Part 12

Who speaks like this? Is it the monk Denys in his cell at Mount Athos? Or Cennini, who spread the pious teaching of the Giotteschi? Or one of the old painters of Sienna, who in their profession of faith called themselves "by the grace of God, those who manifest marvellous things to common and illiterate men, by the virtue of the holy faith, and to its glory"?

No; it was the director of the Schola Cantorum, addressing the students in an inaugural speech, or giving them a lecture on Composition.

We must consider a little this singular book, where a living science and a Gothic spirit are closely intermingled (I use the word "Gothic" in its best sense; I know it is the highest praise one can give M. d'Indy). This work has not received the attention it deserves. It is a record of the spirit of contemporary art; and if it stands rather apart from other writings, it should not be allowed to pass unnoticed on that account.

In this book, Faith is shown to be everything--the beginning and the end. We learn how it fans the flame of genius, nourishes thought, directs work, and governs even the modulations and the style of a musician. There is a passage in it that one would think was of the thirteenth century; it is curious, but not without dignity:

"One should have an aim in the progressive march of modulations, as one has in the different stages of life. The reason, instincts, and faith that guide a man in the troubles of his life also guide the musician in his choice of modulations. Thus useless and contradictory modulations, an undecided balance between light and shade, produce a painful and confusing impression on the hearer, comparable to that which a poor human being inspires when he is feeble and inconsistent, buffeted between the East and the West in the course of his unhappy life, without an aim and without belief."

This book seems to be of the Middle Ages by reason of a sort of scholastic spirit of abstraction and classification.

"In artistic creation, seven faculties are called into play by the soul: the Imagination, the Affections, the Understanding, the Intelligence, the Memory, the Will, and the Conscience."

And again its mediaeval spirit is shown by an extraordinary symbolism, which discovers in everything (as far as I understand it) the imprint of divine mysteries, and the mark of God in Three Persons in such things as the beating of the heart and ternary rhythms--"an admirable application of the principle of the Unity of the Trinity"!

From these remote times comes also M. d'Indy's method of writing history, not by tracing facts back to laws, but by deducing, on the contrary, facts from certain great general ideas, which have once been admitted, but not proved by frequent recurrence, such as: "The origin of art is in religion"--a fact which is anything but certain. From this reasoning it follows that folk-songs are derived from Gregorian chants, and not the Gregorian chants from the folk-songs--as I would sooner believe. The history of art may thus become a sort of history of the world in moral achievement. One could divide it into two parts: the world before the coming of Pride, and after it.

"Subdued by the Christian faith, that formidable enemy of man, Pride, rarely showed itself in the soul of an artist in the Middle Ages. But with the weakening of religious belief, with the spirit of the Reformation applying itself almost at the same time to every branch of human learning, we see Pride reappear, and watch its veritable Renaissance."

Finally, this Gothic spirit shows itself--in a less original way, it is true--in M. d'Indy's religious antipathies, which, in spite of the author's goodness of heart and great personal tolerance, constantly break out against the two faiths that are rivals to his own; and to them he attributes all the faults of art and all the vices of humanity. Each has its offence. Protestantism is made responsible for the extremes of individualism; and Judaism, for the absurdities of its customs and the weakness of its moral sense. I do not know which of the two is the more soundly belaboured; the second has the privilege of being so, not only in writing, but in pictures. The worst of it is, these antipathies are apt to spoil the fairness of M. d'Indy's artistic judgment. It goes without saying that the Jewish musicians are treated with scant consideration; and even the great Protestant musicians, giants in their art, do not escape rebuke. If Goudimel is mentioned, it is because he was Palestrina's master, and his achievement of "turning the Calvinist psalms into chorales" is dismissed as being of little importance.

Haendel's oratorios are spoken of as "chilling, and, frankly speaking, tedious." Bach himself escapes with this qualification: "If he is great, it is not because of, but in spite of the dogmatic and parching spirit of the Reformation."

I will not try to play the part of judge; for a man is sufficiently judged by his own writings. And, after all, it is rather interesting to meet people who are sincere and not afraid to speak their minds. I will admit that I rather enjoy--a little perversely, perhaps--some of these extreme opinions, where the writer's personality stands strongly revealed.

