II
The pioneers of ultra-modern French music are Emmanuel Chabrier and Gabriel Fauré, men of strikingly dissimilar temperaments and equally remote style and achievement. Each is, however, equally significant in his own province.
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) was born at Ambert (Puy-de-Dôme) in the South of France. One can at once infer his temperament from his birthplace. For Chabrier combined seemingly irreconcilable elements: robust vigor, ardent sincerity and intense impressionability. With an inexpressible sense of humor, he possessed a delicate and distinguished poetic instinct side by side with deeply human sentiments. His early bent toward music was only permitted with the understanding that it remain an avocation. Accordingly Chabrier came to Paris to be educated at the age of fifteen, obtained his lawyer's certificate when he was twenty-one and forthwith entered the office of the Ministry of the Interior. In the meantime he had acquired astonishing skill as a pianist, studied harmony and counterpoint, made friends with many poets, painters and musicians, among them Paul Verlaine, Édouard Manet, Duparc, d'Indy, Fauré and Messager. 'Considered up to then as an amateur,'[46] Chabrier surprised professional Paris with an opéra comique in three acts, L'Étoile (1877) (played throughout this country without authorization and with interpolated music by Francis Wilson as 'The Merry Monarch'), and a one-act operetta, L'Éducation manquée (1879), both of which were described as 'exceeding in musical interest the type of piece represented.'[47] A visit to Germany with Henri Duparc, where he heard Tristan und Isolde, affected his impressionable nature so deeply that he resolved to give himself entirely to music and in 1880 resigned from his position at the Ministry. (His paradoxical character was never more succinctly illustrated than by the fact that he later composed 'Humorous Quadrilles on Motives from Tristan.')[48]
In 1881 Chabrier became secretary and chorus master for the newly founded Lamoureux concerts, and helped to produce portions of Lohengrin and Tristan. During this year he composed the 'Ten Picturesque Pieces' for piano, from which he made a Suite Pastorale, in which the orchestral idiom was not always skillful. From his position in the Lamoureux orchestra he soon learned the secrets of orchestral effect from their source. In 1882 he went to Spain, notebook in hand, and in the following year burst upon the Parisian public with a brilliant rhapsody for orchestra on Spanish themes entitled España. This highly coloristic, poetic and impassioned piece at once placed him in the front rank of contemporary French composers, and remains a landmark in a new epoch for its conviction, spontaneous inspiration, rhythmic vitality and individual treatment of the orchestra. If Lalo had shown the way, Chabrier at once surpassed the older musician on his own ground.
During the next few years Chabrier produced some of his most characteristic works, the 'Three Romantic Waltzes' for two pianos, one of which evoked enthusiasm from a Parisian wit for its 'exquisite bad taste,' a remarkable idyllic scena for solo, chorus and orchestra, La Sulamite, a Habañera, transcribed for piano and also for orchestra. But by far the most ambitious work of these years was a serious opera Gwendoline on a text by Catulle Mendès, produced at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels in 1886. Unfortunately the artistic success of this opera was abruptly closed by the bankruptcy of the management. But Germany received Gwendoline with marked favor, and it was performed at Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Dresden, Munich and Düsseldorf.
Gwendoline, despite some obvious defects, is a work of unusual historical import, since it constitutes the first thorough-going attempt, aside from the tentative efforts of Reyer, Bizet, Massenet and others, to incorporate the dramatic reforms of Wagner in an opera of distinctively French character. Mendès' poem on a legendary subject is frankly imitative of scenes and characters from Wagner's music dramas. Chabrier as frankly uses leading-motives, yet he does not conform slavishly to the Wagnerian symphonic treatment of them. Moreover Chabrier is under an equal obligation to Wagner in the use of the orchestra, if indeed there are many pages and scenes which are unmistakably Gallic in their delicacy of conception and in individual color effects. Indeed, there was nothing in Chabrier's previous career to presuppose such genuine dramatic gifts, such fanciful poetry or such depths of sentiment as are to be discovered in this work, even though Mendès' text is commonplace, and his drama too ill-proportioned to form the basis of a satisfactory opera. It cannot be denied that the apotheosis of the dying lovers at the end of Act II is somewhat tawdry and mock heroic in the persistent use of a banal theme; on the other hand, the opening chorus of Act I, Gwendoline's ballad in the same act, the delicate sensibility of the prelude to Act II, the charming bridal music including the tender Epithalame in the same act, all go to establish the intrinsic value and the pioneer force of the work. Gwendoline is and remains a magnificent experiment, which still preserves much of its vitality intact.
Justifiably discouraged, if not overmastered, by the misfortunes attending the production of Gwendoline, Chabrier nevertheless brought out in the following year (1887) an opéra comique, Le Roi malgré lui, in which the lyric charm, vivacity and humor of the music achieved an instant success. Within a few days, however, the Opéra Comique burned to the ground. Despite this crushing blow, Chabrier continued to persist in composition. He published many songs, fantastic, grotesque and sentimental, among them the inimitable 'Villanelle of the Little Ducks,' a poignant and exquisitely lyric chorus for women's voices and orchestra, 'To Music' (1890), a rollicking Bourée fantasque (1891) for piano, one of the boldest and most paradoxical instances of his combining of humor and poetic atmosphere. In addition he was working feverishly at another opera, Briseis, which he hoped to make his masterpiece, when his health gave way. When, after appalling struggles, Chabrier had induced the Opéra to give Gwendoline late in 1893, he was too ill to realize or participate in his success and in the following year he died.
