“Dear written sheets, what a deal of good you have done me!”
So, according with the unvaried rhythm of the universe, there was formed about him the little family of genius, grouped about him, giving him food and taking it from him, which grows little by little, and in the end becomes one great collective soul, of which he is the central fire, like a gleaming world, a moral planet moving through space, mingling its chorus of brotherhood with the harmony of the spheres.
And as these mysterious links were forged between Christophe and his unseen friends, a revolution took place in his artistic faculty: it became larger and more human. He lost all interest in music which was a monologue, a soliloquy, and even more so in music which was a scientific structure built entirely for the interest of the profession. He wished his music to be an act of communion with other men. There is no vital art save that which is linked with the rest of humanity. Johann Sebastian Bach, even in his darkest hours of isolation, was linked with the rest of humanity by his religious faith, which he expressed in his art. Handel and Mozart, by dint of circumstances, wrote for an audience, and not for themselves. Even Beethoven had to reckon with the multitude. It is salutary. It is good for humanity to remind genius every now and then:
“What is there for us in your art? If there is nothing, out you go!”
In such constraint genius is the first to gain. There are, indeed, great artists who express only themselves. But the greatest of all are those whose hearts beat for all men. If any man would see the living God face to face, he must seek Him, not in the empty firmament of his own brain, but in the love of men.
The artists of that time were far removed from that love. They wrote only for a more or less anarchical and vain group, uprooted from the life of the country, who preened themselves on not sharing the prejudices and passions of the rest of humanity, or else made a mock of them. It is a fine sort of fame that is won by self-amputation from life, so as to be unlike other men! Let all such artists perish! We will go with the living, be suckled at the breasts of the earth, and drink in all that is most profound and sacred in our people, and all its love from the family and the soil. In the greatest age of liberty, among the people with the most ardent worship of beauty, the young Prince of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael, glorified maternity in his Trasteverine Madonnas. Who is there now to give us in music a Madonna à la Chaise? Who is there to give us music meet for every hour of life? You have nothing, you have nothing in France. When you want to give your people songs, you are reduced to bringing up to date the German masters of the past. In your art, from top to bottom, everything remains to be done, or to be done again. …
Christophe corresponded with Olivier, who was now settled in a provincial town. He tried to maintain in correspondence that collaboration which had been so fruitful during the time when they had lived together. He wanted him to write him fine poetic words closely allied with the thoughts and deeds of everyday life, like the poems which are the substance of the old German lieder. Short fragments from the Scriptures and the Hindu poems, and the old Greek philosophers, short religious and moral poems, little pictures of Nature, the emotions of love or family life, the whole poetry of morning, evening, and night, that is in simple, healthy people. Four lines or six are enough for a lied: only the simplest expressions, and no elaborate development or subtlety of harmony. What have I to do with your esthetic tricks? Love my life, help me to love it and to live it. Write me the Hours of France, my Great and Small Hours. And let us together find the clearest melody. Let us avoid like the plague any artistic language that belongs to a caste like that of so many writers, and especially of so many French musicians of today. We must have the courage to speak like men, and not like “artists.” We must draw upon the common fund of all men, and unashamedly make use of old formulae, upon which the ages have set their seal, formulae which the ages have filled with their spirit. Look at what our forefathers have done. It was by returning to the musical language of all men that the art of the German classics of the eighteenth century came into being. The melodies of Gluck and the creators of the symphony are sometimes trivial and commonplace compared with the subtle and erudite phrases of Johann Sebastian Bach and Rameau. It is their raciness of the soil that gives such zest to, and has procured such immense popularity for the German classics. They began with the simplest musical forms, the lied and the singspiel, the little flowers of everyday life which impregnated the childhood of men like Mozart and Weber.—Do you do the same. Write songs for all and sundry. Upon that basis you will soon build quartettes and symphonies. What is the good of rushing ahead? The pyramids were
