inge.vanrij@nzsm.ac.nz
Back to (the music of) the future: Aesthetics of technology in Berlioz’s “Euphonia” and Damnation de Faust
Inge van Rij (New Zealand School of Music)
EXAMPLE 2: Ellimac’s dramatic form
Paris
(A richly furnished drawing-room)
EUPHONIA, OU LA VILLE MUSICALE [EUPHONIA, OR THE MUSICAL CITY]
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First published in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, in installments from 18 February – 28
July 1844. Reprinted in La Critique Musicale de Hector Berlioz vol. 5, ed. Anne Bongrain and
Marie-Hélène Coudroy-Saghaï, Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 2004.
Published with minor alterations in Soirées de l’orchestre (1852); translated by Jacques Barzun in
Evenings with the Orchestra, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, repr. 1999. In this
version of the story Berlioz renamed Ellimac ‘Mina’; Rotceh becomes ‘Shetland’.
MINA [E LLIMAC] (alone): Why, I almost feel as if I were going to be bored. Am I the butt of a practical joke?
Not one of my gentlemen has so far come forth with a diverting idea for today. So here I am, alone,
forsaken for the past four hours. […] Am I quite sure I have a soul and a heart? Pshaw! I know one thing: I
don’t feel the slightest love for Xilef any more. I haven’t even answered his glowing letters. […]
FANNY [DÉSIRÉE] (entering):
EXAMPLE
1: Opening, and extracts from Xilef’s first letter to Rotceh: Italian commerce and opera.
CHARACTERS
XILEF, a composer, prefect of voices and stringed instruments in the city of Euphonia
SHETLAND [ROTCEH in 1844], a composer, prefect of wind instruments
MINA[ELLIMAC in 1844], a celebrated Danish singer
MME HARPER [Mme ELLIANAC in 1844], her mother
FANNY [DÉSIRÉE in 1844], her maid
First Letter
Xilef to Shetland [Rotceh]
Sicily, June 7, 2344
I have just taken a swim in Etna! What a delightful time I have been having, my dear Shetland [Rotceh], gliding
through the pure waters of that cool, calm lake! [… etc] (Evenings, pp. 258-9)
In order to divert these brutish traders a little after their deals on the Exchange, someone has had the happy
thought of putting billiard tables in the center of the ground floor of the theatre; and these gentlemen play,
shouting at every lucky stroke, while the tenor and the prima donna blow out their lungs on the stage. In
Palermo day before yesterday they were giving Il re Murate, a sort of hodgepodge by twenty different authors
of twenty different periods. After supper – for everyone takes supper in his box, and always during the
performance – the ladies, annoyed at seeing the men preparing to go and smoke and play downstairs, rose up in
arms and asked that the billiard tables be removed and a dance improvised in the free space, which was done. A
few young men got hold of violins and trumpets and began to play waltzes in an upper corner of the dress circle,
while couples whirled around on the floor without the performance being interrupted in the slightest degree. I
hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when I saw this incredible opera-ballet under my very eyes. (Evenings, p.
261)
When the director wants a new score, he assembles the singers and submits to them the scenario of the piece,
and comes to an understanding with them about the costumes they will wear. The costumes really come first,
being the only thing which momentarily attracts the public’s attention at the première. (Evenings, p. 262)
Madam, here are the papers and a couple of letters.
MINA [E LLIMAC] (unfolding a newspaper): Ah, the Gluck Festival at Euphonia next week. I am going. I want to
sing there. (Reading): “The Song of Praise composed by Shetland [Rotceh] it the talk of the town. No one
before him, in our opinion, has expressed noble enthusiasm with more magnificence. Shetland [Rotceh] is
a man apart. He differs from other men not only by his genius and character, but also by the mystery in his
life.” Fanny, ask my mother to come. (Evenings, pp. 271-2)
EXAMPLE 3: Extract from Rotceh’s letter to Xilef : Rotceh meets Nadira (Ellimac)
She was singing (and ornamenting with all kinds of extravagant vocalizes) the theme of my First Symphony,
which I thought almost unknown except among Euphonians. But on looking closer at the charming creature who
was warbling so brilliantly, I knew that she was not one of us and had never come to Euphonia. […] I made my
ship rise perpendicularly some hundreds of feet in order to see the fleeing sun once more, and I gazed at it for
some minutes in that ecstatic silence of which one has no idea upon earth (Evenings, p. 277)
EXAMPLE 4: Extract from Rotceh’s letter to Xilef: Aeolian harp
Immediately after getting up I went and sat in my rose garden, and without thinking about it threw wide open
the double door of my Aeolian harp. In an instant, floods of harmony poured into the garden; crescendos, fortes,
decrescendos, and pianissimos followed each other haphazard under the fitful breath of the wild morning
breeze. I was painfully shaken, yet not in the least tempted to escape my suffering by closing the doors of the
mournful instrument. On the contrary, I found pleasure in my pain and listened motionless. Just as a gust of
wind stronger than the rest drew from the harp, like a cry of passion, the chord of the dominant seventh, and
carried it wailing through the arbor, it so happened that the decrescendo formed an arpeggio containing the
opening bars of the theme I had heard my unknown sing the day before – the theme of my First Symphony.
