HAYDN: The Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

Volume 2 Number 1 Spring 2012 Article 9

March 2012

Reviving the Classic, Inventing Memory: Haydn's Reception in Fin- de-Siècle France

Jess Tyre

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Recommended Citation Tyre, Jess (2012) "Reviving the Classic, Inventing Memory: Haydn's Reception in Fin-de-Siècle France," HAYDN: The Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America: Vol. 2 : No. 1 , Article 9. Available at: https://remix.berklee.edu/haydn-journal/vol2/iss1/9

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Research Media and Information Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in HAYDN: The Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America by an authorized editor of Research Media and Information Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Reviving the Classic, Inventing Memory: Haydn’s Reception in Fin-de- Siècle France1

Jess Tyre

Abstract

Haydn’s French reception between 1870 and 1914 reflects a central concern of the era’s music criticism: the revival of a classical aesthetic within a post-romantic context. But which, or whose classicism was intended? Examination of contemporary French periodicals reveals a tension within the élite world of the concert hall: between the socially conservative advocates of Viennese classicism –

Haydn’s music representing the standard – and supporters of a nationalistic, culturally progressive nouveau classicisme designed to rejuvenate a specifically

French style without merely imitating eighteenth-century forms.

While most scholars have located Haydn’s reception in France logically on one side of this divide, sources suggest a more nuanced interpretation is needed.

Concert reviews show that, while audiences enjoyed Haydn’s music, many critics, habituated to Beethoven and Wagner, questioned the relevance of an “old- fashioned” style redolent of the defunct milieu of the ancien régime. Among the bourgeois concert-goers of the Third Republic, however, Haydn’s music fired nostalgia for pre-revolutionary France, and triggered the projection of false memories of an aristocratic past that had never existed for their eighteenth- century ancestors. Combined additionally with literary and visual associations,

Haydn’s music strengthened constructs of republican French identity and historical validation for the new ruling class. Yet the tension between

“classicisms” remained, as exemplified by the problematic results obtained by composers such as Debussy, d’Indy, and Dukas, who tried to integrate their respective styles with Haydn’s in works commissioned by the Société

Internationale de Musique for the composer’s centenary in 1909.

Introduction

“Haydn possessed an astonishing Attic sensibility, analogous to that of the

French writers of the past.” Such was the opinion of Camille Saint-Saëns, who claimed that, like the best of seventeenth-century French literature, Haydn’s works remained classic in the Greek sense because they unfold eternally “in the moment.” Yet, interesting though Haydn’s art was, it never seemed particularly moving or provocative to the French composer. It contained neither

Shakespearean nor Byronic elements, noted Saint-Saëns admiringly, chiefly because, “Haydn was not an agitator.” He did not stir the waters, and never wished to upset his audiences, especially not simply for the sake of doing so. This attitude was paramount for the creation of music, according to Saint-Saëns, who considered unacceptable any interest in overexciting or disturbing listeners, and who warned: “The search for agitation or sensation, when it becomes the sole end of music, kills it in no time.”2

Saint-Saëns’s comments neatly summarize the French response to Haydn during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two fundamental perspectives

2 emerge from the French composer’s statements. First, in early-Third-Republic

France (from roughly 1870 to 1914), Haydn was recognized not only as a leading representative of Viennese Classicism, but as a figure within the more specifically

French classicisme of the past and its modern offshoot, nouveau classicisme.

Second, Haydn was considered a figure of stability, unlike the Romantics whom

Saint-Saëns claimed were killing music with their search for novelty. This article delves into these points by considering the French critique of the composer within the context of a resurgent Classicism, and pays special attention to French reinterpretations of Haydn’s art through the musical tributes created for the 1909 commemoration. It concludes by examining the socio-political significance of the composer’s image as it was conceived in the French discourse on Haydn.

