two different key signatures for a substantial part of the piece (e.g. D  major and D minor), as shown in Example 10.1 (rehearsal figures 5–7). Although the bitonality is never sustained, Ravel controls the impact of the aggregations through the use of arco, pizzicato and harmonics. He also uses homophonic moments sparingly for particular effects. Example 10.1 shows both his exploitation of string effects to minimize dissonance, and moments where he heightens it, for example, at 8 bars before rehearsal figure 7, where he superimposes adjacent chords for five bars before they dissolve into octaves. If looking for precursors, Debussy’s late sonatas, particularly the Violin Sonata and the Cello Sonata reveal a new interest in stripping down timbre, while the bitonal effects suggest his awareness of early Stravinsky, Charles Koechlin and Milhaud. Ravel’s inability to appreciate some of Stravinsky’s Neoclassical works, in particular Mavra and Apollon musagète, is significant. Ravel, who had been close to Stravinsky in the early-to-mid 1910s, did not share the younger generation’s enthusiasm for Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism. Declaring his incomprehension of Mavra and other ‘failed’ works, he could not understand Stravinsky’s fascination 42 

p. 497. 43  44 

Nino Frank, ‘Maurice Ravel between Two Trains’, Candide (5 May 1932) in Orenstein, RR, Messing, Neoclassicism in Music, 49–50; see Barbara L. Kelly, ‘History and Homage’, p. 26. Ravel, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’, in Orenstein, RR, p. 32.

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences, Style 175 Example 10.1  Sonata for Violin and Cello, second movement, rehearsal figures 5–7

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176

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

with Tchaikovsky and rejection of Rimsky-Korsakov.45 At the root of the problem was his inability to understand Stravinsky’s substitution of his own tradition for an adopted and ‘artificial’ one. This may seem an odd term to apply to Stravinsky rather than to Ravel, but it is appropriate in the context of acquiring or bolstering traditions. However, of Stravinsky’s works performed in the 1920s, Ravel admired Les Noces. In a letter to Roland-Manuel of 26 June 1923, he called it ‘a splendid work. I even believe that it’s Stravinsky’s masterpiece to date’.46 He described it in an interview in Le Guide du concert as ‘like The Rite of Spring without the tiny imperfections’.47 It is possible to explain his identification with this work, since it stands out from Stravinsky’s Neoclassical compositions. Composed shortly after The Rite of Spring, it shares the same Russian tradition. Its orchestration, which had taken Stravinsky so long to determine, reflects the newer concerns with dépouillement, concerns that were preoccupying Ravel too. Ravel retained an attachment to early Stravinsky, as a number of his post-war works reveal. Ravel’s Concerto in G is a good example of the earlier Russian Stravinsky’s influence, in the context of an eclectic work that incorporates jazz elements suggesting Gershwin and Milhaud and also nods to Satie in the second movement. The opening of Ravel’s first movement is suggestive of Stravinsky’s Petrushka with its pentatonicism and bright orchestration. He also superimposes black and white notes – G and D min7/pentatonic in the piano – but in a clearly G major context. At rehearsal figure 4 he alludes to the blues, employing a Phrygian scale on F  accompanied by F  major arpeggios. These are typical traits of pre-war Ravel in exotic mode, and it is unsurprising that the result evokes both Spanish exoticism and jazz, but with the dotted habanera rhythm smoothed out into crotchets in the left-hand piano. It is also evident that Ravel had heard Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue (particularly at rehearsal figure 7), which were performed when Gershwin visited Paris in 1928.48 Ravel described the work as ‘in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns’, but there are numerous other models between the lines. The stimulus for Ravel’s engagement with jazz and blues in the 1920s is not clear. Ragtime had made an impact on France before the war, and Paris jazz was performed with varying degrees of authenticity in cabarets, clubs and music halls, mainly in Montmartre and Montparnasse, in post-war Paris.49 Although Debussy, Satie and Stravinsky had employed ragtime in a number of compositions for ensemble and piano, Ravel revealed a greater awareness of jazz gestures and instrumentation in his concertos and Sonata for Violin and Piano. Certainly by 1930 Ravel must have encountered numerous jazz ensembles, including the Unsigned interview, ‘Ravel and Modern Music’, in Orenstein, RR, p. 421. In Orenstein, RR, p. 244. 47  Ravel, Le Guide du concert (16 October 1931) in Orenstein, RR, p. 482. 48  Michael Russ, ‘Ravel and the Orchestra’, in Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, pp. 129–34. 49  Jeffrey H. Jackson, ‘Music-Halls and the Assimilation of Jazz in 1920s Paris’, Journal of Popular Culture 34/2 (Fall 2000): 69–82. 45  46 

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences, Style 177 Billy Arnold band (in Jean Wiéner’s performances in 1921), W.C. Handy (from 1920) and Paul Whiteman; he would also have known Milhaud’s jazz-inspired La Création du monde (1923). Indeed, Ravel’s attempts lacked the deeper engagement of Milhaud, who had sought out Harlem jazz on his American tour of 1922–23. Despite acquiring some jazz-like gestures, Ravel’s forays are comparatively tentative, refined, and less sustained than Milhaud’s in La Création, as the first movement of the Concerto in G reveals. Ravel’s own comments concerning his use of blues in the Sonata for Violin and Piano are revealing and consistent. While encouraging Americans to draw on this rich resource, he perceptively remarked of his own practice: ‘while I adopted this popular form of your music, I venture to say that nevertheless, it is French music, Ravel’s music that I have written’.50 Certainly, the opening of the blues movement from the Sonata for Violin and Piano situates the blues firmly in a French context of post-war dépouillement with reiterated bare pizzicato triads. When the violin takes up the melody and adopts the key of the piano part (A  major), it is treated as an exotic melody with prominent minor- and major-second appoggiatura slides dressed in syncopated and triplet rhythms. Gunther Schuller identified European interest in jazz as an exoticism;51 and while Milhaud’s engagement went deeper in one work, La Création du monde, jazz and blues were exotic new sources for Ravel. Chansons madécasses reveals a fascinating fusion of elements: exoticism, primitivism and austerity. It is also one of the few times Ravel lowered his mask, revealing his sense of anger towards colonial practices. He recognized he had introduced ‘a new, dramatic element’ into this work, yet he seems not to have explored it again in subsequent works.52 He resorts to wordless utterances rather than words in ‘Aoua!’. This makes interesting comparison with ‘Asie’ from Schéhérazade, where a word is treated as a sound. In ‘Aoua!’, exoticism is transformed; mixed with primitivism, it is a rare moment of realism stripped of Ravel’s customary luxuriating sensuousness.53 The text is angry and uncomfortable, causing some of his original audiences to declare the work unpatriotic because it articulates and supports the black man’s anger towards his white (French) oppressor (Madagascar was a French protectorate). It displays a surprisingly modern postcolonial sensitivity rarely heard in its time. At the same time, the idea of voice as sound was also central to Ravel’s aim, as the ‘Autobiographical Sketch’ reveals: ‘The songs form a sort of quartet in which the voice plays the role of the principal instrument. Simplicity is all-important. The independence of the part-writing is pronounced …’54 The interest in the voice as an instrument was a contemporary concern Ravel shared with Milhaud, in works such as Machines Ravel, ‘Contemporary Music’, 1928, in Orenstein, RR, p. 46. Gunther Schuller, ‘Jazz and Musical Exoticism’ in Jonathan Bellman (ed.), The Exotic in Western Music (Boston, 1998), pp. 281–91. 52  Ravel, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’, in Orenstein, RR, p. 32. 53  Laurence Kramer, ‘Ravel: Consuming the Exotic: Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé’, Classical Music and Post-Modern Knowledge (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 201–25. 54  Roland-Manuel/Ravel, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’, in Orenstein, p. 32. 50  51 

178

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

Example 10.2 Ravel, ‘Aoua!’, Chansons madécasses, rehearsal figure 1

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agricoles (1919), where the voice is treated as another instrumental line.55 Indeed, Ravel’s vocal line is frequently in contrapuntal exchange with the flute and cello in ‘Nahadove’, where the voice and instruments share the same thematic and rhythmic material. The mention of ‘simplicity’ and ‘independence of part-writing’ further confirms his post-war preoccupations in this work. Ravel’s occasional use of localized bitonality to articulate independence of part-writing in his late works has intrigued commentators, most recently Peter 55 

See Barbara L. Kelly, Tradition and Style, p. 159.

