My Recollections. Jules 1842-1912 Massenet
MY RECOLLECTIONS
CHAPTER I
MY ADMISSION TO THE CONSERVATOIRE
Were I to live a thousand years—which is hardly likely—I should never forget that fateful day, February 24, 1848, when I was just six years old. Not so much because it coincided with the fall of the Monarchy of July, as that it marked the first steps of my musical career—a career which, even yet, I am not sure was my real destiny, so great is my love for the exact sciences!
At that time I lived with my parents in the Rue de Beaune in an apartment overlooking the great gardens. The day promised to be fine, but it was very cold.
We were at luncheon when the waitress rushed into the room like a maniac. "Aux armes, citoyens!" she yelled, throwing rather than placing the plates on the table.
I was too young to understand what was going on in the streets. All I can remember is that riots broke out and that the Revolution smashed the throne of the most debonair of kings. The feelings which stirred my father were entirely different from those which disturbed my mother's already distracted soul. My father had been an officer under Napoleon Bonaparte and a friend of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia. He was all for the Emperor, and the atmosphere of battles suited his temperament. My mother, on the other hand, had experienced the sorrows of the first great revolution, which dragged Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from their throne, and thrilled with worship for the Bourbons.
The memory of that exciting meal remained the more deeply fixed in my mind because on the morning of that historic day, by the light of tallow candles (wax candles were only for the rich) my mother for the first time placed my fingers on the piano.
In order best to introduce me to the knowledge of this instrument, my mother—she was my music teacher—stretched along the keyboard a strip of paper upon which she wrote the notes corresponding to each of the black and white keys, with their position on the five lines. It was most ingenious; no mistake was possible.
My progress on the piano was so pronounced that three years later, in October, 1851, my parents thought I ought to apply at the Conservatoire for the entrance examination to the piano classes.
One morning that month we went to the Rue de Faubourg-Poissonnière. The Conservatoire National de Musique was there then, and it remained there until it was moved to the Rue de Madrid. The large room we entered—like all the rest in the place at that time—had walls painted a bluish gray, spotted with black. A few old benches were the only furniture in this anteroom.
M. Ferrière, a harsh, severe looking man—he was one of the upper employees—came out to call the candidates by flinging their names into the crowd of relatives and friends that accompanied them. It was like summoning the condemned to execution. Then he gave each candidate the number of his turn before the jury which had already assembled in the rooms where the sessions were held.
This room was intended for examinations and was a sort of small theater with a row of boxes and a circular gallery in the Consulate style. I confess that I have never entered that room without feeling emotion. I have always fancied that I saw, seated opposite in a first-tier box, as in a black hole, Bonaparte, the First Consul, and Josephine, the sweet companion of his early years. He with his forceful, handsome face; she with her kind and gentle glances, for both used to come to such occasions. By her visits to this sanctuary dedicated to Art and by bringing him, so preoccupied with many cares, good and noble Josephine seemed to wish to soften his thoughts and to make them less stern by contact with the youth who some day perforce would not escape the horrors of war.
From the time of Sarette, the first director, until recently, all the examinations for classes in the institution, both tragedy and comedy, were held in this same small hall, but it should not be confused with the hall so well known as the Salle de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire.
The organ class was also held there several times a week for at the back, hidden behind a large curtain, was a great organ with two keyboards. Beside that old, worn, squeaky instrument was the fateful door through which the pupils came on to the platform that formed the small stage. Again, this same small hall, for many a year, was the judgment seat for the award of prizes for musical composition known as the Prix de Rome.
But to return to the morning of October 9, 1851. When all the youngsters had been informed of the order in which we must take our examinations, we went into an adjoining room which led into the hall through the "fateful" door, and which was only a sort of dusty, disordered garret.
The jury whose verdict we had to face was composed of Halèvy, Carafa, Ambroise Thomas, several professors of the school, and the director, who was also the president of the Conservatoire, Monsieur Auber. We rarely said just Auber when we spoke of this French master, the most eminent and prolific of all who made the opera and opéra-comique of that time famous.
At this time Monsieur Auber was sixty-five. He was universally respected and everyone at the Conservatoire adored him. I shall always remember his pleasing, unusually bright black eyes, which remained the same until his death in May, 1871.
May, 1871! We were then in open insurrection, almost in the last throes of the Commune … and Monsieur Auber, still faithful to his beloved boulevard near the Passage de l'Opéra—his favorite walk—met a friend also in despair over the terrible days we were passing through, and said to him, in an accent of utter weariness,
"Ah! I have lived too long!" Then he added, with a slight smile, "One should never abuse anything."
In 1851—the date when I became acquainted with Monsieur Auber—he had already lived a long time in his old mansion in the Rue St. George, where I remember having been received soon after seven in the morning, the master's work was finished