The French idea of Haydn derived from reactions to the works of his most publicly projected voice—the symphonies and oratorios—and so reviews of orchestral concerts provide the greatest resource for exploring the post-Second

Empire reception. Sources from the period—journals and newspapers such as the scholarly but eclectic La Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris, the broad-based Le

Courrier Musical, the republican Le Temps, the guardedly liberal La Revue des

Deux Mondes, or the most comprehensive, Le Ménestrel—reveal that Haydn was considered the most important classicist informing the early music revival at the turn of the twentieth century.3 In spite of the popularity of this revival, Haydn’s music received its share of negative criticism. For some reviewers, the composers’ achievements were old fashioned and passé, his contrapuntal expertise slightly redolent of a Baroque taste alien to modern sensibilities. To others, his genius

3 seemed inconsistent, yet somehow predictable. Most importantly for turn-of-the- century critics, Haydn’s music lacked a dramatic depth made requisite by

Beethoven’s symphonies. Interestingly, the originality and beauty of Haydn’s melodies, the crisp clarity and effectiveness of his orchestration, were never faulted, and above all, the verve and élan of his music continued to succeed with audiences and critics throughout the period covering 1870-1914.

That musicians and journalists who came to maturity in the hothouse atmosphere of Romantic, mid-nineteenth-century France should have passed such judgments upon Haydn seems entirely reasonable. (Arthur Pougin,

Hippolyte Barbedette, Jules Jemain, and Amédée Boutarel are among the professional critics considered in this article.) Yet these opinions were not unique to the period, for they reflect the influence of earlier critics such as Berlioz and

Castil-Blaze; nor were they necessarily prompted by the contemporary aesthetic climate alone.4 Indeed, French reviewers had come to some of the same conclusions about Haydn years before musical Romanticism gained momentum in France. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, for example, critics had already identified a dated quality in Haydn, as well as in Mozart, while descriptions of an overly complex learnedness appear in reviews of both composers’ music as far back as the 1770s.5

Thus, responses to Haydn in fin-de-siècle France had their precedents, and to a degree they represent a continuation of the composer’s earliest reception, adapted to suit contemporary Republican and Modernist ends. Major

4 developments in mid- and late-nineteenth-century European music also significantly inflected Haydn's reception. A number of opposing factors occurred in conjunction with a new focus upon the classical qualities valued in Haydn.

Among these were prevailing conservative trends and strong nostalgia for the past fueled by the advance of historicism; the emergence of a modern French musical aesthetic, especially strengthened after 1870; evolving reception of the new music composed by Debussy and others of his generation; and reaction to the triumph of Wagnerism and Wagnerian style. Against this dynamic, Janus-like backdrop, Haydn now recalled a bygone pre-revolutionary era that was fading from the collective French memory. By 1900, Haydn seemed more archaic and remote than ever before, even if his music had only gained in popularity over time. With the surging interest in Classical and early music that swept France in the first decade of the twentieth century, a generation of listeners and critics

“rediscovered” eighteenth-century works as if they were artifacts from an archeological dig. In fact, Haydn’s music had never been “lost,” but had remained a staple in the repertory of French orchestras throughout the nineteenth century.

In his study of the Austro-German nineteenth-century reception of Haydn, Leon

Botstein has shown how the composer was “deified into irrelevance.”6 As this paper demonstrates, the situation in France was somewhat different. For the

French construct of Haydn presented an example for a bourgeoisie in need of an identity, and an anchor for assumptions about culture and art. Haydn symbolized a world increasingly misremembered at the fin-de-siècle. Conceived nostalgically as a figure of order and control, his works definitive representations of beauty,

5 charm, and elegance, he was thought of as a self-made man of taste, and so

Haydn embodied a chief aim of the bourgeoisie: the acquisition of judgment necessary for the justification of power.

I. Classicism Resurgent: Haydn’s Popularity in the French Concert Hall

Histories of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire by Arthur Dandelot,

Édouard Deldevez, and most recently, D. Kern Holoman have documented performances, and hence the popularity, of Haydn’s music in nineteenth-century

France.7 As early as 1829, the Conservatoire Orchestra’s second season opened with a concert dedicated entirely to Haydn featuring excerpts from The Creation and The Seasons.8 Between 1843 and 1848, Parisians heard the Conservatoire perform many of the symphonies, nos. 90, 94 ("Surprise"), 99, 100 ("Military"), and 103 ("Drum Roll") among them.9 By 1850, "La Reine" (no. 85) and all of the

"London" symphonies except nos. 96 and 97 were part of the Conservatoire’s repertoire.10 In 1862, the Société des Concerts premiered the Symphony No. 82

("The Bear"), and in the following season introduced No. 92 ("Oxford").11

Examination of contemporary periodicals shows that between 1870 and 1914 the

Société des Concerts played nos. 88, 91, 95, and 102 most frequently, with each performed at least three times, followed by nos. 94, 96 ("Miracle"), 97, and 104

("London"), all performed twice. During the same period, Pasdeloup’s Concerts

Populaires and the Concerts Colonne further increased Haydn’s presence on the scene. Program listings show they regularly scheduled nos. 85, 99, and 100 along with some of the same works presented by the Conservatoire.

