Next week I went to hear Méhul’s Stratonice with Persuis’ ballet Nina. I did not think much of the music, with the exception of the overture, but I was greatly affected by hearing Vogt play on the cor anglais the very air sung, years before, by my sister’s friends at my first communion in the Ursuline chapel. A man sitting near told me that it was taken from d’Aleyrac’s opera Nina.
In spite of this double life of mine and the hours spent in brooding over my hard fate, I stuck doggedly to my promise for some time longer. But, hearing that the Conservatoire library, with its wealth of scores, was open to the public, I could not resist the temptation to go and learn more of my adored Gluck. This gave the death-blow to my promise; music claimed me for her own.
I read and re-read, I copied, I learnt Gluck’s scores by heart, I forgot to eat, drink, or sleep, and when at last I managed to hear Iphigenia in Tauris, I swore that, despite father, mother, relations and friends, a musician I would be and nothing else.
Without waiting till my courage oozed away, I wrote to my father telling him of my decision, and begging him not to oppose me. At first he replied kindly, hoping that I should see the error of my ways; but, as time went on, he realised that I was not to be persuaded, and our letters grew more and more acrimonious, until they ended in a perfect bombardment of mutual passion and recrimination.
In the midst of the storm I started composing, and wrote, amongst other things, an orchestral cantata on Millevoye’s poem The Arab Horse.
I also, in the Conservatoire library, made friends with Gerono, a pupil of Lesueur, and, to my great joy, he offered to introduce me to his master, in the hope that I might be allowed to join his harmony class. Armed with my cantata, and with a three-part canon as a sort of aide-de-camp, I appeared before him. Lesueur most kindly read through the cantata carefully, and said: “You have plenty of dramatic force, plenty of feeling, but you do not know how to write yet. The whole thing is so crammed with mistakes that it would be simply waste of time for me to point them out. Get Gerono to teach you harmony—just enough to make my lectures intelligible—then I will gladly take you as a pupil.”
Gerono readily agreed, and, in a few weeks, I had mastered Lesueur’s theory, based on Rameau’s chimera—the resonance of the lower chords, or what he was pleased to call the bass figure—as if thick strings were the only vibrating bodies in the world, or rather as if their vibrations could be taken as the fundamental basis of vibration for all sonorous bodies!
However, I saw from Gerono’s manner of laying down the law that I must swallow it whole, since it was religion and must be blindly followed, or else say good-bye to my chance of joining Lesueur’s class. And such is the force of example that I ended by believing in it so thoroughly and honestly that Lesueur considered me one of his most promising and fervent disciples.
Do not think me ungrateful for his kindliness and for the affection he shewed me up to his last hour, but, oh! the precious time wasted in learning and unlearning his mouldy, antediluvian theories.
At one time I really did admire his little oratories, and it grieved me sorely to find my admiration fading, slowly and surely. Now I can hardly bear to look at one of his scores; it is to me as the portrait of a dear friend, long loved, lost and lamented.