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Bob’s
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Reviews — The New York Times
From the New York Times August 18, 1912
A TALK WITH MASSENET A FEW DAYS BEFORE HIS DEATH
The Famous Composer Discussed the Art of Musical Composition
and Modern Tendencies in Operatic Construction
Condemned the New Scale.
By Herbert F. Peyser
Paris, July 27,-“Le maitre vous prie de venir à la salle … manger master asks you to step into the dining room,” said the valet de chambre with obsequiousness as I entered the antechamber of Massenet’s apartment. “He is already waiting for you (and I had arrived ten minutes before the appointed hour!) pas ici, s’il vous plait, Monsieur. He will be with you immediately.”
I felt the right to regard myself as a privileged character, in a sense, for Massenet entertains scant love for interviewers. And I was doubly favored in having been permitted to invade the sanctity of the master’s very salle à manger, nay, even to pass the portals of the ante-chamber. For one of the most intangible rules of his life is to welcome no journalists in the privacy of his home. Such audiences as may chance to fall to their lot take place in the office of Massenet’s publisher, M. Heugel, at the Ménestrel. However, at the request of certain friends and in behalf of Musical America, he had condescended to make an exception in the present instance.
Massenet’s dislike for the frequent intrusion of strangers, newspaper people, importuning artists, &c., led him to move, a number of years ago, from a more central part of Paris to his present domicile, 48 Rue de Vaugirard. The place (an apartment house, of course: the Parisian masters seem particularly partial to apartments however considerable their bank accounts) overlooks the picturesque gardens of the Luxembourg, and is situated within a few minutes’ walk of the Cluny Museum and the Pantheon. The exterior is bare and unpretentious, and, to the average American, about as uninviting as the majority of Parisian houses. The place is innocent of an elevator, but happily the premises of the master are located au premier, thus necessitating the ascent of only one flight of stairs.
The entrance hall and dining room are furnished with severe simplicity (though July, to be sure, is not a favorable time to judge of interior decorations.) The highly polished floors are uncarpeted. On the dining room mantel some few simple pieces of bric-a-brac and a copy of Musical America. In an opposite corner, a black upright piano with a brass handle on each side. The instrument is always closed, it appears, for Massenet’s inspiration needs no piano to guide, stimulate or otherwise invite it. A half-subdued light permeates this room, for its single window of leaded glass looks out upon a court, not the street. Yet this light only emphasizes the reposeful and consistently tranquil atmosphere of the place.
I had not long to wait for Massenet, who the next moment entered hastily from a side room where he had been busily composing (as he subsequently informed me) since the small hours of the morning-his customary modus operandi.
One experiences no need of breaking the ice of initial reserve when brought face to face with Massenet for the first time. You find yourself launched on a lively conversation with him without going through any of the conventional introductory formulae. To one of so thoroughly lovable a nature as his the much-mauled and frequently misdirected phrase “cher maître” seems preeminently applicable. It slips from the tongue irresistibly moved to use it in connection with Massenet even were its circulation far less extensive in France than is actually the case.
Massenet Two Weeks Ago.
Despite the fact that his face is thinner and more wrinkled, and his cheeks far more sunken than is apparent in any of his published photographs, Massenet carries his seventy-odd years with surprising ease. His gray hair, sparce in front, but still falling in the approved musican’s mode over his ears, is yet liberally streaked with the black of earlier years. His eyes are luminous with a very youthful fire, and his varied play of features act as a sort of incessant commentary on the import of his conversation. Massenet is loquacious, speaking with rapidity and directness; trenchantly, pointedly, yet with the utmost simplicity of expression. And the very polish of their simplicity makes the task of recording his word laborious. But though he fairly radiates geniality and bonhomie the observer is, nevertheless immediately and indelibly impressed by his vivacity, animation and supply of nervous energy. When particularly desirous of emphasizing some point he will unconsciously, as it were, grasp the listener’s arm.