So the old Gothic spirit still lives among us, and informs the mind of one of our best-known artists, and also, without doubt, the minds of hundreds of those who listen to him and admire him. M. Louis Laloy has shown the persistence of certain forms of plain-song in M. Debussy's Pelleas; and in a dim sense of far-away kinship he finds the cause of the mysterious charm that such music holds for some of us. This learned paradox is possible. Why not? The mixtures of race and the vicissitudes of history have given us so full and complex a soul that we may very well find its beginnings there, if it pleases us--or the beginnings of quite other things. Of beginnings there is no end; the choice is quite embarrassing, and I imagine one's inclination has as much to do with the matter as one's temperament.

However that may be, M. d'Indy hails from the Middle Ages, and not from antiquity (which does not exist for him), or from the Renaissance, which he confounds with the Reformation (though the two sisters are enemies) in order to crush it the better. "Let us take for models," he says, "the fine workers in art of the Middle Ages."

* * * * *

In this return to the Gothic spirit, in this awakening of faith, there is a name--a modern one this time--that they are fond of quoting at the Schola; it is that of Cesar Franck, under whose direction the little Conservatoire in the Rue Saint-Jacques was placed. And indeed they could quote no better name than that of this simple-hearted man. Nearly all who came into contact with him felt his irresistible charm--a charm that has perhaps a great deal to do with the influence that his works still have on French music to-day. None has felt Franck's power, both morally and musically, more than M. Vincent d'Indy; and none holds a more profound reverence for the man whose pupil he was for so long.

The first time I saw M. d'Indy was at a concert of the Societe nationale, in the Salle Pleyel, in 1888. They were playing several of Franck's works; among others, for the first time, his admirable Theme, fugue, et variation, for the harmonium and pianoforte, a composition in which the spirit of Bach is mingled with a quite modern tenderness. Franck was conducting, and M. d'Indy was at the pianoforte. I shall always remember his reverential manner towards the old musician, and how careful he was to follow his directions; one would have said he was a diligent and obedient pupil. It was a touching homage from one who had already proved himself a master by works like Le Chant de la cloche, Wallenstein, La Symphonie sur un theme montagnard, and who was perhaps at that time better known and more popular than Cesar Franck himself. Since then twenty years have passed, and I still see M. d'Indy as I saw him that evening; and, whatever may happen in the future, his memory for me will be always associated with that of the grand old artist, presiding with his fatherly smile over the little gathering of the faithful.

Of all the characteristics of Franck's fine moral nature, the most remarkable was his religious faith. It must have astonished the artists of his time, who were even more destitute of such a thing than they are now. It made itself felt in some of his followers, especially in those who were near the master's heart, as M. d'Indy was. The religious thought of the latter reflects in some degree the thought of his master; though the shape of that thought may have undergone unconscious alteration. I do not know if Franck altogether fits the conception people have of him to-day. I do not want to introduce personal memories of him here. I knew him well enough to love him, and to catch a glimpse of the beauty and sincerity of his soul; but I did not know him well enough to discover the secrets of his mind. Those who had the happiness of being his intimate friends seem always to represent him as a mystic who shut himself away from the spirit of his time. I hope at some future date one of his friends will publish some of the conversations that he had with him, of which I have heard. But this man who had so strong a faith was also very independent. In his religion he had no doubts: it was the mainspring of his life; though faith with him was much more a matter of feeling than a matter of doctrine. But all was feeling with Franck, and reason made little appeal to him. His religious faith did not disturb his mind, for he did not measure men and their works by its rules; and he would have been incapable of putting together a history of art according to the Bible. This great Catholic had at times a very pagan soul; and he could enjoy without a qualm the musical dilettantism of Renan and the sonorous nihilism of Leconte de Lisle. There were no limits to his vast sympathies. He did not attempt to criticise the thing he loved--understanding was already in his heart. Perhaps he was right; and perhaps there was more trouble in the depths of his heart than the valiant serenity of its surface would lead us to believe.

