In asking me to introduce the five recitals of French Vocal Ensemble Music, the BBC gave me a wonderful and terrible privilege: wonderful because he who has had a purpose likes to define it; terrible because Music, who speaks for herself so convincingly, becomes, when one tries to translate her power into words, the most volatile, intangible element.

What have we tried to do? How have we done it? The purpose was to give an idea of the different aspects vocal ensemble music has had and still has in France, what it has meant and means. What it has been, and is, as a medium of expression.

In order to succeed, was it necessary to follow a chronological order? At first one would say so, but considering the question from another angle, we came to another conclusion, and that for two reasons: the first, if built in successive periods, each recital would only let appear one isolated part of the ensemble we had the purpose to display in its entirety: the second, certainly the more important, refers to the real relationship in art; in looking for it, one makes associations which seem at first strange to the mind, but are clear to the deeper understanding.

For instance, some modern painting is infinitely nearer to the fourteenth century than to a painting of fifty years ago. In accordance with this point of view, the intention of these five recitals is to present five pictures, independent in appearance, connected in fact, each giving an idea of the whole, which however is only realized when the five images have been seen. In building these programmes, we were intending to illustrate the way in which a certain character or human type continually reappears throughout the ages, different in clothing, different in manner, different in language, but expressing a same thought, a same aspiration, a same emotion. These programmes include music from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with its purity, its economy, its wisdom, its amazing fluid transparency.

First an anonymous sequence from the twelfth century: “Verbum Bonum.”

Then a part of a Motet of Perotin, who was organist at Notre-Dame of Paris in the early twelfth century.

Concerts Reviewed

January 10, 1947 (Salle Gaveau, Concerts Colonne)

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, op. 42, Arnold Schoenberg Moïse (Opus americanum no. 2), op. 219, Darius Milhaud

January 12, 1947 (Salle Pleyel, Concerts Lamoureux)

Symphony no. 3 “Eroica,” E-flat major, op. 55, Ludwig van Beethoven Prélude, Sarabande, Toccata, Marguerite Roesgen-Champion

Pavane pour une infante défunte, Maurice Ravel

Trois poèmes, Ivan de Maigret*

Les Préludes, Franz Liszt

Certainly, last Friday night the Salle Gaveau did not have the look it usually does; crowds formed starting at the vestibule; many very young, animated, impatient faces. It is easy to see that this concert was an event for these young people. What work drew them here like this, which personality fascinates them so, what trend has them in its grip? It is Arnold Schoenberg's Concerto, it is Schoenberg and his ideas, it is the Schoenbergien language.

There is no need to debate Mr. Schoenberg's value—it is undeniable. But it is difficult to believe that so many young minds today can still be under the influence of his tormented, romantic art. Do they really think they will find a way forward in a system that seems to ignore or forbid escape and is based only on the most complex relationships between sounds? Do they adopt this system out of conviction or out of unease? Are they making this slightly desperate attempt because they no longer know where to go (one of the most talented among them said, “It is an experiment that one must try.”) or, confident of having found their path, are they ready for all the sacrifices, all the renunciations required to build on a foundation whose solidity they have tested?

For a long time, Arnold Schoenberg's music has aroused zealous enthusiasm and unresolved antagonisms, and sometimes, too, an indifference that is a little exasperating, but no one has ever even thought of debating the mastery with which it is implemented. Unfortunately, the artistic devices this music uses are so complex that it is difficult to ascertain them all through hearing, and, what is more, because it seems that everything is sacrificed for the sake of intellectual pursuits, this music remains enigmatic and inhuman.

