FOOTNOTES:
[34] Even Beethoven illustrates the progressive idea of the time, in the evolution of free initiative in new forms, exhibited in his symphonies, which are progressive steps in greater freedom of treatment, from the first, to the revolutionary introduction of choruses in the ninth.
[35] Beethoven’s exquisite works for stringed instruments show syncopation effects, but the hard, syncopated “accent” seems first evident as sharp contrasts, in the works of Schumann.
CHAPTER VIII.
France (1800-1913).
France, as a most progressive nation, presents a splendid musical system and a correspondingly good product of musical culture. The French national mind is peculiarly sensitive to modern social pressure. Let this pressure be relieved by musical rhythm and France will bound ahead in musical paths as she has in so many other lines. In money expenditure, she stands high, but this expenditure is made largely in Paris. Culture in a State must be considered in its relation to all of its inhabitants, and while France shows a large absolute expenditure, her per capita expenditure is relatively low. This expenditure, however, is independent of private donations, which have no place in State control, and which are a detriment rather than a benefit to the general public, representing as they do, a control by the princely “fads” of a ruling class. National musical genius is expressed in the degree to which the national emotions are aroused by national stimuli. Had France reacted to her social pressure in the same manner as did Germany with practically the same stimuli, our history might have properly closed with Germany’s triumph. But France had received quite a different mental preparation from that which tortured the German heart in the 18th century, and the nature of French emotionalism was both far less sincerely tragic, and far more highly intellectual at every phase, than was Germany’s. The common people of France were indeed subjected to genuine misery before the downfall of the monarchy, but they were ever arrayed in the glory of a conquering nation,—a leading power, conscious of its own supremacy in European affairs, although the peasantry were ground down with taxes, and made to be the overburdened supporters of a vicious royalty; yet the tone of the public mind, while somewhat critical, was chiefly domineering, and capable of great enthusiasm. Free thought was still in the freshness of youth, so that oppressions, as they came, were analyzed and denounced even while endured. Germany had never thought of doing this until 1848. The troubles of France were a direct consequence of the desires of the common people, and were not so much brought upon them by outside forces, as they were voluntarily encountered and even created, by themselves, in their conscious development of a new idea of popular rule. France wanted to do great and new deeds before she was mentally ready for such achievements, and her trials were of her own making. This fact does not lessen her emotional response to her social pressure, but it does color it with a certain control even in its deepest action. Thus it was with France, Napoleon draining her soil of its best blood, but crowning the nation with laurels. The philosophical spirit aroused by the genius of Voltaire did not weaken even under this glory, and the French mind, although wearied by the revolution, rested only a moment in the re-actions under Napoleon. The reckless Republic was but the first sign of the new national temper, and—although all Europe united to subdue it, and Napoleon’s Empire patted it into momentary quiet with an encouragement of all forms of progress—the national mind had tasted freedom and the old tolerance of royalty was dying. During the fourteen years of his reign, Napoleon gave substantial benefits to France. Continental Europe bent in submission at his feet. Although the French people hated the old idea of monarchy, they could not deny the advantages which France received from his powerful genius. His death in 1821 left his former subjects in a bad way, the people striving for constitutional government, against the allies in favor of absolutism. But little by little, certain advances were made by the people, in a gradual assertion of their opinions. Revolution was a constant menace in the social pressure of the half century following Napoleon’s downfall.
The rebellious fanaticism underlying each and all of civilized manifestations, is certain to strike new and staggering blows at the commercialism of our times. We feel as though terror and its causes in religion were lurking very near the surface of the world politics today.
Along many lines France has not lost her old ascendency in leadership, but her discipline has perhaps been too weak in the direction of dogged persistence. Her actions possibly have been governed at home and in her colonization efforts, by too much of a fatalistic policy, to give strong promise of any continuous establishment of power under the people’s rule. Yet much is to be expected, from the daring courage, enthusiasm, and intellectual splendor of the French mind.
The whole country has furnished a strange contrast to German social reaction, for under the same stimuli the one wept while the other laughed. During the first forty years of the Nineteenth century, the piano virtuoso, with his superficial flourishes of finger technique reigned supreme over instrumental Music in France. The sonata, so representative of dignity and noble sentiment, was accorded only an obscure position during this superficial period, and the short piano piece took its place. On the other hand, performers gave stimulus to improvements in piano manufacture, as well as to composition of piano works. Liszt and Thalberg dazzled the Parisians, and the public mind demanded no deeper expression of its emotional disturbance than that which was represented in pianistic display. After 1831 Chopin lived in Paris, and his works continued to express the French love of the dance, of ornamental display, and of delicate sentimentality. But in 1830 the romantic movement had made itself felt in Music under Berlioz, who produced a Music which suited perfectly the hot-headed revolutionary tendencies of this time. Orchestration attained a tone-color, a new technical possibility under Berlioz’s manipulation, and the bizarre aspects of the then economic life were exactly reflected in his revolutionary effects. His book on instrumentation, published in 1844, became an authority, and he influenced musicians to attempt new forms, however these might be opposed to classical traditions. Berlioz desired to invent astonishing instrumental effects, and did so, but his efforts did not win him lasting popularity, although he is the real founder of modern French Music.
