Read Ebook: The Lighter Classics in Music A Comprehensive Guide to Musical Masterworks in a Lighter Vein by 187 Composers by Ewen David

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Commentator: Brander Matthews

Translator: George Burnham Ives

THE NABOB

ALPHONSE DAUDET

TRANSLATED BY

GEORGE BURNHAM IVES

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

BRANDER MATTHEWS

IN TWO VOLUMES

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1902

University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO FRENCH EDITION

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

Alphonse Daudet is one of the most richly gifted of modern French novelists and one of the most artistic; he is perhaps the most delightful; and he is certainly the most fortunate. In his own country earlier than any of his contemporaries he saw his stories attain to the very wide circulation that brings both celebrity and wealth. Beyond the borders of his own language he swiftly won a popularity both with the broad public and with the professed critics of literature, second only to that of Victor Hugo and still surpassing that of Balzac, who is only of late beginning to receive from us the attention he has so long deserved.

Daudet has had the rare luck of pleasing partisans of almost every school; the realists have joyed in his work and so have the romanticists; his writings have found favor in the eyes of the frank impressionists and also at the hands of the severer custodians of academic standards. Mr. Henry James has declared that Daudet is "at the head of his profession" and has called him "an admirable genius." Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson thought Daudet "incomparably" the best of the present French novelists and asserted that "Kings in Exile" comes "very near to being a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all hearts after him,--because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Bruneti?re, who has scant relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that "there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps no one has been able to render so well as Daudet, with that infinitely subtle and patient art which succeeds in giving even to inanimate things the appearance of life."

The documents are abundant for an analysis of Daudet such as Sainte-Beuve would have undertaken with avidity; they are more abundant indeed than for any other contemporary French man of letters even in these days of unhesitating self-revelation; and they are also of an absolutely impregnable authenticity. M. Ernest Daudet has written a whole volume to tell us all about his brother's boyhood and youth and early manhood and first steps in literature. M. L?on Daudet has written another solid tome to tell us all about his father's literary principles and family life and later years and death. Daudet himself put forth a pair of pleasant books of personal gossip about himself, narrating his relations with his fellow authors and recording the circumstances under which he came to compose each of his earlier stories. Montaigne--whose "Essays" was Daudet's bedside book and who may be accepted not unfairly as an authority upon egotism--assures us that "there is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of one's self." And Daudet's own interest in himself is not unlike Montaigne's,--it is open, innocent and illuminating.

Cuvier may have been able to reconstruct an extinct monster from the inspection of a single bone; but it is a harder task to revive the figure of a man, even by the aid of these family testimonies, this self-analysis, the diligence of countless interviewers of all nationalities, and indiscretion of a friend like Edmond de Goncourt . Yet we have ample material to enable us to trace Daudet's heredity, and to estimate the influence of his environment in the days of his youth, and to allow for the effect which certain of his own physical peculiarities must have had upon his exercise of his art. His near-sightedness, for example,--would not Sainte-Beuve have seized upon this as significant? Would he not have seen in this a possible source of Daudet's mastery of description? And the spasms of pain borne bravely and uncomplainingly, the long agony of his later years, what mark has this left on his work, how far is it responsible for a modification of his attitude,--for the change from the careless gaiety of "Tartarin of Tarascon" to the sombre satire of "Port-Tarascon"? What caused the joyous story-teller of the "Letters from my Mill" to develop into the bitter iconoclast of the "Immortal."

These questions are insistent; and yet, after all, what matters the answer to any of them? The fact remains that Daudet had his share of that incommunicable quality which we are agreed to call genius. This once admitted, we may do our best to weigh it and to resolve it into its elements, it is at bottom the vital spark that resists all examination, however scientific we may seek to be. We can test for this and for that, but in the final analysis genius is inexplicable. It is what it is, because it is. It might have been different, no doubt, but it is not. It is its own excuse for being; and, for all that we can say to the contrary, it is its own cause, sufficient unto itself. Even if we had Sainte-Beuve's scalpel, we could not surprise the secret.

