Charles Gounod / Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music

by Charles Gounod

She was not yet eighteen, and her first appearance on the boards had been a great success. I had the honour and pleasure, in the drawing-room at the Academy, of accompanying her performance of the well-known and immortal air from "Robin Hood." I was amazed by the already majestic talent of this mere child, who then promised to be, and eventually became, a great celebrity.

I did not meet her again until ten years later. It is a curious fact, that at the age of twelve, when I first heard Malibran sing in Rossini's "Otello," I made up my mind to embrace a musical career; ten years later, when I was twenty-two, I made the acquaintance of her sister, Madame Viardot; ten years later again, when I was thirty-two, I wrote the part of "Sappho," which she created with such brilliant success on the operatic stage, for the same lady.

That same winter I had the good fortune to meet Fanny Henzel, Mendelssohn's sister. She was spending the winter at Rome with her husband, who was painter to the Prussian court, and her son, who was still a young child.

Madame Henzel was a first-rate musician—a very clever pianiste, physically small and delicate, but her deep eyes and eager glance betrayed an active mind and restless energy. She had rare powers of composition, and many of the "Songs without Words," published among the works and under the name of her brother, were hers.

Monsieur and Madame Henzel often came to the "Sunday evenings" at the Academy, and she would sit down to the piano with the readiness and simplicity of one who played because she loved it. Thanks to her great gifts and wonderful memory, I made the acquaintance of various masterpieces of German music which I had never heard before, among them a number of the works of Sebastian Bach—sonatas, fugues, preludes, and concertos—and many of Mendelssohn's compositions, which were like a glimpse of a new world to me.

Monsieur and Madame Henzel left Rome to return to Berlin, and there I met them again two years later.

Before he left the Academy, Monsieur Ingres was good enough to make me a parting gift, which I value both as a proof of his regard and as a specimen of his talent. He did a pencil portrait of me, sitting at the piano with Mozart's "Don Giovanni" open before me.

I was deeply conscious of the loss his departure would be to me, and of how much I should miss the healthy influence of an instructor whose artistic faith was so strong, whose enthusiasm was so infectious, and whose teaching was so trustworthy and aimed so high. Every art demands something beyond mere technical knowledge and special handicraft, beyond the fullest, nay, the most absolutely perfect acquaintance with and practice in the various processes. These are absolutely necessary, of course, but they are only the tools with which the artist works, the outward form and envelopment of each particular branch. But in each art there is a something, the exclusive property of none, still common to them all, higher than all, in default of which they fall to the level of mere handicrafts. This something, which, itself unseen, imbues the whole with life and soul—this constitutes the art itself.

Art is one of the three great transformations which reality, brought into contact with the human mind, and looked at in the ideal and all-powerful light of the good, the beautiful, and the true, is bound to undergo. Art is neither an utter dream nor an exact copy; it is neither the mere ideal nor the merely real. It is like man himself—the meeting and fusion of the two. It is unity in duality. Inasmuch as it is ideal, it soars above us. Were it only real, it would be below us. Morality is the humanisation, the incarnation of good; science is that of truth, and art is that of beauty.

And Monsieur Ingres was a true apostle of the beautiful. It was the breath of his nostrils; his lectures proved it as well as his works—more so indeed, perhaps; for, as a man with a strong creed is generally a man full of great longings, the very fervour of those aspirations will often carry him far above the ordinary beaten track. From the heights thus gained he shed as much light on a musician's as on a painter's work, ushering us all into the presence of the universal sources of the highest truths. By showing me the real nature of true art, he taught me more about my own than any number of merely technical masters could have done.