Revival: Outspoken Essays on Music (1922)

Camille Saint-Saens, Fred Rothwell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351349857
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica

A series of essays on reactions and emotional responses to music.

OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS ON MUSIC

PART I

The Ideas of M. Vincent D’indy

BY reason of his talent and erudition, by virtue of his position as the founder of a school, M. Vincent D’Indy has acquired great authority. Everything he writes must of necessity possess considerable influence.

Under the sway of such considerations, it has occurred to me that it might be useful to point out —even though it be to my detriment—certain of his ideas in the “ Course of Musical Composition” which do not agree with my own. Not that I claim to be a more or less infallible oracle ; it does not follow, because M. D’Indy’s ideas are not always mine, that they are therefore erroneous I will state my arguments : the reader shall judge for himself.

On opening M. D’Indy’s book one is immediately Struck with admiration at the loftiness of his conceptions. We see how careful the author is—an attitude which cannot be too greatly admired—to look upon art as one of the most serious things in life. He ascends higher and ever higher until we suffer from vertigo as we follow him, and find that he places art on a level with religious faith, demanding from the artist the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—and not only faith in art, but faith in God ! We may remark that Perugini and Berlioz, who were lacking in this faith, were none the less admirable artists, even in the religious style, but we need not labour the point.

Religions, in themselves admirable objects of art, are incomparable springs of artistic expression. Deduct from architecture, sculpture, painting, even from music itself, everything that deals with religion, and see what is left !

All those Jupiters and Junos, Minervas, Venuses and Dianas, Apollos and Mercuries, Satyrs and Nymphs, those mythological scenes painted on the walls of Pompeii—all that art, which we regard as profane, is religious art. It is the same in Egypt and India, in China and Japan, and even among savage tribes.

Such considerations make it easy to imagine that art has its source in religion. All the same, its origin is an even more modest one. Art came into being on the day that man, instead of being solely concerned with the utility of an object he had made, concerned himself with its form, and made up his mind that this form should satisfy a need peculiar to human nature, a mysterious need to which the name of “ aesthetic sense “ has been given.

Afterwards form was enriched by ornament, or decoration, which serves no other purpose than to satisfy this aesthetic sense. Subsequently it became man’s desire to reproduce the form of his fellow beings, human and animal, and he began to do this —as a child still does—by a stroke or line. This line does not exist in nature.

Here is the starting point in the radical difference between nature and art ; art is destined not to reproduce nature literally, but to suggest an idea of nature. This principle, badly interpreted, gives rise to the aberrations which manifest themselves at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Inde-pendants.

It is by virtue of this principle that the most insignificant sketch gives an impression of art which will never be supplied by the finest photograph, however “ artistic.”

It is also on this account that the purists are mistaken when they attack “ imitative music.” Real imitative music would consist of the greenroom noises by which a life-like imitation is given in the theatre to the wind and the rain and the various other sounds of nature. So-called imitative music does not imitate, it suggests. Composers have described storms, but there is not one that is like any of the rest. The singing of birds, which offends certain persons in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, is there imitated in very imperfect fashion ; it is this very fact that constitutes its charm.

Nevertheless, it is from the sounds of nature, the sounds produced by the wind blowing through the reeds, and more particularly from the utterance of the human voice, that music had its birth.

When art was born, religion took possession of it. Religion did not create art.

M. DTndy, like Tolstoi and M. Barrès and many other thinkers, seems to see nothing in art but expression and passion. I cannot share this opinion. To me art is form above all else.

It is perfectly clear that art in general, especially music, lends itself wonderfully well to expression, and that is all the amateur expects. It is quite different with the artist, however. The artist who does not feel thoroughly satisfied with elegant lines, harmonious colours, or a fine series of chords, does not understand art.

When beautiful forms accompany powerful expression, we are filled with admiration, and rightly so. In such a case, what is it that happens ? Our cravings after art and emotion are alike satisfied. All the same, we cannot therefore say that we have reached the summit of art, for art is capable of existing apart from the slightest trace of emotion or of passion.