Ravel after Debussy: Leadership, Influences, Style 179 Kaminsky.56 Given the context in which it occurs – the Sonata for Violin and Cello, the Sonata for Violin and Piano and the Chansons madécasses – it invites comparisons with Milhaud’s polytonal writing in the late 1910s and 1920s. In addition to Milhaud, there are two other sources of bitonality that may have stimulated Ravel. His bitonal passages in the Sonata for Violin and Cello, for instance, owe more to Stravinsky’s Russian-period bitonal experiments, but are transposed into a new context, connecting them to some of Milhaud’s more restrained polytonal moments in terms of timbre, for example, Saudades do Brazil (1920) or the Chamber Sonatas (1917–23). Secondly, Ravel’s friend Charles Koechlin may have provided a stimulus. Examining instances of bitonality in ‘Aoua!’ reveals that like Koechlin, Ravel employs it sparingly. At rehearsal figure 1 (shown in Example 10.2) the spacing of the textures in 4ths and 5ths adheres to Koechlin’s notion of ‘translucent effects’.57 Ravel superimposes G and F /D  minor tonal centres (the voice suggests D  minor with flattened 7ths, while the right-hand piano employs oscillating fifths on D  and F  without 3rds). While the major 7th pedal, Ravel’s favoured interval, suggests a single tonality, more surprising is the fact that G persists for 19 bars alongside the F  major key signature before resolving to F . In this extract he undermines the G with a modally inflected flute part, which adds raised 4ths and 5ths and flattened 7ths to the open fifth tonic dyads in the cello. Although the greatest dissonances occur between the cello and right-hand piano, which outline fifths a semitone apart in the same register, Ravel controls the impact by muting the cello. He also pairs the instruments: flute, cello and piano left hand in G, and voice, piano right hand in F /D , something Milhaud did in his Second and Third Chamber Symphonies and Machines agricoles, although Ravel’s pairings change. Like Koechlin, Ravel’s bitonal moments are only used for moments of heightened expression. If Koechlin were his model, it would strengthen the view that Ravel’s engagement with new post-war developments was filtered through his own pre-war sensibility. Such instances of heightened expression are rare in Ravel. His music can generally be analysed in terms of unresolved appoggiaturas, as he was keen to demonstrate to René Lenormand in relation to his Valses nobles et sentimentales.58 Almost all his works have one controlling tonality, the exceptions being the Mallarmé songs (no. 3) and Frontispice (1918). His attachment to the conventions of tonality is captured in his exchange with Stravinsky in 1913–14 on the issue of superimposing a major and minor third: ‘Ravel said, “But such a chord is perfectly feasible, provided the minor third is placed above the major third below.” “If this arrangement is possible”, commented Stravinsky, “I don’t see why the contrary 56  Peter Kaminsky, ‘Ravel’s Late Music and the Problem of Polytonality’, Music Theory Spectrum 26/2 (2004): 237–64. 57  Charles Koechlin, Traité de l’harmonie (2 vols, Paris, 1930), pp. 258–9; Robert Orledge, Charles Koechlin 1867–1950, Contemporary Music Studies (Chur, 1989/1995), pp. 125–9; Kelly, Tradition and Style, pp. 147–8, 166–8. 58  Orenstein, Ravel, Man and Musician (New York, 1975; Dover, 2/1991) pp. 132–4.

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shouldn’t be possible too: and if I will it, I can do it.”’59 Ravel’s greater respect for rules of common practice, as well as traditions, is striking. From this brief examination of some of Ravel’s later works it is evident that he participated in new musical developments selectively. Certainly Ravel did not always reflect contemporary tendencies; he was still capable of writing Tzigane (1924) and La Valse, which he described as ‘a fatal spinning around, the expression of vertigo and of the voluptuousness of the dance to the point of paroxysm’.60 Some have seen La Valse as a critique of the war, but otherwise its relevance in the post-war context is unclear, as Diaghilev’s humiliating rejection of it confirms. It may be Ravel’s inability or unwillingness to commit more consistently to post-war preoccupations that made him an unsuitable model for the younger generation, and perhaps an unsuitable chef d’école to replace Debussy. Nevertheless, his interest in new developments was genuine, and RolandManuel correctly observed that his post-war music had reflected many of the best examples of traits such as dépouillement. Yet Ravel reserved the right to preserve his independence and detachment (aesthetically, musically and ideologically), to range freely backwards and beyond French traditions when it suited him. Scholars have observed the difficulty in pinning down Ravel’s late works and in locating the composer precisely in them; he can appear as an aloof participant in contemporary musical life. This reveals the problem he faced in his maturity, and it persists in posthumous assessments of his significance. His style during this period is eclectic, as L’Enfant et les sortilèges and the Concerto in G reveal. Boulez observed that even when succumbing to Schoenberg’s influence, Ravel’s harmonic language derives from Gounod and Fauré.61 Landormy’s comment (cited earlier) that Ravel ‘is bound quite closely to Debussy’, that ‘despite everything … he was a product of his time’ is helpful in explaining Ravel’s partial engagement with post-war tendencies. Despite Ravel’s assertion that ‘by nature I am different from Debussy and while I consider that Debussy may not have been altogether alien to my personal inheritance, I should identify also with the earlier phase of my evolution Fauré, Chabrier, and Satie’,62 he was unable to disassociate himself sufficiently from the composer under whose shadow he had lived for so long, and was unwilling to detach himself from the generation that had nurtured him and protected his talent, as Jann Pasler has shown.63 With the support of the Apaches no longer in place after the war, it is unsurprising that Ravel became more isolated. While he participated in many of the innovations of Stravinsky and the younger generation, adopting certain textures, instrumentation and harmonic procedures, he always linked these developments to an inclusive French musical past. 59  Ernest Ansermet, Les Fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (Neuchâtel, 1961), quoted in Eric Walter White, Stravinsky, the Composer and his Works (London, 1966/79) pp. 556–7. 60  Ravel, interview with André Révész, ABC de Madrid (May 1924) in Orenstein, RR, p. 434. 61  Boulez, ‘Trajectoires: Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg’, Contrepoints 6 (1949): 125. 62  Ravel, ‘Contemporary Music’, in Orenstein, RR, p. 45. 63  See chapter 9.

Afterword: The Origins of the Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy Roy Howat Having first met François Lesure in 1975, I spent most of the following year in Paris, primarily studying Debussy manuscript sources as part of my doctoral studies. If my thesis topic (golden-section proportions in Debussy’s symphonic structures) was hardly likely to earn the instant confidence of a scientifically trained scholar like Lesure (of which more later), his sympathy was immediate for my interest in correcting misprints in Debussy editions. This interest was soon fed in various ways. To my initial dismay, early in 1976 I found the Centre de documentation Claude Debussy closed while its founding animatrice Margaret Cobb recovered from illness. Having hoped to make frequent use of the centre, I asked if I could help in the meantime by manning it during opening hours. For the first time I saw that Lesure glint in the eye as he put me in contact with Charles Guy, who for several years generously housed the Centre Debussy in part of his home just outside Paris, the Pavillon de Noailles in Saint Germain-en-Laye. As a result, within a week the centre was again open, putting me in contact with visitors from many countries, including some who shared an interest in score corrections. Among the transatlantic visitors, scholar Douglass Green planted a vital seed for the future Œuvres complètes by mentioning a thesis in progress on La Mer and its sources, by his doctoral student Marie Rolf at the Eastman School of Music. The importance of the Centre Debussy in making the Œuvres complètes happen can hardly be understated. First envisioned by Lesure and Charles Guy in the late 1960s, the centre became reality in 1972 after Lesure enlisted Margaret Cobb; by 1975 she had assembled a comprehensive collection of Debussy literature and recordings, plus copies of manuscripts from libraries and other collections worldwide. In the process she created a spirit of cooperation and   Anik Devriès took over later in 1976 following Margaret Cobb’s retirement; the post later passed to Myriam Chimènes.

