My Recollections Part 1

My Recollections.

by Jules Ma.s.senet.

FOREWORD

I have been often asked whether I put together the recollections of my life from notes jotted down from day to day. To tell the truth I did, and this is how I began the habit of doing so regularly.

My mother--a model wife and mother, who taught me the difference between right and wrong--said to me on my tenth birthday:

"Here is a diary." (It was one of those long-shaped diaries which one found in those days at the _little_ Bon Marche, not the immense enterprise we know now.) "And," she added, "every night before you go to bed, you must write down on the pages of this memento what you have seen, said, or done during the day. If you have said or done anything which you realize is wrong, you must confess it in writing in these pages. Perhaps it will make you hesitate to do wrong during the day."

How characteristic of an unusual woman, a woman of upright mind and honest heart this idea was! By placing the matter of conscience among the first of her son's duties, she made Conscience the very basis of her methods of teaching.

Once when I was alone, in search of some distraction I amused myself by foraging in the cupboards where I found some squares of chocolate. I broke off a square and munched it. I have said somewhere that I am greedy. I don't deny it. Here's another proof.

When evening came and I had to write the account of my day, I admit that I hesitated a moment about mentioning that delicious square of chocolate. But my conscience put to the test in this way conquered, and I bravely recorded my dereliction in the diary.

The thought that my mother would read about my misdeed made me rather shamefaced. She came in at that very moment and saw my confusion; but directly she knew the cause she clasped me in her arms and said:

"You have acted like an honest man and I forgive you. All the same that is no reason why you should ever again eat chocolate on the sly!"

Later on, when I munched other and better chocolate, I always obtained permission.

Thus it came about that from day to day I have always made notes of my recollections be they good or bad, gay or sad, happy or not, and kept them so that I might have them constantly in mind.

MY RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER I

MY ADMISSION TO THE CONSERVATOIRE

Were I to live a thousand years--which is hardly likely--I should never forget that fateful day, February 24, 1848, when I was just six years old. Not so much because it coincided with the fall of the Monarchy of July, as that it marked the first steps of my musical career--a career which, even yet, I am not sure was my real destiny, so great is my love for the exact sciences!

At that time I lived with my parents in the Rue de Beaune in an apartment overlooking the great gardens. The day promised to be fine, but it was very cold.

We were at luncheon when the waitress rushed into the room like a maniac. "_Aux armes, citoyens!_" she yelled, throwing rather than placing the plates on the table.

I was too young to understand what was going on in the streets. All I can remember is that riots broke out and that the Revolution smashed the throne of the most debonair of kings. The feelings which stirred my father were entirely different from those which disturbed my mother's already distracted soul. My father had been an officer under Napoleon Bonaparte and a friend of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia. He was all for the Emperor, and the atmosphere of battles suited his temperament.

My mother, on the other hand, had experienced the sorrows of the first great revolution, which dragged Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from their throne, and thrilled with wors.h.i.+p for the Bourbons.

The memory of that exciting meal remained the more deeply fixed in my mind because on the morning of that historic day, by the light of tallow candles (wax candles were only for the rich) my mother for the first time placed my fingers on the piano.

In order best to introduce me to the knowledge of this instrument, my mother--she was my music teacher--stretched along the keyboard a strip of paper upon which she wrote the notes corresponding to each of the black and white keys, with their position on the five lines. It was most ingenious; no mistake was possible.

My progress on the piano was so p.r.o.nounced that three years later, in October, 1851, my parents thought I ought to apply at the Conservatoire for the entrance examination to the piano cla.s.ses.

One morning that month we went to the Rue de Faubourg-Poissonniere. The Conservatoire National de Musique was there then, and it remained there until it was moved to the Rue de Madrid. The large room we entered--like all the rest in the place at that time--had walls painted a bluish gray, spotted with black. A few old benches were the only furniture in this anteroom.

M. Ferriere, a harsh, severe looking man--he was one of the upper employees--came out to call the candidates by flinging their names into the crowd of relatives and friends that accompanied them. It was like summoning the condemned to execution. Then he gave each candidate the number of his turn before the jury which had already a.s.sembled in the rooms where the sessions were held.

This room was intended for examinations and was a sort of small theater with a row of boxes and a circular gallery in the Consulate style. I confess that I have never entered that room without feeling emotion. I have always fancied that I saw, seated opposite in a first-tier box, as in a black hole, Bonaparte, the First Consul, and Josephine, the sweet companion of his early years. He with his forceful, handsome face; she with her kind and gentle glances, for both used to come to such occasions. By her visits to this sanctuary dedicated to Art and by bringing him, so preoccupied with many cares, good and n.o.ble Josephine seemed to wish to soften his thoughts and to make them less stern by contact with the youth who some day perforce would not escape the horrors of war.

