The ambitious aristocrat who created the Direction des Beaux-Arts in 1824 and who administered for the government of Charles X most of the artistic affairs of the capital, Vicomte de La Rochefoucauld, was a grandee of considerable power and influence. Often ridiculed for exaggerated prudishness, he was in part responsible for certain progressive reforms in the musical arena in the later eighteen-twenties, including the regeneration of the Opéra and the foundation of what became the finest orchestra in Europe.
It is to one of the last ministers of the Maison du Roi of King Charles X, Monsieur le Vicomte Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld, that France owes the foundation of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. It was upon being solicited by Habeneck, and at the request of Cherubini, that the noble Vicomte issued the memorable decree that would regenerate French music…
1 Elwart, Histoire de la Société des Concerts, 1.Like many of his contemporaries, Berlioz had to deal with La Rochefoucauld whenever he wished to appeal to the administration for governmental support. We possess only eight letters that Berlioz sent to the Director of Fine Arts after 1828, but we know that the Vicomte swam into his ken as he contemplated the concerts he wished to give at the time, not so much to reap a profit as to make himself known to the public and marshal his legitimacy and nascent renown. In recognition of the gentleman’s assistance, Berlioz took the unusual step of dedicating to “Monsieur Le Vicomte de La Rochefoucauld, Aide de Camp du Roi, Directeur-général des Beaux-Arts,” his “opus 1,” Huit Scènes de Faust, which appeared in April of 1829. To his prior request for permission to make the dedication, La Rochefoucauld had replied, on March 17:
You wish to offer to me, Monsieur, the dedication of the first work that you have designed for publication, the score of Huit Scènes de Faust from Goethe, and you lead me to believe that you would be sincerely grateful if I were to accept this hommage on your part. In so doing, I am pleased to acquiesce to your wish, and to take this occasion to offer you renewed assurance of my interest in your artistic capabilities, which are already meritorious of encouragement as you enter the initial phase of your career.
Please accept, Monsieur, this expression of my high esteem.
2 AnF, O3 1305.In my translation, I have attempted to suggest not only the Vicomte’s formality of expression but also what I take to be his sincere appreciation of Berlioz’s youthful talent, and perhaps even his surprise that Berlioz’s first important publication should be dedicated to him. Considering La Rochefoucauld’s occasional countermanding of the directives of Cherubini, who was resistant to administrative innovation other than his own, Berlioz’s dedication surely bore a grain of sincerity, but also a grain of wisdom, since he knew he would be in need, in future endeavors, of the Vicomte’s good will. (For similar reasons, François-Joseph Fétis dedicated his early
Dictionnaire historique des musiciens to La Rochefoucauld.)
3 AnF, O3 1815 (III). We thus ought to see the composer as a man whose behavior—despite the pictures he would soon paint of himself as consumed exclusively by Art and Love—was conditioned by the political realities of the time, by the sometime necessity of conformity to convention, of compromise for the sake of career.
Berlioz’s relationship to La Rochefoucauld had a bearing on the efforts he made—little known in the literature—to better the lot of all young French composers by widening their opportunities for performance. We tend to view Berlioz as an individualist, as a melancholy and isolated figure who long fought lonely battles for understanding from the public, the press, and the powers that be. But in his student days, Berlioz was a member of a society of young artists who were as interested as he in innovation and change. Proof positive of one such association comes in the form of a fascinating document that concerns a Gymnase-Lyrique, which Berlioz mentions in a letter to his friend Humbert Ferrand of November 11, 1828:
You know that I have been named “Premier Commissaire” of the Société Gymnase-Lyrique. I am in charge of selecting and replacing the musicians, of renting the instruments, and of looking after the scores and orchestral parts. I am occupied with these tasks at this very moment. We are beginning to receive subscriptions, and we already have some twenty-two hundred francs in the bank. We have received anonymous letters from some individuals who are jealous [of our endeavors]. Cherubini is attempting to determine whether to help us out or to do us in. At the Opéra, everyone is babbling about us, as we continue on our merry way.
