IVCAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
It is a principle of musical expression that of the two great types of temperament, the active and the contemplative, the first tends to express itself in strongly rhythmic figures, the second in phrases of vaguer outline, full of sentiment not easily to be confined in molds. The man of action is incisive, vigorous, compact in utterance; the mystic is by contrast indefinite and discursive. It has been well established, indeed, that primeval music was the product of two modes of instinctive emotional expression, the gesticulatory and the vocal, dance and song; and throughout its growth these two strands, however closely they may intertwine, can still be traced. Thus it happens that even to-day we find the complex work ofmodern musicians getting a special impress of personality and style according as the rhythmic or the melodic-harmonic faculty predominates in the individual. One man's music will be notable for its strong impulse, its variety and vivacity of rhythm; another's will appeal to the more dreamy and sentimental part of our natures, will speak to our hearts so movingly that we shall recognize its descent from the song rather than from the dance. And in all such cases the first man will be of the active temperament, a man of the world, of many interests and great nervous force; the second will be contemplative, inclined to the monastic life, and of great heart rather than keen intelligence.
Such an antithesis of artistic product and of personal character exists in a peculiar degree between Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck, the two greatest composers France has produced since Bizet. Each of these men is great by virtue of qualities somewhat wanting in the other. The one is clever, worldly, learned—and a little superficial; the other, profound, religious, of singularly pure and exalted spirit, is yet emotional to the verge of abnormality. Andso with their music; that of Saint-Saëns is energetic, lucid, consummately wrought, while Franck's, more moving and more subtle, is so surcharged with feeling as to become vague and inarticulate. A review of their lives and a brief analysis of their work will bring out more clearly this divergence of nature, which, in spite of the many traits they have in common, has determined them to very different careers and exacted of them very dissimilar artistic services.
At a concert given in Paris in 1846 appeared a new prodigy, a boy pianist, «le petit Saint-Saëns,» as the «Gazette Musicale» announced him, who, only ten and a half years old, played Händel, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, «without notes, with no effort, giving his phrases with clearness, elegance, and even expression in the midst of the powerful effects of a numerous orchestra using all its resources.» This, the first public appearance of Saint-Saëns, was by no means his first musical exploit. We read that he began the study of the piano with his great-aunt at the age of three, when already his sense of tone was so keen that he would press down with his left hand the slender fingers of the right until they became strong enough tosatisfy his exacting requirements; that at five he composed little waltzes; that at ten he played fugues by Bach, a concerto of Hummel, and Beethoven's C-minor Concerto; and that he could tell the notes of all the clock-chimes in the house, and once remarked that a person in the next room was «walking in trochees.» By the time he was seventeen he had earned wide reputation as a pianist, had taken prizes for organ-playing at the conservatory, and had written an ode for chorus, solo, and orchestra, and a symphony. Thus early did he lay the foundations of that skill which in the early seventies, when at Wagner's house he played on the piano the «Siegfried» score, won from von Bülow the remark that, with the exception of Wagner and Liszt, he was the greatest musician living.
The surprising energy and versatility shown at the opening of Saint-Saëns's career have proved, in the course of time, to be the salient traits of his typically Gallic nature. He is, to a remarkable degree, the complete Frenchman. He has all the intellectual vivacity, all the nervous force, the quick wit and worldly polish, even the physical swarthiness and the drykeenness of visage, that we associate with his countrymen. M. Georges Servières, in his «La Musique Française Moderne,» gives the following excellent description: «Saint-Saëns is of short stature. His head is extremely original, the features characteristic; a great brow, wide and open, where, between the eyebrows, the energy and the tenacity of the man reveal themselves; hair habitually cut short, and brownish beard turning gray; a nose like an eagle's beak, underlined by two deeply marked wrinkles starting from the nostrils, eyes a little prominent, very mobile, very expressive. The familiars of his Mondays, those who knew the artist before injured health and family sorrows had darkened his character, remember that there was about him then a keen animation, a diabolic mischievousness, a railing irony, and an agility in leaping in talk from one subject to another with a sprightliness of fancy that equaled the mobility of his features, which were animated at one and the same moment by the most contrary expressions; and I could cite as instances of his gay humor many funny anecdotes that he loved to tell, adjusting on his nose the while, with both hands, in a way peculiarto him, his eye-glasses, behind which his eyes sparkled with malice.» Some examples of this railing irony of Saint-Saëns are preserved. There is, for instance, a story of an ambitious woman at one of his «Mondays,» who fairly browbeat him into accompanying her two daughters in a duet. After enduring as long as he could the torture of their timeless and tuneless performance, he turned to the mother with, «Whichof your daughters, madam, do you wish me to accompany?» A man of his wit naturally found himself at home in Paris society, and counted among his friends for years such people as the Princess Pauline Metternich, Mme. Viardot-Garcia, and Meissonier, Tourgenieff, and Dumas. A story told in the «Figaro,» of how at Madame Garcia's, where he often played both the organ and the piano, he would pass from improvising «masterly pages» in the contrapuntal style to waltzes for the young people to dance by, illustrates in little that peculiar combination of distinction and gayety, characteristic of Paris, which is the native air of Saint-Saëns.
