“French music? … There has never been any. … And yet you have such fine things to do in the world! You can’t really be musicians, or you would have discovered that. Ah! if only I were a Frenchman! …”
And he would set out all the things that a Frenchman might turn into music:
“You involve yourselves in forms which do not suit you, and you do nothing at all with those which are admirably fitted for your use. You are a people of elegance, polite poetry, beautiful gestures, beautiful walking movements, beautiful attitudes, fashion, clothes, and you never write ballets nowadays, though you ought to be able to create an inimitable art of poetic dancing. … —You are a people of laughter and comedy, and you never write comic operas, or else you leave it to minor musicians, the confectioners of music. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would set Rabelais to music, I would write comic epics. … —You are a people of storytellers, and you never write novels in music: (for I don’t count the feuilletons of Gustave Charpentier). You make no use of your gift of psychological analysis, your insight into character. Ah! if I were a Frenchman I would give you portraits in music. … (Would you like me to sketch the girl sitting in the garden under the lilac?). … I would write you Stendhal for a string quartet. … —You are the greatest democracy in Europe, and you have no theater for the people, no music for the people. Ah! if I were a Frenchman, I would set your Revolution to music: the , the , Valmy, the Federation, I would express the people in music! Not in the false form of Wagnerian declamation. I want symphonies, choruses, dances. Not speeches! I’m sick of them. There’s no reason why people should always be talking in a music drama! Bother the words! Paint in bold strokes, in vast symphonies with choruses, immense landscapes in music, Homeric and Biblical epics, fire, earth, water, and sky, all bright and shining, the fever which makes hearts burn, the stirring of the instincts and destinies of a race, the triumph of Rhythm, the emperor of the world, who enslaves thousands of men, and hurls armies down to death. … Music everywhere, music in everything! If you were musicians you would have music for every one of your public holidays, for your official ceremonies, for the trades unions, for the student associations, for your family festivals. … But, above all, above all, if you were musicians, you would make pure music, music which has no definite meaning, music which has no definite use, save only to give warmth, and air, and life. Make sunlight for yourselves! Sat prata. … (What is that in Latin?). … There has been rain enough. Your music gives me a cold. One can’t see in it: light your lanterns. … You complain of the Italian porcherie, who invade your theaters and conquer the public, and turn you out of your own house? It is your own fault! The public are sick of your crepuscular art, your harmonized neurasthenia, your contrapuntal pedantry. The public goes where it can find life, however coarse and gross. Why do you run away from life? Your Debussy is a bad man, however great he may be as an artist. He aids and abets you in your torpor. You want roughly waking up.”
“What about Strauss?”
“No better. Strauss would finish you off. You need the digestion of my fellow-countrymen to be able to bear such immoderate drinking. And even they cannot bear it. … Strauss’s Salome! … A masterpiece. … I should not like to have written it. … I think of my old grandfather and uncle Gottfried, and with what respect and loving tenderness they used to talk to me about the lovely art of sound! … But to have the handling of such divine powers, and to turn them to such uses! … A flaming, consuming meteor! An Isolde, who is a Jewish prostitute. Bestial and mournful lust. The frenzy of murder, pillage, incest, and untrammeled instincts which is stirring in the depths of German decadence. … And, on the other hand, the spasm of a voluptuous and melancholy suicide, the death-rattle which sounds through your French decadence. … On the one hand, the beast: on the other, the prey. Where is man? … Your Debussy is the genius of good taste: Strauss is the genius of bad taste. Debussy is rather insipid. But Strauss is very unpleasant. One is a silvery thread of stagnant water, losing itself in the reeds, and giving off an unhealthy aroma. The other is a mighty muddy flood. … Ah! the musty base Italianism and neo-Meyerbeerism, the filthy masses of sentiment which are borne on by the torrent! … An odious masterpiece! … Salome, the daughter of Ysolde. … And whose mother will Salome be in her turn?”
“Yes,” said Olivier, “I wish we could jump fifty years. This headlong gallop towards the precipice must end one way or another: either the horse must stop or fall. Then we shall breathe again. Thank Heaven, the earth will not cease to flower, nor the sky to give light, with or without music! What have we to do with an art so inhuman! … The West is burning away. … Soon. … Very soon. … I see other stars arising in the furthest depths of the East.”
“Bother the East!” said Christophe. “The West has not said its last word yet. Do you think I am going to abdicate? I have enough to say to keep you going for centuries. Hurrah for life! Hurrah for joy! Hurrah
