He keeps a little place where Italian refugees and men who have failed in the black, weltering symphony of Parisian life gather and feed at dusk. It is a queer, interesting crew. Here is a poor composer—not Gambara—of romances. “You see what a florid complexion, what self-satisfaction, how little there is in his features, so well disposed for romance. He who accompanies him is Gigelmi.” The latter is a deaf conductor of orchestra. Then there is Ottoboni, a political refugee—a nice, clean old gentleman, but considered dangerous by the Italian government. A journalist is discovered at the table, the poorest of the lot. He tells the truth about the theatrical performances, hence writes for an obscure journal and is miserably paid. Enter Gambara. He is bald, about forty, a man of refinement, with brains,—a sufferer in a word. Though his dress was free from oddity, the composer’s appearance was not lacking in nobility. A conversation follows, merging into a debate, modulating angrily into a furious discussion about art. It is wonderfully executed.
The composer of romances has written a mass for the anniversary of Beethoven’s death. He asks the count, with assumed modesty, if he will not attend the performance. “Thank you,” responds Andrea. “I do not feel myself endowed with the organs necessary to the appreciation of French singing; but if you were dead, monsieur, and Beethoven had written the mass, I should not fail to hear it.” It may be observed that this epigram has been remembered by several generations since Balzac. Von Büllow is credited with it. Behold the original in all its pristine glory! The deaf orchestra conductor also has his say: “Music exists independently of execution. In opening Beethoven’s symphony in C minor a musical man is soon translated into the world of fancy upon the golden wings of the theme in G natural, repeated in E by the horns. He sees a whole nature by turns illuminated by dazzling sheafs of light, shadowed by clouds of melancholy, cheered by divine song.” It is just possible that some one told Balzac of the indeterminate tonality at the opening of the Fifth Symphony, though he gets his scoring mixed.
“Beethoven is surpassed by the new school,” said the writer of romances, disdainfully. “He is not yet understood,” answered the count; “how can he be surpassed? Beethoven has extended the boundaries of instrumental music, and no one has followed him in his flight.” Gambara dissented by a movement of the head. “His works are especially remarkable for the simplicity of the plan, and for the manner in which this plan is followed out. With the majority of composers the orchestral parts, wild and disorderly, combine only for momentary effect; they do not always coöperate by the regularity of their progress to the effect of a piece as a whole. With Beethoven the effects are, so to speak, distributed in advance.” This is not bad criticism for a writer of fiction. Think of the banalities perpetrated about the same time by Henri Beyle, Stendhal, otherwise a master of psychology.
Then the Count Andrea proceeds to demolish the reputation of Rossini by comparing the “capering, musical chit-chat, gossipy, perfumed” school of the Italian master to Beethoven. “Long live German music!—when it can sing,” he adds sotto voce. Of course there is a lively row, the host having much to say. Later Gambara shows Andrea his Panharmonicon, an instrument which is to replace an entire orchestra. He plays upon it. They are all enchanted. Every instrument is represented. The total impression is overwhelming. Gambara sang to its accompaniment—in which the magic execution of Paganini and Liszt was revealed—the adieus of Khadijeh, Mahomet’s first wife. “Who could have dictated to you such chants?” demanded the count. “The spirit,” replied Gambara; “when he appears, everything seems to me on fire. I see melodies face to face, beautiful and fresh, colored like flowers; they radiate, they resound, and I listen, but an infinite time is required to reproduce them.” It is a pity this man drank so much. There follows an admirable exposition of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable too long for transcription. In the end comes ruin. Gambara’s wife, tiring of his habits, his slow progress toward fame, leaves him for Andrea. Abandoned, Gambara falls into disgrace, into dire poverty. The Panharmonicon is sold by the sheriff and his scores sold for waste paper. “On the day following the sale the scores had enveloped at the Halle butter, fish, and fruits. Thus three great operas of which this poor man spoke, but which a former Neapolitan cook, now a simple huckster, said were a heap of nonsense, had been disseminated in Paris, and devoured by the baskets of retailers.” Worse remained. After years Marianna, the runaway wife, returns, lean, dirty, old, and withered. Gambara receives her with tired, faithful arms. Together they sing duets, with guitar accompaniment, on dusty boulevards after dark. Marianna makes Gambara drink cheap brandy so that he will play well. He gives bits from his half-forgotten operas. A duchess asks: “Where do you get this music?” “From the opera of Mahomet,” replied Marianna; “Rossini has composed a Mahomet II,” and the other remarks:—
“What a pity that they will not give us at the Italiens the operas of Rossini with which we are unacquainted! for this certainly is beautiful music.” Gambara smiled! Thus ends the career of a great composer. Gambara knew his failings. “We are victims of our own superiority. My music is fine; but, when music passes from sensation to thought, it can have for auditors only people of genius, for they alone have the power to develop it.” Here is consolation for Richard Strauss!
