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

sounds,

sounds. They think of nothing: they feel nothing: they are sponges. True

joy, or true sorrow—strength—is not drawn out over hours like beer from

a cask. They take you by the throat and have you down: after they are gone

there is no desire left in a man to drink in anything: he is full!…

 

“Too much music! You are slaying each other and it. If you choose to murder

each other that is your affair: I can’t help it. But where music is

concerned,—hands off! I will not suffer you to debase the loveliness of

the world by heaping up in the same basket things holy and things shameful,

by giving, as you do at present, the prelude to Parsifal between a

fantasia on the Daughter of the Regiment and a saxophone quartette, or an

adagio of Beethoven between a cakewalk and the rubbish of Leoncavallo. You

boast of being a musical people. You pretend to love music. What sort of

music do you love? Good or bad? You applaud both equally. Well, then,

choose! What exactly do you want? You do not know yourselves. You do

not want to know: you are too fearful of taking sides and compromising

yourselves…. To the devil with your prudence!—You are above party, do

you say?—Above? You mean below….”

 

And he quoted the lines of old Gottfried Keller, the rude citizen of

Zurich—one of the German writers who was most dear to him by reason of his

vigorous loyalty and his keen savor of the soil:

 

“_Wer über den Parlein sich wähnt mit stolzen Mienen Der steht zumeist

vielmehr beträchtlich unter ihnen._”

 

(“He who proudly preens himself on being above parties is rather

immeasurably beneath them.”)

 

“Have courage and be true,” he went on. “Have courage and be ugly. If you

like bad music, then say so frankly. Show yourselves, see yourselves as you

are. Kid your souls of the loathsome burden of all your compromise and

equivocation. Wash it in pure water. How long is it since you have seen.

yourselves in a mirror? I will show you yourselves. Composers, virtuosi,

conductors, singers, and you, dear public. You shall for once know

yourselves…. Be what you like: but, for any sake, be true! Be true even

though art and artists—and I myself—have to suffer for it! If art and

truth cannot live together, then let art disappear. Truth is life. Lies are

death.”

 

Naturally, this youthful, wild outburst, which was all of a piece, and in

very bad taste, produced an outcry. And yet, as everybody was attacked and

nobody in particular, its pertinency was not recognized. Every one is, or

believes himself to be, or says that he is the best friend of truth: there

was therefore no danger of the conclusions of the article being attacked.

Only people were shocked by its general tone: everybody agreed that it

was hardly proper, especially from an artist in a semi-official position.

A few musicians began to be uneasy and protested bitterly: they saw that

Christophe would not stop at that. Others thought themselves more clever

and congratulated Christophe on his courage: they were no less uneasy about

his next articles.

 

Both tactics produced the same result. Christophe had plunged: nothing

could stop him: and as he had promised, everybody was passed in survey,

composers and interpreters alike.

 

The first victims were the Kapellmeisters. Christophe did not confine

himself to general remarks on the art of conducting an orchestra. He

mentioned his colleagues of his own town and the neighboring towns by name:

or if he did not name them his allusions were so transparent that nobody

could be mistaken. Everybody recognized the apathetic conductor of the

Court, Alois von Werner, a cautious old man, laden with honors, who was

afraid of everything, dodged everything, was too timid to make a remark to

his musicians and meekly followed whatever they chose to do,—who never

risked anything on his programme that had not been consecrated by twenty

years of success, or, at least, guaranteed by the official stamp of some

academic dignity. Christophe ironically applauded his boldness: he

congratulated him on having discovered Gade, Dvorak, or Tschaikowsky: he

waxed enthusiastic over his unfailing correctness, his metronomic equality,

the always fein-nuanciert (finely shaded) playing of his orchestra:

he proposed to orchestrate the École de la Vélocité of Czerny for his

next concert, and implored him not to try himself so much, not to give

rein to his passions, to look after his precious health.—Or he cried

out indignantly upon the way in which he had conducted the Eroica of

Beethoven:

 

“A cannon! A cannon! Mow me down these people!… But have you then no idea

of the conflict, the fight between human stupidity and human ferocity,—and

the strength which tramples them underfoot with a glad shout of

laughter?—How could you know it? It is you against whom it fights! You

expend all the heroism that is in you in listening or in playing the

Eroica of Beethoven without a yawn—(for it bores you…. Confess that it

bores you to death!)—or in risking a draught as you stand with bare head

and bowed back to let some Serene Highness pass.”

 

He could not be sarcastic enough about the pontiffs of the Conservatories

who interpreted the great men of the past as “classics.”

 

“Classical! That word expresses everything. Free passion, arranged and

expurgated for the use of schools! Life, that vast plain swept by the

winds,—inclosed within the four walls of a school playground! The fierce,

proud beat of a heart in anguish, reduced to the tic-tacs of a four-tune

pendulum, which goes its jolly way, hobbling and imperturbably leaning on

the crutch of time!… To enjoy the Ocean you need to put it in a bowl with

goldfish. You only understand life when you have killed it.”