The most striking feature in Chabrier's art was his uncompromising sincerity and directness. He expressed himself in his music with undeviating fidelity, despite the shattering of conventions involved. Herein lies the intrinsic value of his music, and the potency of his example. Whether his medium were a humorous song, a fantastic piano-piece, a pastoral idyl or a tragic drama, he followed his creative impulse with an outspoken daring not to be equalled since that stormy revolutionary, Berlioz. Chabrier possessed a positive genius for dance-rhythms and humorous marches which he redeemed from coarseness by surprising turns of melodic and harmonic inventiveness. Thus the choeur dansé from the second act of Le Roi malgré lui, the first of the 'Three Romantic Waltzes,' the witty Joyeuse Marche and finally España are genuinely classics, despite their lack of 'seriousness.' But Chabrier was equally epoch-making in the sincerity and glamour with which he painted lyric moods of poetic intensity and extremely personal sentiment. Gwendoline's ballad, the bridal music and Epithalame from the same opera, La Sulamite and À la Musique display an astonishing variety in scope of sentiment for the robust and almost over-exuberant composer of España and the Bourée fantasque. In sensuous and poignant imaginativeness again, Chabrier is the forerunner to a considerable extent of the later group whose essential purpose was truthfulness of atmosphere. While as a dramatic composer Chabrier followed deliberately in the footsteps of Wagner, his own expressive individuality maintained itself as persistently as could be expected from the force of the spell to which it was subjected. Also, Chabrier was in this respect but one of many, and not until the fusion of Wagnerian method and French individuality had been tried out, could the native composer at last enfranchise himself. Harmonically, Chabrier was bold and defiant in a generation which was submissive to convention. With an idiom essentially his own, he foreshadowed many so-called innovations in sequences of seventh chords, the use of ninths, startling modulations, and even a preparing of the whole-tone scale. In short, Chabrier's legacy to French music was that of a self-confident personality, daring to express himself with total unreserve in an assimilative age which deferred to public taste and superficialities of style.
Between Chabrier and Gabriel Fauré there can be no comparison, and no parallel save that both have exerted a constructive influence on modern French music. Where Chabrier was high-spirited almost to boisterousness, Fauré is suave, urbane, polished, a man of society who nevertheless preserves curiously poetic and mystical instincts. Born in 1845 at Pamiers, in that district known as the Midi, he is of the reflective rather than the spontaneous type. Meeting with a relatively slight opposition from his father in cultivating his early manifested gift for music, he came to Paris when only nine years of age and studied for eleven years at Niedermeyer's École de Musique Religieuse. He studied first with Pierre Dietsch, who is remembered chiefly for his purchase of Wagner's text to 'The Flying Dutchman' and for the inconspicuous success of his music, then with Saint-Saëns, who drilled him thoroughly in Bach and the German romanticists. After four years' incongenial work at Rennes, as organist and teacher (in the latter capacity watchful mothers were loath to confide their daughters' education to the attractive youth), he served in the Franco-Prussian war. Then, returning to Paris, he occupied various positions in Parisian churches before settling finally at the Madeleine. From 1877 to 1889 he made several trips to Germany to see Liszt and to hear Wagner's music. During these journeys he won glowing comments from such diverse personalities as von Bülow, César Cui and Tschaikowsky. In 1896 he became teacher of composition at the Paris Conservatory; in 1905 he became director, and still holds this position. He has thoroughly reorganized the Conservatory, enlarged the scope of its curriculum, especially as regards composition, and has accomplished significant results as a teacher.
Fauré has not been equally successful in every field of composition. His development has been inward. He is first and foremost a composer of songs, and his attainment in this direction alone would maintain his position. He has been a fertile writer of piano pieces. Many of them are disfigured by a light salon style; a considerable number, however, are of intrinsically poetic expression. Despite respectable achievements in chamber music (he has been awarded prizes), the quintet for piano and strings op. 89 (1906) is the one outstanding work which is conspicuous in modern French music, although the early violin sonata, op. 13 (1876), had its day of popularity. He has written some agreeable choral music, of which the cantata 'The Birth of Venus' is notable if unequal. There is noble music in the Requiem op. 48 (1887) and the final number In Paradisum is an exceptionally fine instance of mystical expression. Fauré's orchestral music is relatively insignificant, and his incidental music to various dramas has not left a permanent mark, save for the thoroughly charming suite arranged from the music to Pelléas et Mélisande op. 80 (1898). Not until the performance of Pénélope (1913) at Monte Carlo and Paris has Fauré accomplished a successful opera.