This is proved—speaking only of music—by the fact that during the whole of the 16th century there were produced admirable works entirely devoid of emotion.^* Their true purpose is thwarted when an attempt is made to render them expressive. Wherein does the Kyrie of the famous Missa Papae Marcelli express supplication ? Here there is absolutely nothing else than form. On the other hand, see to what a low level music descends when it disdains form and sets emotion in the forefront !

It may here be worth while informing amateurs that music is not—as Victor Hugo has well said in giving form to the most widespread of all feelings— the vapeur de Vart; it is a plastic art, one that is made up of forms. True, these forms exist only in the imagination, and yet, does art as a whole exist in any other way ? These forms are but imperfectly reproduced in musical writing, though sufficiently to suggest it. On this account music should not be written with figures which represent nothing to the eye. It is also for this reason that those who do not read music have some difficulty in forming an idea of it, unless they happen to be gifted with a special aptitude for this art. To them it is indeed the vapeur de l’art, a source of sensations and nothing else, and so we find that they take pleasure in listening to the most divergent works, the finest and the most despicable alike ; they see no difference in them.

In the introduction of his book, M. DTndy says the most excellent things about artistic consciousness, the necessity of acquiring talent as the result of hard work and of not relying solely on one’s natural endowments. Horace had said the same thing long ago ; still, it cannot be repeated too often at a time like the present, when so many artists reject all rules and restrictions, declare that they mean “ to be laws unto themselves,” and reply to the most justifiable criticisms by the one peremptory argument that they “ will do as they please.” Assuredly, art is the home of freedom, but freedom is not anarchy, and it is anarchy that is now fashionable both in literature and in the arts. Why do poets not see that, in throwing down the barriers, they merely give free access to mediocrities, and that their vaunted progress is but a reversion to primitive barbarism ?

It is no longer necessary to know how to draw or to paint; things absolutely devoid of form—I dare not call them works—find admirers everywhere. Architecture attempted to follow this trend, but as houses must stand upright, and as they must be habitable, it had to call a halt along this particular path of folly. The other arts, finding nothing to hinder them, plunged forward in thoughtless delirium.

Fétis had foreseen the coming of the “ omnitonic ” system. “ Beyond that,” he said, “ I see nothing further.” He could not predict the birth of cacophony, of pure charivari.

Berlioz speaks somewhere of atrocious modulations which introduce a new key in one section of the orchestra while another section is playing in the old one. At the present time as many as three different tonalities can be heard simultaneously.

Everything is relative, we are told. That is true, though only within certain limits which cannot be overstepped. After a severe frost, a temperature of twelve degrees above zero seems stiflingly hot; on returning from the tropics, you shiver with cold at eighteen degrees above zero. There comes a limit, however, beyond which both cold and heat disorganise the tissues and render life impossible.

The dissonance of yesterday, we are also told, will be the consonance of to-morrow ; one can grow accustomed to anything. Still, there are such things in life as bad habits, and those who get accustomed to crime, come to an evil end. . . .

It is impossible for me to regard scorn of all rules as being equivalent to progress, by which word we generally mean improvement. The true meaning of the word—progressus—is a going forward, but the end or object is not stated. There is such a thing as the progress of a disease, and this is anything but improvement.

The more civilization advances, the more the artistic sense seems to decline : a grave symptom. We have already said that art came into existence on the day when man, instead of being solely preoccupied with the utility of an object, began to concern himself with its form.

More and more at the present time does attention to utility assume the foremost place ; we do away with all adornment and trouble ourselves nothing about form. The need to know is being substituted for the need to believe and to admire ; and since what we know is insignificant compared with what we do not know, there is an immense field open to the human intellect. Nothing will ever again check the march of science, though this latter is deadly to faith and art. Faith defends itself with all its might, and it is able to make a prolonged defence ; but what can art do ? It languishes and dies wherever our civilization spreads its tentacles. No longer is it a necessity for us ; it is a luxury that appeals only to the élite. Even the beauties of nature are attacked ; animal species are massacred and disappear for ever; age-long forests are destroyed, never to be restored. The same thing happens to cataracts and waterfalls ; no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PART I
• PART II