Yet an inquiry into the successive stages of Daudet's career, a consideration of his ancestry, of his parentage, of his birth, of the circumstances of his boyhood, of his youthful adventures,--these things are interesting in themselves and they are not without instruction. They reveal to us the reasons for the transformation that goes so far to explain Daudet's peculiar position,--the transformation of a young Proven?al poet into a brilliant Parisian veritist. Daudet was a Proven?al who became a Parisian,--and in this translation we may find the key to his character as a writer of fiction.

He was from Provence as Maupassant was from Normandy; and Daudet had the Southern expansiveness and abundance, just as Maupassant had the Northern reserve and caution. If an author is ever to bring forth fruit after his kind he must have roots in the soil of his nativity. Daudet was no orchid, beautiful and scentless; his writings have always the full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he recognized in himself the possibility of a like exuberance. He could never take the rigorously impassive attitude which Flaubert taught Maupassant to assume. Daudet not only feels for his characters, but he is quite willing that we should be aware of his compassion.

He is not only incapable of the girding enmity which Taine detected and detested in Thackeray's treatment of Becky Sharp, but he is also devoid of the callous detachment with which Flaubert dissected Emma Bovary under the microscope. Daudet is never flagrantly hostile toward one of his creatures; and, however contemptible or despicable the characters he has called into being, he is scrupulously fair to them. Sidonie and F?licia Ruys severally throw themselves away, but Daudet is never intolerant. He is inexorable, but he is not insulting. I cannot but think that it is Provence whence Daudet derived the precious birthright of sympathy, and that it is Provence again which bestowed on him the rarer gift of sentiment. It is by his possession of sympathy and of sentiment that he has escaped the aridity which suffocates us in the works of so many other Parisian novelists. The South endowed him with warmth and heartiness and vivacity; and what he learnt from Paris was the power of self-restraint and the duty of finish.

He was born in Provence and he died in Paris; he began as a poet and he ended as a veritist; and in each case there was logical evolution and not contradiction. The Parisian did not cease to be a Proven?al; and the novelist was a lyrist still. Poet though he was, he had an intense liking for the actual, the visible, the tangible. He so hungered after truth that he was ready sometimes to stay his stomach with facts in its stead,--mere fact being but the outward husk, whereas truth is the rich kernel concealed within. His son tells us that Daudet might have taken as a motto the title of Goethe's autobiography, "Dichtung und Wahrheit,"--Poetry and Truth. And this it is that has set Daudet apart and that has caused his vogue with readers of all sorts and conditions,--this unique combination of imagination and verity. "His originality," M. Jules Lemaitre has acutely remarked, "is closely to unite observation and fantasy, to extract from the truth all that it contains of the improbable and the surprising, to satisfy at the same time the readers of M. Cherbuliez and the readers of M. Zola, to write novels which are at the same time realistic and romantic, and which seem romantic only because they are very sincerely and very profoundly realistic."

Alphonse Daudet was born in 1840, and it was at N?mes that he first began to observe mankind; and he has described his birthplace and his boyhood in "Little What's-his-name," a novel even richer in autobiographical revelation than is "David Copperfield." His father was a manufacturer whose business was not prosperous and who was forced at last to remove with the whole family to Lyons in the vain hope of doing better in the larger town. After reading the account of this parent's peculiarities in M. Ernest Daudet's book, we are not surprised that the affairs of the family did not improve, but went from bad to worse. Alphonse Daudet suffered bitterly in these years of desperate struggle, but he gained an understanding of the conditions of mercantile life, to be serviceable later in the composition of "Fromont and Risler."