But it is in the field of grand opera that we must look for those amazingly accurate reflections of economic and social pressure, as evidenced in the Music of France during the nineteenth century. Cherubini contributed an earnest musicianship to French opera seria, but he exhibits strong influences of foreign models. Napoleon encouraged only the most trivial of the Italian operas; his attitude was naturally disadvantageous to serious attempts in this field. Opera-comique began to exhibit dramatic color under Mehul but it remained for Spontini to reflect the Napoleonic regime, in opera which glorified the heroic in all its splendor. His French works “La Vestale” (1807), “Fernando Cortez” (1809), and “Olympie” (1819), reflect the mental attitude of the time, but true to this reflection, also show the lack of real depths of emotions not yet touched in France by the social pressure of the time. The opera-comique more truly represented public sentiment in the works of Boildieu, in “Le Calife de Bagdad,” and “La Dame Blanche” which manifest a more serious tone and refinement than had as yet been known in this field. Auber, however, knew best how to call forth French admiration. His fame commenced about 1820, when ideals were beginning to be colored by a darker hue of seriousness, and his “Fra Diavolo” and “Le Domino Noir” exhibit his fine gift of characterization. Herold’s “Zampa” presented new orchestral elements, and is still very popular in America and England. Grand opera of the heroic character received a strong impulse at the hands of Rossini, (who lived at Paris after 1824), in his French work “Guillaume Tell” (produced in 1829). Dramatic expression finds here some scope, although without any great depth, and Auber’s “La Muette de Portici” (1828), more nearly expresses the revolutionary feeling of the people, for the subject of the Music is popular revolt against tyranny. The works of Meyerbeer carry French grand opera to its highest point; his “Robert le Diable” (1831), and “Les Huguenots” (1836) fit into the expression of those years admirably, while his last work “L’Africaine” (1864), shows all of that ferment in French thought which was so inevitably leading up to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
The dramatic events of French Nineteenth century history had produced the genuine histrionic instinct in musical composition; and the complication of orchestral effects, was a natural expression of the multiplicity of stimuli accompanying every economic impulse. Consistency in Meyerbeer’s Music was as conspicuous by its absence as it was in the French economic world, where the abnormal, sensational, religious and absurd were so inconsistently jumbled up with plans for a stable constitutional government, and peaceful relations with Europe. Simplicity was not to the taste of the time. Glaring colors and noisy effects much more nearly reflected the social mode, and Meyerbeer responded as the musician in him should have done, to the prevailing social pressure. The greatest development was exhibited in the orchestral dramatic expression, and the action in a scene began to take a superior place above vocalization, in the formation of the Music drama. This departure may be said to mark the beginning of the degeneration of the real purpose of the opera.
With the reign of peace after the Franco-Prussian war, a new element entered the musical productions of the time. Orchestral concerts abounded. Church Music by Dubois, Gounod and Franck was of an excellent character, in line with the increasing agitation over religious questions. France needed rhythm, as a hungry man needs bread, and she found it in a partial return to Bach, and to the still earlier masters of sacred Music. Popular concerts were instituted for the benefit of the people in 1861. These have continued their useful mission to the present day. France has demanded that life shall be actually pictured in her Music. This impossible demand is leading French Music far from the relative characterizations as presented in Guonod’s “Faust” and Bizet’s “Carmen,” and into the ridiculous “tonal tears” region, where a printed program is needed to inform the hearers, that the staccati of the piccolo are meant to indicate the rain drops on my lady’s brow, and not intended to announce the squeal of a pig. Without the program, who would know?
Towards the close of the century, there is a decline in the sensuous and mystical elements, both in economic and in musical affairs. Gounod’s “Faust” in 1859 had reflected these qualities of the social mind, and his “St. Cecilia Mass” in 1856 expressed the religious attitude of the people. But the rise of the present Republic gave the sceptre into sterner hands, and the skillful use of Music in characterization was vividly expressed, in so far as it could be, in Bizet’s “Carmen” in 1873. Saint Saens and Massenet show the intellectual refinement of the period now ushered in, with its strong suggestions of dramatic feeling so exquisitely expressed, yet clinging to ancient models in melodic construction, and avoiding the harsh and bizarre effects lately manifested in French tendencies. Cesár Franck, in his beautiful oratorio, “Les Beatitudes” (produced in 1891), demonstrates the real depth of religious sentiment existing under the intellectual adornments of the French mind at this period, and the great depth, and musical value of this work exhibit a fund of religious sentiment, which we do not believe has been crushed by the recent separation of Church and State, and which will show itself in revolt at no distant period.
The very latest operatic works of French composers are exhibiting a mad desire for an expression of a national Music, which looks more like an effort to root out the musical supremacy of Germany, than like a plan to establish a genuine progression in French art. France would like to have a Music all its own, be it ever so ugly, distorted, or bizarre. She wants to lead in musical art, to tear up old models, to force a new-old scale upon her half distracted people, and to over-dress the misshapen things in absurd orchestral exaggeration, which so drowns the poor human voice, that the helpless vocal organ is obliged to shout dramatic phrases to a deafened audience, over the countless unrestrained vibrations of a hundred or more madly ringing instruments. What a farce it is! A grand opera presenting a modern girl of Paris, in a modern shirt-waist, yelling common-place remarks to the accompaniment of a monster band! But it must change. The human voice will come into its own again, when the over-excited modern mentality shall have calmed itself down to the normal. The orchestra will shrink to its diminutive and correct position, as a mere suggestor of the harmony which supports the voice, and the emotions of life will find their true relief in accentuated rhythm, soothing melody, and noble harmonies. France is still passing through, and she certainly will not come out of, her transition period with the thing she is now trying to call “Music.”
French pride in musical accomplishment is well exhibited in the aid extended to this culture by State activity.[36]