We sat close by the black piano with the brass handles, the master resting his left arm upon the lid (for he seems to hold armchairs in disdain.) “You see,” he said, “this is the most valuable usage I get out of this instrument. I never think of composing at it, voyez vous! There are many people who do not believe me when I tell them so, and therefore, their astonishment and amusement are great when they come here and see this one. ‘Eh bien, voil…! Je le savais bien! they cry. ‘I knew it! Massenet does compose with a piano, after all!’ ‘Mais pas du tout! Not at all!’ I answer them ‘You see, I like to sit alongside it, voil… tout! I am most comfortable when I am resting against it like this, vous comprenez? That is what I use my piano for. But to compose on it-jamais de la vie!’ ”
“Cher maître,” I asked, “how comes it that you are in Paris at this season of the year?”
“Mais, je ne suis pas! I am here temporarily, only for a day or two. I am a ‘membre d’Institut,’ you know, and I am obliged to be present for the decision of the jury regarding the examinations in the class of architecture. The opinions of all members of the institute are required in such circumstances, you see, whether they are directly interested in architecture or not. I was a ‘membre de l’Institut’ when I was thirty-four years old. Most persons do not become that until around fifty or sixty.”
“And you are still at work as hard as ever?”
“Mais toujours! Always! But people, you must know, get the wrong impression of my working. People do not know that while I seem to be writing continuously I am never in the habit of mentioning a word about what I have been laboring upon until it is quite finished and in the hands of the engravers. Sometimes an opera that is said to be new because it is just about to receive its première is already years old. But they are like those distant stars, which are long but of existence, whose light is only reaching us now. Here in my ‘Roma,’ which was given for the first time only last winter, and will not be heard in the majority of French cities until next. Eh bien, voyez-vous, mon ami, ‘Roma’ was finished in 1902. Then there is ‘Panurge,’ which is a subject taken from Rabelais. That was finished in 1905. Another of my works not yet brought out was completed in 1890. ‘Cléopatre’ is long since finished. I have my reasons for waiting so long. When an opera of mine is brought out it must be under the most favorable circumstances; every participating artist must be, in my opinion, perfectly suited to his task.
Now this condition is not always easy to fulfill, and so, rather than allow a piece to be given in a way that does not measure up to my ideals I withhold it until the favorable opportunity presents itself. The only performance of my works that I regard as truly authoritative and representative of my own desires and purposes are those given with the original cast, with the actual creators of the various rôles. They have worked under my own supervision; in them I have embodied my every wish. Other representations can, therefore, never be their equal.
First Work on an Opera.
“When I set to work upon an opera my first move is to copyright it. That is an advantage that you have not got in America, where several copies of the completed score and libretto must be handed in before the copyright can be said to exist. In France I have but to hand in the name and an outline of the plot of my work to have it fully protected, before I write a note of the music. After I decided to write ‘Manon’ no other could write a work with the same title. ‘Manon Lescaut’ yes, but a ‘Manon’ never.
“And is it possible that this almost continual process of composition does not tire you?”
“Mais, pas du tout, pas du tout!” exclaimed Massenet, laughing at the idea; “not in the least. The fact is that my work is not so continuous as all that. Rehearsals and preparations for performances afford me a good deal of relaxation. But even if I did not have these I should not be tired. You see, mon ami, I have made it a point to afford myself the necessary element of contrast in the style of my every succeeding work. If I write one in a lofty, passionate, tragic mood I see to it that my next is in a comic or otherwise different vein. And after a less serious piece, again something more exciting, quelque chose de plus profond, de plus passion‚. After ‘Don Quichotte’ Rome’; after ‘Roma’ ‘Panurge’; after ‘Panurge’ ‘Cléopâtre.’ By thus constantly changing the emotional atmosphere in which I am immersed I avoid fatigue. But it is a mistake to believe that I am often engaged on several operas at once. Never do I take up one before the other is off my mind.