6 A brief survey of performances from the early and late years under discussion suggests Haydn’s music received almost constant attention between 1870 and

1914. French orchestras continued patterns established by the Société des

Concerts in the 1830s and 1840s. Only slightly more than a handful of works, mainly symphonies, maintained the composer’s position in concert programming. For example, between 1872 and 1875 the Concerts Populaires performed sixteen different Haydn works, including Symphonies nos. 85, 88,

100, and 102, excerpts from the same and other symphonies, and selections from string quartets, performed by “tous les cordes.” Six of these works received multiple performances. During the same period, both the Conservatoire and the

Concerts Populaires performed excerpts from The Seasons, Colonne’s Concert-

National scheduled the "Surprise" Symphony two years in a row, and the Danbé

Orchestra programmed the "Military" Symphony during the same season (1873-

74) that Pasdeloup’s group played it twice. Taking into account the fact that most orchestras repeated programs within a span of two weeks, it was possible to hear music by Haydn nearly every week during these years.

Programs from 1904-1908 show fewer of Haydn’s works performed in later years, and the practice of playing excerpts seems to have declined. Among the symphonies, only nos. 94, 97, and the Symphony in C, inédite (Hob. I.c3), were heard with any frequency.12 The oratorios, however, received more attention. The

Conservatoire featured complete performances of The Seasons in 1904 and The

Creation in 1907, while the Lamoureux Orchestra also presented The Creation in

7 1907. These few items preserved Haydn’s canonical significance and reflect some measure of continuing interest over time.

II. Classicism Resurgent: Haydn Popular and New

In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, Haydn’s music appeared on

Parisian symphonic concert programs roughly 100 times. During the same period

Beethoven’s was scheduled 659 times, Mendelssohn’s, 482, Wagner’s, 431, and

Schumann’s, 302 times. The Romantic repertory clearly dominated the scene, yet change was in the wind by 1900, as evinced by the reaction of journalist

Raymond Bouyer to Anton Rubinstein’s prediction of music’s imminent demise.

In 1892 Rubinstein had written that, with the deaths of Schumann and Chopin, nothing beautiful or profound remained to be composed, especially in the realm of instrumental music. For now, after Wagner, orchestral color had overtaken melody, technique had become more important than idea, form superior to content.13 But Bouyer, a supporter of the Impressionist movement and known for his books on Berlioz and Chopin, saw a remarkable phenomenon emerging as a counterbalance. Works by Bach, Haydn, and Mozart were increasingly performed in concert halls, taught in conservatories, and discussed in music journals throughout France. Seasoned musicians, scholars of the old school, and now young members of the French avant-garde had pledged new allegiance to the classics. This was a striking development, for the avant-garde, which by definition never looked back, now advocated a return to tradition.14

8 Bouyer’s perception of growing enthusiasm for Haydn’s music may have been based on a sense of greater critical and scholarly interest, rather than on the number of actual performances. Nothing less than the resurrection of ancient music, specifically that of the eighteenth century, was underway, in Bouyer’s opinion. More than merely a snobbish reaction to the social habits of the musical establishment, the reemergence of Classicism appeared characteristic of all

French art in the opening years of the twentieth century. Bouyer argued that, in painting, the revolution of Impressionism was over, while in visual media, décor, and architecture, art nouveau was showing signs of age. In literature, a new generation of writers more interested in Racine had rejected symbolisme and vers libre. Even the exhibits at the most recent Expositions had avoided references to modern styles. Only yesterday, recalled Bouyer, novelty had been synonymous with beauty, and all that had mattered in art was innovation. Now, the “faithful” (“les fidèles”) had come home; in the world of music the “true religion” (“une vraie religion”) of Bach, Mozart, and Haydn had triumphed.15

Many “Classicisms” were in circulation during the period, and it is necessary to draw their distinctions, especially between “Viennese Classicism” (or “German

Classicism” or “Austro-German Classicism”) and French nouveau classicisme.