Amazed at this freak of nature, I opened my eyes, which I had shut at the beginning of the Aeolian concert and
– there she stood before me, beautiful, strong, imperious – a goddess! (Evenings, pp. 277-8)
EXAMPLE 5: Extract from Rotceh’s letter to Xilef : Nadira (Ellimac) and ornamentation
“You sing – too well.”
“What do you mean, ‘too well’?”
“I mean, madam, that in the Gluck Festival florid singing is not allowed. You shine especially by the lightness
and grace of your ornaments; hence there is no room for it in a ceremony that is eminently in the grand, epic
style.” [Evenings, pp. 278-9]
[At the Gluck festival:]
“Euphonians,” she begins, “I am not known to you. Only yesterday I was but an ordinary woman gifted with a
brilliant and agile voice, and nothing more. High art had not been revealed to me. I have just heard Alcestis for
the first time in my life, and with you I have admired the splendid majesty of Shetland’s Song. Now I
understand, I have heard, I have come to life: I am an artist. The instinct of genius alone, Shetland’s genius,
could have divined this. Allow me therefore, before crowning the god of expressiveness, to prove to you, his
faithful worshippers, that i am worthy of this signal honor, and that our great Shetland was not mistaken.”
At these words, tearing the pearls and gems from her hair, she flings them to the ground, tramples them
underfoot (as a symbol of recantation), places her hand over her heart, bows her head to Gluck, and in a voice
sublime in its accent and quality, begins Alcestis’ aria, “Inexorable deities!”’ (Evenings, p. 280)
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EXAMPLE 6: Extract from Rotceh’s letter to Xilef : Nadira (Ellimac) resists a Liebestod.
“See: life has nothing more to offer us in this world; we have reached the summit; shall we return to the earth?
[…] let us fling ourselves over the ship’s side in each other’s arms. Our souls, fused in a last kiss, will rise
heavenward as one breath even before our bodies whirling through space have reached the prosaic earth again.
Will you? Come!’”
“Later,” was her answer. “Let us live a little longer.”
Later! thought I. But later will we know another such minute together? Oh, Nadira, you are a mere woman after
all! (Evenings, p. 282)
EXAMPLE 7: Xilef’s balloon ride
We left Xilef breathing nothing but revenge, and ready to pursue his bold mistress by air to America, where
in his simplicity he thought that she had gone. He left, accordingly, mute and gloomy as the thunderclouds that
sweep across the sky before the coming of a great storm. He ate up space; never had his engine worked so
furiously. If his ship ran into a contrary wind, she would meet it head on, or by soaring to a higher zone, would
either seek a more favourable current or rise to that region of eternal calm which probably no human being
before Xilef had ever reached. In those almost inaccessible solitudes, on the borderline of life, the cold and
dryness are such that the objects made of wood in the ship warped and cracked. Pilot on a sinister mission, Xilef
remained impassible. He was half dead from the rarefaction of the atmosphere and unmoved at the sight of
blood streaming from his nose and mouth. He waited until he could no longer stand the pain and was forced to
come down in search of air fit to breathe, hoping that the direction of the wind would permit him to remain
there.
Such was his headlong speed of flight that forty hours after his leaving Palermo he landed in New York.