In those days of privation and ambition Daudet's longing was to make himself famous as a poet; and when at last, not yet twenty years old, he began his career as a man of letters it was by the publication of a volume of verse, just as his fellow-novelists, M. Paul Bourget and Signor Gabriele d'Annunzio have severally done. Immature as juvenile lyrics are likely to be, these early rhymes of Daudet's have a flavor of their own, a faintly recognizable note of individuality. He is more naturally a poet than most modern literators who possess the accomplishment of verse as part of their equipment for the literary life, but who lack a spontaneous impulse toward rhythm. It may even be suggested that his little poems are less artificial than most French verse; they are the result of a less obvious effort. He lisped in numbers; and with him it was rather prose that had to be consciously acquired. His lyric note, although not keen and not deep, is heard again and again in his novels, and it sustains some of the most graceful and tender of his short stories,--"The Death of the Dauphin," for instance, and the "Sous-pr?fet in the Fields."

Daudet extended poetry to include playmaking; and alone or with a friend he attempted more than one little piece in rhyme--tiny plays of a type familiar enough at the Od?on. He has told us how the news of the production of one of these poetic dramas came to him afar in Algiers whither he had been sent because of a weakness of the lungs, threatening to become worse in the gray Parisian winter. Other plays of his, some of them far more important than this early effort, were produced in the next few years. The most ambitious of these was the "Woman of Arles," which fv?n was a nationalist composer of Romantic tendencies who wrote five symphonies together with a considerable amount of orchestral and choral music. He died in Faluns, Sweden, on May 8, 1960.

Louis Alter

Louis Alter was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on June 18, 1902, where he received his academic education in the public schools, and his initial instruction in music. Music study was completed with Stuart Mason at the New England Conservatory. In 1924 Alter came to New York, where for five years he worked as accompanist for Nora Bayes, Irene Bordoni and other stars of the stage; he also did arrangements for a publishing firm in Tin Pan Alley. Between 1925 and 1927 he wrote his first popular songs and contributed a few of them to Broadway productions. Since then he has written many song hits, as well as scores for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. His best known songs include "A Melody from the Sky" and "Dolores," both of which were nominated for Academy Awards; also "Twilight on the Trail," such a favorite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the manuscript, together with a recording by Bing Crosby, repose in the Roosevelt Museum in Hyde Park, New York.

Alter has been successful in writing skilful compositions for piano and orchestra in which the popular element is pronounced, encased within a symphonic structure. Some of them are now staples in the symphonic-jazz repertory. His best compositions were inspired by the sights, sounds and moods of New York City.

Leroy Anderson

Beyond possessing a most ingratiating lyric invention and a consummate command of orchestration, Anderson boasts an irresistible sense of humor and a fine flair for burlesque. He is probably at his best in programmatic pieces in which extra-musical sounds are neatly adapted to and often serve as a background for his sprightly tunes--ranging from the clicking of a typewriter to the meowing of a cat.

Daniel Fran?ois Auber

With Adam and Boieldieu, Auber was one of the founding fathers of the op?ra-comique. He was superior to his two colleagues in the lightness of his touch, surpassing wit, and grace of lyricism. But Auber's charm and gaiety were not bought at the expense of deeper emotional and dramatic values; for all their lightness of heart, his best comic operas are filled with pages that have the scope and dimension of grand opera. As Rossini once said of him, Auber may have produced light music, but he produced it like a true master.

Overtures to several of his most famous operas are standards in the light-classical repertory.

The overture opens with a sustained melody for the strings that is dramatized by key changes. A rhythmic passage leads to a martial subject for the brass. Several other vigorous ideas ensue in the brass and woodwind. After their development there comes a lyrical string episode which, in turn, leads into a second climax. Contrast comes with a lyrical idea in the strings. A loud return of the first martial subject in full orchestra marks the beginning of a spirited conclusion.

The text by Eug?ne Scribe and Germain Delavigne is based on an episode from history: a successful Neapolitan revolt against the Duke of Arcos, headed by Tommaso Anello in 1647. In the opera, Masaniello assumes Anello's part, and toward the end of the opera after the insurrection is smothered, he is assassinated.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, on March 21, 1685. He was the most significant member of a family that for generations had produced professional musicians. His career can be divided into three convenient periods. The first was between 1708 and 1717 when, as organist to the Ducal Chapel in Weimar, he wrote most of his masterworks for organ. During the second period, from 1717 to 1723, he served as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold in Coethen. During this period he wrote most of his major works for orchestra, solo instruments, and chamber-music ensembles. The last period took place in Leipzig from 1723 until his death where he was cantor of the St. Thomas Church. In Leipzig he produced some of his greatest choral compositions. Towards the end of his life he went blind and became paralyzed. He died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750.