Complicating matters was the term “les classiques,” used by French journalists to describe the finest examples of the Austro-German musical tradition: Bach,

Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven. This confusion overlooked many distinctions of style and genre, as well as the broader European scope of musical

Classicism as a whole.

9

Scott Messing has helped untangle the differences.16 The resurgence of classicisme in French art was largely motivated by a new generation of poets and authors who wished to liberate themselves from the influence of Romantic aesthetics, which they considered German in nature, and antithetical to the

French character. Labeled the École romane by the writer Jean Moréas in 1891, these artists sought to restore Greco-Latin ideals they traced back to medieval trouvères, qualities they claimed were then passed down to the nineteenth century by Ronsard, Racine, and La Fontaine. According to Moréas, “it was

Romanticism which perverted the [classical] principle in conception as well as in style, thus frustrating the French Muses of their legitimate heritage. . . . The École romane renews the Gallic bond, broken by Romanticism and its Parnassian, naturalistic, and Symbolist descendants.”17 Writings by members of the École, which included Charles Maurras, Raymond de la Tailhède, Ernest Raynaud, and

Maurice du Plessys, exhibit renewed commitment to older French verse forms, a rejection of Symbolist literature, and the rejuvenation of what were considered the characteristically French attributes of clarity, formal perfection, and straightforward, sincere expression.18

This nouveau classicisme embraced an eighteenth-century understanding of ancient Greek art, its advocates appropriating Greco-Roman antiquity for a nationalist agenda.19 Putting aside the question why the aforementioned qualities should be considered particularly or exclusively French, it is clear they could be applied to Haydn’s music, and comments by contemporary critics such

10 as Henri Ghéon suggest a purposely drawn connection between French and

Viennese classicisms. Ghéon (Henri-Léon Vangeon) wrote for a number of periodicals in the early twentieth century, including L’Ermitage, Mercure de

France, Nouvelle Revue Française, and La Revue Blanche. He strongly supported modern artists such as Debussy, Dukas, and Stravinsky, yet believed the past could not be swept away. Comparing Mozart’s achievements to current musical developments in 1912, Ghéon wrote, “We still need pure song, less charged with innuendo, less weighed down with commentaries. It is not always necessary to portray the most ravaged spirits, somberly oppressed by the problem of fate.”20 Though referring to Mozart, the statement might just as easily defend

Haydn’s even-keeled expressivity and lyrical charm. Reacting to the angst of the

German Romantics, as well as to the subtlety of the modern French School,

Ghéon implies a return to, possibly a rapprochement with, Viennese Classicism in a post-Romantic world, and hints at the more concretized nouveau classicisme proposed in Jean Cocteau’s Le Coq et Le Harlequin.

Considering the issue from a somewhat less ideological perspective, Bouyer wondered if the Parisian taste for variety might account for the new interest in musical classicism. In 1901, he pointed out that young listeners were discovering

Haydn’s works because they sounded so refreshingly different to ears accustomed to more extravagant, modern sounds.21 By 1908, he was basing the revival on listeners’ reactions to current developments in the orchestra and in orchestration.

Bouyer believed the evolution of orchestral techniques alternated between periods of creative exploration and consolidation. He claimed that after the

11 opulence of the Baroque, a period of retrospection and reorganization in the arts had emerged. A systemization of ideas and techniques marked the resulting stage of stability, which eventually achieved universal acceptance. In the history of orchestration, Bouyer wrote, “this period did not arrive at its apogee until after

1750, with Haydn.”22

Following an era of unparalleled growth and creativity sparked largely by the accomplishments of Beethoven, orchestration had reached a “wagnéro- straussienne” apex by the turn of the twentieth century. Who, Bouyer wondered, could surpass the lavish sounds of Death and Transfiguration, The Sorcerer’s

Apprentice, and La Mer? A reaction against modern orchestration’s extravagances was sure to follow, and already the signs of a resurgent Classical manner of instrumentation appeared on the horizon:

From now on, musical art, as all the other arts, takes refuge in intimacy.

Contemporary works have an air of being obscurely illuminated by the

gloom of a thunderstorm. . . . They speak in a low voice, almost

mysteriously. They seek less the great pandemonium of Liszt’s symphonic

poems, and their remarkable, original heirs in Russian music, than subtle

contemplation, and the rarer combinations among the lightest timbres;

hence, the reborn vogue for Mozart and Rameau, for the old who were

once the young.23

12 Here Bouyer seems to be observing a new desire for less overt, less demonstrative musical creations, and a relationship between the luminosity of Impressionism and the clarity of Classicism. He claimed that, while technical advancements in orchestration and performance may have expanded the tone palette of composers since Haydn’s time, the exorbitant, mannered results often lacked soul and inspiration.