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friendship among the international community of Debussy scholars that remains undimmed today. By 1976 the centre’s holdings included photocopies of numerous unpublished works and corrections (many then unpublished) that Debussy had marked into an exemplar of his Second Book of Préludes that he had given to his colleague Fernand Lamy. It is extremely lucky that Lamy kept this safely, because nearly all Debussy’s other printed exemplars of his piano music have vanished. Lamy’s score alone proved the need for a complete corrected edition and, with the Centre Debussy acting as a sort of communications base, pianists and scholars across the seas and continents were now starting to share an informal pool of unpublished corrections. This notably proved its worth in 1977 for Paul Jacobs’s renowned recording of Debussy’s Préludes. Thanks to the Centre Debussy, I was able to perform Debussy’s three unpublished piano Images of 1894 in spring 1978, and—somewhat on the spur of the moment—to play his unpublished Elégie of December 1915 during a live interview for Radio France Culture. (One of their producers had heard of the Centre and decided to visit, and Charles Guy owned a good grand piano.) I later learnt fortuitously of the programme’s broadcast: my sister, passing through Paris, was collected from the Gare de Lyon by a friend who turned on the car radio only to be regaled by an accent that sounded oddly familiar to my astonished sister, followed by the sounds of Debussy’s Elégie … All this was spurring interest in bringing several of the Debussy inédits into print: in French law this required the authorization of Debussy’s stepdaughter and heir, the diminutive but formidable Mme Gaston de Tinan (née Dolly Bardac). Two more coincidences again involved Margaret Cobb, who sent me a copy of six pages she had acquired of Debussy sketches, apparently for the Etude ‘Pour les arpèges composés’. On closer inspection they turned out to comprise an entirely different, unknown piece. François Lesure promptly requested an article about this for the first of the new series of enlarged Cahiers Debussy, the Centre Debussy’s official annual publication.   See Margaret G. Cobb, Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht: The Story of a Musical Friendship (Rochester, NY, 2005), p. xvi; the centre’s early history is related in more detail in Margaret G. Cobb’s unpublished typescript ‘Centre de Documentation Claude Debussy: The First Four Years, 1972–1976’. The Centre Debussy is now housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (presently under the curatorship of Alexandra Laederich); most of Debussy’s objets d’art plus one or two manuscripts are now in the Musée Debussy (the house where he was born) at 38 rue au Pain, Saint Germain-en-Laye.   Mme Lamy later let me check this exemplar in close detail; since her death in the mid-1990s it has vanished, along with a notebook of Chabrier sketches. One rapidly learns to take maximum notes at any opportunity.   The manuscript of the Images formerly belonged to Alfred Cortot, who had made photocopies available to some colleagues: these poor-quality photocopies served for LP recordings of the pieces by Jörg Demus and Noël Lee, as well as for the Centre Debussy’s archives and the initial Theodore Presser proofs.   Roy Howat, ‘A Thirteenth Etude of 1915: The Original Version of “Pour les arpèges composés”’,

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The other coincidence followed the decision by Mme de Tinan, following some patient diplomacy by Margaret Cobb, to authorize publication of the 1894 Images. By mid-1976 these had reached proofs for an edition by Theodore Presser Co., the musical text prepared at Mme de Tinan’s request by Arthur Hoérée, a well-known Paris all-round musician who had worked with the likes of Ravel, Roussel and Poulenc. It turned out that the only original material available to Hoérée was a set of the same old, poor-quality photocopies as the Centre Debussy had, leaving many dubious readings impossible to ascertain with accuracy. At this point another package arrived from Margaret Cobb in New York, containing a new set of clear photocopies of the original manuscript, just obtained from the Pierpont Morgan Library (this again had required diplomacy; copyright issues had long prevented rephotocopying of the manuscript). On learning this, Arnold Broido, president of Theodore Presser Co., put me straight in touch with M. Hoérée, who disarmingly suggested we go through the material together (at his piano, which had belonged to Roussel). A day’s work together produced a reliable text, which Presser published in 1977 as Images (oubliées), to avoid confusion with Debussy’s other Images. With no publisher yet visible for any global Debussy edition, the contact with Theodore Presser led meanwhile to an Urtext re-edition of Debussy’s 1915 Page d’album for piano, plus—again involving Margaret Cobb—Debussy’s early song Jane and the newly discovered doppelgänger Etude. In the latter case Margaret Cobb’s diplomacy resulted in an afternoon audition of the piece chez Mme de Tinan before an informal ‘jury’, including Yvonne Lefébure and her musicologist husband Fred Goldbeck, and M. et Mme Frank Emmanuel (son of Debussy’s composer colleague Maurice). Having received approval (from underneath one of Mme Lefébure’s more spectacular hats), the Etude appeared in 1980 from Presser as Etude retrouvée, a title felicitously suggested by Richard Langham Smith. Around the same time Durand were persuaded to issue a first commercial edition of Debussy’s short Morceau de concours for piano of 1904, a piece rediscovered in part through the Centre Debussy. All this was feeding recurring talk of a complete edition, usually winding up with Lesure’s observation ‘Il le faut absolument—mais qui l’éditera?’ Various publishers were approached, the sticking point always being funding. Lesure meanwhile was engaged to write prefaces for a Henle series of Debussy piano music whose editing, though, remained in the hands of Henle’s house editor in Germany. In 1980 Pierre Boulez, in Cambridge for the award of an Honorary Mus. D. by the University, was entertained by the music-loving Sir Alan Cottrell, Master of Jesus College, where I happened to be Music Research Fellow. I was invited to Cahiers Debussy 1 (new series, 1977): 16–23.   Debussy produced the piece for a spot-the-composer competition in the January 1905 issue of the magazine Musica. Mme de Tinan requested this time that it be published by Debussy’s old publisher, Durand.

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join them, and, on hearing of my researches, Boulez’s immediate comment was a now-familiar ‘Mais il faut vraiment une nouvelle édition corrigée.’ My reply—that this was a recurring topic with François Lesure (whom Boulez knew)—prompted Boulez to ask to be kept abreast of any developments. This was duly relayed to rue Louvois. Exactly what ensued I never learnt in detail, but shortly after the advent of the Mitterand government—which had made a feature of offering visible support for France’s artistic heritage—a message arrived from François Lesure in spring 1982 saying that funding was now available, and inviting me to join an editorial committee for a complete Debussy edition that would also include Boulez. Lesure wanted the committee to range internationally: could I suggest an American participant? An obvious candidate was Marie Rolf, already prepared to produce an edition of La Mer. Marie’s arrival in Paris that summer inspired Gallic galanterie at its finest: within seconds of their meeting Marie had Lesure’s complete confidence and support, and he promptly became ‘François’ to us all. The first editorial board meeting (at IRCAM) took place on 3 July 1982, with François presiding over an initial editorial board of Pierre Boulez, Claude Helffer, Marie Rolf and myself, plus Jérôme Paillard from Editions Costallat. Myriam Chimènes and Marius Flothuis joined the board in the next two years. (Myriam was completing a doctorate on Khamma and studying sources of Jeux; Marius was introduced by Boulez on the basis of his wide musical experience, including editorial participation in the Neue Mozart Ausgabe.) The project was to be co-published by Editions Costallat (part of the Gaumont-Erato group) and Editions Durand—in practice, Costallat took charge of production, and Durand of marketing and distribution. Government subsidy took the form of a complex tax deal with Gaumont-Erato; Durand’s participation stemmed from their publication of works—such as Pelléas and Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien—in which the text element (in these cases, Maeterlink and D’Annunzio respectively) still kept the whole work in copyright. With Boulez’s schedule allowing him to attend only part of the meeting, François steered through a long list of decisions about general structure (such as division into genres); projected volume total (around 30: it later grew to 34, then 35); a public campaign to trace unknown sources (supplementing the 1977 first edition of Lesure’s Catalogue de l’œuvre de Claude Debussy) and to encourage potential editors to make contact; general editorial approach; teamwork structure for individual volumes (a volume editor plus a relecteur to check the work and respond with critical suggestions, plus an independent proof reader per volume); editorial remuneration and projected price per volume (we may laugh now on reading ‘autour de 200F’ for the latter, then around £25). A provisional grouping by volumes and genres was circulated, discussed and retouched, with a provisional calendar that foresaw 30 volumes out in ten years … (we’ve nearly all made the same optimistic error). Everyone agreed on taking the Bärenreiter Berlioz edition as the basic model for editorial procedure, though particular problems

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Figure A.1 At the Fondation des Treilles, July 1986 (photo by the author). Standing, left to right: Roger Blanchard, Catherine Massip, Edmond Lemaître, François Lesure, Lionel Sawkins, Marie Rolf. Seated, left to right: Denise Launay, Robert Fageon, Graham Sadler

pertaining to sources and Debussy’s working methods would later modify this in a few ways. By the end of a long day—albeit aerated by a good French lunch—several volumes had been allocated for editing by either committee members or other specialists who had submitted proposals. Two of these later fell through (the external editors lacking time when the scale of the task became clear), but four volumes immediately put in train were La Mer (Marie Rolf), Jeux (Pierre Boulez and Myriam Chimènes), the two-piano works (Noël Lee), and the piano Préludes (myself with the collaboration of Claude Helffer). Two different music engravers were already engaged to cope. Editorial board meetings each succeeding summer led to one of the most memorable in July 1986, coinciding with the Journées d’études de la Société française de Musicologie at the Fondation des Treilles near Villecroze in Provence (see Figure A.1). This allowed debate and informal comparing of notes with participants in other critical editions, notably of Rameau and Berlioz. It also introduced Edmond Lemaître, who later became anchorman in charge of Debussy production chez Durand. The meeting celebrated the appearance of our first two volumes: the piano Préludes and works for two pianos (series 1, volumes 5 and 8).

