Jean-Christophe, vol 1, Romain Rolland [book club recommendations .txt] 📗

the Basle Boecklin, “_The Dream

of Life_,” and the motto: “Vita somnium breve.” A song-cycle completed

the programme, with a few classical works, and a Festmarsch by Ochs,

which Christophe had kindly offered to include in his concert, though he

knew it to be mediocre.

 

Nothing much happened during the rehearsals. Although the orchestra

understood absolutely nothing of the composition it was playing and

everybody was privately disconcerted by the oddities of the new music, they

had no time to form an opinion: they were not capable of doing so until

the public had pronounced on it. Besides, Christophe’s confidence imposed

on the artists, who, like every good German orchestra, were docile and

disciplined. His only difficulties were with the singer. She was the

blue lady of the Townhalle concert. She was famous through Germany:

the domestic creature sang Brünnhilde Kundry at Dresden and Bayreuth

with undoubted lung-power. But if in the Wagnerian school she had

learned the art of which that school is justly proud, the art of good

articulation, of projecting the consonants through space, and of

battering the gaping audience with the vowels as with a club, she had not

learned—designedly—the art of being natural. She provided for every word:

everything was accentuated: the syllables moved with leaden feet, and there

was a tragedy in every sentence. Christophe implored her to moderate her

dramatic power a little. She tried at first graciously enough: but her

natural heaviness and her need for letting her voice go carried her away.

Christophe became nervous. He told the respectable lady that he had tried

to make human beings speak with his speaking-trumpet and not the dragon

Fafner. She took his insolence in bad part—naturally. She said that,

thank Heaven! she knew what singing was, and that she had had the honor of

interpreting the Lieder of Maestro Brahms, in the presence of that great

man, and that he had never tired of hearing her.

 

“So much the worse! So much the worse!” cried Christophe.

 

She asked him with a haughty smile to be kind enough to explain the meaning

of his energetic remark. He replied that never in his life had Brahms

known what it was to be natural, that his eulogies were the worst possible

censure, and that although he—Christophe—was not very polite, as she had

justly observed, never would he have gone so far as to say anything so

unpleasant.

 

The argument went on in this fashion: and the lady insisted on singing in

her own way, with heavy pathos and melodramatic effects—until one day when

Christophe declared coldly that he saw the truth: it was her nature and

nothing could change it: but since the Lieder could not be sung properly,

they should not be sung at all: he withdrew them from the programme.—It

was on the eve of the concert and they were counting on the Lieder: she

had talked about them: she was musician enough to appreciate certain of

their qualities: Christophe insulted her: and as she was not sure that the

morrow’s concert would not set the seal on the young man’s fame, she did

not wish to quarrel with a rising star. She gave way suddenly: and during

the last rehearsal she submitted docilely to all Christophe’s wishes. But

she had made up her mind—at the concert—to have her own way.

 

*

 

The day came. Christophe had no anxiety. He was too full of his music to

be able to judge it. He realized that some of his works in certain places

bordered on the ridiculous. But what did that matter? Nothing great can be

written without touching the ridiculous. To reach the heart of things it

is necessary to dare human respect, politeness, modesty, the timidity of

social lies under which the heart is stifled. If nobody is to be affronted

and success attained, a man must be resigned all his life to remain bound

by convention and to give to second-rate people the second-rate truth,

mitigated, diluted, which they are capable of receiving: he must dwell in

prison all his life. A man is great only when he has set his foot on such

anxieties. Christophe trampled them underfoot. Let them hiss him: he was

sure of not leaving them indifferent. He conjured up the faces that certain

people of his acquaintance would make as they heard certain rather bold

passages. He expected bitter criticism: he smiled at it already. In any

case they would have to be blind—or deaf—to deny that there was force

in it—pleasant or otherwise, what did it matter?—Pleasant! Pleasant!…

Force! That is enough. Let it go its way, and bear all before it, like the

Rhine!…

 

He had one setback. The Grand Duke did not come. The royal box was only

occupied by Court people, a few ladies-in-waiting. Christophe was irritated

by it. He thought: “The fool is cross with me. He does not know what to

think of my work: he is afraid of compromising himself.” He shrugged his

shoulders, pretending not to be put out by such idiocy. Others paid more

attention to it: it was the first lesson for him, a menace of his future.

 

The public had not shown much more interest than the Grand Duke: quite a

third of the hall was empty. Christophe could not help thinking bitterly of

the crowded halls at his concerts when he was a child. He would not have

been surprised by the change if he had had more experience: it would have

seemed natural to him that there were fewer people come to hear him when

he made good music than when he made bad: for it is not music but the

musician in which the greater part of the public is interested: and it is

obvious that a musician who is a man and like everybody else is much less

interesting than a musician in a child’s little trowsers or short frock,

who tickles sentimentality or amuses idleness.