(Evenings, pp. 289-90)
EXAMPLE 8: Xilef’s revenge – the orchestra piano and Ellimac’s death
In those days there was in Euphonia a celebrated mechanical genius whose inventions aroused universal
wonder. He had just finished a huge piano whose variegated sound was so powerful that under the fingers of a
single virtuoso it could hold its own with an orchestra of a hundred players. Hence the name of orchestra-piano
given to it. Nadira’s birthday being near, Xilef had no difficulty in persuading his friend what a magnificent
present for his beloved the new instrument that everyone admired and talked about would be. “But if you wish
to make her joy complete,” he added, “you must give her as well the delightful steel pavilion that the same
designer has just made.[…]” (Evenings, p. 292)
Xilef lost no time before calling on the inventor. After telling him the object of his visit, he asked whether it
would be possible to add to the summerhouse a special and powerful mechanism, the nature and effect of which
he described, and the existence of which was to be kept secret by both of them. (Evenings, p 293)
Very soon the strains of an irresistible waltz are heard, while groups of dancers form and whirl. Xilef, standing
with is hand on a steel button in the outer wall of the summerhouse, follows them with his eyes. […]
Fearful shrieks were in fact to be heard from the summerhouse; but Shetland [Rotceh], more and more excited,
was letting loose from the orchestra-piano a torrent of sound that drowned out the cries and disguised their
import.
The instant Xilef had pressed the spring that released the secret mechanism of the summerhouse, the steel
walls of the little circular building had begun to roll in on themselves slowly an noiselessly, so that the dancers,
finding less space in which to move, thought at first that their numbers had increased. […]
[T]he summerhouse turns on itself with a sharply accelerated motion which masks the doors and windows with
an iron wall. The space inside shrinks rapidly; the screams grow in intensity, those of Nadira can be heard rising
above the din. And the beautiful singer, the poetic fairy queen, feeling herself hemmed in on all sides, pushes
back those around her with gestures and words of horrible bestiality, her low nature shown up by the fear of
death and standing out in all its hideousness. […]
And indeed, to the horrible and anguished screams under the ever-tighter straining of the steel partitions, has
succeeded the hideous noise of flesh mangled, the cracking of fractured bones, bursting skulls; eyes are torn
from their sockets and screams of foaming blood spurt out from beneath the roof of the summer-house, until the
hideous machine stops exhausted over the unresisting mass of bloody clay. (Evenings, pp. 292-9)
EXAMPLE 9: ‘A description of Euphonia’.
The singers and players of instruments are grouped by categories in the several quarters of the town. Each
type of voice and instrument has a street bearing its name, which is inhabited only be the section of the
population which practices that particular voice or instrument. There are streets of sopranos, of basses, of tenors,
of contraltos; of violins, of horns, of flutes, of harps, and so on.
Needless to say, Euphonia is governed in military fashion and subjected to a despotic regime. (Evenings, p.
283)
EXAMPLE 10: ‘A description of Euphonia’ – electric metronome
An ingenious mechanism, which might have been invented some five or six centuries earlier if someone had
taken the trouble to design it, and which is actuated by the conductor without being visible to the public,
indicates to the eye of each performer, and quite close to him, the beats of each measure. It also denotes
precisely the several degrees of piano or forte. In this way the performers are immediately and instantaneously
in touch with the conductor’s intention, and can respond to it as promptly as do the hammers of a piano under
the hand pressing the keys. (Evenings, pp. 286-7)
EXAMPLE 11: ‘A description of Euphonia’ – suppression of body
Any marking of the rhythm by bodily movements during the singing is strictly forbidden to the choristers. They
are also trained to silence, a silence so absolute and profound that if three thousand Euphonian choristers were
assembled in the amphitheater or in any other resonant place, one could still hear the buzzing of an insect, and a
blind man in their midst might think he was quite alone. (Evenings, p. 286.)
BERLIOZ’S ORCHESTRATION TREATISE (1844)
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Hugh Macdonald, Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise: A Translation and Commentary, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
EXAMPLE 12: Berlioz on the orchestra as machine:
The assortment of players whose coming together constitutes an orchestra could be regarded as its strings, tubes,
chests and surfaces, made of wood or metal – machines bearing intelligence but subordinate to the action of an
immense keyboard played by the conductor following the directions of the composer. (p. 319)
His [the conductor’s] feelings and emotions will then pass to them [the players], his inner flame will warm
them, his electricity will charge them, his drive will propel them. He will radiate the vital spark of music. (p.
