Non-believers in musical expressiveness

Summary

“Music”, according to Potier, “like justice, is a very fine thing—when it’s right.”

I was speaking just now of composers who believe in musical expressiveness, but who act upon that belief with discretion and good sense, aware of the limitations which the very nature of music imposes on its expressive ability, and beyond which it can never go.

Yet there are many people in Paris and elsewhere who don’t believe in it at all. Like blind men denying the existence of light, they seriously maintain that all words go equally well with all music. To them it seems perfectly natural for an opera libretto which has been found wanting to be replaced by another in an entirely different genre without disturbing the score. They convert Rossini’s comic operas into masses: I know of one which is sung to the music of The Barber of Seville. They would have no compunction in fitting the poem of La Vestale to the score of Der Freischütz, or the other way around. No one raises a murmur about such absurdities, and yet practised by men holding positions of authority their influence on art can be appalling.

It’s no good answering these wretched people like the ancient philosopher who walked around in order to prove the possibility of movement. They’d never be convinced.

So it’s merely for the amusement of healthy minds that we here present the words of two well-known pieces, the first set to the air La Grâce de Dieu, and the second to the tune of the song Un jour, maître corbeau

These two glaring examples, in which different music of a particular character has been substituted for the noble inspirations of Rouget de l’Isle and Monsieur Halévy and coupled with verses of great intensity and tenderness, form a pendant to the psalm setting by Marcello that I quoted at the beginning of the book. In that all-too-celebrated piece a merry, playful tune was written by the composer for an Italian ode of elevated and grandiose character; and by fitting some jolly words to Marcello’s music I produced a perfect match between music and verse.