Famous composers and their works, Vol. 3

by Unknown

But if “Faust” and “Roméo” are worthy of so much admiration, that does not mean that no importance or sympathy should be attached to the composer’s other works, which, though less perfect and less lofty in character, are none the less deserving of the most active appreciation on the part of the public and of true artists. “Philémon et Baucis,” “Mireille,” “Le Médécin Malgré Lui,” are productions of unquestionable merit, and even in “Sapho” and “La Reine de Saba,” weak and unequal as they undoubtedly are, one may find pages of the rarest beauty. It should be remarked that even in his least successful works, what we may always admire in Gounod is the noblesse of his language and the splendor of his style. It is necessary to add that if, as is generally believed, fertility is a sign of force, Gounod deserves to be classed among the strongest! Few artists, indeed, have produced more or in greater variety, opera, oratorio, symphony, religious music, cantatas, vocal chamber music, (set to French, English or Italian words) choruses with or without accompaniment, compositions for piano or organ, he has touched them all, and in all has given proof of the most substantial and brilliant qualities.

A very convincing proof of the power of Gounod’s personality is the influence which he has exerted for more than quarter of a century on the young French school of music. The author of Faust has brought into the art a note entirely new and unknown before him. This dreamy, poetic note is stamped with a grace and melancholy which characterizes all of Gounod’s work, and vainly have young musicians sought to reproduce and tried their best to imitate the methods of a master whose genius they did not possess, and who remained for them inimitable. Nevertheless, this influence of Gounod is the sign and the proof of his creative power.

One could scarcely pass over, in speaking of such an artist, his literary proclivities, and the desire which he manifested on different occasions to set forth his ideas and the principles which he professed in matters of art. All French musicians of the present period are afflicted with a mania for writing. Not only great artists like Reyer and Saint-Saëns, following the example of Berlioz, Halévy and Adolpe Adam, undertake to criticise and make themselves the judges of their colleagues, but the most inconsequential composer of operettas gives himself to-day the airs of a writer, and believes himself called upon to deliver himself of long esthetic and philosophic discussions on the art of which he deems himself one of the noblest representatives.

Gounod has not escaped the general contagion. It is only just to state, however, that he has not abused his pen in this connection, and that usually it has been occasion, rather than preconceived desire, that has caused him to take it up. The most important writing which we owe to Gounod is the remarkable volume which he has published under the title of “Le ‘Don Juan’ de Mozart,” in which he expresses very clearly his profound admiration for the master, of whom he declares himself to be one of the most ardent, respectful and faithful of disciples. In addition to this Gounod has given to various journals or periodicals some articles of running criticism or of musical philosophy (“De la Routine en Matière d’Art,” “Le Public,” “La Critique,” “Les Compositeurs Chefs d’Orchestre,” “La Propriété Artistique,” “l’Enseignement,” “La Critique Musicale Anglaise,” “Les Pères de l’Eglise de la Musique,” etc.) He has also given an interesting preface to the volume of “Lettres Intimes” by Berlioz, and he has published a preface intended to accompany his score of “George Dandin,” a score which has not yet seen the light and perhaps never will. He enumerated and discussed in this curious preface the reasons which led him to set prose to music—and what prose! That of Molière; in other words, the most compact, substantial and solid prose which it is possible to imagine. Some years since a report was spread abroad that Gounod was preparing a book in which he would refute the doctrines and theories of Richard Wagner. I do not know whether he really ever conceived such a project, but if he did I regret that he did not put it in execution. For it seems to me that whatever might be his ideas on this subject it would be an exceedingly interesting thing, to have an artist like Gounod express his opinions on an artist like Wagner.

I return to Gounod the composer. However little enthusiasm his detractors—for he has them—may feel for his genius, they are none the less obliged to confess that genius, and the power and influence exerted by him upon the public—a public which everywhere, in all the countries of the world, has applauded his works. The artists who are sharply discussed are usually the ones who possess true worth. More noble than majestic, more tender than pathetic, more pensive than enthusiastic, more deliberate than spontaneous, the immense talent of the author of “Faust” glitters with a multitude of rare qualities, and in that talent one may almost say that study, constant and indefatigable study, has as great a part as inspiration. Not only is Gounod a fine man of letters, well versed in the knowledge of the languages and of masterpieces, but, from a musical point of view, few artists have, like him, been nourished by the marrow of lions. There is no great musician whom Gounod does not know, as it were, by heart, and he has only enthusiastic admiration for the old masters. It was he, who, listening one day at the Conservatoire to Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, ran up to a friend and cried, his face all aglow and wildly waving the score, “It is the Bible of the musician!” On another occasion when, at a certain salon, conversation fell on music, and the proper rank of the different musicians was under discussion, he delivered himself of the following sentiment. “If the greatest masters, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, could be annihilated by an unheard-of cataclysm, as the painters might be by fire, it would be easy to reconstruct all the music with Bach. In the firmament of art, Bach is a nebula which has not yet condensed.”

I have said that study is almost as great a part as inspiration in the talent of Gounod, which may be said of all truly superior artists; one might add that this talent acquired a very individual color from the alliance of the artist’s almost mystic sentiments with a very keen comprehension of the human passions and the storms of the heart. There has remained by Gounod a sort of recollection of his first years vowed by him to theological studies and of his leaning toward a monastic life and the seclusion of the cloister; possibly it is this which characterizes his genius in such a special way, which gives it its originality, its peculiar and its exceptional flavor, although it is difficult to determine with precision how much his artistic personality gained and how much it lost by the influence of the ideas and aspirations of his youth upon his later imagination.

Musically and dramatically Gounod is more of a spiritualist than materialist, more poet than painter, more elegiac and vigorous than deeply pathetic; this is perhaps the reason that some have pronounced him lacking in dramatic sense. In this they are mistaken, for it is not dramatic sense, that is to say, impassioned perception, which sometimes fails Gounod; it is, properly speaking, temperament. But after all is said, the author of “Faust,” of “Mireille” and of “Roméo” remains a true poet, an inspired creator, an artist of the first rank, and if not one of those who illumine the world with a dazzling light, at least one of those who charm it, who touch it, who make it listen and make it think, His part is a sufficiently beautiful one, with which he may well be satisfied.

Publishers’ Note.—Since the foregoing was written, the death of Charles Gounod has been announced. On October 16, 1893, he was stricken with apoplexy, and lingered until the 18th. He died at St. Cloud, and was buried in the family vault at Auteuil.