Works Reviewed

Ebony Concerto, Igor Stravinsky

A concert hall where boredom reigns offers a strange sight. From all these presences results nothing but a sort of emptiness. Faces without expression, gazes without thought, slumped bodies, dispersal, lethargy. Is this really the audience's fault? The audience is a convenient scapegoat, they are made responsible for everything. “They don't like music,” “they are afraid of modern music,” “they are ‘pickled’ in their old habits,” etc. Certainly, they are often wrong, they come along slowly, they can easily be lazy, not giving of themselves, their culture is insufficient. But if the program is good and well played, you will see this same audience, who just now was sluggish, pull themselves together, “take part, sympathetically,” as Stravinsky says. But, you insist, where do the audience's indifference and the hostility toward new works come from? Come on now, let's be serious! The audience is asked to be the witness to experiments, they are drowned in mediocrity, they are offered the best and the worst on the same program, and we are surprised, we dare to be surprised by the fact that they lack discernment and welcome with only cold politeness these experiments that amuse no one, to be honest. We’ve all seen that, when the audience is exposed to good things and to the best things, they will almost inevitably gravitate toward the best; when the audience is exposed to good things and to the worst things, they will gravitate toward the worst; when the audience is exposed to whatever mishmash with mediocre works included, they are lost: they do not know which way the wind blows. Which is to say that every concession toward mediocrity when selecting works is difficult to excuse. Concessions betray uncertainty and negligence more often than opportunism. But whether they are excused, understood, or condemned, this does not change the consequences they bring about. Each of us, with the slightest reflection, can measure them. And when one thinks of the treatment that is all too often inflicted upon the audience, it is deplorable that they are not angered. You might say that among the listeners there are those who are amused by nothing and others who settle for anything. Nothing can be expected of those types of people.

Concert Reviewed

(asterisk indicates premiere)

October 19, 1921 (Salle Gaveau)

Quartet, D major, op. 64, no. 5, Joseph Haydn

Quartet, E-flat major, op. 22, no. 1, George Enescu

Quartet, D major, op. 18, no. 3, Ludwig van Beethoven

Concertino, Igor Stravinsky*

In general, leading artists devote themselves almost exclusively to works whose reputation matches their own, or better yet, exceeds it. Moreover, many reasons justify this attitude: the reserve, the mistrust of the audience in relation to what is not already ranked; its manifest wish to “evaluate” performers through comparison, which excludes almost all variety in programming; and finally, the artists’ difficulty in reviewing enough music to take on the responsibility of making a choice on which their authority confers a real importance with respect to listeners. But because of this, new works risk waiting a very long time before taking the place that they deserve. This is to say how much respect is due for the incessant effort of the Flonzaley Quartet, since they devote months to working with the same passion on the renowned masterwork that ensures them a brilliant success as they do on the still-unknown pages that are hardly listened to, if they are not condemned without even taking the trouble to understand them. It is necessary to see with what conviction each of these four artists speaks of the work that he would like to render as beloved by others as he loves it himself, and with what faith he champions it.

Their recent concert was particularly meaningful in this respect. Haydn, then a first performance of George Enescu. Beethoven, then a first performance of Stravinsky. I think that one could not better fulfil the Quartet's wish than by forgetting to speak of them in order to speak only of these works, which they came to acquaint us with. But the quality of their performance does not permit such a silence. In fact, one could not achieve a more perfectly coherent ensemble or have a richer sonorous palette. The performance of Haydn's Quartet was imbued with that charming courtliness that is at once a repose, a joy, and a model. Can one, in fact, imagine a more perfect adaptation of means to an end, and does not the old Master remain one of those who best understood the spirit of that elegant and witty chamber music that represents an entire epoch?

Concerts Reviewed

December 1921

L’Heure espagnole, Maurice Ravel

It is impossible to imagine a play more subtly written or more wittily accomplished than Mr. Franc-Nohain’s. The personalities are drawn in a few words and the respective situations of the characters are shown with a delicacy … that does not prevent clarity.

The first scene presents the clockmaker Torquemada, a ridiculous, svelte little man, and the muleteer Ramiro, a little dull and clumsy, but likeable and solid. The latter has come to have his watch repaired (leading to a hilarious speech), but the conversation of the two men is interrupted by Concepcion, Torquemada's wife. She reminds him that his duties as municipal clockmaker require his presence elsewhere. The way she speaks to him is enough to make understood in what paltry esteem she holds her husband, and for what reasons! Torquemada leaves, asking Ramiro to await his return. Annoyed by this inopportune presence, Concepcion thinks of having the placid and complacent muleteer move one of the two large clocks that frame the workbench into her bedroom. In fact, scarcely has he left, carrying one of them, but Gonzalve, a young poet awaited with determined and unconcealed impatience, arrives; he is soon hidden in the second clock by Concepcion, who hears Ramiro coming down and dreams up this ingenious means of arranging for herself the longed-for tête-à-tête.