From the time of Sarette, the first director, until recently, all the examinations for cla.s.ses in the inst.i.tution, both tragedy and comedy, were held in this same small hall, but it should not be confused with the hall so well known as the Salle de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire.

The organ cla.s.s was also held there several times a week for at the back, hidden behind a large curtain, was a great organ with two keyboards. Beside that old, worn, squeaky instrument was the fateful door through which the pupils came on to the platform that formed the small stage. Again, this same small hall, for many a year, was the judgment seat for the award of prizes for musical composition known as the _Prix de Rome_.

But to return to the morning of October 9, 1851. When all the youngsters had been informed of the order in which we must take our examinations, we went into an adjoining room which led into the hall through the "fateful" door, and which was only a sort of dusty, disordered garret.

The jury whose verdict we had to face was composed of Halevy, Carafa, Ambroise Thomas, several professors of the school, and the director, who was also the president of the Conservatoire, Monsieur Auber. We rarely said just Auber when we spoke of this French master, the most eminent and prolific of all who made the opera and opera-comique of that time famous.

At this time Monsieur Auber was sixty-five. He was universally respected and everyone at the Conservatoire adored him. I shall always remember his pleasing, unusually bright black eyes, which remained the same until his death in May, 1871.

May, 1871! We were then in open insurrection, almost in the last throes of the Commune ... and Monsieur Auber, still faithful to his beloved boulevard near the Pa.s.sage de l'Opera--his favorite walk--met a friend also in despair over the terrible days we were pa.s.sing through, and said to him, in an accent of utter weariness,

"Ah! I have lived too long!" Then he added, with a slight smile, "One should never abuse anything."

In 1851--the date when I became acquainted with Monsieur Auber--he had already lived a long time in his old mansion in the Rue St. George, where I remember having been received soon after seven in the morning, the master's work was finished by that time, the hour at which he gave himself to the calls he welcomed so simply.

Then he went to the Conservatoire in a tilbury which he ordinarily drove himself. At sight of him one was instantly reminded of the opera _La Muette de Portici_, which had exceptional good luck, and which was the most lasting success before _Robert le Diable_ made its appearance at the Opera. To speak of _La Muette de Portici_ is to be vividly reminded of the magical effect which the duet in the second act, _Amour sacre de la patrie_, produced on the patriots in the audience when it was produced at the Theatre de la Monnaie at Brussels. In very truth it gave the signal for the revolution which broke out in Belgium in 1830 and which brought about the independence of our neighbors on the north. The whole audience was wild with excitement, and sang the heroic strain with the artists, repeating it again and again without stopping. What master can boast of a success like that in his own career?

When my name was called, all of a tremble, I made my appearance on the stage. I was only nine years old and I had to play the finale of Beethoven's Sonata, Opus 29. What ambition!

They stopped me in the usual way after I had played two or three pages.

I was utterly embarra.s.sed as I heard Monsieur Auber's voice calling me before the jury. To get down from the stage, I had to descend two or three steps. I paid no attention to them and would have gone head first if Monsieur Auber had not kindly called out, "Take care, my little man."

Then he immediately asked me where I had studied so well. After replying with some pride that my mother had been my only teacher, I went out, absolutely bewildered, almost at a run, but entirely happy. _He_ had spoken to me!

Next morning my mother received the official notice. I was a pupil at the Conservatoire.

At this time there were two teachers of the piano at the great school--Mamontel and Laurent. There were no preparatory cla.s.ses. I was a.s.signed to Laurent's cla.s.s, and I remained there two years while I continued my cla.s.sical studies at college. At the same time I took _sol-fa_ lessons from M. Savard who was excellent.

Professor Laurent had been _Premier Prix de piano_ under Louis XVIII.

Then he was a cavalry officer, but left the army to become a professor in the Royal Conservatoire of Music. He was goodness itself, realizing the ideal of that quality in the fullest sense of the word. He placed entire confidence in me.

M. Savard was an extraordinarily erudite man. He was the father of one of my pupils, a Grand Prix de Rome, now the director of the Conservatoire at Lyons. (What a number of my old pupils are or have been directors of conservatoires!) His heart was as large as his learning was extensive. It is pleasant to recall that when I wanted to work at counterpoint, before I entered the cla.s.s in fugue and composition--Ambroise Thomas was the professor--M. Savard was quite willing to give me lessons. I went to his house to take them, and every evening I went down from Montmartre where I lived to Number 13, Rue de la Vielle-Estrpade, behind the Pantheon.

What wonderful lessons I had from that simple, learned man! How courageous I was as I walked the long way I had to go to his house from which I returned each evening about ten o'clock full of the wise and learned advice he had given me!