4 CG 1:216.The guiding spirit and artistic director of the Gymnase-Lyrique was Stéphen de La Madelaine, a chapel singer at the court of Charles X, one of Berlioz’s close friends in the eighteen-twenties, and later a functionary at the Ministry of the Interior. Planned in the fall of 1828, the Gymnase-Lyrique had as its purpose “the encouragement of those young French composers who have not as yet had an opera or a ballet performed on the stage of one of the Parisian operatic theaters by providing them with the means to become known to the public via concerts equal in brilliance to the best the capital has to offer.”
5 From the Règlement of the Gymnase-Lyrique, AnF, O3 1619 (1); published in the Revue musicale, 4 (October 1, 1828): 292–296. The organization intended to present vocal and orchestral music by its composer-members with a force of sixty-five instrumentalists and fifty-five singers, with activities commencing, in January 1829, in an auditorium situated in the recently completed Passage du Saumon, at the time the longest such
passage in Paris.
6 Galignani’s New Paris Guide (Paris: Galignani, 1837), 225.Berlioz was optimistic about the group’s future, and pleased to be assigned tasks, including that of vocal coach, that would later prove essential to his career as a traveling conductor. His optimism was spurred by the possibility of assistance from Vicomte de La Rochefoucauld. Indeed, as I was pleased to discover, a letter from the founding members of the Gymnase-Lyrique, requesting precisely such assistance, was composed and penned in late October 1828 by the Premier Commissaire of the association, Berlioz himself:
Monsieur le Vicomte,
Monsieur Stéphen, the founder of a musical association entitled Gymnase-Lyrique, sent you a letter several weeks ago requesting authorization to employ the leading singers of the Académie Royale de Musique for the concerts of the new association, which are to take place on Sunday mornings once every two weeks.
Since this authorization in no way runs counter to the interests of the Opéra, we should like to add our voices to that of Monsieur Stéphen in begging your assistance. We also hope, Monsieur le Vicomte, that after having thoroughly examined the constitution of our Society, you will be persuaded that it has been conceived in such a way as to produce the most beneficial results and will thus offer your august support to an effort whose success could brighten the future for many young composers by reducing the first hurdles of their professional careers.
We are, Monsieur le Vicomte, with the greatest respect, your humble and devoted servants,
the composer-members of the Gymnase-Lyrique.
7 AnF, O3 1619 (1)—document dated October 23, 1828. See also CG 9:65–66.This letter is signed by Berlioz and the following musicians: Mathurin-Auguste Barbereau, Nathan Bloc, Louis-Constant Ermel, Alphonse Gilbert, Claude-Joseph Paris (in absentia [in Rome]), Eugène-Prosper Prévost, Théodore Schlosser, Stéphen de La Madelaine, Jean-Baptiste Tolbecque, and Francois-Laurent-Hébert Turbry. For Berlioz, who penned the letter, as we know only from his conspicuously chiseled hand, these now largely forgotten individuals, many of them recent competitors for the Prix de Rome, would have been among the musicians of “la Jeune France.” (Turbry was a student of Lesueur’s who, in 1835, would compose a
Symphonie fantastique, a parody of Berlioz’s, as is obvious from the printed program.
8 Le Ménestrel (October 4, 1835). In the same year, another
Symphonie fantastique was composed by the Belgian conductor Étienne-Joseph Soubre.)
9 Brittan, Etienne-joseph Soubre: Sinfonie fantastique. The constitution or “Règlement” of the Gymnase-Lyrique is dated October 14, 1828; a revision of October 23, 1828, was joined to Berlioz’s letter to La Rochefoucauld and printed in the
Revue musicale at the beginning of the month by F.-J. Fétis, who wholeheartedly approved of the effort: “The editor of the
Revue musicale is far too devoted to the cause of the art of music and of the youthful composers not warmly to applaud Monsieur Stéphen’s generous proposition, which he seconds as firmly as possible and with great hope for a successful outcome.”