And from this point onward, everything will revolve around the two clocks—one containing Gonzalve, and the other containing Inigo, the fat financier who has meanwhile arrived to pay his court—which will be carried in turn, again and again, with the same casualness by the indefatigable Ramiro, who, after having thus facilitated the successive and disappointing conversations between Concepcion and her suitors, will finish by climbing the stairs a final time, but … without a clock and accompanied by Concepcion!

Torquemada comes home in the meantime, and in his shop finds Gonzalve, a little speechless, and Inigo, who is prevented by his girth from getting out of the singular shelter that he had so much trouble getting into: he takes advantage of the situation in order to sell them the two clocks.

Concerts Reviewed

February 2, 1919

Overture “Namensfeier,” op. 115, Ludwig van Beethoven

Brandenburg Concerto no. 5 in D major, BWV 1050, Johann Sebastian Bach

Passacaglia, C minor, BWV 582, Johann Sebastian Bach

La Vague et la cloche, Henri Duparc

Le Rhin allemand, Julien Tiersot

Armenia, canti armeni tradotti sinfónicamente, Gian Francesco Malipiero

Pupazzetti, op. 27, Alfredo Casella

Symphony no. 3 “Bucolic,” B-flat minor, op. 11, Albéric Magnard

February 9, 1919

Namouna, Edouard Lalo

Fantasietta, Théodore Dubois

Typhaon, Claude Delvincourt

L’Étranger, op. 53, “Introduction to Act II,” Vincent d’Indy

Symphony no. 6, “Pastoral,” F major, op. 68, Ludwig van Beethoven

February 16, 1919

Gwendoline,“Overture,” Emmanuel Chabrier

Dolly, op. 56, Gabriel Fauré

Orphée, Jean Roger-Ducasse

Clarinet Quintet, A major, K. 581, “Larghetto,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

La Belle au bois dormant, op. 48, Guy de Lioncourt

Symphony no. 4, D minor, op. 120, Robert Schumann

February 23, 1919

Les Perses,“La Tragédie d’Eschyle,” Xavier Leroux

Poeme depitié, Antoine Mariotte

Symphony no. 2, Augustin Savard

Ballade, F# major, op. 19, Gabriel Fauré

Petrushka, Igor Stravinsky

Simple Reflections

Yet another month has gone by. In spite of all the gazes bound to the past, in spite of all the mourning amassed during these years of holocaust, of all the sacrifices, be they desired or accepted, life is rising up from the ruins, perhaps the stronger for being more rarefied, perhaps intensified because of all those ardent and rich existences that were destroyed before they had expressed themselves, and which dominate our era with all the purity, with all the flame of their heroic youth.

We come out of those terrible years with new glory, but above all, with new duties. Each of us must envisage them as a whole, then consider our own.

Individually, the task could be easy, if it is only a question of a little selflessness, courage, and abandon of the heart.

Collectively, the thing is more complicated, as the problem needs to be tackled from the root before being addressed in close union, if, that is, we are to transcend the domain of utopia.

Nevertheless, it seems that the time has come to consider the situation seriously, frankly.

Jean Binet was exquisite, sensitive, deep. His vast culture had something aristocratic about it. Rather than promoting himself, he chose more often to hide himself, to erase himself. His modesty was a gentler form of his supreme dignity.

Such humility only rendered more sensitive the vigour of his intelligence and the warmth of his heart, which was always ready to open itself so as to give and receive.

By his presence, by his words, even by his silence—because he had the ability to listen and to understand—Jean Binet immediately put the person with whom he was speaking at ease. He spread around him the gifts of a humane and understanding kindness, and in him could be discovered all that he caused to emerge from others, through his desire to lose nothing, to neglect nothing of what one could be.

There was nothing affected about his demeanor. Such attention was nothing more than a reflection of his respect. He respected people and things, instinctively and because nothing was unimportant in his eyes. He welcomed life with a continuous attention. This respect, this awareness, this integrity, this sensitivity, we found them in the musician, whatever form his thoughts might take. His ideas changed, they evolved, but essential traits remained the same, assuring unity within such a diverse output. Beautiful texts, chosen with an infallible taste, showed us the scope of his knowledge, of his curiosity, of Jean Binet's poetic point of view.

