Famous composers and their works, Vol. 3

by Unknown

CARICATURE OF HALÉVY BY DANTAN.
From the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.

In addition to the production of this immense mass of operatic music, Halévy was able to fill the part of one of the principal professors at the Conservatoire. In 1831 he was made professor of counterpoint and fugue, and in 1840 he became professor of composition. He wrote a book of instruction, entitled, “Leçons de lecture musicale,” which first appeared in 1857. It remains, in a revised form, the accepted text-book for teaching solfeggio in the primary schools of Paris. Among his more distinguished pupils were Gounod, Victor Massé, Bazin and Bizet, the last-named of whom married Halévy’s daughter.

In 1854 he was made permanent secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. It was a part of his duties in this office to pronounce eulogiums. These he published, with additions, in 1869, under the title, “Souvenirs et Portraits, études sur les beaux arts.” They are gracefully written, and are entertaining and edifying reading. In 1861 the severe work to which he had subjected himself, began to tell on his health. A southern climate was ordered by his physicians. He selected Nice, whither he departed with his family in December, 1861. It was too late, and moreover, in the comparative quiet of his new abode he missed the excitement to which he had been accustomed. His debility rendered work almost impossible, and his depression in consequence was painfully intensified. The end came March 17, 1862. His body was taken to Paris and buried on the 24th of the same month, with great ceremony. “La Juive” was revived at the Grand Opera in honor of his memory, on the 29th of May, and his bust, the work of his widow, was crowned on the stage.

HALÉVY’S TOMB IN PÈRE LACHAISE, PARIS.
From a photograph made specially for this work.

Halévy was a highly gifted man. In addition to his genius for music, he had innate talent for writing and was an excellent poet and a brilliant literateur. He was acquainted with German, Italian, English and Latin and also with Hebrew and Greek. As a composer, though he was a musician of rare talents, he wrote too much, too rapidly and too carelessly, to do himself full justice. His two masterpieces are almost immeasurably above any of his other operas. In these latter, we meet, now and then, with moments of great beauty, with scenes of thrilling dramatic power, but they are in the midst of much that is oppressively dull owing to the rigid obscurity of style in which they are written. He seems to have had so sensitive a fear of falling into commonplace that he went to the opposite extreme, even avoiding clearly marked rhythms. His mannerisms were a persistent resort to the minor key, a fondness for a soft pianissimo effect on the lower notes, long held, to be regularly and suddenly opposed by a loud crash of the whole orchestra on the upper notes; unexpected and violent contrasts in dynamics that are mere capricious effects without any logical cause; prolixity and over-deliberately following a sombre strain with one of great brilliancy, and vice versa. In all his scores, however, his fine genius is manifested, and it is impossible to study one of them carefully without becoming impressed by the vigor, the affluence and the flexibility of his genius. He was equally at home in the gloom of tragedy and the gaiety of piquant comedy. In scenes of pomp in which the stage is crowded with characters concerned in some high festivity, he is peculiarly felicitous. He was a master of passion in its every aspect, and when he is at his best here, he never sounds a false note. His characters are always strongly defined, and no composer has left behind him a more masterly collection of vivid stage portraits than has he. He was essentially the bard of melancholy, as his many exquisitely tender and mournful melodies testify. One of the typical characteristics of his music is its refined distinction. His abhorrence of triviality was so keen that it caused him often to go too far out of his way to avoid it, and the result was that he overfrequently fastened on his music a labored aspect that was fatal to the impression of spontaneity in effect. When he was less self-conscious, however, his music flows with delightful ease, lucidity and naturalness. His instrumentation is that of a thorough master. He had a fine sense of tone-color, and his scores are rarely overloaded. He was an innovator in the use and treatment of wind instruments, and anticipated many effects that have been claimed for those who came after him.

Fac-simile autograph manuscript by Halévy in possession of the Paris Opera Library.

In “La Juive” the orchestration is, in point of richness, originality and variety of powerful contrasts, much in advance of anything previously known in French opera; and his instrumentation of “L’Eclair,” in its freshness, vivacity and piquancy, was no less innovating, and notable in a lighter direction. In “La Juive” he had a libretto which is among the finest that were ever set to music. Its tragic story is told with immense effect, and the poet’s knowledge of the needs of a composer is manifested with masterly ability. Halévy never again obtained such a book. How felicitously it inspired him, is seen in the first act in the impressive reply of the Cardinal to Eleazar’s contempt for the Christians; in the romance sung by Leopold to Rachel; in the chorus of the people at the fountain which runs with wine; in the magnificent chorus and march which precede the brilliant entrance of the Emperor, and ending with the stirring Te Deum and the welcome to the Emperor. In the second act, the Passover scene in Eleazar’s house is full of interest in its Jewish elements, with which Halévy, himself a Jew, must have been in complete sympathy. In the same act there are the fiery duet between Eudoxia and Leopold, and the other duet, equally spirited and intense in effect, between Rachel and Leopold, both masterpieces in their way, and speedily followed by the no less splendid dramatic aria sung by Rachel to her father, and in which she announces her love for Leopold; the climax of this wonderful act being reached in the thrilling trio, in which Eleazar pronounces the curse. The next act, with its brilliant pageantries, falls short of that which precedes it, but has an immensely dramatic, concerted number which culminates in the anathema by the Cardinal. The fourth act rises to the level of the second, with its noble duet between Eleazar and the Cardinal, the tremendous scene of the Jew in which he savagely defies his Christian foes and welcomes death. The last act is for the most part declamatory, and has no such numbers as those we have named, but the impressive dramatic intensity of the work is maintained to the end.