This viewpoint, also held by French critics such as Romain Rolland and Lionel de la Laurencie, is already reflected in writings predating Bouyer’s claims of a

Classical “resurrection.” In an article of 1895, Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin presented a concise history of symphonic orchestration that praised the wealth of sound found in Bach, Haydn, Sammartini, and Lully, but he barely recognized the importance of Beethoven and Wagner, and entirely ignored the contributions of nineteenth-century French composers.24 One year earlier, the critic Hippolyte

Barbedette had complained that modern orchestral techniques revealed a misunderstanding of the difference between specifically musical tone (sonorité) and sound used merely for effect. “Sonority is something else,” wrote Barbedette,

“something entirely relative. There is more sonority in a quartet by Beethoven, or even by Haydn than in an overture by Wagner, and the beautiful symphonies of this same Haydn satisfy the ear as well as, and even better than, the vividly colorful works of our young composers.”25

Changes that had come about in performance practice since Haydn’s time had also affected responses to his music. Bouyer perceived that late-nineteenth-

13 century practice was seriously influencing modern renditions of the composer’s works, thereby creating somewhat mannered, overdone mutations of the originals. Referring to contemporary musicians, Bouyer wrote, “they play smoothly with sonorous force; they strike loudly, and perform roughly with the

Classical orchestra. Haydn and Mozart vigorously resound within the little candy box of the Salle Gaveau. This is a refurbishment of the orchestral palette. And is this not one of the last eccentricities of the ultra-Byzantine art that our music has become?”26

In Bouyer’s view, negative reaction to the sounds and practices of the modern orchestra lay at the heart of both Haydn’s revived popularity and the return to

Classicism. Yet programs demonstrate that Haydn’s music had held its own in the

French concert hall throughout the nineteenth, and into the first decade of the twentieth century, even if what audiences knew of the composer’s work was based on just a few favorite symphonies played very frequently. Haydn’s popularity had never really weakened. What struck Bouyer, however, was the reassessment of

Haydn occurring within the context of a waning Romanticism, specifically the branch that had grown from the influences of Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz, and the potential such reexamination had for future developments.

III. The 1909 Commemoration

For Bouyer, the resurgence of Classicism, and particularly of Haydn’s music, signaled above all the eclipse of Wagner and Wagnerism’s impact on reinterpretations of the past. Proclaiming the “de-Wagnerization” of Paris’s

14 orchestral programs, Bouyer wrote, “Today Haydn rises immortal from his tomb.

Such is the law of change.” In the critic’s view, the process of renewal, which actually represented a progressive metamorphosis of elements from the past, and not merely regained interest, was to be carried out willfully. “It is necessary to exercise control over the history of art and to direct its events,” maintained

Bouyer, “And now it is time to clear the confused forest.”27

The effort would not result in an illumination of Classicism. When, in 1909, the

Société Internationale de Musique commissioned a number of France’s most famous composers to write pieces commemorating the hundredth anniversary of

Haydn’s death, the results were telling.28 Using the letters of Haydn’s name as a musical cipher, Ravel and d’Indy contributed menuets, Debussy a slow waltz,

Dukas his Prélude élégiaque. Widor submitted a fugue, Hahn a theme with variations. In each work the difficulty of integrating Classical elements within an original context is evident. Bryan Proksch has argued convincingly that d’Indy honored Haydn’s style largely through modeling and allusion, while maintaining his own early-twentieth-century approach to the tenets of Classicism.29 Peter

Revers has located aspects of Haydn’s compositional style in each of the tributes, analyzing variation and fugue techniques, for example, along with complex melodic and harmonic transformations that suggest these French composers took a lesson from Haydn, as it were, before beginning their respective pieces.30

Michel Faure, however, finds only Ravel’s Menuet succeeds as true homage, and claims it alone among the group of compositions retains its composer’s distinctively modern voice, while reflecting Haydn’s style.31