The spontaneity that characterised the man can also be found in all of his work. The moment will come to speak of his work as one should, and to distinguish one from the other. But Jean Binet has just left us: shouldn't we pause over the images that others will no longer be able to see? Before his work is severed from him forever, one must say how much it represents and reflects him; he who was so noble and so charming. One could not approach him without being struck by his personality. Who among us can forget his slender, tall, vigorous stature; his tremendously gentle and extremely attentive gaze; his smile full of goodness, at times of wit; his beautiful, neat, solid hands; his welcoming gestures, without being overly familiar; all these traits where one could read intelligence, heart, and thoughtfulness?

Concerts Reviewed

December 4, 1946 - (Conservatoire, Public Radio Concert)

Serenade, Bohuslav Martinů

Karagueuz, Suite, Marcel Mihalovici

Sérénade à Angélique, Arthur Honegger

Divertimento, no. 1, Tibor Harsanyi

Le Jeu de la nativité, op. 74, Alexander Tcherepnin

[December 1946, Radio broadcast]

Les Trois Lettres de Madame de Sévigné, Henri Barraud

Sonata, Paul Hindemith

Sonate für Fagott und Klavier, Henri Martelli

Sonata for Two Pianos, Marcelle de Manziarly

December 15, 1946 (llicâire du Châtelet, Concerts Colonne)

Phaéton, Camille Saint-Saëns

Le Rouet d’Omphale, Camille Saint-Saëns

Piano Concerto no. 4, C minor, Camille Saint-Saëns

Divertissement, Charles Brown

Die Walküre (extracts), Richard Wagner

December 16, 1946 (Conservatoire, Quintette à vent de Paris)

Trois pièces, Jean Doyen

Quartet, Jean Françaix

Sextet, Francis Poulenc

December 19, 1946 (Palais de Chaillot, Orchestre Jane Evrard)

Suite in D major, Johann Sebastian Bach

Concerto no. 4, George Frideric Handel

Sinfonietta, Albert Roussel

Symphonie, Arthur Honegger

Trois Leçons des Ténébres, François Couperin

December 20, 1946 (Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Ensemble vocal Marcel Couraud)

Motets, Josquin des Prés

Motets, Orlando de Lassus December 21, 1946 (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Société des concerts)

Oriane la sans égale, Florent Schmitt

Cello Concerto, Paul Hindemith

Petrushka, Igor Stravinsky

One of last week's important concerts was given in discouraging conditions. Two rehearsals to put together three difficult works, one of which was performed for the first time by this orchestra. When one is used to dancing on a tightrope, one grows accustomed to danger, becomes uninterested in success, surrenders to chance: fatalist or fool. When familiar works are performed, each person knows how the outlines should be established, what the general arc of the piece is. “Things sort themselves out.” Likewise, the audience manages to figure things out: it knows what's right and wrong. But, when it comes to a new work, confusion is such that performers and listeners are equally deceived.

The performers’ talent is not in question; it is so great that often the audience is unaware of the risks undertaken, of the dangers rushed into. But if talent allows catastrophes to be avoided, it cannot replace the fine tuning that only hard work can guarantee. Nothing can be prepared without the assistance of time. Do not tell us: “But you must understand the difficulties we are facing”; do not mention our current poverty; do not appeal to pity—this is a poor strategy.

Ladies and gentlemen: My task here this evening is brief, simple, and particularly pleasant.

It has been one of the constant purposes of the Rice Institute from the beginning, not only to give instructions to resident students in Letters, Science, and Art, but also to try to perform some service for the higher cultural and spiritual welfare of the community. In performing that task, we have been, as you all know, very generously aided by certain citizens of Houston. We have presented to you on a number of occasions eminent lecturers from the Short Foundation in Civics and Philanthropy, the Gordon Lectureship in Public Affairs, and now tonight, for the second time, on [sic] the Rice Institute Lectureship in Music.

