V
Turning to France, we have as the leading 'transition' composers Massenet, Saint-Saëns, and Lalo, three musicians strangely difficult to classify. They remain on the margin of all the turbulent movements in modern musical evolution. Each pursued his own way and the only point of contact between the three, outside of their uniformly friendly relations, is their individual isolation. Each might have turned to the other for sympathy in his loneliness. No doubt the spoiled and successful Massenet, the skeptical and mocking Saint-Saëns, and the noble and sensitive Lalo must have felt alone in the attacks or indifference of their fellow artists. Yet, aloof as they were, each in his way has been an important influence on French music. Massenet by the essentially French character of his melody, Saint-Saëns by his eminently Latin sense of form, and Lalo by the picturesque fondness for piquant rhythms, have each woven themselves into the very texture of modern French music, Saint-Saëns and Lalo in particular being propagandists for the new and vital growth of the symphonic forms in Paris during the last three decades. If there is less of the spectacular and the intense in their productions, there are qualities that make for a certain recognition and popularity over a relatively longer space of time. There is nothing enigmatic or revolutionary with either. Each expressed himself with varying degrees of sincerity in an idiom which, without pointing to the future, is nevertheless of the time in which it was written. If there are retrogressive qualities in Saint-Saëns, it must not be forgotten that he is one of the significant exponents of the symphonic poem. If Massenet attempted no revolutionary harmonic procedure, he nevertheless made a certain type of lyric opera all his own. If Lalo was content to compose in the conventional form known as symphony, concerto, quartet, etc., he none the less endowed them with a quality immediately personal and not present heretofore in these forms. They are all intimately related to French music as it has been and as it will be.
'I was born,' wrote Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet (1842-1912) in an article appearing in 'Scribner's Magazine,' 'to the sound of hammers of bronze.' With this stentorian statement, which would have better served to inaugurate the biography of a Berlioz or a Benvenuto Cellini, Massenet tells us the bare facts of a more or less colorless life. With the exception of a few hard years during his apprenticeship at the Conservatoire, Massenet remains for well over a quarter of a century the idol, or rather the spoiled child, of the Parisian public. His reputation abroad is considerably less, the rôle of his elegant or superficial art being taken in Germany and America by Sig. Puccini. Nevertheless, even to the American public, little interested in the refined neuroticism of this child of the Second Empire, Massenet is not devoid of a certain charm.
To obtain an adequate idea of his importance among the group of composers of the late nineteenth century it is necessary to close one's ears against the railing of the snobbish élite. There is much in Massenet to criticize. If one thinks merely of the spirit which actuates his productions, one is very apt to be condemnatory. When one considers, however, a fluid and elegant technique such as was his, an amazing power of production that recalls the prolific masters of the Renaissance, and a power not only to please but even to dictate to the fickle operatic tastes of a quarter-century, one must stop one's criticism to murmur one's admiration. Massenet has probably never been justly appraised. Among his compatriots the critics allied with the young school are so vituperative as to render their opinions valueless. His admirers show an equal lack of proportion, being ofttimes friends rather than well equipped critics. Any just observer of musical history, however, must stop to consider the qualities of a man that could retain his hold upon the sympathies of a public rather distinguished for the fickleness and injustice of its tastes. To find the work that best exemplifies the Massenetian qualities among an opus that includes twenty-four operas, seven orchestral suites, innumerable songs, some chamber music, and some incidental music for various popular productions, is not easy.
Let us pass his operas in rapid review. The first dramatic work of any importance is Le Roi de Lahore, given for the first time in April, 1877. In this opera, as in Hérodiade, which followed it four years later, there is much that has become permanently fixed in the concert répertoire. It is doubtful whether either will ever regain its place in the theatre. With Manon, however, an opéra comique in five acts, Massenet inaugurates a success that was to be undimmed until his death in 1912. Manon, since its production in 1884, has enjoyed a remarkable career of more than 1,200 productions in Paris. It is typical, as regards the text, of the successful libretto that the composer of Werther, of Le Jongleur de Nôtre Dame, and Thaïs was to employ. Massenet in his attitude toward adaptable literary material may be said to have had his ear to the ground. It is not surprising, therefore, that the passionate novelette of the Abbé Prévost should have attracted him, and in Manon one may observe the characteristics of the Massenetian heroine that were to make him so popular among the sensitive, subtle, spoiled, and restless women of our time. One enthusiastic biographer asserts that Massenet has taken one masterpiece to make another. Although one must acknowledge the undoubted charm of this fragile little opera, one cannot consider it on the same intellectual plane as that sincere epic of a young sentimentalist of the late eighteenth century. Throughout the five acts are scenes or parts of scenes that show Massenet at his best. Technically speaking, however, the work is often inferior to the one or two little masterpieces composed later on. In it a certain crudity and hesitation of technique are often apparent. The casual mingling of musical declamation with spoken dialogue is often unsatisfactory if not absolutely distasteful. It is in the splendid love-scene of Saint Sulpice that the composer first gives a revelation of his remarkable powers as a musico-dramatic artist.
