One of J. F. Gounod’s friends has written the following lines concerning him: “M. Gounod has made a reputation in engraving. He has produced little and his income could scarcely have been enough to suffice him. Nevertheless, he liked to work and engraving offered him the quiet and deliberation which suited his disposition. In general he spoke but little. When he was obliged to quit the Louvre, he was quite helpless in regard to the great confusion which always characterized his apartment; it was one mass of books, pasteboard, drawings and articles of all sorts scattered about, including a dismembered skeleton, whose bones were all pretty effectually separated from each other. Fortunately one of his cousins undertook to transfer for him everything that was transferable, otherwise Gounod would have abandoned all. He concluded to marry, for it was absolutely necessary that somebody should aid him in finding himself again. He was, nevertheless, a good and excellent man. His wife was charming, a very good musician, and it was she who educated her son. He was getting along in years when he married, and at his death this son was still very young.”
Very young indeed, for the future author of “Faust,” “Roméo et Juliette” and “Mireille,” Charles Gounod, was scarcely five years old when he lost his father, whom he had not learned to know. Like Hérold, like Adam, like Halévy, Charles Gounod was born at Paris, where he first saw the light June 17, 1818. His mother, a woman of fine character and high intelligence, neglected nothing that could contribute to his literary and artistic education. She was his first music teacher. He began very young to feel an intense love for this art, which he was to make illustrious. A pupil of the Saint Louis lyceum, he was already an excellent pianist while still pursuing his classical studies at this establishment, and before completing these studies he took up a course of harmony with the famous theoretician, Reicha. He took the degree of bachelor when he was little more than sixteen years old, and was admitted to the Conservatoire in the class of counterpoint and fugue directed by Halévy, and soon after in the composition class of Lesueur, one of the greatest masters that ever glorified the French school. In the following year Gounod took part in the concours of the Institute for the “Prix de Rome,” and carried off without opposition a second grand prize. He was thus exempted from the military service, since the rules of the “Concours de Rome” established at that time this exemption for any pupil having obtained a prize before the age of twenty. This was in 1837, and Gounod was only nineteen.
At the close of this same year Lesueur died, and Gounod passed under the instruction of Paër, with whom he finished his studies. In 1838 he presented himself again at the Institute, this time without success, but in 1839 he carried off a brilliant first prize with a cantata entitled “Fernand,” the words of which were written by the marquis de Pastoret. This first prize was almost unanimously awarded to him, twenty-five votes out of twenty-seven being in his favor. He left at once for Rome and there devoted himself almost exclusively for three or four years, to the study and composition of religious music, being especially charmed and influenced by the works of the great Palestrina. In 1841 he had performed in the Saint-Louis-des Français church, on the occasion of the fête of king Louis-Philippe, a grand orchestra mass, with contralto and tenor solos. Towards the end of the following year he made a trip through Germany, pausing for a time in Vienna, where he gave in the Saint Charles church a Requiem mass which produced upon its hearers a most profound impression. Some idea of the effect produced may be had from an account addressed to one of the Paris papers of the day, and which seemed invested with a spirit of prophecy: “On All Soul’s Day” said this writer, “there was performed at the Saint Charles church a Requiem, a quite recent work by M. Charles Gounod. One recognizes in this composition not only a very marked musical talent which has already obtained by its assiduity and experience a high degree of independence, but one sees in it also a great and wholly individual comprehension, which breaks away from the beaten tracks in order to create new forms. In the melodic phrases there are things which deeply touch and impress the hearer, things which disclose a grandeur of conception become very rare in our day, and which engrave themselves ineffaceably upon the soul, things which would do honor to any musician, and which seem to point to a great future. The solos were sung perfectly, and the choruses as well as the orchestra likewise deserve praise. M. Gounod directed in person the performance of his work.”
It is plain that the pace of the young musician was not that of an ordinary artist, and that his first steps were directed toward glory, for rarely does one hear such praise accorded a composer of twenty-five years.
Meanwhile Gounod, already haunted by an idea which was long to pursue him, had dreamed of bidding farewell, not to his art, but to the world, and had seriously considered taking ecclesiastic orders. His mind possessed by this fancy, he had, during the latter part of his stay at Rome, left the villa Médécis, where at that time the French school was established, and had retired to the seminary. As soon as he returned to Paris, he entered as precentor the Missions Etrangères, where he wore the long robe and costume of the conventual house, and his resolution seemed thenceforth so certain that it was accepted as an accomplished fact. Indeed a special sheet, the Revue et Gazette Musicale, published the following under date of Feb. 15, 1846: “M. Gounod, composer and former winner of the grand Institute prize, has just taken orders.” From this moment, Gounod was called “l’Abbé Gounod,” just as, sixty years before, his master Lesueur was called “l’Abbé Lesueur,” when he became precentor of the Metropolitan church. There was this difference, however, that Lesueur had never desired to become a priest, but according to the usage then in vogue at the Notre Dame church, Paris, he was obliged, in order to fulfill the functions of precentor, to don the priestly garb. Gounod, on the other hand, seemed to have made up his mind to a religious life, since in 1846 a publisher brought out a series of religious choruses entitled “Offices of Holy Week, by the Abbé Charles Gounod.”