15

Ravel’s treatment of melodic contour, phrasing, and rounded binary form corroborates Faure’s view. The initial “A” theme of the Menuet (the H-A-Y-D-N melody built upon the notes B-A-D-D-G at bars 1-16), cast in tinted, yet conventional harmonies, with only a touch of quirkiness in the opening stress on the weak beat, conveys the balance and poise of the eighteenth-century genre

[Example 1]. The material of the subsequent “B” section (bars 17-38) is not so stylistically faithful. It develops into two elided segments of eight and fourteen measures, the second being an expansion of the first. Although still concerned with generally straightforward variations of the H-A-Y-D-N theme, this second part nevertheless confuses the order established by “A” through its extended melodic sequences, which proceed either chromatically or at the interval of an augmented fourth. Rhythmic repetition and the continual restatement of the primary motive in reverse create a static quality more characteristic of Ravel than of Haydn. The highly inflected chromatic retransition following “B” (beginning at bar 38) is far from the world of Haydn, and only gradually is there a return to the relative security of the opening “classical” section.

16 Example 1: Ravel, Menuet sur le Nom d'Haydn

17 18 The remaining tributes are more problematic. Dukas’s Prélude exudes an air of

Impressionism, and seems to be entirely of the composer’s own making. The relentless counterpoint of Widor’s fugue recalls primarily Baroque sensibilities, while the insistent articulation and chromatic inflection of d’Indy’s Menuet betrays so much late-nineteenth-century, Romantic urgency. As Faure points out,

Reynaldo Hahn’s variations lean towards unabashed pastiche, and lack the personal perspective one might consider essential to a true hommage. Debussy’s

Valse lente, which by virtue of its genre immediately sets up a stylistic collision, seems self-consciously to avoid Haydn, While the H-A-Y-D-N theme ostensibly unfolds with G as its tonal center, the opening emphasis on whole-tone and half- diminished sonorities unsettles things right away. In addition, the curious opening line in the bass is puzzling.32 Formed from the pitches B-flat-C-D-flat-E- flat-F-flat in bars 1-3, it is then transposed down a minor third before the entrance of an identifiable H-A-Y-D-N tune at bar 8. If one follows the encryption format of the clef allemande assigned to Debussy and the other composers by

Jules Écorcheville, editor of the Revue Musicale S.I.M., these opening pitches signify neither H-A-Y-D-N nor seemingly anything else.33 It is tempting to think the distinctive melody may be a D-E-B-U-S-S-Y theme of sorts, a sarcastic intrusion upon the scene before the piece even gets under way, or possibly a pun on B-A-C-H intended by M. Croche to mock the traditions and composers that had engaged such intellectual procedures as musical ciphers. Neither D-E-B-U-S-

S-Y nor B-A-C-H fits the pattern convincingly, however. “Debussy” would translate to the pitches D-E-B-G-E-E-D and “Bach” would be B-A-C-B. Or is

Debussy’s tune, finally, some sardonic transmutation of the H-A-Y-D-N theme

19 itself, designed to thwart expectations and thereby derail the work’s supposedly reverential intention? 34

The incongruity of the 1909 Haydn tributes exposes the irony and lack of focus within fin-de-siècle France’s Classical revival. As Faure observed, “Everyone claimed to restore a Classicism that was French, but each one imitated Haydn and Mozart, ‘German’ musicians” – and not very well, it appears, even if

Debussy’s possibly organized sabotage suggests intentional failure.35 Indeed, the oddness of the waltz for Haydn suggests new perspectives on Debussy’s motivation for acknowledging French musical and literary masters of the past such as Rameau, Villon, Charles duc d’Orléans, and Tristan l’Hermite.

IV. Vincent d’Indy’s Haydn

The interest in homage and imitation that drove the Haydn retrospective in

France also led critics to pay special attention to the composer’s originality.