In 1892 at Vienna was presented a work that Massenet was never to surpass: Werther. This work has never attained the popularity of Manon, but it is infinitely superior in every detail. In it Massenet has achieved an elastic musical declamation that is almost unique in the history of opera. Throughout, with absolute deference to the principles of diction, the solo voice sings a sort of melodic recitative skillfully accompanied by a transparent yet marvellously colored orchestra. The comparative lack of success of Werther is no doubt due to the sentimentalization of a tale already morbid when fresh from the pen of Goethe. Naturally in adapting it to the stage, and especially to the French stage, the idyllic charm of Goethe's extraordinary tale has been lost. Also, the glamour of its quasi-autobiographical connection with a great poet has entirely vanished. With all these qualifications, one must nevertheless—if his opinion be not too influenced by musical snobbishness—acknowledge Werther to be a lyric work of the greatest importance.
There is only one other work that could add to Massenet's reputation or show another facet of his genius, Le Jongleur de Nôtre Dame. This work, founded upon a legend of the Middle Ages adapted with taste and discretion by Maurice Lena of the University of Paris, is a treasure among short operas. The skeptical box-holder of the theatre rejoices in the fact that there is no woman's rôle. The three brief acts centre about the routine of a monastery and the apparition of the Virgin. Massenet has treated this innocent historiette with a tenderness and care that belie the casual overproduction that characterized his career.
After Le Jongleur one is face to face with a sad succession of hastily composed, often mediocre, stage pieces. Upon the occasion of the presentation of the posthumous opera Cleopatra at Monte Carlo in 1914, friendly critics pointed to the renewal of Massenet's genius. An examination of Cleopatra, however, reveals a deplorable use of conventional procedures with certain disagreeable mannerisms of the composer at their worst. Panurge, presented in 1913, is a better work. No doubt in composing it Massenet wished to achieve a French Meistersinger. He has fallen far short of this and one is forced to confess that the Gallic cock crows in a shrill and fragile falsetto.
Among Massenet's orchestral suites, it would be unjust to omit mention of the Scènes Alsaciennes. Also one can separate from the quantity of stage music composed for various dramatic pieces Les Erynnies, composed for the drama of Leconte de Lisle. An examination of the cantatas, 'Eve' in particular, is interesting as evidence of Massenet's extraordinary virtuosity.
So much for the actual works. When one considers the influence of Massenet upon the new musical school that sprang up in France after Franck, one can hardly exaggerate it. Among his pupils are many of the distinguished young musical Nihilists of to-day, for, if we admit the meretricious aims of Massenet in contemporary music, it is impossible not to admit, too, that he possessed one of the most certain techniques for the stage since Rameau. Absolutely conversant with the exactions of dramatic composition, one might say that in each bar of music he was haunted by the foot-lights. Musically speaking, the modelling of the Massenetian melody is characterized by an elegance that is sickly and cloying. Towards the end of his career there was no need to subject his music to the polishing that other composers find necessary. His mannerisms resolved themselves into tricks. The effect of these tricks was so certain as to enable this skillful juggler to intersperse pages of absolutely meaningless filling. In one department of technique, however, one can think of little but praise—that is Massenet's clear and sonorous orchestration. He is one of the shining examples of that economy of resources to be observed in present-day French composers. His orchestra is that of the classics, and yet he seems to endow it with possibilities for color and dramatic expression unknown in France, at least in the domain of theatrical composition, before his appearance.
His dominant fault is a nervous and ever-present desire to please at all costs. He had an uncanny power of estimating the receptivity of audiences and was careful not to go beyond well-defined limits. In Esclarmonde there is a timid attempt to acclimate the procedures of Richard Wagner to the stage of the Opéra Comique. We cannot share the enthusiasm of some of Massenet's critics for this empty and inflated imitation. It is not good Massenet, and it is poor Wagnerism, for the real Massenet, say what you will, is the Massenet of a few scenes of Manon, of the delicate moonlight reverie of Werther, and the cloying Meditation from Thaïs. The mistake of critics in appraising a composer like Massenet is that they assume that there is a platinum bar to standardize musical ideals. Massenet set himself to do something. He wanted to please. Haunted by the sufferings of his student life at the Conservatoire, he wanted to be successful; he was eminently so. If his means of obtaining this success seem questionable to those of us who believe in a continuous evolution of art, when we are confronted with the industry, the achievement, and the mastery of technical resources that are to be observed in Massenet, we must unwillingly acclaim him a genius.
We have already referred to Massenet's prodigious output. Besides his 23 operas his works include 4 oratorios and biblical dramas, his incidental music to any number of plays, his suites, overtures, chamber music, piano pieces and four volumes of songs, as well as a capella choruses. Massenet was a native of Montaud, near St. Étienne (Loire), studied at the Conservatoire with Laurent (piano), Reber (harmony), and Ambroise Thomas (composition). He captured the prix de Rome in 1863 with the cantata David Rizzio.
French Eclectics:
Édouard Lalo Benjamin Godard
Camille Saint-Saëns Jules Massenet