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One fairly radical annotation in the Préludes concerned a matter of pianistic importance audible from Debussy’s piano roll recording of ‘La Cathédrale engloutie’: in parts of the piece the minim has the same sounding tempo as the surrounding crotchet, something Debussy omitted to show explicitly on the original score. Ironically, this makes the piece sound in one continuous tempo, solving the notorious practical problem of holding a viable tempo through the piece. Several other secondary sources tend to corroborate the evidence of Debussy’s piano roll. While my co-editor Claude Helffer was in agreement about showing this in the score (suitably flagged), it justifiably prompted some committee debate, and at one point I related the reaction of Mme de Tinan. I had once played her the piece following the tempo equivalences of Debussy’s piano roll: she immediately exclaimed, ‘That’s how he used to play it! Why do pianists play it so slowly nowadays? Tell them!’ The story was greeted with some horror by François (whose relations with Mme de Tinan were not always smooth): ‘Mais Roy, vous ne mettrez pas cela dans les notes critiques, j’espère! Il faut être scientifique!’ Fortunately it wasn’t necessary (other sources established the point adequately), but it was an apt reminder that musicologie in France comes under sciences (as in Centre national de recherche scientifique). The committee meeting wasn’t the place to rock boats by prodding the unspoken assumption that such elements should be kept out of view in order to appear objective. By 1991 Jérôme Paillard, by then transferred to another part of the Gaumont group, had been replaced as coordinator of Œuvres complètes production by Denis Herlin (then preparing a doctorate under François’s supervision on the complex sources of Debussy’s Nocturnes). Denis was soon appointed rédacteur-en-chefadjoint, not only for the Œuvres complètes but also for a Patrimoine series from Costallat that, in just three or four years, produced paperback critical editions of major works by Bizet, Chabrier, Chausson, Franck and others. Started and presided over by François, the Patrimoine series benefited from Œuvres complètes experience and reciprocally contributed back. Though we were not to know it, 1991 was to be our last editorial board meeting for eleven years, and our last with François. Five volumes were by then in print (Préludes, Etudes, Jeux, piano works 1903–7 and two-piano works; La Mer was delayed by engraving complexities) when the large Gaumont-Erato group found itself being ‘restructured’ in a way that left no role for Editions Costallat. Denis’s post (for both the Œuvres complètes and Patrimoine) evaporated in real terms, and it is only thanks to much voluntary work by him over several following years that a measure of proof preparation and correction continued—and arguably, that the Œuvres complètes survived at all. Even so, no more publication was possible until, in 1996, Editions Durand were appointed sole publisher. This last news was signalled to committee members in a joint announcement from Durand and François, with an explanation from François that a committee  

The rest of the Costallat catalogue (including Patrimoine) was taken over by Editions Jobert.

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reunion would be delayed until the logjam had been cleared. La Mer thus appeared in 1997 and another volume of piano works in 1998, though it took a few more years for Rodrigue et Chimène (ed. Richard Langham Smith) to surmount the final hurdles of its complex engraving and proofing. It soon became increasingly clear that François was happier away from the complex logistics of committee meetings, dealing more succinctly with individual editors and relecteurs. However we all felt about that, only François was empowered to call editorial board meetings, and at least things were now moving again, greatly helped by Denis Herlin’s energy. Retired from the Bibliothèque nationale, François was now spending more time out of Paris, though it was easy to forget he was already in his mid-seventies. A long-running frustration in the project had been the relative inaccessibility of our volumes to the musical public. Although each piano volume could be obtained in France in the 1990s for around 600 francs (c.£65, good value for such luxurious volumes), this was beyond the means of the students who most needed and wanted them; international distribution outside France was uneven, and some importers imposed deterrent price mark-ups. At board meetings until 1991 we had pressed Durand’s managing director Thierry Mobillion (brother of the firm’s owner Jean-Manuel de Scarano) to issue volumes in paperback, pointing out that otherwise we were losing sales to other critical (or part-critical) editions like Peters, Henle and Wiener Urtext. Unfortunately we couldn’t overrule Mobillion’s view that paperbacks weren’t viable (partly because of the then co-edition with Costallat), weren’t part of Durand’s brief, and would disturb Durand’s successful commerce with their existing editions (which even some of the Durand staff, more sympathetic to our cause, were now calling ‘nos vieilles éditions merdiques’). At the 1991 meeting Mobillion, pressed again, almost floored us by adding that neither did he count on reprinting the hardback volumes once the initial government-subsidized print runs were sold out. Thierry Mobillion’s sudden death in 1997 prompted some major reorganization, with the appointment of Bernard Brossollet as Durand managing director. We put the question again to him, emphasizing the asset Durand (now sole publisher) had ready for immediate exploitation. He agreed, the only question being whether to run the new versions in parallel with their old editions or replace the latter. For a while the latter decision could be delayed while Durand started by preparing Œuvres complètes paperbacks of works not already in their catalogue. A larger issue was simultaneously in play as Durand merged with Eschig and Salabert under the joint ownership of BMG, Durand remaining under Brossollet’s direction after Jean-Manuel de Scarano took up a new post with BMG. In face of our concern, Brossollet’s view was that not only would the Œuvres complètes be safe—provided we delivered the goods editorially—but that the net effect should be positive in terms of production standards and international distribution (the buyout also brought us into the same stable as Ricordi’s critical editions of Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer). It was a nervous year, but generally his view proved true. Besides new distribution channels, existing good working relations

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with firms like United Music Publishers in London have been maintained (UMP currently feature some of the Œuvres complètes offprints on their website, on the initiative of their supportive marketing manager Stephen Harding). François lived to see the first fruits of all this, not least the appearance of Denis Herlin’s critical edition of the orchestral Nocturnes as the first paperback offprint from the Œuvres complètes. Not that we were spared mishaps. Typesetting problems over Rodrigue et Chimène (from before Brossollet’s arrival) resulted in a complete and expensive re-engraving, just before a software malfunction caused a volume of early piano works (series 1, volume 1) to appear without numerous musical articulation signs (this was one of a spate of computer problems around then in music publishing, notably affecting the 2nd edition of the New Grove Dictionary in 2000). It was the very worst moment for BMG to see anything from Durand that might smack of disaster, and this dismal timing thwarted our hopes to have the volume pulped and reprinted: instead, to our dismay, it was decided to make do with a large errata list. (As it is, it’s still the most accurate edition of those works, because its corrections greatly outnumber the missing symbols.) Following François’s death in June 2001, and aware of the potential vacuum after a committee-less decade, Brossollet quickly appointed Denis Herlin acting president of the editorial board, empowering him to call an editorial board meeting. The reinstated board meetings confirmed Denis as president and have now accelerated the schedule of volume allocation and production to their fastest rate yet. François left a strong tide running in the project’s favour. Since his death, most of the solo piano works have appeared in paperback, at high quality and low prices that would have delighted him. Besides Pour le piano, D’un cahier d’esquisses, L’Isle joyeuse, the Estampes and both series of Images, the volume of Préludes (both books in one) has generated considerable excitement and incorporates some new corrections discovered since 1985; offprints of Suite bergamasque, the piano Nocturne of 1892, and a volume of six more early pieces all happily correct the printing mishap from their hardback parent version mentioned above. François would have been equally intrigued to see a hitherto unknown piano piece suddenly surface at the end of 2001 (Les Soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon), in time for inclusion in series 1, volume 4 (ed. Christophe Grabowski) as well as in a separate offprint. Series 1, volume 7 brought into print a substantial quantity of hitherto unknown early piano duets, throwing new light on various aspects of Debussy’s whole output. The Appendix to series 1, volume 4 also features a solo piano Intermède that surfaced in 2002—a reduction, possibly but not conclusively by Debussy, of the ‘Scherzo-Intermezzo’ movement from his Piano Trio of 1880. Following Bernard Brossollet’s departure from Durand in March 2003, one of the first decisions of his successor Nelly Quérol was to take the plunge of progressively replacing their old Debussy editions, as stock runs out, with Œuvres