337)
EXAMPLE 13: Berlioz on the violins
Violins are faithful, intelligent, energetic and indefatigable servants. (p. 34)
EXAMPLE 14: Berlioz on stopped notes on the natural horn
Unless you are writing stopped notes for a particular effect you should at least avoid those whose tone is too
weak and too unlike the rest of the horn’s range, such as d’, d’, b, a and a, which should never be used for
filling in but only for the special effect of their harsh, muffled, savage sound. (p. 170)
EXAMPLE 15: Macdonald’s preface - Division of labour
There is another sense in which Berlioz’s craft is modern. At certain points in the book he advocates techniques
for getting effects form instruments which practice deceive the listener. […] composers began to manipulate
instruments as parts in a great machine, not as voices in a choir. The milestone is perhaps the Symphonie
fantastique and the curious passage where Berlioz subdivides the violins for a passage in constant quaver
movement […] This was certainly a new concept of orchestration, manipulating the allocation of notes to create
an effect unperceived by the players themselves. (pp. xxx-xxxi)
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‘THE PIANO POSSESSED’
Soirées de l’orchestre (1852); translated by Jacques Barzun in Evenings with the Orchestra,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, repr. 1999.
EXAMPLE 16
M. Erard arrives; but try as he will, the piano, which is out of its mind, has no intention of minding him either.
He sends for holy water and sprinkles the keyboard with it – in vain: proof that it wasn’t witchcraft, but the
natural result of thirty performances of one concerto. They take the instrument and remove the keyboard, still
moving up and down, and throw it into the middle of the courtyard next to the Warehouse. There M. Erard in a
fury has it chopped up with an ax. You think that did it? It made matters worse: each piece danced, jumped,
frisked about separately – on the paving stones, between our legs, against the wall, in all directions, until the
locksmith of the Warehouse picked up this bedeviled mechanism in one armful and flung it into the fire of his
forge to put an end to it. Poor M. Erard! Such a fine instrument! We were heartbroken, but what could we do?
There was no other way to loose its grip. But after all, how can a piano hear a concerto thirty times in the same
hall on the same day without contracting the habit of it? M. Mendelssohn won’t be able to complain that his
music isn’t being played. But think of the damage! (pp. 218-9.)
BERLIOZ, LA DAMNATION DE FAUST
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Hector Berlioz : New Edition of the Complete Works, vol. 8a, ed. Julian Rushton, Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1979.
EXAMPLE 20: ‘Choeur des soldats et chanson des étudiants’ (p. 234, mm. 132-7)
IMPRESSIONS OF LISZT
EXAMPLE 17
Notes are ‘played staccato with a most incredible rapidity, such that each note produces only a dry sound that is
extinguished immediately after it is played and is thus perfectly detached from the notes that both precede and
follow, resembling passages of this sort as might be played at the nut of the bow on a fine double bass by a
steam engine – because I can imagine no human arm, even that of some Dragonetti or Dragonettis, that would
be capable of such incredible agility. (Journal des débats, 12 June 1836. Translated by Peter Bloom in Cécile
Reynaud, ‘Berlioz, Liszt, and the Question of Virtuosity’, Berlioz: Past, Present, Future (ed. Bloom), N. Y.:
University of Rochester Press, 2003, p. 116; emphasis in original)
BERLIOZ AND THE TRAIN
EXAMPLE 18: Fear of derailment
‘I’m going to return to Vienna after my third concert, which is taking place in the theatre tomorrow; […] and I
will arrive just before the rehearsal, provided the carriages of the train don’t jump the rails.’ (Berlioz to Joseph
D’Ortigue, Prague, 27 January 1846. Correspondance Générale vol. 3 (ed. Pierre Citron ), Paris: Flamarion,
1978, p. 310).
Berlioz on his trip to Lille in 1846: ‘The railway made an exceptional concession for its inaugurators, in that we
reached Arras without being derailed once.’ (Berlioz, Les Grotesques de la musique (1859). Translated by
Alastair Bruce, The Musical Madhouse, N. Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2003, pp. 179-82.)
EXAMPLE 19 Composing Faust
Seeing me approach at such speed the station staff took me for a passenger who was late for a train and directed
me to the ticket window saying “Hurry now, you’ve only got five minutes!” So I go. Everyone else pulls out a
purse, so I too reach for my purse. They go up to the window, so I do too. They ask for Second Class, so I ask
for Second Class too. The clerk slips me a piece of paper through the window with my change saying “Second
Class for Enghien”.
“So it’s for Enghien”
“Yes, sir. Isn’t that where you want to go?”
“Yes, perhaps. I seem to be going there. I’m not sure. All right, I’ll go to Enghien.” ... quarentes puellas
eamus… ut cras… fortunate Caesares … dicamus: veni, vidi… vici.
EXAMPLE 21: Evocation, Menuet des follets, Sérénade de Méphistophélès
21 (a) Text
Scéne XII : Une rue devant la maison de
Scene XII : A street in front of Marguerite’s house
Marguerite.