Massimilla Doni is dedicated to Jacques Strunz, at one time a music critic in Paris. This dedication, charmingly indited, as are all of Balzac’s, acknowledges the author’s indebtedness to the critic. Massimilla Doni is more violent and less credible than Gambara. The chief character is a musical degenerate, a morbid nobleman whose solitary pleasure in life is to hear two tones in perfect concord. This musical Marquis de Sade is described as follows: “This man, who is 118 years old on the registers of vice and forty-seven according to the records of the church, has but one last means of enjoyment on earth that is capable of arousing in him a sense of life. Yes, all the chords are broken, everything is a ruin or a tattered rag; the mind, the intelligence, the heart, the nerves, all that produces an impulse in man, that gives him a glimpse of heaven through desire or the fire of pleasure, depends not so much upon music as upon one of the innumerable effects, a perfect harmony between two voices, or between one voice and the first string of his violin.”
Certainly this evil-minded person would not care for Wagner. He is attached to a beautiful Venetian singer, Clara Tinti. It is she who tells of this horrid Duke Cataneo:—
The old monkey sits on my knee and takes his violin; he plays well enough, he produces sounds with it; I try to imitate them, and when the longed-for moment arrives, and it is impossible to distinguish the note of the violin from the note that issues from my windpipe, then the old fellow is in ecstasy; his dead eyes emit their last flames, he is deliriously happy, and rolls on the floor like a drunken man. That is why he pays Genovese so handsomely. Genovese is the only tenor whose voice sometimes coincides exactly with mine. Either we do really approach that point once or twice in an evening, or the duke imagines it; and for this imaginary pleasure he has engaged Genovese; Genovese belongs to him. No operatic manager can engage the singer to sing without me, or me without him. The duke educated me to gratify this whim, and I owe to him my talent, my beauty, my fortune. He will die in some spasm caused by a perfect accord. The sense of hearing is the only one that has survived in the shipwreck of his faculties—that is the thread by which he clings to life.
This is a lovely study of a melomaniac, is it not? A man whose sole passion mounts to his ears; who when he hears an accord is vertiginously possessed like a feline over a bunch of catnip. As a foil to this delirious duke there is a cooler headed fanatic of music, named Capraja. He is a sort of Diogenes—never looks at women and lives on a few hundreds a year, though a rich man. “Half Turk, half Venetian, he was short, coarse looking, and stout. He had the pointed nose of a doge; the satirical glance of an inquisitor; a discreet, albeit a smiling mouth.” For him the decorative is the only element in music worth mentioning. He goes to the opera every night of his life. Hear him:—
Genovese will rise very high. I am not sure whether he understands the true significance of music, or acts simply by instinct, but he is the first singer with whom I have ever been fully satisfied. I shall not die without hearing roulades executed as I have often heard them in my dreams, when on waking it seemed to me that I could see the notes flying through the air. The roulade is the highest expression of art. It is the arabesque which adorns the most beautiful room in the building—a little less, and there is nothing; a little more, and all is confused. Intrusted with the mission of awakening in your soul a thousand sleeping ideas, it rustles through space, sowing in the air seeds which, being gathered up by the ear, germinate in the heart. Believe me; Raphael, when painting his Saint Cecilia, gave music precedence over poetry. He was right. Music appeals to the heart, while written words appeal only to the intelligence. Music communicates its ideas instantly, after the manner of perfumes. The singer’s voice strikes not the thought, but the elements of thought, and sets in motion the very essence of our sensations. It is a deplorable fact that the common herd has compelled musicians to adapt their measures to words, to artificial interests; but it is true that otherwise they would not be understood by the multitude. The roulade, therefore, is the only point left for the friends of pure music, the lovers of art in its nakedness, to cling to. To-night as I listened to that last cavatina, I imagined that I had received an invitation from a lovely girl who, by a single glance, restored my youth! The enchantress placed a crown on my head and led me to the ivory gate through which we enter the mysterious land of Reverie. I owe it to Genovese that I was able to lay aside my old envelope for a few moments, brief as measured by watches, but very long as measured by sensations. During a springtime, balmy with the breath of roses, I was young and beloved!