 

If he was not kind to the “bird-stuffers” as he called them, he was even

less kind to the ringmen of the orchestra, the illustrious Kapellmeisters

who toured the country to show off their flourishes and their dainty hands,

those who exercised their virtuosity at the expense of the masters, tried

hard to make the most familiar works unrecognizable, and turned somersaults

through the hoop of the Symphony in C minor. He made them appear as old

coquettes, prima donnas of the orchestra, gipsies, and rope-dancers.

 

The virtuosi naturally provided him with splendid material. He declared

himself incompetent when he had to criticise their conjuring performances.

He said that such mechanical exercises belonged to the School of Arts and

Crafts, and that not musical criticism but charts registering the duration,

and number of the notes, and the energy expended, could decide the merit of

such labors. Sometimes he would set at naught some famous piano virtuoso

who during a two hours’ concert had surmounted the formidable difficulties,

with a smile on his lips and his hair hanging down into his eyes—of

executing a childish andante of Mozart.—He did not ignore the pleasure

of overcoming difficulties. He had tasted it himself: it was one of the

joys of life to him. But only to see the most material aspect of it,

and to reduce all the heroism of art to that, seemed to him grotesque

and degrading. He could not forgive the “lions” or “panthers” of the

piano.—But he was not very indulgent either towards the town pedants,

famous in Germany, who, while they are rightly anxious not to alter the

text of the masters, carefully suppress every flight of thought, and, like

E. d’Albert and H. von Bülow, seem to be giving a lesson in diction when

they are rendering a passionate sonata.

 

The singers had their turn. Christophe was full to the brim of things to

say about their barbarous heaviness and their provincial affectations. It

was not only because of his recent misadventures with the enraged lady, but

because of all the torture he had suffered during so many performances. It

was difficult to know which had suffered most, ears or eyes. And Christophe

had not enough standards of comparison to be able to have any idea of the

ugliness of the setting, the hideous costumes, the screaming colors. He was

only shocked by the vulgarity of the people, their gestures and attitudes,

their unnatural playing, the inability of the actors to take on other souls

than their own, and by the stupefying indifference with which they passed

from one rôle to another, provided they were written more or less in

the same register. Matrons of opulent flesh, hearty and buxom, appeared

alternately as Ysolde and Carmen. Amfortas played Figaro.—But what most

offended Christophe was the ugliness of the singing, especially in the

classical works in which the beauty of melody is essential. No one in

Germany could sing the perfect music of the eighteenth century: no one

would take the trouble. The clear, pure style of Gluck and Mozart which,

like that of Goethe, seems to be bathed in the light of Italy—the style

which begins to change and to become vibrant and dazzling with Weber—the

style ridiculed by the ponderous caricatures of the author of

Crociato—had been killed by the triumph of Wagner. The wild flight of

the Valkyries with their strident cries had passed over the Grecian sky.

The heavy clouds of Odin dimmed the light. No one now thought of singing

music: they sang poems. Ugliness and carelessness of detail, even false

notes were let pass under pretext that only the whole, only the thought

behind it mattered….

 

“Thought! Let us talk of that. As if you understood it!… But whether or

no you do understand it, I pray you respect the form that thought has

chosen for itself. Above all, let music be and remain music!”

 

And the great concern of German artists with expression and profundity of

thought was, according to Christophe, a good joke. Expression? Thought?

Yes, they introduced them into everything—everything impartially. They

would have found thought in a skein of wool just as much—neither more nor

less—as in a statue of Michael Angelo. They played anything, anybody’s

music with exactly the same energy. For most of them the great thing in

music—so he declared—was the volume of sound, just a musical noise. The

pleasure of singing so potent in Germany was in some sort a pleasure of

vocal gymnastics. It was just a matter of being inflated with air and

then letting it go vigorously, powerfully, for a long time together and

rhythmically.—And by way of compliment he accorded a certain great singer

a certificate of good health. He was not content with flaying the artists.

He strode over the footlights and trounced the public for coming, gaping,

to such performances. The public was staggered and did not know whether

it ought to laugh or be angry. They had every right to cry out upon his

injustice: they had taken care not to be mixed up in any artistic conflict:

they stood aside prudently from any burning question: and to avoid making

any mistake they applauded everything! And now Christophe declared that

it was a crime to applaud!… To applaud bad works?—That would have been

enough! But Christophe went further: he stormed at them for applauding

great works:

 

“Humbugs!” he said. “You would have us believe that you have as much

enthusiasm as that?… Oh! Come! Spare yourselves the trouble! You only

prove exactly the opposite of what you are trying to prove. Applaud if you

like those works and passages which in some measure deserve applause.

Applaud those loud final movements which are written, as Mozart said, ‘for

long ears.’ Applaud as much as you like, then: your braying is anticipated:

it is part of the concert.—But after the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven!…

Poor wretches!… It is the Last Judgment. You have