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]
FOOTNOTES:
[36] The statistics will be found in [Appendix E].