Benjamin Godard, who presumably may have also died before attaining the summit of his powers, was an over-fertile composer of indisputable melodic gift and spontaneity of mood, whose most conspicuous defect was an almost total lack of critical discrimination. In consequence, few of his works have survived, and then chiefly for the practical usefulness of a few pieces for violin or piano.
Jules Massenet, even more emphatically destined for the theatre than Bizet, showed in his early works, such as the overtures Pompeia (1865), Phèdre (1873), Les Erynnies (suite from incidental music to the drama by Leconte de Lisle, 1873), as well as in numerous orchestral suites and shorter pieces, an unusual instinct for concise precision of form, clarity of style, and an extraordinarily dextrous, if at times coarse, manipulation of the orchestra. But his sympathies were never with the 'advanced school,' and his influence, a considerable force despite the sneers of critics, has been exerted almost entirely in the field of opera.
As a further preliminary to the evolution of ultra-modern French music, several important manifestations of progress must be discussed. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870, an irretrievable misfortune to the French people politically, acted as a direct and far-reaching stimulus toward a nationalistic tendency in music. It led to the rejection of extra-French influences, that of Wagner among them, although the current of imitation became ultimately too strong to be resisted. It brought about a conscious striving toward individuality in technical methods and the deliberate attainment of racial traits in expression. The strength and unity of this sentiment among French musicians was strikingly exemplified in the founding as early as 1871 of the National Society of French Music by Romain Bussine and Camille Saint-Saëns. Its purpose, as indicated in the device Ars Gallica, was to provide for and encourage the performance of works by French composers, whether printed or in manuscript.[45] From the beginning the Society has striven amazingly, and it is not too much to assert that its programs constitute a literal epitome of French musical evolution and progress. Saint-Saëns, the first president of the Society, resigned owing to disagreement over a policy adopted. César Franck then acted virtually as president until his death in 1890. Since then Vincent d'Indy has been at its head.
The pioneer efforts of Pasdeloup in establishing orchestral concerts were ably continued by Édouard Colonne in connection with different organizations beginning in 1873, and by Charles Lamoureux in 1881. Colonne's great memorial was the efficient popularization of Berlioz, while Lamoureux achieved a like service, not without surmounting almost insuperable obstacles, for the music of Wagner. Both coöperated in encouraging the work of native composers, if less ardently than the National Society, still to a sufficient extent to prove to the Parisian public the existence of French music of worth. In other respects the educational achievement of both orchestras has been admirable, and both are active to-day, the Colonne concerts being directed by Gabriel Pierné, the Lamoureux concerts by Camille Chevillard.
In 1892, Charles Bordes (1863-1905) founded a choral society, Les Chanteurs de Saint Gervaise, to spread a knowledge of the choral music of Palestrina and his epoch, as well as the study of plain-chant. Four years later this society was merged into the Schola Cantorum, an école supérieure de musique, with Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as founders, to perpetuate the spirit and teachings of César Franck. Intended originally as an active protest against the superficial standpoint of the Conservatoire before the administration of Gabriel Fauré, the Schola aims to have the pupil pass through the entire course of musical evolution with a curriculum of exhaustive thoroughness. Aside from the practicability or the æsthetic soundness of this theory, the Schola attempts to furnish a comprehensive education that is praiseworthy in its aims. Further than this the attitude of the Schola possesses an historical import in that it embodies a deliberate reaction against the revolutionary tendencies of Debussy and Ravel, and aims to conserve the outlook of Franck.
To complete the preparatory influences bearing upon ultra-modern French music one should mention more than tentatively the palpable stimulation of the so-called 'Neo-Russian School' comprising Balakireff, Borodine, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Cui, and more particularly Moussorgsky. While these men have reacted more noticeably upon individuals rather than upon modern French composers as a group, their example has been none the less tangible. Russian sensitiveness as to orchestral timbre, their use of folk-song, their predilection for novel rhythms, exotic atmosphere, have all appealed to the receptive sensibilities of the ultra-modern French composer.
II
The pioneers of ultra-modern French music are Emmanuel Chabrier and Gabriel Fauré, men of strikingly dissimilar temperaments and equally remote style and achievement. Each is, however, equally significant in his own province.
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) was born at Ambert (Puy-de-Dôme) in the South of France. One can at once infer his temperament from his birthplace. For Chabrier combined seemingly irreconcilable elements: robust vigor, ardent sincerity and intense impressionability. With an inexpressible sense of humor, he possessed a delicate and distinguished poetic instinct side by side with deeply human sentiments. His early bent toward music was only permitted with the understanding that it remain an avocation. Accordingly Chabrier came to Paris to be educated at the age of fifteen, obtained his lawyer's certificate when he was twenty-one and forthwith entered the office of the Ministry of the Interior. In the meantime he had acquired astonishing skill as a pianist, studied harmony and counterpoint, made friends with many poets, painters and musicians, among them Paul Verlaine, Édouard Manet, Duparc, d'Indy, Fauré and Messager. 'Considered up to then as an amateur,'[46] Chabrier surprised professional Paris with an opéra comique in three acts, L'Étoile (1877) (played throughout this country without authorization and with interpolated music by Francis Wilson as 'The Merry Monarch'), and a one-act operetta, L'Éducation manquée (1879), both of which were described as 'exceeding in musical interest the type of piece represented.'[47] A visit to Germany with Henri Duparc, where he heard Tristan und Isolde, affected his impressionable nature so deeply that he resolved to give himself entirely to music and in 1880 resigned from his position at the Ministry. (His paradoxical character was never more succinctly illustrated than by the fact that he later composed 'Humorous Quadrilles on Motives from Tristan.')[48]
In 1881 Chabrier became secretary and chorus master for the newly founded Lamoureux concerts, and helped to produce portions of Lohengrin and Tristan. During this year he composed the 'Ten Picturesque Pieces' for piano, from which he made a Suite Pastorale, in which the orchestral idiom was not always skillful. From his position in the Lamoureux orchestra he soon learned the secrets of orchestral effect from their source. In 1882 he went to Spain, notebook in hand, and in the following year burst upon the Parisian public with a brilliant rhapsody for orchestra on Spanish themes entitled España. This highly coloristic, poetic and impassioned piece at once placed him in the front rank of contemporary French composers, and remains a landmark in a new epoch for its conviction, spontaneous inspiration, rhythmic vitality and individual treatment of the orchestra. If Lalo had shown the way, Chabrier at once surpassed the older musician on his own ground.