But this adept metropolitan is also an inveterate nomad. Not content with traveling allover Europe in his virtuoso tours, he has long had the habit of wintering in outlandish places like the Canary Islands. Often he leaves home without announcing to any one his departure, or even giving friends his addresses; sometimes without knowing himself where he will go. The spectacle of distant lands and alien races has for him an inexhaustible fascination. In writing of his experiences in England, where he went in 1893 to receive the doctor's degree from Cambridge, he dwells with gusto on the procession of dignitaries, at the head of which, he says, «marched the King of Bahonagar, in a gold turban sparkling with fabulous gems, a necklace of diamonds at his throat.» «Dare I avow,» he adds, «that, as an enemy of the banalities and the dull tones of our modern garments, I was enchanted with the adventure?» And in his charming little essay, «Une Traversée de Bretagne,» the same enthusiasm throws about his oboe-playing ship-captain the glamour of romance. On his first trip to the Canaries, made incognito, he is said to have offered himself as a substitute to sing a tenor part in «Le Trouvère,» and to have come near appearing in this incongruous rôle.When his grand opera, «Ascanio,» was produced at Paris, he scandalized his friends and the public by being absent from the first performance. Diligent inquiry, and even the efforts of the diplomatic agents of the Government, failed to discover his whereabouts, and it was actually rumored that he had died in Ceylon, on his way to Japan. But all the while he was happily basking in the sun at Palma, scribbling verses. Finally his fondness for astronomy is well known, and he is said to have a private observatory in some «ultimate island.» There is much about this picturesque Frenchman that reminds one of the heroes of Jules Verne's romances.
When he is at home, Saint-Saëns carries on a many-sided activity of which composition is hardly more than half. For one thing, he is indefatigable in his efforts to improve public taste. In 1864 he gave in a series of concerts all the concertos of Mozart; in 1878, such is the catholicity of his taste, he organized concerts to produce Liszt's Symphonic Poems. He has done much for musical bibliography by his careful editions of Gluck, Rameau, and others. In 1871 he took active measures tobetter the opportunities of young native composers. At that time, as he puts it, «the name of a composer at once French and living, upon a programme, had the property to put everybody to flight.» The great improvement that has taken place since then is due largely to him and his brother-workers of the National Society of Music.
His two volumes of critical essays, «Harmonie et Mélodie» and «Portraits et Souvenirs,» are marked by soundness of principle, broad eclecticism of taste, and a pungent, epigrammatic style. In general temper he is classical without being pedantic; that is to say, he has no superstitious awe for rules, but a profound reverence for law. The licenses of modern technique and the mental vagueness of which they are the reflection find in him a formidable foe. The thrust he gives, in the preface of «Portraits et Souvenirs,» to those amateurs who are «annoyed or disdainful if the instruments of the orchestra do not run in all directions, like poisoned rats,» is typical of his attitude and method. He is a master of innuendo and delicate sarcasm, which he always employs, however, to protect art against affectation andignorance. In dealing with the theory that music depends for its effect on physical pleasure, he speaks derisively of the solo voice which one can «savor at one's leisure, like a sherbet.» He says of those orchestral conductors and choirmasters who always complain of difficulties that they «love above all their little habits and the calm of their existence.» Among these sparkling sentences one comes frequently also upon pieces of wisdom, sometimes expressed with rare dignity, as when he writes, «There is in music something which traverses the ear as a door, the reason as a vestibule, and which goes yet further.» A writer so highly gifted with both raillery and eloquence might do mischief were he narrow or intolerant. That Saint-Saëns is neither can be seen from a mere enumeration of some of his subjects, chosen almost at random: there are essays on The Oratorios of Bach and Händel, Jacques Offenbach, Liszt, Poetry and Music, The Nibelungen Ring and the Performances at Bayreuth, Don Giovanni, A Defense of Opéra-Comique, The Multiple Resonance of Bells, and The Wagnerian Illusion.