10 Revue musicale, 4 (October 1, 1828): 291. This “Règlement” articulates an idealistic agenda clearly modeled on the democratic program of the new Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (founded only eight months earlier, in February 1828), proposing as it does both shared responsibilities and shared rewards.
It is noteworthy and perhaps revealing that Berlioz and his collaborators chose to pursue this private effort to establish a concert organization at the same time that a similar, public organization, a Société Mineure des Jeunes Élèves de l’École Royale de Musique, was attempting to establish itself in emulation of that same Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Fétis wrote about it in an April 1828 issue of the Revue musicale:
An emulation [of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire] borne of the thunderous public reception of their brilliant performances did not take long to establish itself. A new ensemble has been organized by the youthful students at the École Royale de Musique whose goal is to perfect the talents of the performers by exposing them to the public eye and to have them play the works, or more properly the sketches, of the student-composers who are still enrolled at the school. Monsieur Cherubini has authorized the establishment of this association and has offered it the use of the small concert hall of the Conservatoire.
11 Revue musicale, 4 (April 1828): 472–473.Unfortunately for the young musicians of the Gymnase-Lyrique, who were aiming at something higher than a student orchestra, Monsieur Cherubini was not inclined to offer support to them: worried about the potential competition it would offer to both the Société Mineure and the Société des Concerts, the indomitable director of the Conservatoire seems to have convinced La Rochefoucauld not to provide a subvention for the new society. A different but similar organization designed to assist young composers, the Athénée Musical, founded in 1829 by André-Hippolyte Chélard,
12 Fauquet, Dictionnaire, 66. did manage to put on concerts for some years, after the opening concert of August 26, 1829, in the Salle Saint-Jean in the Hôtel de Ville, apparently with the financial and moral support of the then Préfet de la Seine, Gaspard de Chabrol de Volvic, in what may have been a small demonstration of municipal independence from the government of the state.
The Gymnase-Lyrique, the Athénée Musical, and even the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire were organizations distant from the mainstream of early nineteenth-century French musical life, which flowed through the capital’s three major opera houses: the Opéra, the Théâtre-Italien, and the Opéra-Comique. The last-mentioned theater, though frequently in financial difficulty during the period with which we are concerned, was central to the hopes of young composers desirous of presenting their new music. For many years, from the Restoration through the July Monarchy, efforts were thus made by various groups and individuals to establish a second Opéra-Comique: we find a number of such proposals both in the press and in the archives.
13 AnF, F21 1092. In 1828, some of the artists mentioned above, this time led by Berlioz’s friend from the Théâtre de l’Odéon and the Théâtre des Nouveautés, the violinist-conductor Nathan Bloc, appealed directly to the Minister of the Interior to obtain government support for such a new theater. The petition cited below, signed by twenty-five French composers, including fifteen former winners of the Prix de Rome, was addressed to Comte de Martignac, Minister of the Interior from January 1828 through August 1929:
The Fine Arts are in need of protection. But one art in particular needs greater assistance than all the others. By some unfortunate turn of fate, not only is music not properly supported, but it is and has long been barred from seeking the means to support itself on its own. If you were to accord to us your august protection, all young composers would owe you an eternal debt of gratitude.
There exist in Paris only two theaters that are licensed to present new French operas: the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique. These two theaters normally perform works by composers who are already well known. Those young composers who graduate from our conservatories, and those who win the Grand Prize awarded by the Institut de France, after having worked assiduously for long years and after having long dreamed of riches and renown, see themselves reduced to poverty or oblivion because of the impossible situation in which they find themselves, unable as they are to make their works known to the public. How they envy the lot of the painters and the sculptors! Every year the museums open their doors to all of those who have even a modicum of talent. But while the exhibition of a handsome canvas or a beautiful statue can enable a previously unknown artist to establish a reputation, the musician alone is condemned to silence—and this because the requirement of official authorization prevents all theaters other than the Opéra and Opéra-Comique from performing his work. Thus we find that France, first in the realm of the Arts and Sciences, is, uniquely in the realm of music, inferior to both Germany and Italy.
