Rameau

“ Still I am bound to say that both in verse and prose Gustave Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste of the day, and therefore he is coming into vogue. So much as to his writings; as to his wickedness, you have only to look at him to feel sure that he is not a hundredth part so wicked as he wishes to seem. In a word, then, M. Gustave Rameau is a type of that somewhat numerous class among the youth of Paris, which I call ‘the lost Tribe of Absinthe.’ There is a set of men who begin to live full gallop while they are still boys. ”

“ I, Rameau, son of Rameau, the apothecary of Dijon, who is a good man and never yet bent his knee to a creature in the world! I, Rameau, who have composed pieces for the piano that nobody plays, but which will perhaps be the only pieces ever to reach posterity, and posterity will play them—I, I, must go! Stay, sir, it cannot be [and striking his right hand on his breast, he went on:] I feel here something that rises and tells me: Never, Rameau, never. There must be a certain dignity attached to human nature that nothing can stifle ”

“ Having taken this resolution, the D'Alonville spoke peremptorily, and told Rameau to show him some part of the castle least liable to observation from without. It was some time before Rameau could be made to comprehend him.—At last he led the way up a great stair-case to a gallery, trembling at every step he took and looking wildly around him.—The faint light he held, served only to render the dilapidated state of these gloomy, but once magnificent apartments, more visible. ”

“ There is a sort of instinctive freemasonry among us, including masters and disciples; and one art has a fellowship with other arts. Mine is but song and music, yet I feel attracted towards a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a poet, as much as towards a singer, a musician. Do you understand why I cannot contemn M. Rameau as you do? I differ from his tastes in literature; I do not much admire such of his writings as I have read; I grant that he overestimates his own genius, whatever that be,—yet I like to converse with him. ”

“ In temperament as in brain, Rameau belongs to another period. He is a bourgeois of the old school, positive and severe, of Cartesian education, the very last man to run after sentimental will o' the wisps and idyllic illusions. In that lofty and firm soul there is no nook for pastorals. But he is a very great artist with a quick and piercing eye, quick at probing the meaning of what lies around him, seizing passionately its appeal and grace, transforming it into rich material for his art, and appreciating it rather with the heart than the intellect. ”

“ It is true my composition, unequal and without rule, was sometimes sublime, and at others insipid, as that of a person who forms himself in an art by the soarings of his own genius, unsupported by science, must necessarily be. Rameau pretended to see nothing in me but a contemptible pilferer, without talents or taste. The rest of the company, among whom I must distinguish the master of the house, were of a different opinion. ”

“ The meetings of that Council had been so long suspended that Rameau had almost forgotten its existence. He gave orders to admit the conspirators. The two men entered, the Pole, tall, stalwart, and with martial stride—the Italian, small, emaciated, with skulking, noiseless, cat-like step, both looking wondrous threadbare, and in that state called "shabby genteel," which belongs to the man who cannot work for his livelihood, and assumes a superiority over the man who can. ”

“ With Rameau, at any rate in his best work, there is nothing of this. The great expressions whether vocal or instrumental arise from the actual progress of the sentiment and of the dialogue, with such spontaneity that one feels their elevating effect without having, so to speak, noticed it. The listener is out on the ocean of music without having been conscious of leaving the shore. The composer, carried away by the exaltation of the passion he is translating into music lets himself go and plies his tools joyfully on his material Sound. ”

“ The stars, the stars! When nature made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni, she wore a smile; her face was solemn and commanding when she created my dear uncle Rameau, who for ten years has been called the great Rameau, and who will soon be named no more. But when she scraped his nephew together, she made a face and a face and a face.— (And as he spoke he made grimaces, one of contempt, one of irony, one of scorn. He went through the motions of kneading dough, and smiled at the ludicrous forms he gave it. Then he threw the strange pagoda from him.) ”

“ Rameau was not physically a coward—very few Frenchmen are, still fewer Parisians; and still fewer no matter what their birthplace, the men whom we call vain—the men who over-much covet distinction, and over-much dread reproach. ”

“ Before he had thoroughly learned the laws of harmony, Rameau, as yet a beardless youth, yielded to the law laid down by the little winged god whose name is Cupid. He fell madly in love with a widow who was his neighbor. Everybody knows that nothing exercises a more unfortunate or more beneficial influence over the mind of a young lover than the advice given him by the woman he loves. ”

“ Rameau as painter of warlike pageants, of the sports of athletes and soldiers, is just as great, perhaps more so. Perhaps Mars inspires him with even more life than Venus, and fills him with more enthusiasm. The interlude in the first act is extraordinary in its power and virile gaiety. In particular, the air for the athletes, "sound forth, proud trumpets" is remarkable for a strength, a burst of rhythm, and a flame of melody to which I find nothing comparable in other masters. ”

“ I have emphasised Rameau's high qualities of dramatic expression, because it often happens that they are not recognised, and he is represented as a great symphonist who strayed into opera. I think I have shewn on the contrary that the same basis of musical wealth from which his symphonic inspiration draws its nourishment, provides also the eloquence, variety and fine shades of his dramatic expression. ”

“ Rameau-d'or's young companion slid from his horse, and the two advanced together toward the ladies.
"My friend Baron Michel encouraged me to hope, mesdemoiselles, that your father, the Marquis de Souday, would grant us hospitality," said the Comte de Bonneville, bowing to the two girls.
"My father is absent, monsieur," replied Bertha. "He will regret having lost this occasion to exercise a virtue which in these days we cannot often practise." ”