These titles indicate a wide enough range ofinterest, but Saint-Saëns is furthermore a writer on subjects entirely unconnected with music. His devotion to philosophy has prompted him to publish a volume called «Problèmes et Mystères;» an antiquarian interest has found expression in his «Note sur les décors de Théâtre dans l'antiquité romaine;» and he has printed a volume of poems under the title «Rimes familières.» Finally, a comedy in one act called «La Crampe des écrivains» (a disease from which he appears never to have suffered) has been successfully produced at Paris.
As a composer, Saint-Saëns impresses the student first of all by his excessive, his almost inordinate, cleverness. It is not seemly for a human being to be so clever; there is something necromantic about it. Look at the opening of the G-minor Piano Concerto and see a modern Frenchman writing like the great Bach. See, in the «Danse Macabre,» Berlioz and Johann Strauss amalgamated. Listen to the rich effects of tone in the 'Cello Sonata in C minor. Study the thematic transformations and the contrapuntal style of the Symphony in the same key. Admire the lightness, the cobweb iridescence, of the «Rouet d'Omphale.»The author of these works is obviously a man of great intellectual skill and versatility.
Looking more closely, one observes a duality of style, for the moment puzzling, which properly understood only emphasizes the peculiarity of his artistic impulse. His compositions are of two well-marked varieties which at first seem to have little in common. To begin with, all those cast in the conventional symphonic mold—the three symphonies, the eight concertos, three for violin and five for piano, and most of the chamber-music—are severely, at times almost aridly, classical in conception and execution. They are «absolute music» of the most unequivocal sort. They depend for their effect on clear form, well-calculated symmetry, traditional though interesting melodic and harmonic treatment; their themes are of the family of Haydn and Mozart; their structure is that perfected by Beethoven; their orchestration is skillful but unobtrusive, a transparent medium rather than a rich material garment. In a word, they are very pure examples in music of a type of art—the French classic or pseudo-classic type—which gains little from richness of material or variety of suggestion,which depends for its appeal on clarity and symmetry of form and on clean workmanship in style. But, in addition to these conventional works, Saint-Saëns has produced a whole museum of exotics, in which his aim is to delineate passions, peoples, and places. There are the four Symphonic Poems, for example, the «Rouet d'Omphale,» «Phaéton,» the «Danse Macabre,» and «La Jeunesse d'Hercule,» in which he assumes the rôle of story-teller. In the «Nuit à Lisbonne,» the «Jota Aragonese,» and the «Rapsodie d'Auvergne,» he makes a tour in southern Europe; in the «Suite Algerienne» he portrays the deserts about Algiers, and in his opus 89 he gives us a fantasy of odd rhythms and outlandish tonalities supposed to introduce us to Africa. Nothing could seem, at the first blush, more diametrically opposite to the pseudo-classic works than these exotics, which among their academic brothers recall the King of Bahonagar at Cambridge. Yet both kinds, after all, when one looks more closely, are products of the widely questing intelligence, whose interests are dramatic rather than personal. They have this in common, that neither is of primarily emotional origin, that both areexpressions of a mind objective and alertly observant. The difference between them is that in the one case this observation takes for object the purely musical world of tones, and in the other nature's world of persons, nations, races, and climates. But whether he is seeking a piquant rhythm or a curious turn of harmony, or sketching his impression of Spain or Egypt, Saint-Saëns is always the onlooker, the man of the world, never the mystic who contemplates in his own heart the forces that underlie the universe.