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complètes offprints. Besides the volumes mentioned in the paragraph above, a few perennial favourites, such as the ‘Golliwogg’s cake walk’ and the first Arabesque, have now been joined by several of the Préludes. With the solo piano music now completely covered by the Œuvres complètes, the next planned step is updated reprints of the parent volumes to keep the series going at library and collectors’ level (as with Bärenreiter’s Neue Mozart and Neue Schubert Ausgaben, the Durand paperbacks feature prefaces but not the full critical apparatus from the hardbound volumes). While experience teaches us not to count unhatched chicks, news at present is optimistic and reflects years of patient, often unseen spadework by François; it incidentally leaves a monument to his dedication that should touch musical lives for many generations. Our story would be incomplete without a few passing glimpses of associated events and participants. Constant good nature and sense were provided by Claudie Cabon, François’s secretary at the Bibliothèque nationale. François knew of Claudie’s incidental role in finding a home for ‘Pousse’, an abandoned one-eyed tabby kitten who turned up in the midst of a busy editorial week; he probably never knew, though, of the odiferous offering Pousse left just outside his office door, an emergency brilliantly dealt with by Claudie. Robin Lehman, a distinguished film-maker and portrait painter who studied music with Nadia Boulanger, has long helped musicians by leaving his collection of Debussy manuscripts on deposit at New York’s Pierpont Morgan Library (and by publishing some luxury facsimile editions). Again, Margaret Cobb helped in establishing good relations—so much so that 1989 saw the marriage of Robin to our committee member Marie Rolf (presently director of graduate music studies at the Eastman School of Music). The importance of seeing original manuscripts, as opposed to just photographs or photocopies, was proved by Pour le piano, of whose autograph manuscript Dr Rudolf Grumbacher kindly provided a good-quality photocopy. Some months later he welcomed me to his Basel office before we took a swim at his favourite outdoor pool (during a violent electrical storm, though this left him unworried) and then adjourned for an evening that included playing Pour le piano, as well as some Chopin Waltzes and Fauré Préludes, from the composers’ manuscripts. Debussy’s manuscripts often show different ink colours, and it emerged that some annotations in red (including repetition marks and accidentals) had not shown up on the photocopies of Pour le piano. The critical commentaries of a few other critical editions suggest that they relied on photocopies for this work. An untimely fall prevented Claude Helffer from attending the 2004 editorial meeting a few months before his death. A champion of French avant-garde music, he shared Boulez’s lifelong advocacy of Debussy’s late works and joined the Œuvres complètes avid to be involved, particularly with the Préludes and Etudes

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(which he edited). He liked to counter received opinion (this could be healthy), but disliked intervening in, or even flagging, suspect readings where a fault could not be clearly documented in sources. To him that would unduly influence the reader, even if one countered that editorial silence might be an equal, more hidden influence. This strict view probably reflects his Ecole Polytechique education: he once eloquently qualified the remark ‘il faut être scientifiquement objectif!’ by banging the table with his fist. At his death he had started editing Debussy’s three Sonates of 1915–17, a task now being completed by his relecteur Neil Heyde (an Australian-born cellist and scholar based at London’s Royal Academy of Music). Sadly, Marius Flothuis died a few months before the long-awaited committee reunion of 2002, without seeing in print his volume of early Debussy songs—a volume repeatedly delayed by source complications beyond our control and now being completed by Marie Rolf and Denis Herlin. I had first seen his name in my student years as the author of Mozart cadenzas so skilfully devised that they could easily pass as Mozart’s. Composer, musicologist and practical musician, Marius was for many years manager of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and his critical editions included a volume of Mozart piano concertos for the Neue Mozart Ausgabe. His charm and wit, over all his lightly worn practical experience, refreshed us and gently kept many debates in sensible perspective (see Figure A.2). At the 1990 Debussy conference in Geneva (which hosted our editorial board meeting that year), after I participated in a performance of En blanc et noir and Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Marius confided that he had once turned pages for Béla Bartók in the latter work, then still in manuscript. (This incidentally helped confirm that the middle part of the first movement, as Bartók and Ditta played it for several years, was entirely different from the version eventually published.) Had I known this before—perhaps this was why he waited until after the performance—he would have been immediately conscripted as historically authentic page turner. While preparing the Préludes, I became increasingly persuaded that Debussy’s sometimes unorthodox way of directing stems in his piano manuscripts had important things to show: it often indicated large-scale voicing and architecture in ways that normal engraving conventions (as in the original editions) obscured. (The standard rule is that notes below the middle of a stave should point their stems up, and vice versa, unless another voice shares the stave.) My idea of following Debussy’s unorthodox usage in print, where practicable, was supported by Claude Helffer but scrutinized by the committee with understandable initial scepticism before being approved. Our engraver Dominique Montel was less happy, and matters reached a head after a third proof of ‘Poissons d’or’ asked him again to point some stems up instead of down. An elegantly phrased letter arrived by return, explaining that this could be done only if ‘les musicologues’ would clearly explain in their preface that such ‘absurd’ breakages of ‘musical laws’ were not due to incompetence by the engraver. Following one of those quizzical glances from François, I devised a diplomatically worded reply, and our final proof arrived

Afterword

191

Figure A.2 Some intense editorial debate, Café de l’Opéra, 1990 (photo by the author). Left to right: Marius Flothuis, Richard Langham Smith, Marie Rolf, Robin Lehman

with the stems in question pointing up (bars 72–3 and 76–7 of ‘Poissons d’or’, top stave), surmounted by Montel’s written commentary triply underlined in lurid green ink: ‘Debussy, dans son paradis, doit être soulagé!!!’ We certainly had no wish to impugn M. Montel, whose Berlioz software (used for La Mer and volumes 2 and 3 of the piano works) created some of the most elegant musical typesetting I’ve ever seen. The episode also helped us reconstruct some probable history of the original editions. On several occasions, convinced that the engraver of the first edition had misread or ‘miscorrected’ one of Debussy’s unorthodox notations, I changed our own Stichvorlage to what Debussy had written—only to receive a first proof that flipped it back again to the first edition’s reading. It was clear that the same engraving rules (or ‘laws’, as we soon found they were called by engravers) were still being applied, and woe betide any attempt to flout them unless we flagged and pleaded our perverse intentions with care and tact. That established, Montel became a hero of our efforts, going along with usages like Debussy’s wide hairpin dynamics that signal dramatic surges in pieces like L’Isle joyeuse (standard printed usage often narrows the width of such hairpins to a fixed, small proportion of their length). Outsiders’ views of this varied. The highly regarded president of an associated publishing firm expressed his horror

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at what he considered ugly flouting of rules designed for elegance and legibility; pianists by contrast tended to be pleased at what Debussy’s manuscript stemming revealed, and one reviewer suggested we should have pushed the unconventional usages further still. François was largely undogmatic about such matters, observing them with interest provided they could be musically and logically justified: one of his quizzical glances, inviting concise explanation, often spared hours of debate. François Lesure, although not a performer, has had a major impact on performance of a wide repertoire (far beyond Debussy), even by performers who never knew of him, partly through his researches, partly through the teamwork he brought about for enterprises such as the Œuvres complètes. His quiet quest for clarity and concision neatly matches Debussy’s music, and I’ve often wondered what a meeting between the two men might have been like. Debussy wanted us to listen anew to music and sound; François spent his life encouraging the same by blowing dust and lifting veils off misconceptions, misreadings and sentimental legends.

Bibliography Manuscript Sources Berlioz, Hector, Les Troyens à Carthage (manuscript material), Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Fonds de l’Opéra-comique, Mat. F.1245bis. Bizet, Georges, Carmen dossier, Association de la régie théâtrale (ART), Bibliothèque de la ville de Paris, ART C27 I. Debussy, Claude, Pelléas et Mélisande (manuscript sources): 1. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; André Meyer collection, Ms. 20631; Mus. ms. 1206. 2. Robert Owen Lehman deposit, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. 3. Frederick R. Koch Collection on deposit in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Milhaud, Darius, ‘Claude Debussy’, unpublished, n.d. (Archives Milhaud, Paris). Landormy, Paul, ‘Articles de critique musicale publiés dans les journaux de 1918 à 1939’, 21 vols. BNF Mus, Vmc. 88, 1–21. Roland-Manuel, ‘Les Six devant Ravel’, unpublished typescript. BNF Mus, 4 Vm. Pièce 369, c.1925. Viñes, Ricardo, ‘Diary’, unpublished manuscript translated from the original Spanish into French, Nina Gubisch Collection, Paris. Secondary Sources Abbate, Carolyn, ‘Tristan in the Composition of Pelléas’, 19th-Century Music, 5/2 (Fall 1981): 117–41. Abraham, Gerald (ed.), Grieg: A Symposium (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950; reprinted, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971). Auerbach, Jeffrey A., The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Aurevilly, Jules Barbey d’, Les Oeuvres et les hommes: Sensations d’art (Paris: L. Frinzine, 1886). Baker, Evan, ‘Scene Designs for the First Performance of Bizet’s Carmen’, 19th Century Music, 13/3 (1990): 230–42. Bartoli, Jean-Pierre, ‘Historicisme, éclectisme et modalité dans L’Enfance du Christ d’Hector Berlioz’, Musurgia, 8/3–4 (2001): 7–31.