 

After waiting in vain for the hall to fill, Christophe decided to begin.

He tried to pretend that it was better so, saying, “A few friends but

good.”—His optimism did not last long.

 

His pieces were played in silence.—There is a silence in an audience

which seems big and overflowing with love. But there was nothing in this.

Nothing. Utter sleep. Blankness. Every phrase seemed to drop into depths

of indifference. With his back turned to the audience, busy with his

orchestra, Christophe was fully aware of everything that was happening in

the hall, with those inner antennæ which every true musician is endowed, so

that he knows whether what he is playing is waking an echo in the hearts

about him. He went on conducting and growing excited while he was frozen by

the cold mist of boredom rising from the stalls and the boxes behind him.

 

At last the overture was ended: and the audience applauded. It applauded

coldly, politely, and was then silent. Christophe would rather have had

them hoot…. A hiss! One hiss! Anything to give a sign of life, or at

least of reaction against his work!… Nothing.—He looked at the audience.

The people were looking at each other, each trying to find out what the

other thought. They did not succeed and relapsed into indifference.

 

The music went on. The symphony was played.—Christophe found it hard to

go on to the end. Several times he was on the point of throwing down his

baton and running away. Their apathy overtook him: at last he could not

understand what he was conducting: he could not breathe: he felt that he

was falling into fathomless boredom. There was not even the whispered

ironic comment which he had anticipated at certain passages: the audience

were reading their programmes. Christophe heard the pages turned all

together with a dry rustling: and then, once more there was silence until

the last chord, when the same polite applause showed that they had not

understood that the symphony was finished.—And yet there were four pairs

of hands went on clapping when the others had finished: but they awoke no

echo, and stopped ashamed: that made the emptiness seem more empty, and the

little incident served to show the audience how bored it had been.

 

Christophe took a seat in the middle of the orchestra: he dared not look to

right or left. He wanted to cry: and at the same time he was quivering with

rage. He was fain to get up and shout at them: “You bore me! Ah! How you

bore me! I cannot bear it!… Go away! Go away, all of you!…”

 

The audience woke up a little: they were expecting the singer,—they were

accustomed to applauding her. In that ocean of new music in which they were

drifting without a compass, she at least was sure, a known land, and a

solid, in which there was no danger of being lost. Christophe divined their

thoughts exactly, and he laughed bitterly. The singer was no less conscious

of the expectancy of the audience: Christophe saw that in her regal airs

when he came and told her that it was her turn to appear. They looked at

each other inimically. Instead of offering her his arm, Christophe thrust

his hands into his pockets and let her go on alone. Furious and out of

countenance she passed him. He followed her with a bored expression. As

soon as she appeared the audience gave her an ovation: that made everybody

happier: every face brightened, the audience grew interested, and glasses

were brought into play. Certain of her power she tackled the Lieder, in

her own way, of course, and absolutely disregarded Christophe’s remarks of

the evening before. Christophe, who was accompanying her, went pale. He had

foreseen her rebellion. At the first change that she made he tapped on the

piano and said angrily:

 

“No!”

 

She went on. He whispered behind her back in a low voice of fury:

 

“No! No! Not like that!… Not that!”

 

Unnerved by his fierce growls, which the audience could not hear, though

the orchestra caught every syllable, she stuck to it, dragging her notes,

making pauses like organ stops. He paid no heed to them and went ahead: in

the end they got out of time. The audience did not notice it: for some time

they had been saying that Christophe’s music was not made to seem pleasant

or right to the ear: but Christophe, who was not of that opinion, was

making lunatic grimaces: and at last he exploded. He stopped short in the

middle of a bar:

 

“Stop,” he shouted.

 

She was carried on by her own impetus for half a bar and then stopped:

 

“That’s enough,” he said dryly.

 

There was a moment of amazement in the audience. After a few seconds he

said icily:

 

“Begin again!”

 

She looked at him in stupefaction: her hands trembled: she thought for a

moment of throwing his book at his head: afterwards she did not understand

how it was that she did not do so. But she was overwhelmed by Christophe’s

authority and his unanswerable tone of voice: she began again. She sang the

song-cycle, without changing one shade of meaning, or a single movement:

for she felt that he would spare her nothing: and she shuddered at the

thought of a fresh insult.

 

When she had finished the audience recalled her frantically. They were not

applauding the Lieder—(they would have applauded just the same if she

had sung any others)—but the famous singer who had grown old in harness:

they knew that they could safely admire her. Besides, they wanted to make

up to her for the insult she had just received. They were not quite sure,

but they did vaguely