So much for the actual works. When one considers the influence of Massenet upon the new musical school that sprang up in France after Franck, one can hardly exaggerate it. Among his pupils are many of the distinguished young musical Nihilists of to-day, for, if we admit the meretricious aims of Massenet in contemporary music, it is impossible not to admit, too, that he possessed one of the most certain techniques for the stage since Rameau. Absolutely conversant with the exactions of dramatic composition, one might say that in each bar of music he was haunted by the foot-lights. Musically speaking, the modelling of the Massenetian melody is characterized by an elegance that is sickly and cloying. Towards the end of his career there was no need to subject his music to the polishing that other composers find necessary. His mannerisms resolved themselves into tricks. The effect of these tricks was so certain as to enable this skillful juggler to intersperse pages of absolutely meaningless filling. In one department of technique, however, one can think of little but praise—that is Massenet's clear and sonorous orchestration. He is one of the shining examples of that economy of resources to be observed in present-day French composers. His orchestra is that of the classics, and yet he seems to endow it with possibilities for color and dramatic expression unknown in France, at least in the domain of theatrical composition, before his appearance.
His dominant fault is a nervous and ever-present desire to please at all costs. He had an uncanny power of estimating the receptivity of audiences and was careful not to go beyond well-defined limits. In Esclarmonde there is a timid attempt to acclimate the procedures of Richard Wagner to the stage of the Opéra Comique. We cannot share the enthusiasm of some of Massenet's critics for this empty and inflated imitation. It is not good Massenet, and it is poor Wagnerism, for the real Massenet, say what you will, is the Massenet of a few scenes of Manon, of the delicate moonlight reverie of Werther, and the cloying Meditation from Thaïs. The mistake of critics in appraising a composer like Massenet is that they assume that there is a platinum bar to standardize musical ideals. Massenet set himself to do something. He wanted to please. Haunted by the sufferings of his student life at the Conservatoire, he wanted to be successful; he was eminently so. If his means of obtaining this success seem questionable to those of us who believe in a continuous evolution of art, when we are confronted with the industry, the achievement, and the mastery of technical resources that are to be observed in Massenet, we must unwillingly acclaim him a genius.
We have already referred to Massenet's prodigious output. Besides his 23 operas his works include 4 oratorios and biblical dramas, his incidental music to any number of plays, his suites, overtures, chamber music, piano pieces and four volumes of songs, as well as a capella choruses. Massenet was a native of Montaud, near St. Étienne (Loire), studied at the Conservatoire with Laurent (piano), Reber (harmony), and Ambroise Thomas (composition). He captured the prix de Rome in 1863 with the cantata David Rizzio.
French Eclectics:
Édouard Lalo Benjamin Godard
Camille Saint-Saëns Jules Massenet
VI
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born October 9th, 1835, in Paris. He lives to-day (1915) in possession of all his powers as an artist and a witty pamphleteer. In some respects Saint-Saëns may be dubbed a musical Voltaire. A master of all the forms peculiar to symphonic music, he has never succeeded in endowing his work with any quality save clarity and brilliance. One would almost think at times that he deliberately stifled emotional elements in himself of which he disapproved. There is scarcely any department of music for which he has not written. Symphonies, chamber music, songs, operas and a ballet, and all this in quantity. Saint-Saëns, too, has undeniably lofty musical standards. Prolific, like Massenet, too prolific, in fact, for the subtle, sensitive taste of our time, Saint-Saëns seems rather to defy the public than to make any effort to please. His skill as a technician and his extraordinary abilities as a virtuoso have won him immediate recognition with musicians. In examining the whole of his work, there are only four orchestral pieces which have enduring qualities. These are the four symphonic poems in which Saint-Saëns pays an eloquent tribute to the form espoused by his friend Franz Liszt. Of these, the finest is Phaëton. Strange to say, the best known of this tetralogy of masterpieces is not the best. Beside the magnificently picturesque Phaëton the Danse macabre seems a drab and inelegant humoresque. After Phaëton, Le Rouet d'Omphale must be given the place of distinction in the long list of Saint-Saëns's compositions. In it the composer has given us a witty delineation of the irresistible powers of seduction of a truly feminine woman. The delicate orchestral texture entirely made up of crystalline timbres marks Saint-Saëns as one of the surest and most skillful manipulators of the modern orchestra since Wagner. As is characteristic of many French composers, there is a remarkable economy of means. Small aggregations of instruments achieve brilliant and compelling sonorities.
In the operatic field, Saint-Saëns is not happy. Here all of his reactionary neo-classicism found its full vent, and we are shocked to see a musician of Saint-Saëns's taste and intelligence employing the pompous conventionalities of the opera of 1850. 'Samson and Delilah,' however, has found its way into the répertoire no doubt on account of its fluent melodic structure and its agreeable exoticism. No matter what his technical excellences, one is conscious, with Saint-Saëns, of a certain sterility. Sometimes his music is so imitative of the classics as to be absolutely devoid of any reason for being. Bach and Mendelssohn are his great influences and Liszt and Berlioz have had a great part in the formation of his orchestral technique. M. Schuré remarks aptly: 'One notices with him a subtle and lively imagination, a constant aspiration to strength, to nobility, to majesty. From his quartets and his symphonies are to be detached grandiose moments and rockets of emotion which disappear too quickly. But it would be impossible to find the individuality which asserts itself in the ensemble of his works. One does not feel there the torment of a soul or the pursuit of an ideal. It is the Proteus, multiform and polyphonic, of music. Try to seize him, and he changes into a siren. Are you under the charm? He undergoes a change into a mocking bird. You believe that you have got him at last, then he climbs into the clouds like a hypogriff. His own nature is best discerned in certain witty fantasies of a skeptical and mordant character, like the Danse macabre and the Rouet d'Omphale.' When one considers that Saint-Saëns has been before the public ever since the sixties, a period in which musical evolution has undergone the most rapid and surprising changes, it is not strange that he eludes characterization. He is a musician who has, as Mr. Schuré so aptly says, refused to set himself the narrow and rocky path of an ideal. He has consistently avoided extremes. Side by side with Saint-Saëns the modernist, the champion of the symphonic poem, is Saint-Saëns the anti-Wagnerian. He is one of the great pillars, however, in the remarkable edifice of French symphonic music.
With Romain Bussine, in 1872, Saint-Saëns founded the Société Nationale, an organization which was to have the most far-reaching influence on the development of French music. Like Lalo, Saint-Saëns worked for a sort of protective tariff to keep French symphonic music from being overwhelmed by the more experienced Teuton neighbors. As a pamphleteer and propagandist, Saint-Saëns is full of verve and always has the last word. He was one of the first to appreciate Wagner, but later, feeling that the popularity of the master of Bayreuth might overwhelm young French composers, he withdrew his sympathetic allegiance.