Do not think, Monseigneur, that our nation is lacking in musical genius. It is rather lacking only in the means of putting such genius on display. Were you to wish it, young French musicians would, in a few short years, be able to stand proudly beside their rivals, because the esteemed masters who have taught them the secrets of their art are unequaled elsewhere in Europe.
Germany and Italy each have a hundred cities, and each city has several theaters in which a young composer can test his abilities before the public and profit from the lessons of experience. Only in France are there but two lyric theaters.
All musicians thus trust that, in you, their hopes will not be disappointed.
14 AnF, F21 1092.The copy of the petition preserved in the archives omits the signatures. But Berlioz was close to the Swiss-born violinist at the time: Bloc conducted the orchestra for Berlioz’s inaugural concert of May 26, 1828, prepared the orchestra for the
Symphonie fantastique,
in May 1830, when the performance had to be canceled
in extremis, and remained in contact with the composer through the end of that year and beyond, even after leaving Paris to become the conductor of the Société de Musique de Genève, in 1831, and, in 1835, the founding director of the Conservatoire de Genève. Furthermore, when Bloc wrote to a correspondent who was as interested as he in ameliorating the lot of the young composer, on November 10, 1829, Berlioz acted as his scribe!
15 “Bloc” to an unnamed addressee (November 10, 1829), CG 8:49. So we may be certain that Berlioz was one of the “collègues” Bloc mentions in the letter cited below. In two essentially identical letters, addressed to two successive Ministers of the Interior and dated October 11, 1829, and January 1830, Bloc resubmitted his original 1828 petition, along with a letter of support from the Section de Musique of the Académie des Beaux-Arts:
Monseigneur,
For a long time, young composers have been in a most unfortunate situation. In order to better their standing, they resolved to address a petition to His Excellency the Minister of the Interior and respectfully to request that he graciously give the authorization necessary such that another theater, in addition to the Opéra-Comique, be permitted to present their works.
I write to you today, Monseigneur, in the name of my colleagues, respectfully to request that you act favorably upon this petition, persuaded as I am of your willingness to protect all that is useful and just. Such a favorable action will be met by all composers with lasting gratitude.
16 AnF, F21 1092 (October 29, 1830).Many such requests for performance opportunities for young French composers were put to the administration at the time. In the Revue musicale, F.-J. Fétis proposed a detailed scheme for opening several new theaters in the main cities of the departments, anticipating by more than one hundred fifty years the artistic “décentralisation” that was in vogue in France during the mid-nineteen-eighties and that to this day rises to the top of one or another political leader’s cultural agenda. That Berlioz wished to administer a theater of his own in 1838 is now better known than it once was (this is the subject of chapter 4); that he had joined his efforts to those of others, ten years earlier, is a less-familiar fact of his student years in Paris.
It is noteworthy that Nathan Bloc’s petition calls attention to the relatively happy lot of painters and sculptors, to whom the doors of the museums were regularly open and from whom purchases by the government were regularly made. The notion of becoming known—of being able to put their work before the public, with government assistance—was thus especially attractive to young composers. (Franz Liszt would later propose an ambitious government-sponsored system of musical commission and performance roughly modeled on the annual salon system for painters and sculptors.)
17 Wangermée, “Conscience et inconsciences,” 564–566. Had the administration accepted some of the musical reforms that were proposed by a Commission on the Arts in their September 1830 report to the Minister of the Interior,
18 Revue musicale, 9 (September 4, 1830): 113–117. nineteenth-century French musicians might have enjoyed more celebrity. In particular, had “officialdom” been willing to simply relax the strict system of limited authorizations, or
privilèges,
that restricted the performance of new French works to essentially two theaters—allowing the Théâtre de l’Odéon, for example, to produce opera as well as spoken drama (as Berlioz had explicitly hoped they would), allowing the lesser venues to put on works with new music—then the composer of
Les Francs-Juges and a host of others might have had more opportunities to hear their music in performance. In fact, the system of
privilèges,
designed to preserve the prosperity of the main houses, persisted until 1864.