As the culmination of the age of polyphony, Johann Sebastian Bach's masterworks are, for the most part, too complex and subtle for popular appeal. But from his vast and incomparable output of concertos, sonatas, suites, masses, passions, cantatas, and various compositions for the organ and for the piano, it is possible to lift a few random items of such melodic charm and simple emotional appeal that they can be profitably exploited for wide consumption. In these less complicated works, Bach's consummate skill at counterpoint, and his equally formidable gift at homophonic writing, are always in evidence.

Michael Balfe

Melodious selections from this opera are frequently heard. The most famous single melody is "I Dream'd That I Dwelt in Marble Halls" which Arline sings in the first scene of the second act as she recalls a dream. "The Heart Bowed Down," the Count's song in the fourth scene of the second act as he gazes longingly on a picture of his long lost daughter, and "Then You'll Remember Me," a tenor aria from the third act are also familiar.

Hubert Bath

Hubert Bath was born in Barnstaple, England, on November 6, 1883. He attended the Royal Academy of Music in London, after which he wrote his first opera. For a year he was conductor of an opera company that toured the world. After 1915 he devoted himself mainly to composition. Besides his operas, tone poems, cantatas and various instrumental works he wrote a considerable amount of incidental music for stage plays and scores for the motion pictures. He died in Harefield, England, on April 24, 1945.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, on December 16, 1770. He received his earliest musical training in his native city where he early gave strong evidence of genius. He published his first works when he was eleven, and soon thereafter was performing publicly on the organ, cembalo, and the viola. He also disclosed a phenomenal gift at improvisation. He established permanent residence in Vienna in 1792. Three years later he made there his first public appearance, and from then on began to occupy a high position in Viennese musical life as a piano virtuoso. His fame as a composer soon superseded that of virtuoso as he won the support of Vienna's aristocracy. He entered upon a new creative phase, as well as full maturity, beginning with 1800, when his first symphony was introduced in Vienna. His creative powers continually deepened and became enriched from that time on. As he restlessly sought to give poetic and dramatic expression to his writing he broke down the classical barriers so long confining music and opened up new horizons for style and structure. Meanwhile, in or about 1801 or 1802, he realized he was growing deaf, a discovery that swept him into despondency and despair, both of which find expression in a unique and remarkable document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. Deafness led to personal idiosyncrasies and volatile moods which often tried the patience of even his closest friends, but it did not decrease the quantity of his musical production nor prevent him from achieving heights of creative expression achieved by few, if any. He died in Vienna on March 26, 1827 after having ushered in a new age for music with his symphonies, concertos, sonatas, string quartets, and masterworks in other categories including opera and choral music.

The grandeur of expression, the profundity of thought, and the independence of idiom we associate with Beethoven is not to be found in his lighter music which, generally speaking, is in a traditional mold, pleasing style, and in an inviting lyric vein. This is not the Beethoven who was the proud democrat, whose life was a struggle with destiny, and who sought to make music the expression of his profoundest concepts. This is rather, another Beethoven: the one who liked to dance, though he did it badly; who flirted with the girls; and who indulged in what he himself described as "unbuttoned humor."

Vincenzo Bellini

Ralph Benatzky

It is mainly the worldwide popularity of this operetta that brings tourists each year to the White Horse Inn at St. Wolfgang, for a sight of the operetta's setting, and to partake of refreshments on the attractive veranda overlooking Wolfgangsee. The inn is now generously decorated with pictures in which the two main songs of the operetta are quoted, supplemented by a portrait of Benatzky. Souvenir ashtrays also carry musical quotations from the operetta.

Arthur Benjamin

Robert Russell Bennett

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