The lecturer who comes to us tonight needs very few words of introduction from me. Her reputation is international. Mr. Walter Damrosch has said of her that he has never met a woman her superior in musicianship. To that praise from a high authority, I certainly could add nothing, and I feel sure that I speak the sentiments of this audience here tonight in giving her a most cordial welcome to the Rice Institute and to the city of Houston: Miss Boulanger. (Applause.)

Miss Boulanger

Ladies and Gentlemen. I must first apologize for my English, which is, I know very weak, and if my mistakes are many, I trust you will not laugh, but if you do, I will not be hurt at all; it will only remind me of the good times I have had in Paris with my American students, who laugh often.

The subject I have today for you is one which appears to me to be very important.

Debussy came at an opportune time; his influence was tremendously important, tremendously necessary; but the progress of music was so great during the last fifteen years that, of course, the younger musicians of today have a tendency to forget what his music is and what they themselves owe to Debussy.

Debussy was born in 1863 in St. Germain-en-Laye.

Mlle Nadia Boulanger began by establishing the principles of her course in a few words. Laying out the subject, she first insisted on the relativity of the notion expressed by the words Modern Music:

“Music is always evolving, just as life is perpetual evolution, and there is not a complete change or a barrier between the art of yesterday, the art of today, and the art of tomorrow; but a transformation that occurs little by little, in an almost incessant way: since we live from day to day, it sometimes seems to us that this transformation is very great, because old habits have been changed, because we are all very lazy, and it is much easier to stick with something that has been established than to change something about which we have already accepted.

The laws of music are, in certain ways, permanent, in other ways, absolutely changeable. Some discoveries exist at first in an accidental state, as it were, of which the author is not fully aware until after the fact. Not every discovery must be accepted with blind admiration. But it is indispensible, as Schoenberg said so well in the preface to his Treatise on Harmony (and, by an odd coincidence, Mr. G. Rageot in his recent article in Le Temps, concerning general knowledge), to exercise one's curiosity, to protect oneself from intellectual laziness, not to settle for asking music only for superficial pleasures, but also to seek in it superior intellectual joys. The great stumbling block, Schoenberg says, in essence, is our desire for ‘comfort.’ Men search, men try to give a new or renewed sense to life; we have to try to understand them. They are around us, and it is terrible to think that cases exist of people who are very great artists, and they are completely abandoned and completely kept apart from everything, because they say something new; they are condemned without due process, without being heard. ”

After these opening remarks, Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger came to the technical part of her topic. We will reproduce here some long textual excerpts from the stenographer's notes, joining them together in a summary.

My Dear Maître,

Your friends told me, “We want to pay homage to the memory of Auguste Chapuis—one will speak about the composer, another about the organist, another about the man, and another about the friend—you, if you would like, about the teacher.” What? To pay a debt so old and dear to my heart could only appear, and did appear to me, easy and sweet. But little by little as the days passed, something came to stand between me and myself: I knew and yet could not; I wanted to, and didn't know how—and, hesitation after hesitation, qualm after qualm, postponement after postponement, the present and myself, as I am today—we gradually disappeared, so as to make space for a group, witnesses to a time long past.

I suddenly understood that it is the three members of this group who must be asked to speak, because it is they who keep your image present within me, through them that I always see you, such as you were when I saw you in the past.

The white-haired old man said to me, “How happy I am to have entrusted my daughter to Chapuis—his teaching is clear, calm—his knowledge is so sound that he will never seek to force it upon others; he renders it accessible to his students and then allows them the time to assimilate it. That is just what I was looking for: [someone] capable and willing to understand the student while providing a solid technique.”

The little five-year-old girl told me, “I do love Mr. Chapuis—you can tell him everything, ask everything of him, he listens without ever getting impatient, he answers all questions—and, when I give him my copybook, he laughs so gently in looking at my homework. And when I sing for him and he accompanies me, the piano seems to be as small as me.”

The eleven-year-old girl, for her part: “We left one day with papa and mama to go to Mr. Chapuis’s.Who is this Mr. Chapuis? Is he going to forbid me to write what I love so as to ‘observe’ the rules, make me write harmony exercises that I hate all the time, prevent me from sight-reading, as I like to do?—Now we are at the Boulevard Voltaire.