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Rolland, Romain, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (18th edn, Paris: Hachette, 1908; reprinted 1947). Albert Roussel, ‘Young French Composers’, The Chesterian, 2 (October 1919): 33–37. Roux, Louis (ed.), Souvenirs musicaux et littéraires (Saint-Etienne: Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’expression contemporaine, 1977). Rushton, Julian, The Music of Berlioz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Rushton, Julian, The Musical Language of Berlioz (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Ruwet, Nicolas, ‘Note sur les duplications dans l’œuvre de Claude Debussy’, Revue belge de musicologie, 16 (1962): 57–70. Saint-Saëns, Camille, ‘La Société nationale de musique’, in Harmonie et mélodie (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1885). Schuller, Gunther, ‘Jazz and Musical Exoticism’, in Jonathan Bellman (ed.), The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), pp. 281–91. Sernam, Pierre-René and Christian Wasselin (eds.), Berlioz (Paris: Editions de l’Herne, Paris, 2003). Smith, Richard Langham, ‘Rodrigue et Chimène: genèse, histoire, problèmes d’édition’, in Cahiers Debussy 12–13 (1988–1989): 67–81. Smith, Richard Langham, Debussy Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Soubies, Albert, Soixante-neuf ans à l’Opéra-comique en deux pages de la première de La Dame Blanche à la millième de Mignon, 1825–1894 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1894). Sparling, Tobin Andrews, The Great Exhibition: A Question of Taste, with Contributions by Laura C. Roe (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1982). Stœcklin, Paul de, Grieg (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1926). Strasser, Michael Creasman, ‘Ars Gallica: The Société Nationale de Musique and Its Role in French Musical Life, 1871–1891’, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Illinois, 1998). Tiersot, Julien, ‘Le Lied “Ein Mädchen, das auf Ehre hielt” et ses prototypes français’, Zeitschrift der internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, 12 (1910–11): 222–26. Vallas, Léon, César Franck, trans. Hubert Foss (London: Harrap, 1951). Vallas, Léon, Claude Debussy: His Life and Works, trans. Marie and Grace O’Brien (London: Oxford University Press, 1933; reprinted, New York: Dover Publications, 1973). Van der Merwe, Peter, Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of TwentiethCentury Popular Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Vuillermoz, Emile, ‘Claude Debussy’, Le Ménéstrel, 82/24 (11 June 1920): 241– 43 and 82/25 (18 June 1920): 249–51.

202

Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts, Legacies

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Index Abbate, Carolyn, 119–21n, 134n, 144n Abraham, Gerald, 103, 115 Apaches, 153–66, 180 and Russian music, 157 and Symbolist poetry (see also Symbolism), 157 and visual arts, 156, 158 Association de la régie théâtrale (ART), 95, 98–101 Augustin, Félix, 155 Aurevilly, Jules Barbey d’, 48 Auric, Georges, 169, 169n, 172 Bach, J.S., 24, 49, 50, 72, 163 Baillot Quartet, 29 Balakirev, Mily Alekseyevich, 105, 157 Bartoli, Jean-Pierre, 47 Barzun, Jacques, 32, 44, 48 Baudelaire, Charles, 117, 118, 157 Beale, Frederick, 38, 38n Becker, Howard, 161 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 19–23, 29–31, 33, 72, 108, 127, 163 Fidelio, 23, 31 Symphony No. 2, 23 Symphony No. 9, 21 Bellaigue, Camille, 107, 111n Bellini, Vincenzo, 8 Bénédictus, Edouard, 153, 154, 156 Bennett, W. Sterndale, 68, 72 Berlioz, Adèle-Eugénie (sister), 58, 60 Berlioz, Antoinette-Joséphine, née Marmion (mother), 44, 48 Berlioz, Louis-Clément-Thomas (son), 62 Berlioz, Louis-Hector, xvii, 3 and Haydn, 23–4 and Mozart, 19–34 and London Great Exhibition, 67–80 and opéra-comique, 4–5, 7–10, 13–14 song composition, 16–18 ‘Adieu, Bessy’, 17 ‘Je crois en vous’, 17 ‘Le Matin’, 17–18 ‘Petit oiseau’, 17–18

Benvenuto Cellini, 47n Damnation de Faust, La, xvi, 4n, 34, 38–9, 39n, 47, 47n, 50, 50n Enfance du Christ, L’, 35–51 ‘Adieu des bergers, L’, 47 Arrivée à Saïs, L’, 35, 38n, 42–3 Fuite en Egypte, La, 35–8, 42, 42n, 46 Prologue, 39–40 Songe d’Hérode, Le, 35, 40, 41 Grande messe des morts, 36 Huit Scènes de Faust, 14, 50 Messe solennelle, 45 Nonne sanglante, La, 55 Roméo et Juliette, 34 Symphonie fantastique, 50n Troyens, Les, 17, 34, 35, 45, 47, 50, 53–65 Brussels manuscript, 54, 60–65 Stoltz Libretto, 54, 62–3 A travers chants, 31, 46n Correspondance générale, xvii, 5n, 37n, 53n, 58n, 67n Critique musicale, 3, 3n, 5, 7, 10 Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration, 30, 30n, 38n, 43n, 68n Grotesques de la musique, Les, 35n, 46n Mémoires, 4, 4n, 19, 27, 27n, 28–9, 32, 40, 44, 49 New Berlioz Edition (NBE), xvi, 3n, 35n, 50n, 53, 60, 184–5 Berlioz, (Dr) Louis-Joseph (father), 43n, 44–5, 48, 50, 53 Bertin, Armand, 74 Berton, Henri-Montan, 6–7, 13–15 Charme de la voix, Le, 6 Ponce de Lëon, 15 Romance, La, 13 Bertrand, Aloysius, 157 Bibliothèque nationale de France, xvi– xviii, 54, 153 Bishop, Henry, 68, 72, 75, 75n–76n, 77

204

index

Bizet, Georges, 83, 86, 89, 90–93, 98, 100 Carmen, 83–9, 91, 94–102 Djamileh, 91–3 Don Rodrigue, 90 Blaise, Adolphe, 11n Blavet, Michel, 11, 12n Bloom, Peter, 35n, 43n Boieldieu, François-Adrien, 5–6, 13 Bransle de Poitou, 14 Petit Chaperon rouge, Le, 13 Voitures versées, Les, 5 Bongrain, Anne, 3n, 20n Bordes, Charles, 162 Boulanger, Nadia, 189 Boulez, Pierre, 180, 183–5, 189 Bourdieu, Pierre, 161 Broadwood & Sons, 68–9, 69n, 72–3, 76, 76n Broadwood, John, 72n Broido, Arnold, 183 Brossollet, Bernard, 187–8 Cairns, David, 40n, 43n Calvocoressi, Michel-Dimitri, 153–5, 157, 159, 161–2, 162n, 163–5 Caplet, André, 155 Carcer, Partington y de, 155 Castil-Blaze, François-Henri-Joseph, 26, 27 Castro, Guilhem de, 90 Catrufo, Gioseffo, 13 Félicie, 13 Cavalieri, Lina, 28 Centre de documentation Claude Debussy (Centre Debussy), 181–3 Chabrier, Emmanuel, 164, 171, 174, 180 Chadeigne, Marcel, 153–5 Chantavoine, Jean, 167 Charlton, David, xvi, xviii, 4n, 9n, 11n Charpentier, Marc-Antoine, 46 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 39–40, 41 Génie du christianisme, Le, 39–40 Chausson, Ernest, 115, 133, 139 Chemin, Nicolas Du, xv Cherubini, Luigi, 6, 15, 21, 25, 25n Deux journées, Les, 6 Eliza, 15 Requiem in D minor, 25, 25n Chimènes, Myriam, 181n, 184–5 Cobb, Margaret, 181–3, 189 Cocteau, Jean, 155n, 169, 169n, 170, 173 Coq et l’arlequin, Le, 170

Colonne, Edouard, 105, 110–14 Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris, 106, 154–5, 160n, 161, 163 Corbin, Solange, xviii Cortot, Alfred, 182n Chopin, Frédéric, 33, 156, 157 Chorley, Henry Fothergill, 38, 38n, 39, 39n, 41, 70 Clermont, Comte de, 11–12, 12n, 18 Cohen, H. Robert, 3n, 20n Collard [& Collard], 69, 72, 76, 76n Corneille, Pierre, 90, 91 Cornelius, Peter, 37, 37n, 39n, 41n, 48, 48n, 90 Coudroy-Saghaï, Marie-Hélène, 3n Couperin, François, 163, 167 Cramer, J.B., 72 Dalayrac, Nicolas-Marie, 3–10, 12–18 Adolphe et Clara, 9–10 Azémia, 5, 9 Camille, 6, 9 Deux Petits Savoyards, Les, 6 Deux Tuteurs, Les, 15 Dot, La, 16–17 Gulistan, 8 Gulnare, ou l’esclave persanne, 13 Maison à vendre, 6 Maison isolée, La, 6 Nina, 4 Philippe et Georgette, 13 Picaros et Diégo, 6 Une Heure de mariage, 6, 8 Soirée orageuse, La, 15–16 Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 21, 27 Davillier, Baron Jean-Charles, 86, 89 Davison, J.W., 71–2 De Pixérécourt, René-Charles Guilbert, 12–13 Debussy, Claude, xvii–xviii, 83–4, 90–91, 93, 94, 101, 103–9, 115, 149–54, 156–62, 163–5, 167–71, 173–4, 176, 180, 181–92 and Arabesque, 117, 124n, 134 Ariettes, 107 Ariettes oubliées, 121n Chute de la maison Usher, La, 94 Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire, 118, 121n Damoiselle élue, La, 107 Elégie, 182 Enfant prodigue, L’, 121n

