Part 4 (1/2)

Unnecessary to describe the civic honours showered on me in return.

At length I got into the second cla.s.s, and found myself once again under my beloved former master, Adolphe Regnier, who had taught me while I was in the sixth.

Among my new comrades were Eugene Despois, afterwards a brilliant pupil at the ecole Normale, and a well-known cla.s.sic, Octave Ducros de Sixt, and Albert Delacourtie, the high-minded and clever lawyer, still one of my closest and most faithful friends. We four practically monopolised the top places, the ”Banc d'Honneur.”

At Easter I was considered sufficiently advanced to warrant my being transferred to the Rhetoric cla.s.s;[2] but I only remained in it three months, as my studies had been sufficiently satisfactory for my mother finally to abandon her idea of extra cla.s.ses.

I left the Lycee at the summer vacation, being then a little over seventeen.

Still I had not pa.s.sed through the Philosophy cla.s.s, and my mother had no intention of allowing me to leave my education incomplete. It was therefore agreed and arranged that I was to go on working at home, and, without interrupting my musical studies, to read for my Bachelor of Arts degree, which I succeeded in taking within the year.

I have often regretted that I did not take a science degree as well. I should thus have made acquaintance at an early age with many ideas whose importance I only realised later in life, and my ignorance of which I much regret. But time was running short. I had to set to work if I was to win the Grand Prix de Rome, as I had promised; it was a matter of life or death for my career. So there was not a moment to be lost.

Reicha being just dead, I was bereft of my instructor. The idea of taking me to Cherubini, and asking him to put me into one of the composition cla.s.ses at the Conservatoire, struck my mother. I took some of my exercise books under my arm, to give Cherubini some notion of what Reicha had taught me. But he did not think fit to look at them. He questioned me closely about my past, and as soon as he knew I had been a pupil of Reicha's (although the latter had been a colleague of his at the Conservatoire), he said to my mother--

”Very well; now he must begin all over again. I don't approve of Reicha's style. He was a German, and this boy ought to follow the Italian method. I shall put him under my pupil Halevy, to work at counterpoint and fugue.”

Cherubini's view was that the Italian school followed the only orthodox system of music, as laid down by Palestrina, whereas the Germans look upon Sebastian Bach as the high priest of harmony.

Far from being discouraged by this decision, I was only too delighted.

”All the better,” said I to myself; and to my mother, later on, ”It will be great advantage to me. I can choose the best points of both the great schools. It is all for the best.”

I joined Halevy's cla.s.s, and at the same time Cherubini put me into the hands of Berton, the author of ”Montano and Stephanie,” and a varied collection of other works of high value, who was to instruct me in lyrical composition.

Berton was a man of quick wit, kindly and refined. He was a great admirer of Mozart, whose works he constantly recommended to the attention of his old pupils.

”Study Mozart,” he was always saying; ”study the 'Nozze de Figaro!'”

He was quite right. That work should be every musician's text-book.

Mozart bears the same relation to Palestrina and Bach as the New Testament bears to the Old, in Holy Writ.

When Berton died, as he did a couple of months after I joined his cla.s.s, Cherubini handed me over to Le Sueur, the composer of ”Les Bardes,” ”La Caverne,” and of many ma.s.ses and oratorios.

He was a man of grave and reserved character, but fervent and almost biblical in inspiration, and devoted to sacred subjects. He looked like an old patriarch, with his tall figure and waxen complexion.

Le Sueur received me with the greatest kindness, almost amounting to paternal tenderness; he was very affectionate and warm-hearted. I was only under him, I regret to say, for nine or ten months; but the period, short as it was, was of incalculable benefit to me. The wise and high-minded counsels he bestowed on me ent.i.tle him to an honoured place in my memory and my grateful affection.

Under Halevy's guidance I re-learned the whole theory and practice of counterpoint and fugue; but although I worked hard, and gained my master's approval, I never won a prize at the Conservatoire. My one and constant aim was that Grand Prix de Rome, which I had sworn to win at any cost.

I was nearly nineteen when I first competed for it. I got the second prize.

On the death of Le Sueur I continued to study under Paer, his successor as Professor of Composition.

I tried again the following year. My poor mother was torn between hope and fear. This time it must be either the Grand Prix or nothing! Alas!

it was the latter; and I was just twenty, the age when my military service was due.