MEPHISTOPHELES :
Esprits des flammes inconstantes,
Accourez ! j’ai besoin de vous.
Accourez ! Accourez !
Follets capricieux, vos lueurs malfaisantes
Vont charmer une enfant et l’amener à nous.
Au nom du Diable, en danse !
Et vous, marquez bien la cadence,
Ménétriers d’enfer, ou je vous éteins tous !
MEPHISTOPHELES:
Spirits of the fickle flames
Hasten! I need you.
Hasten! Hasten!
Capricious will-o-the-wisps, your evil glow
Is going to bewitch a child and bring her to us.
In the name of the Devil, dance!
And you, mark well the rhythm,
Fiddlers of hell, or I’ll extinguish you all!
Menuet des Follets
Minuet of will-o-the-wisps
(Les follets exécutent des évolutions et des danses
bizarres autour de la maison de Marguerite.)
(The will-o-the-wisps carry out bizarre movements
and dances around Marguerite’s house.)
MEPHISTOPHELES (Il fait les mouvements d’un homme
qui joue de la vielle)
Maintenant,
Chantons à cette belle une chanson morale,
Pour la perdre plus sûrement
MEPHISTOPHELES (He makes the movements of a man
who plays a hurdy gurdy)
Now,
Sing to this beauty a moral song,
To damn her all more surely.
Sérénade de Méphistophélès
Mephistopheles’ Serenade
MEPHISTOPHELES
Devant la maison
De celui qui t’adore [etc]
MEPHISTOPHELES
In front of the house
Of the one whom you love [etc]
Still mumbling my gaudeamus I got into the train and it left. But as the movement of the locomotive beat out a
rhythm quite different from the one that had been battering my brain a few minutes before, I could see that I was
going to forget my song. I quickly wrote it down in my notebook, and after a difficult confinement I fell asleep.
(Journal des débats, 6 September 1846, translated by Hugh Macdonald, “Berlioz takes the train,” in Hector
Berlioz: Ein Franzose in Deutschland, eds. Matthias Brzoska, Hermann Hofer, and Nicole Strohmann, Laaber:
Laaber Verlag, 2005, p. 219)
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21 (b) Evocation, p. 273, mm. 1-8
21 (c) Evocation, p. 278, mm. 41-3
EXAMPLE 22: ‘La course à l’abîme’
22 (a) Text
Scène XVII Récitatif et chasse
Scène XVII Recitative and hunt
[…]
FAUST
Qu’exiges-tu ?
[…]
MEPHISTOPHELES
De toi ?
Rien qu’une signature
Sur ce vieux parchemin.
Je sauve Marguerite à l’instant,
Si tu jures
Et signes ton serment
De me servir demain.
MEPHISTOPHELES
FAUST
Eh ! que me fait demain quand je souffre à cette
heure ?
Donne.
FAUST
Ha! What do I care about tomorrow when I’m
suffering right now?
Give it to me.
(Il signe)
Voilà mon nom.
Vers sa sombre demeure
Volons donc, maintenant.
Ô douleur insensée !
Marguerite, j’accours !
(He signs.)
Here is my name.
To her gloomy abode
Let us fly, straight away.
Oh torturous grief!
Marguerite, I’m coming!
MEPHISTOPHELES
MEPHISTOPHELES
Come to me, Vortex! Giaour!
On these two black horses, quick as thought,
FAUST
What do you require?
From you?
Nothing but a signature
on this old parchment.
I’ll save Marguerite in a flash
If you swear
And sign an oath
To serve me tomorrow.
À moi, Vortex ! Giaour !
Sur ces deux noirs chevaux, prompts comme la
pensée,
Montons, et au galop…
La justice est pressée.
Let us mount, and gallop …
Justice will not wait.
21 (d) Serenade, p. 313, mm. 1-4
(Ils partent.)
SCENE XVIII Plaines, montagnes
.
(They leave.)
et vallées
La course à l’abîme
SCENE XVIII Plains, mountains and valleys
The ride to the abyss
(Faust et Méphistophélès galopant sur deux chevaux
noirs.)
(Faust and Mephistopheles gallop on two black
horses.)
FAUST
Dans mon cœur retentit sa voix
Désespérée ;
Ô pauvre abandonnée !
FAUST
In my heart resounds her despairing voice
PAYSANS
(AGENOUILLES DEVANT UNE CROIX CHAMPETRE)
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis
Sancta Magdalena, ora pro nobis.