“ I dislike that sort of writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, and in which young Rameau excels. He has the knack of finding very exaggerated phrases by which to express commonplace thoughts. He writes verses about love in words so stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon Semele; but when you examine his words, as a sober pathologist like myself is disposed to do, your fear for the peace of households vanishes,—they are Fox et proeterea nihil; no man really in love would use them. He writes prose about the wrongs of humanity. You feel for humanity ”

“ The great masters, on the other hand, in their strength, have always gloried in striking them, without petty precautions or beating about the bush—striking them again and again through long passages, in conformity with the robust decision and majestic gait of their thought. No one, not even the author of the Heroic Symphony and the Symphony in C Minor, has put more energy than Rameau into this familiar and superb handling of what might be called the fundamentals of the world of sound. ”

“ What is certain is that for Frenchmen nothing could be more heavy, hampering, scholastic and crushing. Nothing could be more unsuited to our alert temperaments. The recitative that suits us is one that follows Nature with simplicity and has the lure of spontaneity of expression and of freshness due to continuous inventions. That is Rameau's way and it is, let me repeat, far more difficult to get hold of. ”

“ No lack of eloquence and sentiment there.”
“I am rather tired of eloquence and sentiment,” said Enguerrand. “Your editor, Gustave Rameau, sickens me of them with his ‘Starlit Meditations in the Streets of Paris,’ morbid imitations of Heine’s enigmatical ‘Evening Songs.’ Your journal would be perfect if you could suppress the editor.”
“Suppress Gustave Rameau!” cried Bernard, the painter; “I adore his poems, full of heart for poor suffering humanity.”
“Suffering humanity so far as it is packed up in himself,” said the physician, dryly,—“and a great deal of the suffering is bile. ”

“ All people have thorns in their path, and I have no great respect for those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever they are scratched. But M. Rameau seems to me one of those writers very common nowadays, in France and even in England; writers who have never read anything worth studying, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their ignorance. ”

“ How we should like to be in the confidence of the artist himself about the long, hidden portion of his life which preceded this period of brilliance! But, so far from being allowed to know the history of his mind, we have only the most imperfect knowledge of his outward life during the twenty years that passed between the moment when he left the paternal roof and his definitely establishing himself in Paris.
The son of Jean Rameau, organist at the church of St. Etienne at Dijon, he began his classical studies at the Jesuit College in that town. ”

“ Again, Rousseau, in his forcible tract on French [Pg 236] music, says of Rameau, from whose school Grétry’s music was such a significant departure—
“One must confess that M. Rameau possesses very great talent, much fire and euphony, and a considerable knowledge of harmonious combinations and effects; one must also grant him the art of appropriating the ideas of others by changing their character, adorning and developing them, and turning them around in all manner of ways. On the other hand, he shows less facility in inventing new ones. ”

“ For the present, confreres, you are relieved. Remain only you, dear young author."
CHAPTER VII. Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no longer moody and overcast,—his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph; there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable, excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,—especially when it nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a secret society ”

“ The technical doctrine of Rameau is set forth in the Treatise on Harmony reduced to its Natural Principle which appeared in 1722 and in Harmonic Generation, issued in 1737. These are Rameau's two principal theoretical works. They find their complement in a long series of dissertations and monographs published from year to year in reply to criticisms, to clear up or to develop points on which discussion had arisen. ”

“ The absence in his works of personality and of fine writing, then so common with musical authors, is the more striking as he had great command of language and thoroughly enjoyed discussion. His active pen was exercised in almost all branches of music—composition, theory, criticism, and history. Of his theoretical works the most celebrated are—the 'Handbuch beim Generalbasse, und der Composition,' founded on Rameau's system (3 parts, 1757–8, Berlin) ”

“ Le Docteur Rameau is, at least towards its close, one of the most ambitious, if not the most ambitious of all its author's books. The hero is one of those atheistic and republican physicians who are apt rather to embêter us by their frequency in French novels. He is thrown into the also familiar situation of ascertaining, after his wife's death, that she has been false, and that his daughter, of whom he is very fond, is probably or certainly not his own. ”

“ He is barely alive. These riches you speak about are imaginary. We have fields, cattle, a schooner; take them for the Republic, but, monsieur, my father has injured no one."
Petithomme Laguerre reseated himself in the hammock and swung himself idly, his bare soles scuffing the hard earthen floor; he continued to eye Pierrine.
Now that young Rameau had brought himself to beg, he fell to his knees and went on: "I swear to you that we are not traitors. Never have we spoken against the government. We are 'colored,' yes, but the black people love us. ”

“ While the older contrapuntists were perfectly satisfied with the laws which regulated the melodious involutions of their vocal and instrumental parts, Rameau demonstrated the possibility of building up a natural harmony upon a fundamental bass, and of using that harmony as an authority for the enactment of whatever laws might be considered necessary for the guidance either of the contrapuntist or the less ambitious general composer. ”

“ Rameau and Wagner have given to their symphonic music the character of real plastic creations. I am not saying that they are descriptive writers; that term would be weak, or rather the idea would be inaccurate. An act of the imagination is involved that is far deeper and stronger than description. In these masters the poetic impressions of spectacles of nature and fancy inspire musical forms that have as much boldness in rhythm as simplicity in melody, and shew a wonderful relief. They might well be called syntheses by music. ”