Index Estampes, 157, 163, 188 Etude retrouvée, 182–3 Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, 107 Fêtes galantes, 121n Ibéria, 91 Images (series 1 and 2), 156, 163, 188 Images [oubliées], 121n, 182–3 Jeux, 129n, 184–6 L’Isle joyeuse, 191 ‘La Soirée dans Grenade’, 91 Lindaraja, 91 Martyre de Saint-Sébastien, Le, 184 Mer, La, 156, 181, 184, 185–7, 191 Nocturnes, 156, 163, 186, 188 Oeuvres complètes, 84, 90, 94, 181–92 Page d’album, 183 Pelléas et Mélisande, xvii, 117–48, 149–55, 159–60, 162, 164, 184 additive variation, 123, 123n, 124, 124n, 125, 129–31, 137, 139, 148 foreshortening technique, 127–31, 137, 139, 148 interpolation, 129–31, 137, 148 leitmotif, 120, 132, 133, 133n, 134, 134n, 139, 148 light v. darkness, 123, 144, 147 manuscript sources, 120–22n, 124n, 129n, 134n, 137n, 142n, 143n, 144n, 147 pitch/tonal centricity, 143–7 reception of, 149–53, 155, 162 sequence, 117, 124, 127, 137, 139, 148 silence, 119, 122, 139, 142, 148  Tritone C-F , 124, 143, 144n, 147 Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, xvii, 118, 121n, 129n, 156 Préludes, 91,182, 185–6, 188, 189, 190 Pour le piano, 158, 163, 188–9 Proses lyriques, 121n Rodrigue et Chimène, xviii, 83–4, 90– 94, 101, 118n, 121n, 144n, 187–8 Soirées illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon, Les, 188 String Quartet in G Minor, 103, 105, 107–8, 115, 121n, 156 Catalogue de l’œuvre de Claude Debussy, xvii, 184 Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, xvii, 104n–105n, 133n, 159 Debussystes, 156, 160, 162

205

Delacroix, Eugène, 48 Delage, Maurice, 153, 153n, 154–6, 158–9, 160, 162, 163–5 Della-Maria, Dominique, 6–7, 13–14 Prisonnier, Le, 6 Opéra-comique, L’, 6, 13–14 Denis, Maurice, 154, 158 Deschamps, Antoni, 26, 27, 27n Devienne, 6 Visitandines, Les, 6 Dezède, Nicolas-Alexandre, 7, 13, 15 Alexis et Justine, 15 Blaise et Babet, 7, 13 Renaud d’Ast, 15 Trois Fermiers, Les, 15 Diaghilev, Serge, 155n, 157, 163, 180 Didion, Robert, 99–100 Doré, Gustave, 86, 89 Dreyfus Affair, 105, 114–15, 160–61 Duchesneau, Michel, 154n Ducré, Pierre, 46 Ducroquet, Pierre Alexandre, 77, 77n Dujardin, Edouard, 119 Durey, Louis, 169, 169n, 170 Ecole des chartes, xvi Ecole pratique des hautes études, xv–xvi, xviii–xix, 164 editions, 83–102, 181–92 Editions BMG, 187–8 Editions Costallat, 184, 186 Editions Durand, 124, 183, 183n, 184–8 El Cid myth, 84, 85, 90, 91 Elgar, Edward, 49, 50, 164 Dream of Gerontius, 49 Ella, John, 35n Ellis, Katharine, 8n, 21n, 26, 27n, 35n Elwart, Antoine, 48 Emmanuel, Frank, 183 Erard [Pianos], 69, 69n, 71n, 72, 72n, 73–4, 74n, 76 Erard, Pierre 71n, 72n, 74, 74n Erard, Sébastien, 72n Escudier, Léon, 80 Escudier, Marie, 67n, 77n Falla, Manuel de, 155 Fargue, Léon-Paul, 153–8 passim, 160, 161, 161n, 166 Fauré, Gabriel, 50, 110, 113, 154, 155, 159, 160, 163, 170, 174, 180 Fauser, Annegret, 3, 4

206

index

Favart, Marie-Justine & Charles-Simon Annette et Lubin, 11, 11n Ferrand, Humbert, 48, 50, 51n Fétis, François Joseph, 67, 67n, 68, 76, 79, 79n Flothuis, Marius, 184, 190, 191 folk-music, 4, 162 Franck, César, 105–8, 115, 163 Franckists, 105–7, 109 French song, see Romance Garban, Lucien, 155 Garden, Mary, 148 Gatayes, Guillaume, 14 Gauguin, Paul, 158 Gautier, Théophile, 35, 35n, 36n–37n, 46n, 48n, 86, 87 Gaumont-Erato, 184, 186 Gaveaux, Pierre, 6, 7 Bouffe et le tailleur, Le, 6 Monsieur Deschalumeaux, 6 Genelli, Bonaventura, 37 Geoffroy, Julien-Louis, 21, 21n Gérard, Yves, 3n, 20n Gershwin, George, 176 Gluck, 19–22, 26, 30, 33 Alceste, 22 Iphigénie en Tauride, 22 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 33n, 35, 50n Golden Legend, The, see Voragine, Jacobus de Goldbeck, Fred, 183 Gounod, Charles, 48, 171, 180 Grabowski, Christophe, 188 grand opera, 47, 90, 94 Grayson, David, 119, 120n, 121n, 133n Green, Douglass, 181 Grellmann, Heinrich, 86–9 Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste, 6–8, 9n, 15 Richard Coeur-de-lion, 6–7, 15–16 Rival confident, Le, 15 Tableau parlant, Le, 6 Zémire et Azor, 6, 8 Grieg, Edvard, 103–5, 109–15 String Quartet in no. 1 in G Minor, 103–4, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115 Vocal works, 110, 113 Grumbacher, Rudolf, 189 Guérin, Pierre Narcisse, Baron, 61 Guiraud, Ernest, 91, 102, 119 Guy, Charles, 181–2

gypsies, 84–9 Habeneck, François-Antoine, 26 Halévy, Ludovic, 86, 89, 101 Handel, Georg Friedrich, 33, 49, 72, 163 Haour, Pierre, 155 Harding, Stephen, 188 Haydn, Joseph, 16n, 23–4, 29, 31, 32, 32n, 50 Hebbel, Friedrich, Herodes und Mariamne, 39, 39n Helffer, Claude, 184–6, 189–90 Henle, 183, 187 Herlin, Denis, 134n, 186, 187, 188 Heyde, Neil, 190 Hoérée, Arthur, 183 Hoffmann, E.T.A., 21, 27, 28 Holloway, Robin, 119, 134n Holmes, Edward, 73 Howat, Roy, 129n Impressionism, 117, 159, 169–70, 173 Indy, Vincent d’, 105–6, 108–15, 160–64, 167 Indystes, d’, 162 Inghelbrecht, Désiré-Emile, 152–4, 162, 166n Isouard, Nicolò, 6–7 Billet de loterie, Le, 6 Cendrillon, 6 Jeannot et Colin, 6–7 Joconde, 6 Rendezvous bourgeois, Les, 6 Janin, Jules, 70, 71 Jarocinski, Stefan, 117 Josephus, Flavius, Jewish Antiquities, 39, 39n, 40 July Monarchy, 4 Kaminsky, Peter, 179 Kipling, Rudyard, 158 Klingsor, Tristan (Léon Leclère), 153–5, 157–9, 161, 165 Koechlin, Charles, 104, 105, 174, 179 Kreutzer, 6 Homme sans façon, L’, 6 Paul et Virginie, 6 La Borde, Jean-Benjamin de, 11, 12 Lachnith, Ludwig, 21 Lacombe, Hervé, 95