In song-writing, however, Fauré has achieved a remarkable distinction not exceeded by any of his countrymen. Some of the early songs dating from the years spent at Rennes, as Le Papillon et la Fleur and Mai, suggest naturally enough the influence of Saint-Saëns. Others in the first volume, Sérénade Toscane, Après un rêve, and Sylvie, show clearly a growing independence, while Lydia in its delicate archaism foreshadows Fauré's later achievements in this style. From 1880 onwards, Fauré at once launches into his own subtle and fascinating vein. If some of the songs in a second volume suggest the salon as do many of the piano pieces, they have a peculiar elegance of mood and a finesse of workmanship which elevate them above any hint of vulgarity. Such are the songs Nell, Rencontre and Chanson d'Amour. But there are many songs in the same volume which bespeak eloquently Fauré's higher gifts for lyrical interpretation and imaginative delineation of mood. Among these the most salient are Le Secret (1882), remarkable for its intimate sentiment, En Prière, delicately mystical though slightly sentimental, Nocturne (1886), which is original in its harmonic idiom; Clair de Lune (1887), adroitly suggestive of Verlaines' Watteauesque text; Les Berceaux (1882), expansive in its human emotion; and Les Roses d'Ispahan, replete with an impassioned exoticism. In a third volume are two songs which show Fauré's individuality in a significantly broader scope. These are Au cimitière (1889), a profound elegy, typical of the outspoken lamentation of the Latin temperament, and Prison, in which the tragic emotion is heightened by an intensely declamatory style. Fauré has published other sets of songs, among them La Bonne Chanson (1891-92), texts by Verlaine, and La Chanson d'Ève (1907-10), texts by Charles Van Lerbergle, which contain many striking specimens of his delicate lyricism, but none more significant, except possibly from the virtue of added maturity, than those already mentioned. As a whole, the imaginative and expressive traits of Fauré's songs are partially due to his unerring instinct in the choice of texts by the most distinguished French poets, including Leconte de Lisle, Villiers de Lisle-Adam, Paul Verlaine, Jean Richepin, Sully-Prudhomme, Armand Silvestre, Charles Grandmougin, Charles Baudelaire and others.
It is not too much to say that Fauré has vitalized the song as no French composer had done hitherto, and that his influence has been paramount among his younger contemporaries despite divergences of individuality. Furthermore, weighing the differences of race and temperament, they can be successfully compared with the German romanticists. If they do not scale the same heights, sound the same depths, or approach the artless simplicity of German lyricism, their poetry is far more subtle, imaginative and varied in its infinite differentiation of mood. In these songs are the manifestations of suave elegance, individual perfume, sometimes sensuous, sometimes mystical, a singularly poetic essence expressed in music that delights alike by its refined workmanship, melodic and harmonic ingenuity. In his songs, Fauré is at once transitory and definitive; he begins experimentally, but soon attains ultra-modern significance.
Pénélope, text by Réné Fauchois, is a lyric drama presenting the legend of Ulysses' return with a few unessential variants. It does not attempt therefore a drama of large outlines, but is content to remain within the scope prescribed by its frame. Fauré also has wisely followed within similar lines as being the more compatible with his lyric talent. Nevertheless we find in many episodes the distinguished invention which marks his songs, a style which if somewhat too restrained is nevertheless adequate. The first act contains many passages of lyrical and emotional charm, but not until the climax of the third act (the slaying of the suitors) does Fauré arrive at genuine intensity. If Pénélope cannot be classed with Pelléas et Mélisande or Louise, if it does not convince one that Fauré is a born dramatist, it contains too much that is poignantly beautiful to be dismissed hastily. Furthermore it possesses distinct historical import as owing virtually nothing to the thralldom of Wagnerism. From this standpoint it marks a conscious path of effort which has engaged French composers for thirty years or so.
If some critical attention should rightfully be given Fauré's Elegy for violoncello and piano op. 24 (1883), the quintet, one of his noblest and most individual works, the Requiem, the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande, these omissions are purposely made to concentrate appreciation on Fauré as a song writer. If he is a significant figure among French musicians of to-day on the intrinsic merits of his creative fancy, he deserves none the less to be recorded as an important innovator from the technical standpoint. He has adapted, either literally or freely, modal harmony to lyrical or dramatic suggestion. If Saint-Saëns had already done this in his third symphony (finale), Fauré has employed this medium with greater fluidity and poetic connotation. Moreover this device has been partially imitated by Debussy. In his use of secondary sevenths in conventional sequence, the use of altered chords suggesting the whole-tone scale, of ninths, elevenths and thirteenths, he has gone beyond Chabrier, and furnished many a hint to later composers. He is also original and evolutionary in his ingeniously transitory modulations, adding a spice of surprise to his music. A conspicuous defect, on the other hand, is his abuse of the sequence, melodic or harmonic, a shortcoming which has been transmitted in some degree to his pupil, Maurice Ravel. But after all critical cavilling and analysis of his harmonic originality his enduring charm and sincerity of sentiment defy analysis or reconstruction.