“And yet when I have completed a composition I experience a deep and poignant grief-j’éprouve une douleur très vive! I have loved the work, I have had untold joy at seeing it grow, I have lived with my characters, have been happy and have suffered with them. I have lost myself completely in my creation, I have totally merged my personality with the persons I have brought into being. They are so intensely real to me! And then, alas! when all is finished I must tear myself away from them. I must give them to the public. And therewith the charm of the heartfelt intimacy is over. I have, it almost seems to me, given away my children in marriage and they have deserted me.”
“Is it true, cher maître, that you leave the city on the occasion of very première?”
“It is. But the reason for this is not in the least nervousness, however much people may imagine that. When the time for the première is at hand my share of the work is finished. Singers, conductor, stage directors have learned all my intentions. I have no further instructions to give. I have done my best. Pourqoui rester? Why wait any longer and be pestered, with people rushing up to me in the coulisses and in the streets asking ‘are you satisfied?’ or ‘are you happy?’ and having to answer in some dreadfully banal terms myself! I always have to think of Dumas, who when a certain play of his was given for the first time without great success, was accosted behind the scenes by an individual who boldly asked him, ‘Well, are you pleased?’
“ ‘Yes, but not as pleased as you are?’ replied Dumas. A splendid answer, n’est ce pas? But I for my part much prefer to go away and avoid taking chances. In a couple of weeks people have forgotten and then all is well again.”
“But coming back to your music,” I ventured, “do you not find that by keeping operas unperformed so long after their completion there is a chance that their musical style may seem somewhat behind the times when they finally reach the footlights?”
“I do not. Fundamentally my style has not changed from year to year. But what does determine the general character of my music is the type of subject it paints. Take my ‘Panurge,’ for example. It will not be a light opera, but a sort of heroic comic opera, but no more light, than the ‘Meistersinger.’ In that work will be found all sorts of harmonies and effects that have hitherto been strange to me. But my style has not changed. It is merely that the subject has called for another and less familiar kind of musical treatment.
“That is a fact that one has often to explain to people, to critics in particular, before they understand a work. Critics do not take time to study a composition intelligently before delivering their verdict. After my ‘Sapho’ was first produced I was violently accused of putting into Sapho’s mouth music that was said to be fit for Montmartre but which had no place in an opera. ‘Can you not perceive,’ I asked one critic ‘that Sapho was a woman who frequented that quarter, and who, consequently, would most naturally express herself at times in its musical idiom?
“Ah! mais oui! That is so! I had not thought of that, I had not looked at it in that light!’ he answered in confusion. There you are! That is the way of most critics. No doubt I should have perpetrated the same kind of error had I been one. Why, I remember that the first time I heard ‘Aïda,’ instead of being struck by the splendor of the work, by the beauty of the music and its wonderful appropriateness to the situations and text, I exclaimed with contemptuous indifference, ‘It is worthless; no ideas, no originality, nothing!’ Et pensez donc! I should actually have committed such absurd sentiments to paper had I been a professional critic! Mais, c’est horrible! I shudder to think of it! Critics should be given more time to study their own views.
The New Scale.
“I have not been very deeply influenced as you may see, by the developments among some of the composers in France at present. I have no confidence in the new scale, which I feel sure has no future, and I still have a great deal in the old one, which is by no means played out in spite of all that may be said to the contrary. See all the chords you can build on the tones of our familiar scale! And then, when you turn to the other you find but one single chord hand of the augmented fifth! And how monotonous this chord becomes after a short while! Ah, yes! I know that some man has published a treatise on ultra-modern harmony here in Paris. But it is a ridiculous book, perfectly nonsensical. It gives all sorts of examples of dissonances and changing tonalities, mind you, but no rules to guide you. I went over the book with Monsieur Saint-Saëns and we agreed as to the utter absurdity of the thing.
