Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/229



I do not think I have denied to Wagner any of his charms. I have owed to his art much enjoyment which I am very far from disdaining. But if I am asked what our art (apart from technical lessons, as I have said before) might advantageously borrow from him, according to my very humble opinion, I reply at once, "Nothing." Our life-giving streams are elsewhere.

Is that to say that his effect on French musicians has had no beneficial quality? Not at all! He administered a salutary shock. When he came on the scene French music was at a very low ebb. The period which extends from 1820 or 1825 to about 1865 was that of its lowest depression since it first began. Except for Berlioz, who had fine talent but was an ineffective musician, and some delightful comic operas by Auber, it was a period of utter emptiness, that is if one admits that replicas in plaster and sham glories based on successes of coarse quality are really equivalent to emptiness. It is possible, that our art would have recovered itself quite well, (and I believe it would have done so) without the help of Wagner. Still, the universal attention that he attracted by works of which the least one can say is that they gloriously raised again the fallen flag of true music, brought comfort and support to that generation of young French musicians, who were proposing to undertake the same restoration. They included Bizet, Lalo, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, César Franck. But these were hardly the men to wish to imitate him.