In his retreat Gounod continued to occupy himself with religious music, and in 1849 he had performed at the Saint Eustache church a grand solemn mass which was very well received. At this moment he seemed absolutely lost to profane art, and as he was brought very little before the public, people began to forget about him, when there appeared in the London Athenæum early in 1851, an article which was immediately republished in the Revue et Gazette Musicale of Paris, and which contained an enthusiastic eulogium on several of Gounod’s compositions recently performed at a concert at St. Martin’s Hall. “This music,” said the writer, “brings before us no other composer ancient or modern, either by the form, the melody or the harmony. It is not new in the sense of being bizarre or whimsical; it is not old, if old means dry and stiff, the bare scaffolding, with no fine construction rising behind it; it is the work of an accomplished artist, it is the poetry of a new poet. * * * * * That the impression produced upon the audience was great and real there can be no doubt, but it is the music itself, not its reception, which to our minds presages for M. Gounod an uncommon career; for if there be not in his works a genius at once true and new, then must we go back to school and relearn the alphabet of the art and of criticism.”
This article fell like a thunderclap on Paris, where people were scarcely giving Gounod a thought. A very distinguished French musical critic, Louis Viardot, was then in London with his wife, the worthy and noble sister of Malibran. This Athenæum article was attributed to him, not without reason, I think, and it was soon known that Mme. Viardot, whose experience, taste and musical knowledge everyone knows, was struck by the music of the young master, and that she was far from concealing her admiration for a talent so pure, so elegant and so exquisite.
Excited by such a success Gounod at once renounced his orders, and entered without more delay upon the militant career of the art interrupted for so many years. He soon produced in public a pretty symphony in E flat, which, performed in a remarkable manner by the Saint Cecilia Society, then a worthy rival of that of the Conservatoire, won him the congratulations and sincere encouragement of the critics. Then, thanks to the assistance of Mme. Viardot, he was charged with writing for the Opéra the score of a work in three acts, “Sapho,” the libretto of which had been confided to a young poet, Emile Angier, who was likewise in the morning of his career, and likewise destined for glory, and in this work the great artist whom we have just named, was to take the principal rôle. Notwithstanding all, “Sapho” was not well received by the public, or at least only moderately so and scarcely achieved more than what is called in France a success of esteem. Yet the work was an exceedingly good one, but the first step on a stage so important as that of the Opéra is so difficult for a young composer to make! It must be said, however, that if the work as a whole was not judged entirely satisfactory, especially in regard to the scenic effects, etc., it presented a value which a fastidious critic stated in these terms: “The opera of “Sapho,” without being a good dramatic work, is the work of a distinguished musician who has style and lofty tendencies. M. Gounod has perfectly seized and happily rendered all the lyric parts of the subject which he has treated, but he has been less happy in trying to express the conflict of passions and the contrast of characters.” Certain pages in the score of “Sapho” were remarked as being quite individual in flavor, and the public were especially delighted with the beautiful song of the young shepherd, “Brontez le Thym, Brontes mes chêvres,” as well as the admirable couplets of “Sapho,” of a character so melancholy, and an inspiration so full of a delicate poetry. The work was performed on the 16th of April, 1851.
A year later the Comédie-Française produced a tragedy by Pousard, “Ulysse,” for which Gounod had written a number of beautiful choruses, redolent with the perfume of antiquity and full of a manly energy. Very soon the young composer appeared again at the Opéra with a grand work in five acts called “La Nonne Sanglante,” the libretto of which, although signed by the names of Scribe and Germain Delavigne, was absolutely devoid of interest. He made a mistake in accepting this libretto, previously refused by several of his colleagues, among others Meyerbeer and Halévy, and which could not excite his inspiration. Notwithstanding some remarkable bits, some vigorous and beautiful scenes, the score of “La Nonne Sanglante” was really only secondary in value, and the work achieved a very mild success when it was produced Oct. 18, 1854, with Mlles. Werthermber, Poinsot and Dameron, MM. Gueymard, Depassio and Merly for interpreters. Its career was short, and it only lived through eleven performances. Gounod had not yet found his vein.
But better fortune was in store for him, and after a few years of silence he began the series of his successes by giving to the Théâtre-Lyrique, then very flourishing and very brilliant under the direction of M. Carvalho, “Le Médécin Malgré Lui.” The libretto of this had been arranged for Opéra Comique by MM. Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, who had preserved the greater part of Molière’s prose. Although from a general point of view the comic sentiment may not be the dominant quality of his talent, yet that quality is far from lacking in Gounod, as is proved by “Le Médécin Malgré Lui,” which remains one of the most curious and most original of his attempts. In this work, which was performed Jan. 15, 1858, the composer revived with a rare cleverness the old forms of French music, while adding thereto the most ingenious and most piquant artifices of the modern science, and by clothing the whole with his masterly style he produced a work of a very unique color, flavor and character. “Le Médécin Malgré Lui,” which the public received with marked favor, seemed to prepare the great day of Gounod’s artistic life. Fourteen months after the appearance of this work, that is to say, on March 19, 1859, the composer gave to the same theatre the work which was to establish his fame upon a fixed basis. The reader of course divines that I refer to “Faust,” that masterpiece which can boast of such a brilliant, prolonged and universal success, and which will remain, perhaps, the author’s best title to the remembrance and recognition of posterity.