“In a way I should feel thankful to this new music, for it benefits me. People turn to me all the more gratefully for what I have been able to give them and I therefore gain a larger number of admirers among the public. The truly pernicious aspect of the present tendencies is the distressing effect they have on those who are still young, who have the best years of their lives ahead of them. They throw themselves into it with ardor. After a space of time they weary of it, the taste palls. But they then find themselves in the hopeless position of having vitiated their tastes to the extent of losing all appreciation for the older music. So where can they possibly turn for satisfaction?
“As for Debussy I never notice that he is getting anywhere. He writes preludes, he writes aquarelles. One always expects that he will strike into something big some symphony or what not. But no; nothing comes of it all. D’Indy, though, has written such things. But D’Indy I find, at the same time, very tiresome and boring.”
Massenet, with all his arduous work, is an indefatigable traveler. “Journeys do not interfere with my composing in the least,” he said, “and I can write just as comfortably in a crowded hotel, regardless of the noise, as I can at home. I compose very easily, my ideas, coming to me spontaneously and without effort. I believe that ideas that can only be brought into being by labor are worthless. Travel is one of the most essential elements to stimulate creative powers. We must have change, we must submit to new impressions, we must add new words to our artistic dictionaries. Nous sommes tous les reflects de nôtre esprit-we are all reflections of our spirit and when the spirit is wearied and ill-nourished the result is soon evident. Not only do I travel considerably to quicken my imagination, but I keep near me great numbers of photographs of other countries which I often look at, and which help to put me in the right state of mind with some specific locality. Moreover, I find true artistic pleasure in seeing beautiful faces. Not long ago I was asked to go to America and one of he inducements held out to me was that the New York women were the most beautiful in the world. I replied, however, that I did not believe it, that the loveliest ones were right here in Paris.”
All of which brings us to a consideration of the phenomenon of a womanless opera among Massenet’s works. The general verdict having been that he could not write a work that did not deal with a purely amorous subject, he set about the matter and evolved the “Jongleur.”
The “Jongleur” and Its History.
“It was long before I could induce any one to have faith in the piece,” said Massenet. “The Opéra here refused it, as did one institution after another. People made fun of it, though quite unacquainted with the work. I told them that it was not altogether with a female character, that the Virgin, whom legend makes the noblest of all women, was one of its personages, but that, in consideration of her exalted nature, I could find no music worth of putting into her mouth and therefore had left her silent. Still people refused to take me seriously. Then, after a time, the Prince of Monaco asked me for an opera. I gave him this one, it was accepted by the Monte Carlo opera and performed. And after that good fortune attended it elsewhere. But my intentions that the principle rôle should be assumed by a man have never changed. I have strongly objected to its being sung in any different fashion; but people have told me that it was so well liked in America with Mary Garden, and that she did so well that I said, ‘Oh! very well; let it be so!’ ”
It has been claimed at various times that the “Jongleur” was Massenet’s favorite among his own creations. To the present writer, however, he would not confirm that opinion. “I have no favorite,” he said; “or at least, I never can say which my favorite will be. For all I can tell, it may be the one I shall write next; it may be the one I am writing now. It may, perhaps, be even the one I write after my next.”
An instance of the kindheartedness of Massenet was an incident which took place in Vichy recently, at the hotel where he was stopping. A band of street musicians came to play in the garden where the guests of the house, among whom was the composer, were drinking their after-dinner coffee. No one took note of them until suddenly the composer was struck by the fact that they played far better and with vastly more musicianly style and finish than the average organization of the kind. They were, as a matter of fact, graduates of the Conservatoire, some of them even having been prize winners in their student days, whose fortunes had ultimately obliged them to eke out a scanty living in this nomadic fashion. Massenet, deeply struck by their work, went among them and complimented them with fervor, to the amusement of the other guests of the hotel who had not paid the faintest attention to the concert. The poor players were quite overcome at the honor paid them by their distinguished listener, whose praise began to be echoed by all the rest of the audience as soon as the master’s identity was learned. It goes without saying, moreover, that the composer was as liberal in his material donations to the musicians as he had bee in his praise.
Last updated December 30, 2006