PEASANTS
(KNEELING BEFORE A WAYSIDE CROSS)
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.
Sancta Magdalena, ora pro nobis.
FAUST
Prends garde à ces enfants,
A ces femmes priant
Au pied de cette croix.
FAUST
Be careful of those children,
And those women praying
At the foot of that cross.
MÉPHISTOPHÉLÈS
METPHISTOPHELES
Oh poor abandoned one!
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Eh, qu’importe ! en avant!
Ah, who cares ?! Keep going !
PAYSANS
Sancta Margarita – Ah!!
PEASANTS
Sancta Margarita – Ah!!
(Les femmes et les enfants se dispersant épouvantés.)
(The women and children scatter in fear.)
FAUST
Dieux !
Un monstre hideux
En hurlant
Nous poursuit !
FAUST
Gods!
A hideous monster
Howling
Is pursuing us!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Tu rêves !
MEPHISTOPHELES
You’re dreaming!
FAUST
Quel essaim de grands oiseaux de nuit !
Quels cris affreux !
Ils me frappent de l’aile !
FAUST
What a swarm of night birds!
What fearful shrieks!
They’re striking me with their wings!
MEPHISTOPHELES (RETENANT SON CHEVAL)
Le glas des trépassés sonne déjà pour elle.
As-tu peur ? Retournons !
MEPHISTOPHELES (REINING IN HIS HORSE)
The death knell is already sounding for her.
Are you afraid? Let’s turn back.
(Ils s’arrêtent.)
(They stop.)
FAUST
Non, je l’entends, courons !
FAUST
No! I can hear it. Hurry!
(Les chevaux redoublent de vitesse.)
(The horses redouble their speed.)
MEPHISTOPHELES (EXICTANT SON CHEVAL)
Hop ! Hop!
Hop!... Hop! (etc)
MEPHISTOPHELES (SPURRING ON HIS HORSE)
Hup! Hup!
Hup!... Hup ! (etc)
22 (c) La course à l’abîme, p. 406, mm. 65-8
22 (b) La course à l’abîme, pp. 401-402, mm. 1-9
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22 (d) La course à l’abîme, pp. 412-413, mm. 90-104
BERLIOZ, ‘THE RICHARD WAGNER CONCERTS: THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE’ (1860)
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trans. Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay, The Art of Music and Other Essays, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1971, pp. 202-209.
EXAMPLE 23
Now let us look at the theories said to be those of his school, the school generally called the Music of the
Future. It bears this name because it is deemed to be diametrically opposed to the musical taste of the present
day, and certain to find itself perfectly in harmony with the taste of a future time.
For many years now, I have been credited in Germany and elsewhere with views on this subject that are not
mine. I have often received praise that I could have taken as a virtual insult; I have kept silent throughout. Now
that I am called upon to explain myself categorically, can I still stay silent? Or should I utter a profession of
faith that is a lie? Nobody, I should hope, entertains that expectation.
Let me speak then, in complete frankness. If the school of the future says the following: […]
“Operas should not be composed for singers; on the contrary, the singers should be trained for the operas.
“Works composed for the sole purpose of showing off the talents of virtuosi can only be works of a secondary
order, usually of little value.
“Performers are merely more or less intelligent instruments whose task is to bring out the form and inner
meaning of the work; their despotic rule is over.
“The composer must remain the master; it is for him to command.
“Beauty of sound ranks below the idea; the idea ranks below feeling and passion.
“Lengthy and rapid vocal flourishes, ornaments, and trills, and many kinds of rhythms are all incompatible with
the expression of most serious, noble, and deep feelings. […]
If such be the musical code of the school of the future, then I belong to this school, I belong to it body and soul,
with the deepest conviction and the most ardent fellow feeling. […]
But, if that school maintains:[…]
“We must concentrate only on the idea and ignore the senses altogether. […]
“Nor is the art of singing to be shown any consideration, nor should attention be paid to its nature or
requirements.
“In opera we must do no more than set notes for declamation, to the point of using, if necessary, ugly,
unsingable, outlandish intervals.
“No distinction need be made between music that is read by a musician sitting quietly in front of his stand and
that which has to be sung form memory, on stage, by a performer who must also attend to his acting and that of
others.
“We need not concern ourselves over what is possible or impossible in performance. […]
If this is the new religion – very new indeed – I am very far from professing it; I never have joined it, I do not
join it now, and never shall. I raise my hand and swear: Non credo.
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