Strong testimony from the man himself to the truth of this view is indirectly afforded by his essay on Liszt, an essay which is furthermore noteworthy as containing in half a dozen sentences the essential truths of that vexed question of programme-music. He is, to begin with, as assertive as we should expect of the necessity, in all music, of absolute beauty. «Is the music itself,» he says, «good or bad? All is there. Whether or no it has a programme, it will not be, for that, better or worse.» Thus far speaks the author of the symphonies, the concertos, and the chamber-works. The composer of the symphonic poems and the geographicalpieces continues: «But how much greater is the charm when to the purely musical pleasure is added that of the imagination coursing without hesitation over a determined path.... All the faculties of the soul are put in play at once, and toward the same end. I can see well what art gains from this, I cannot see what it loses.» Here speaks, recognizably enough, the Frenchman. In that phrase about «the imagination coursing without hesitation over a determined path» stands clearly revealed the dramatic point of view characteristic of French art, which is always devoted to the spectacle of life rather than to the elemental passions which underlie it. The satisfactions Saint-Saëns finds in music are those of the formal musical sense and of «the imagination coursing a determined path;» of the emotional satisfaction which music gives so generously he has nothing to say. To take another instance, how admirably logical and how adequate to the composition, which for all its picturesque grace leaves one cold, is the «programme» he appends to the «Rouet d'Omphale.» «The subject of this symphonic poem,» he writes, «is feminine seduction, the triumph of weakness overstrength. The spinning-wheel is but a pretext, chosen solely with a view to the rhythm and the general effect of the piece. Those interested in the study of details will see at page 19, Hercules groaning under the bonds he cannot break, and at page 32 Omphale laughing at the vain efforts of the hero.» Both programme and piece are the creations of a keen intelligence which records its observations with accuracy and skill, but makes no personal revelation, cares not to contemplate itself, and is moved by no deep and perhaps vague, but nevertheless creative, emotion.
Lack of emotion, then, is the serious defect of this master. And in a musician it is in truth serious. Emotion is the life blood of the musical organism; without it all the members may be shapely, well ordered, highly finished, but all will be cold and lifeless. So it is with much of this clever craftsman's work. Too often there is graceful melody, arresting harmony, ingenious rhythm, but none of the passion needed to fuse and transfigure them. Impassioned vocal utterance, the song element in music, is seldom heard from Saint-Saëns. In the classic works he manipulates, in the exoticpieces he depicts; nowhere does he speak. But to speak, to voice deep feeling directly, though with the restraint necessary to plastic beauty, is the aim and the justification of music. Complex as the art has become in our day, the essence of it is still, as it ever must be, emotional expression; and though modern composers sing broader songs than the first musicians, and sing them on instruments rather than with the voice, they must equally sing, and their song must proceed from their hearts if it is to touch the hearts of others. Hence Saint-Saëns, when compared with a man of passionate earnestness like César Franck, or Schumann, or Wagner, inevitably seems superficial. Pieces like his B-minor Violin Concerto, with its elaborate classical machinery, its well-planned contrasts and brilliant effects, and the vast Symphony in C-minor, in which the theme undergoes such wonderfully skillful manipulation, seem so little the expression of a personal impulse that we catch ourselves wondering why he wrote them. Elsewhere, to be sure, as in the Andante of the 'Cello Sonata, his very virtuosity achieves such noble effects that we forget the hand-made quality of the work. But itis seldom indeed that, subordinating workmanship entirely, he gives us a genuine song of feeling, such as the second theme of the Finale in this Sonata. The lift and impetus of this beautiful theme emphasizes by contrast the emotional emptiness of the ingenious web that surrounds it.
While, however, we may with propriety recognize the lack of personal ardor in Saint-Saëns that reduces the song element in his music to a minimum, it would be a sad mistake to exaggerate the limitation or to forget that from another and perhaps an equally valid point of view he is a great musician. However he may fall short as a melodist, he is a past-master of rhythm and harmony, spheres in which feeling counts for less, logic for more. His harmonic style is eminently lucid. To him a chord is part of an organism, not a bit of color or a phase of feeling. A series of chords has for him all the tendency, the direction, and the self-fulfillment of a sentence of words; to omit or to change one would be like striking out a predicate or an object—the sentence would not parse. He uses most those chords which point in a definite direction, which carry inthemselves, so to speak, the indication for their fulfillment—the dominant and secondary sevenths, and suspensions of triads. He avoids the vague and the ambiguous. And although he is a lover of novel harmonic effects, and an ingenious inventor of them, the novelty is always a new form, not a new formlessness. His modulation, too, is of an extreme clarity: he never falls into a new key, so to speak, as Dvořák does; he proceeds thither.