Index Ladmirault, Paul, 153, 154, 155, 159, 161, 162 Lalo, Pierre, 151, 172, 172n Laloy, Louis, 114, 133, 133n, 156, 169 Lamy, Fernand, 182 Landormy, Paul, 168, 180 Langley, Leanne, 74n Lee, Noël, 185 Lefébure, Yvonne, 183 Lehman, Robin, 189, 191 Lemaître, Edmond, 185 Le Roy & Ballard, xv Le Sueur, Jean-François, 15, 36, 46, 48 Oratorio de Noël, 46 Lesure, François, xv, xvn, xvi–xix, 83, 90n, 117, 118n, 120n, 129n, 133n, 134n, 139n, 143n, 153, 181–92 Ligue nationale pour la défense de la musique française, 167 Liszt, Franz, 36, 38, 38n, 47–8, 72 Christus, 47 St Elizabeth, 47 Lloyd-Jones, David, 35n–36n Loder, Edward J., 72 London Great Exhibition, 67–80 Musical Instrument Jury, 67–9, 71–8 Lorrain, Jean, 151 Louÿs, Pierre, 119, 156 Macdonald, Hugh, xvii 19n, 26n, 35n, 37n–37n, 43n, 51n, 53, 53n, 58n, 67n Maeterlinck, Maurice, 117–21, 139, 144, 144n, 147, 147n, 148, 148n, 149, 151, 157 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 117, 118, 119, 121n, 156, 157, 160, 165 Marnold, Jean, 150, 155 Marsick-Delsart Quartet, 109 Martin, Jean-Blaise, 5 Massenet, Jules, 90 Massip, Catherine, xvn, 47 Maurat, Edmond, 154, 159 Méhul, Etienne-Nicolas, 6, 7, 9, 15, 16 Héléna, 15 Irato, L’, 6 Mélidore et Phrosine, 16 Une Folie, 6 Meilhac, Henri, 86, 89 Mendelssohn, Felix, 38, 72 Mendès, Catulle, 84, 90, 91 Méreaux, Jean Amédée, 29 Mérimée, Prosper, 85–7, 89

207

Merwe, Peter Van der, 10 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 21 Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti, 37 Milhaud, Darius, 169, 171–2, 172n, 174, 176, 177, 179 La Création du monde, 177 Mobillion, Thierry, 187 Monsigny, Pierre-Alexandre, 4n, 6, 6n, 7 Déserteur, Le, 6, 7, 16 Montel, Dominique, 190, 191 Mouveau, Georges, 155 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 16n, 20–34, 72–3 Ave verum corpus, 24, 30 Clemenza di Tito, La, 20 Don Giovanni, 19, 21–3, 26, 26n, 27–31, 33–4 Entführung aus dem Serail, Die, 20, 28 Idomeneo, 20, 22, 26–7, 30 Mystères d’Isis, Les, 19, 21 Nozze di Figaro, Le, 20, 29, 32 Requiem, 20, 24–5, 27, 31 Thamos, 31 Zauberflöte, Die, 19, 21–2, 25–6, 26n, 28–30, 34, 43 Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466, 29 Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478, 29 Symphony No. 38 ‘Prague’, 22 Symphony No. 40, 23 Murphy, Kerry, xviii, 3, 31, 67 Musset, Alfred de, 27n Neoclassicism, 173–4 Nichols, Roger, 119n, 121n Nourrit, Adolphe, 26 Nuovo Vogel, xv Odéon, L, 20, 26 Oeser, Fritz, 99, 102 Opera buffa, 26–7, 29–31 Opéra-comique, 3–11 passim, 13–15, 86, 91, 95, 97–8, 100, 102, 120, 149 Opera seria, 26 Orledge, Robert, 121n Ortigue, Joseph, d’, 43, 43n, 45, 46, 46n, 48, 74, 77 Ovid, 13 Paillard, Jérôme, 184, 186 Pal, Camille (Berlioz’s brother-in-law), 67, 76 Palacio Foz, xviii

208

index

Palestrina, Giovanni Luigi da, 48 Pascal, Blaise, 44 Pasler, Jann, xvi, xviii, 180 Périgueux, 45, 50 Petit, Abbé Léonce, 155 Peter, René, 91n, 150, 152 Pissarro, Camille, 158 Pivet, Léon, 154 Poe, Edgar Allen, 157 Pohl, Richard, 36, 49 Pommier, Jean, 87 Ponchard, Louis, 5, 7, 8 Poulenc, Francis, 169, 170 Prod’homme, Jacques Gabriel, 36n, 37 Quérol, Nelly, 188 Racine, Jean, Athalie, 40, 40n, 41 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 156, 163, 167 ‘Ranz des vaches’, 50n Ravel, Maurice, xviii, 84, 153–8, 160, 161, 161n, 162–6, 167–80 and bitonality, 178–9 and classicism, 171, 173–4 and dépouillement (economy of means), 173–4, 176–7, 180 and jazz and blues, 176–7 and patriotism, 167 Chansons madécasses, 177–9 Cinq chansons populaires grecques, 162 Concerto in G, 176, 179 Daphnis et Chloé, 162 L’Enfant et les sortilèges, 180 L’Heure espagnole, 84 Histoires naturelles, 156, 158 Jeux d’eau, 155–7, 163 Miroirs, 156, 163 Oiseaux tristes, 155 Shéhérazade songs, 157, 177 Sonata for Violin and Cello, 174–5, 179 Sonata for Violin and Piano, 176 Sonatine, 162 La Valse, 169, 179 Redon, Odilon, 158 Renan, Ernest, 40n Reynaud, Cécile, 44n Rimbaud, Arthur, 156, 157, 160 Roland-Manuel, 169n, 170, 170n, 171, 176, 180 Rolf, Marie, 117, 181, 184, 185, 190, 191

Rolland, Romain, 111 Romagnesi, Antoine, 14 romance, 3–7 passim, 10, 11, 12, 13–18 Roussel, Albert, 162, 168 Rushton, Julian, xvi, xviii, 4n, 10, 10n, 17n, 35, 47n, 50n Saboly, Nicholas, 46, 46n Sax, Adolphe, 74, 76 Saint-Saëns, Camille, 105, 106, 107, 160, 163, 167, 169, 174, 176 Satie, Erik, 155n, 169–73, 176, 180 Saint Pierre, Bernardin de, Paul et Virginie, 58 Sayn-Wittgenstein, Princess, 54–8 passim, 62 Scarano, Jean-Manuel de, 187 Schikaneder, Emanuel, 25 Schmitt, Florent, 154, 155, 155n, 159, 161, 163, 165, 168 Schoenberg, Arnold, 124n, 127n, 164, 171, 180 Schola Cantorum, 114, 160–64 Schuller, Gunther, 177 Séguy, Emile-Alain, 153–5 Séverac, Déodat de, 153, 154, 156–9, 161–3, 166, 168 Shakespeare, William, 33–5 Six, Les, 168–73 Smith, Richard Langham, xviii, 120, 121n, 133n, 144n, 187, 191 Société des concerts du conservatoire, 5, 20, 26 Société musicale indépendente (SMI), 160, 171 Société nationale de musique (SN), 105–15, 157, 160, 163, 167 Solié, Jean-Pierre, 7, 13 Diable à quatre, Le, 7 Jockey, Le, 13 song, see romance Sordes, Paul, 153, 154, 155, 158, 164 Soubies, Albert, 6 Spain, 83–7, 89, 91, 101–2, 157 Spontini, Gasparo, 74n Stoddard, Matthew, 72, 72n, 73 Stoltz, Rosina, 54 Strauss, Richard, 49, 161 Stravinsky, Igor, 153, 155, 156, 157, 164, 166, 171, 173, 74, 176, 179, 180 symbolism, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 133, 139, 144n, 147–8

Index Synnestvedt, Magnus, 104, 155, 159 Tabuteau, Marcel, 155 Tailleferre, Germaine, 170 Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilych, 33, 113, 176 Thalberg, Sigismund, 68, 69, 72, 75, 75n, 78 Theodore Presser Co, 183 Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique, 11n Théâtre des Délassements-Comiques, 11n Théâtre des Jeunes-Artistes, 11n Théâtre du Marais, 11n Théâtre Feydeau, 5 Théâtre Italien, 21, 26, 29 Théâtre-lyrique, 53 Tiersot, Julien, 11, 112–13 Tinan, Mme Gaston de (née Dolly Bardac), 182, 183, 186 troubadours, 12, Turner, J.W., 158 United Music Publishers, 188 Université libre, xviii Valéry, Paul, 155n, 156, 159, 161n

209

Vallas, Léon, 106, 107n Vasnier, Marie-Blanche, 144 Verdi, Giuseppe, 50 Verlaine, Paul, 117–18, 156, 160 Viñes, Ricardo, 153, 153n, 154–8, 160–65 Diary, 156–8, 160 Virgil, 40, 40n, 50, 53, 57, 58, 59, 64 Voragine, Jacobus de, Golden Legend, The, 39n, 43, 44n Vuillaume, Jean-Baptiste, 74, 76 Vuillermoz, Emile, 152–4, 159, 160, 160n, 162, 164 Wagner, Richard, 36, 47, 50, 105, 106, 111, 118, 119–20, 132, 133, 133n, 134, 134n, 139, 144n Die Meistersinger, 47 Wagnerians, 106, 151 Weber, Carl Maria von, 9, 19, 144n Webster, James, 32n Weimar, 36, 37, 48, 54, 90, 159 Wiéner, Jean, 171, 177 Willy (Henri Gauthier-Villars), 112, 150, 159 Wyzewa, Téodor de, 139n