Musical Memories

In bygone days I was often told that I had two mothers, and, as a matter of fact, I did have two--the mother who gave me life and my maternal great-aunt, Charlotte Masson. The l...

I cannot let the old Conservatoire in the Rue Bergère go without paying it a last farewell, for I loved it deeply as we all love the things of our youth. I loved its antiquity,...

Everything in my youth seemed calculated to keep me far removed from romanticism. Those about me talked only of the great classics and I saw them welcome Ponsard's _Lucrece_ as...

Young musicians often complain, and not without reason, of the difficulties of their careers. It may, perhaps, be useful to remind them that their elders have not always had bed...

As _Déjanire_, cast in a new form, has again appeared in the vast frame of the Opéra stage, I may be allowed to recall my recollections of my friend and collaborator, Louis Gall...

Oceans of ink have been spilled in discussing the question of whether the subjects of operas should be taken from history or mythology, and the question is still a mooted one. T...

Art is a mystery--something which responds to a special sense, peculiar to the human race. This is ordinarily called the esthetic sense, but that is an inexact term, for estheti...

René Bazin has sketched cleverly Pasteur's brilliant career. France has no clearer claim to glory than in Pasteur, for he is one of the men, who, in spite of everything, keeps h...

Music is as old as human nature. We can get some idea of what it was at first from the music of savage tribes. There were a few notes and rudimentary melodies with blows struck...

When hairy Pan joined reeds of different lengths and so invented the flute which bears his name, he was, in reality, creating the organ. It needed only to add to this flute a ke...

Joseph Haydn, that great musician, the father of the symphony and of all modern music, has been neglected. We are too prone to forget that concerts are, in a sense, museums in w...

The Liszt centenary was celebrated everywhere with elaborate festivities, perhaps most notably at Budapest where the _Missa Solemnis_ was sung in the great cathedral--that alone...

The reading of the score of Berlioz's _Requiem_ makes it appear singularly old-fashioned, but this is true of most of the romantic dramas, which, like the _Requiem_, show up bet...

Alfred de Musset covered Maria Malibran's tomb with immortal flowers and he also told us the story of Pauline Garcia's debut. There is also something about it in Théophile Gauti...

We know, or, rather we used to know--for we are beginning to forget that there is an admirable edition of Gluck's principal works. This edition was due to the interest of an unu...

Felix Duquesnal in one of his brilliant articles has written something about Delsarte, the singer, in connection with his controversy with Madame Carvalho. The cause of this con...

While Delsarte was preparing the way for the old French opera and above all for Gluck's works, another pioneer of musical evolution was working to form the taste of the Parisian...

Nowadays it is difficult to form any idea of Rossini's position in our beautiful city of Paris half a century ago. He had retired from active life a long time before, but he had...

I have waited to speak of him until the time when the Académie was ready to replace him,--that is to say, put some one in his place, for great artists are never replaced. Others...

Who would have predicted that the day would come when it would be necessary to come to the defense of the author of _Les Huguenots_ and _Le Prophète,_ of the man who at one time...

It is dangerous to prophesy. Not long ago I was speaking of Offenbach, trying to do justice to his marvellous natural gifts and deploring his squandering them. And I was imprude...

Queen Victoria did me the honor to receive me twice at Windsor Castle, and Queen Alexandra paid me the same honor at Buckingham Palace in London. The first time I saw Queen Vict...

Ingres was famous for his violin. A single wall separated the apartment where I lived during my childhood and youth from the one where the painter Granger, one of Ingres's pupil...