But even more striking than the clearness of his harmony is the trenchant perspicuity of his rhythm. The sense of rhythm is perhaps the prime criterion of intellectuality in a composer. For just as determinations of accent and measure, such as occur in the dances of the most primeval savages, were undoubtedly the earliest means of formulating the cries and wails of emotion which underlie all musical expression, so throughout musical history rhythm has been the chief formative or rationalizing agent, and a vivid sense of it has always characterized the more intellectual musicians. The dreamers and the sentimentalists are never fastidious of accent; it is the clear, active minds who delight in precise meter. Quite inevitable to a man ofSaint-Saëns's temperament, then, is the instinct for strong, various and subtle rhythms that his compositions reveal at every page. One discerns it in his fondness for pizzicato effects and for the percussion instruments, both of which emphasize the accent. And his devotion to the piano, which he uses more in combination with other instruments than almost any other composer, is doubtless due to the fact that it compensates for its lack of sustained tone by a special incisiveness of attack. Another significant peculiarity is the short groups of repeated notes that occur so often in his writings as to be a mannerism. They are found, for example, in the fourth of his Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, opus 35, in the «scherzando» section of «Africa,» at the opening of the Trio, opus 92, in the accompaniment of the well-known air from «Samson et Dalila,» «Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix,» and in the third of the Six Études, opus 52. The effect of this device, which throws a strong emphasis on the first of the reiterated notes, is a peculiar rhythmic salience. Again, on the principle that minor irregularities in a regular plan bring out all the more clearly the larger orderliness, Saint-Saëns loves to alternate groups offour notes with groups of three, or three with two, and to displace his accent entirely by syncopation, which, when properly handled, deepens the ideal stress by setting the actual in competition with it.
In all these and countless other ways are revealed the accuracy and virtuosity of intellect that distinguish this brilliant Frenchman. Clearness of form is, on the whole, so much rarer in modern music than wealth of meaning, that the art in our day has peculiar need of such workers. Their office is to make us remember, in our welter of emotion, the perennial delightfulness of order and control. They are the apologists of reason, without which feeling, however noble, must become futile, inarticulate. In their precise, well-constructed works we find a relief from the dissipating effects of mere passion. We breathe there a serene, if a somewhat rarefied, atmosphere. Of this classic lucidity Saint-Saëns is a great master. However dry he may sometimes be, he is never turgid; however superficial his thought, it is never vague; he offers us his artistic sweets never in the form of syrup—he refines and crystallizes them. If, then, we of a race emotionally profounder and mentallymore diffuse find his music sometimes empty for all its skill, we must not for that reason underrate the service he does for music by insisting on articulateness in feeling, logic in development, and punctilious finesse in workmanship.
BIBLIOGRAPHICALNOTE.—Saint-Saëns's best orchestral works are arranged not only for four hands, but for two players at two pianos, a combination of which he is extremely fond. It is interesting to play in this way the four symphonic poems, «La Rouet d'Omphale,» «Phaéton,» the «Danse Macabre,» and «La Jeunesse d'Hercule.» The five Piano Concertos are also excellent. The symphonies are rather dry. Of the chamber-music, the 'Cello Sonata, op. 32, and the Violin Sonatas, op. 75 and 102, are particularly good. The piano music is less original, being for the most part pseudo-classic in conception and style. Thus the Suite, op. 90, is like a suite of Bach's with the sincerity taken out. On the whole the Six Études, op. 52, and the Album of six pieces, op. 72, are better worth study. The former contains two able fugues, the latter an odd «Carillon» in 7-4 time and an attractive «Valse.» There is charm in «Les Cloches du Soir,» op. 85, and also in a well-known melody, without opus-number, called «Le Cygne.» Saint-Saëns has little power as a song-writer; those who wish to realize this for themselves, may purchase the Schirmer Album of fifteen of his songs. To his numerous operas no reference is made in the present essay, the subject of which is his contribution to pure music.
BIBLIOGRAPHICALNOTE.—Saint-Saëns's best orchestral works are arranged not only for four hands, but for two players at two pianos, a combination of which he is extremely fond. It is interesting to play in this way the four symphonic poems, «La Rouet d'Omphale,» «Phaéton,» the «Danse Macabre,» and «La Jeunesse d'Hercule.» The five Piano Concertos are also excellent. The symphonies are rather dry. Of the chamber-music, the 'Cello Sonata, op. 32, and the Violin Sonatas, op. 75 and 102, are particularly good. The piano music is less original, being for the most part pseudo-classic in conception and style. Thus the Suite, op. 90, is like a suite of Bach's with the sincerity taken out. On the whole the Six Études, op. 52, and the Album of six pieces, op. 72, are better worth study. The former contains two able fugues, the latter an odd «Carillon» in 7-4 time and an attractive «Valse.» There is charm in «Les Cloches du Soir,» op. 85, and also in a well-known melody, without opus-number, called «Le Cygne.» Saint-Saëns has little power as a song-writer; those who wish to realize this for themselves, may purchase the Schirmer Album of fifteen of his songs. To his numerous operas no reference is made in the present essay, the subject of which is his contribution to pure music.