Who does not feel the infectious warmth and beauty of these spirited words? How this force of enthusiasm and sincerity must grip all young and eager hearts. "There are two qualities," says M. d'Indy, on the last page of Cours de Composition, "which a master should try to encourage and develop in the spirit of the pupil, for without them science is useless; these qualities are an unselfish love of art and enthusiasm for good work." And these two virtues radiate from M. d'Indy's personality as they do from his writings; that is his power.
But the best of his teaching lies in his life. One can never speak too highly of his disinterested devotion for the good of art. As if it were not enough to put all his might into his own creations, M. d'Indy gives his time and the results of his study unsparingly to others. Franck gave lessons in order to be able to live; M. d'Indy gives them for the pleasure of instructing, and to serve his art and aid artists. He directs schools, and accepts and almost seeks out the most thankless, though the most necessary, kinds of teaching. Or he will apply himself devoutly to the study of the past and the resuscitation of some old master. And he seems to take so much pleasure in training young minds to appreciate music, or in repairing the injustices of history to some fine but forgotten musician, that he almost forgets about himself. To what work or to what worker, worthy of interest, or seeming to be so, has he ever refused his advice and help? I have known his kindness personally, and I shall always be sincerely grateful for it.
His devotion and his faith have not been in vain. The name of M. d'Indy will be associated in history, not only with fine works, but with great works: with the Société Nationale de Musique, of which he is president; with the Schola Cantorum, which he founded with Charles Bordes, and which he directs; with the young French school of music, a group of skilful artists and innovators, to whom he is a kind of elder brother, giving them encouragement by his example and helping them through the first hard years of struggle; and, lastly, with an awakening of music in Europe, with a movement which, after the death of Wagner and Franck, attracted the interest of the world by its revival of the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M. d'Indy has been the chief representative of all this artistic evolution in France. By his deeds, by his example, and by his spirit, he was among the first to stir up interest in the musical education of France to-day.He has done more for the advancement of our music than the entire official teaching of the Conservatoires A day will come when, by the force of things and in spite of all resistance, such a man will take the place that belongs to him at the head of the organisation of music in France.
I have tried to unearth M. d'Indy's strongest characteristics, and I think I have found them in his faith and in his activity, I am only too aware of the pitfalls that have beset me in this attempt; it is always difficult to criticise a man's personality, and it is most difficult when he is alive and still in the midst of his development. Every man is a mystery, not only to others, but to himself. There is something very presumptuous about pretending to know anyone who does not quite know himself. And yet one cannot live without forming opinions; it is a necessity of life. The people we see and know (or say we know), our friends, and those we love, are never what we think them. Often they are not at all like the portrait we conjure up; for we walk among the phantoms of our hearts. But still one must go on having opinions, and go on constructing and creating things, if we do not want to become impotent through inertia. Error is better than doubt, provided we err in good faith; and the main thing is to speak out the thing that one really feels and believes. I hope M. d'Indy will forgive me if I have gone far wrong, and that he will see in these pages a sincere effort to understand him and a keen sympathy with himself, and even with his ideas, though I do not always share them. But I have always thought that in life a man's opinions go for very little, and that the only thing that matters is the man himself. Freedom of spirit is the greatest happiness one can know; one must be sorry for those who have not got it. And there is a secret pleasure in rendering homage to another's splendid creed, even though it is one that we do not ourselves profess.
RICHARD STRAUSS
The composer of Heldenleben is no longer unknown to Parisians. Every year at Colonne's or Chevillard's we see his tall, thin silhouette reappear in the conductor's desk. There he is with his abrupt and imperious gestures, his wan and anxious face, his wonderfully clear eyes, restless and penetrating at the same time, his mouth shaped like a child's, a moustache so fair that it is nearly white, and curly hair growing like a crown above his high round forehead.
I should like to try to sketch here the strange and arresting personality of the man who in Germany is considered the inheritor of Wagner's genius—the man who has had the audacity to write, after Beethoven, an Heroic Symphony, and to imagine himself the hero.