His faith too.... I know how dangerous it is to interpret a musician's feelings by his music; but how can we do otherwise when we are told by Franck's followers that the expression of the soul is the only end and aim of music? Do we find his faith, as expressed through his music always full of peace and calm? I ask those who love that music because they find some of their own sadness reflected there. Who has not felt the secret tragedies that some of his musical passages enfold--those short, characteristically abrupt phrases which seem to rise in supplication to God, and often fall back in sadness and in tears? It is not all light in that soul; but the light that is there does not affect us less because it shines from afar,

"Dans un ecartement de nuages, qui laisse Voir au-dessus des mers la celeste allegresse...."

And so Franck seems to me to differ from M. d'Indy in that he has not the latter's urgent desire for clearness.

* * * * *

Clearness is the distinguishing quality of M. d'Indy's mind. There are no shadows about him. His ideas and his art are as clear as the look that gives so much youth to his face. For him to examine, to arrange, to classify, to combine, is a necessity. No one is more French in spirit. He has sometimes been taxed with Wagnerism, and it is true that he has felt Wagner's influence very strongly. But even when this influence is most apparent it is only superficial: his true spirit is remote from Wagner's. You may find in Fervaal a few trees like those in Siegfried's forest; but the forest itself is not the same; broad avenues have been cut in it, and daylight fills the caverns of the Niebelungs.

This love of clearness is the ruling factor of M. d'Indy's artistic nature. And this is the more remarkable, for his nature is far from being a simple one. By his wide musical education and his constant thirst for knowledge he has acquired a very varied and almost contradictory learning. It must be remembered that M. d'Indy is a musician familiar with the music of other countries and other times; all kinds of musical forms are floating in his mind; and he seems sometimes to hesitate between them. He has arranged these forms into three principal classes, which seem to him to be models of musical art: the decorative art of the singers of plain-song, the architectural art of Palestrina and his followers, and the expressive art of the great Italians of the seventeenth century. But in doing this is not his eclecticism trying to reconcile arts that are naturally disunited? Again, we must remember that M. d'Indy has had direct or indirect contact with some of the greatest musical personalities of our time: with Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, and Cesar Franck.

And he has been readily attracted by them; for he is not one of those egotistic geniuses whose thoughts are fixed on his own interests, nor has he one of those carnivorous minds that sees nothing, looks for nothing, and relishes nothing, unless it may be afterwards useful to it. His sympathies are readily with others, he is happy in giving homage to their greatness, and quick to appreciate their charm. He speaks somewhere of the "irresistible need of transformation" that every artist feels. But in order to escape being overwhelmed by conflicting elements and interests, one should have great force of feeling or will, in order to be able to eliminate what is not necessary, and choose out and transform what is. M. d'Indy eliminates hardly anything; he makes use of it. In his music he exercises the qualities of an army general: understanding of his purpose and the patience to attain it, a perfect knowledge of the means at his disposal, the spirit of order, and command over his work and himself. Despite the variety of the materials he employs, the whole is always clear. One might almost reproach him with being too clear; he seems to simplify too much.

Nothing helps one to grasp the essence of M. d'Indy's personality more than his last dramatic work. His personality shows itself plainly in all his compositions, but nowhere is it more evident than in L'Etranger.

The scene of L'Etranger is laid in France, by the sea, whose murmuring calm we hear in a symphonic introduction. The fishermen are coming back to port; the fishing has been bad. But one among them, "a man about forty years old, with a sad and dignified air," has been more fortunate than the others. The fishermen envy him, and vaguely suspect him of sorcery. He tries to enter into friendly conversation with them, and offers his catch to a poor family. But in vain; his advances are repulsed and his generosity is eyed with suspicion. He is a stranger--the Stranger. Evening falls, and the angelus rings. Some work-girls come trooping out of their workshop, singing a merry folk-song. One of the young girls, Vita, goes up to the Stranger and speaks to him, for she alone, of all the village, is his friend. The two feel themselves drawn together by a secret sympathy. Vita confides artlessly in the unknown man; they love each other though they do not admit it. The Stranger tries to repress his feelings; for Vita is young and already affianced, and he thinks that he has no right to claim her. But Vita, offended by his coldness, seeks to wound him, and succeeds. In the end he betrays himself. "Yes, he loves her, and she knew it well. But now that he has told her so, he will never see her again; and he bids her good-bye."