Reviewers frequently mentioned innovations in technique and form, though they claimed that Haydn had primarily set the stage for later, greater developments without truly exploring his own discoveries. Botstein has shown that Naumann and Nohl strengthened this view of Haydn’s talents in Germany, where he was seen as the artist who founded an organic approach to musical composition, but never brought it to full fruition.36

Proksch has argued that d’Indy differed somewhat in his assessment of Haydn’s originality.37 Yet, the French pedagogue did underscore the notion of Haydn as

20 precursor in some of his writings. In his article, “De Bach à Beethoven,” written for the Tribune de Saint-Gervais in 1899, d’Indy, fascinated by evolutionary relationships among artists of a particular style or period, imagined a mountain range of history in which lesser creators were seen as hills supporting the highest peaks – the supreme masters. Among the non-musicians, he counted Dante and

Shakespeare. Haydn, Mozart, and other classicists of the post-Bachian tradition represented prominences in the massif that led to the great summits, the

Himalayas of music: Beethoven and Wagner. At the same time, d’Indy resisted drawing too many interconnections among these composers. He even went so far as to object to a monument, proposed for Berlin, in which the combined statues

(“un triple buste”) of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were to demonstrate “la grande filiation symphonique.”38 Avoiding comparisons in this case, d’Indy claimed he did not understand how the Germans could have so “flagrantly” erred in drawing “an aesthetic relationship between the singing Italians -- Haydn and

Mozart -- and the ever troubled, suffering German cousin, always preoccupied with the great beyond, the veritable incarnation of our century’s spirit, who was

Ludwig van Beethoven.”39

In the same article, d’Indy recognizes C.P.E. Bach and W.F. Rust as Beethoven’s stylistic ancestors. In parts of his Cours de composition musicale, however, he attempts to show how Beethoven’s symphonic techniques, notably his approaches to rhythm and phrasing, and his use of slow introductions, derive from Haydn’s later symphonies. D’Indy separated Haydn’s symphonic output into three periods. The first includes, among other works, the "Farewell"

21 Symphony and the Symphony No. 46, of which he wrote: “The form is still that of the concerto, and is very Italian, with some influence from Viennese folklore.”40

In the second period, d’Indy places "La Chasse," "La Reine," and, oddly, the

"Military," and the "Surprise". In the third, which includes the "London" symphonies, it is clear that d’Indy wished to show a connection between Haydn’s late style and Beethoven’s early symphonies. The "London" symphonies presented a new approach for Haydn, in d’Indy’s view. Here, all the sections in each of the first movements are clearly delineated, both thematically and tonally, while subsequent movements follow song, menuet, and sonata or rondo forms, respectively.41 Throughout the essay, d’Indy gave Haydn his due as an original composer, but the entire discussion seems directed towards preparing

Beethoven’s arrival upon the scene.

D’Indy identified Haydn’s penchant for humorous formal surprises as an influence upon Beethoven, though he saw its source in Bach. As proof, he pointed to Haydn’s frequent use of an “abrupt interruption” (“une brusque interruption”) just before the coda of a first movement. “It is something similar to the old deceptive cadence (generally on an immense diminished seventh chord) preceding the authentic cadence at the end of Bach’s fugues,” wrote d’Indy, “and one can see herein the point of departure that would become the concluding developmental coda in Beethoven’s works.”42 This observation seems misplaced.

D’Indy cited no examples to support his remarks, but his description suggests a number of fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier that feature (rarely

“immense”) diminished seventh chords as deceptive gestures before final

22 cadences, for example, nos. 2 and 7 from Book II, in C minor and E-flat, respectively. Their counterparts in Haydn’s symphonies might be found in the conclusions of the first movements of the Symphonies Nos. 93 and 96. The only corresponding moment in Beethoven’s symphonies, that is, where an interruption of closing material within first-movement form prompts the emergence of the coda, occurs in the Fifth Symphony. The codas of Beethoven’s other first movements, especially those of the Eroica, the Seventh, and the Ninth, certainly delay conclusion, but they proceed as appendices to movements that are essentially finished from a tonal standpoint; they do not intrude upon processes of completion. Possibly d’Indy was not thinking of just first movements, but was remembering the deceptive device as it occurs in other sections of the symphonies.

Proksch has demonstrated how d’Indy’s analysis of Haydn reveals a pioneering approach almost entirely absent from French criticism of the day. Even so, d’Indy’s deterministic orientation sometimes got the better of him, encouraging him to situate Haydn somewhat typically upon the foothills of music history’s mountain range, as it were. In what follows, it shall be shown that, D’Indy’s exceptional view aside, the French musical world was arguably more interested in interpretations of Haydn’s historical importance within a socio-political context.

V. Imagining Haydn in Third-Republic France

The Viennese Classicists, especially Haydn, inspired manufactured memories of a beautiful, softly tinted Watteau-esque past, the imagined aristocratic past that

23 now attracted the Third Republic’s middle class, and engendered misplaced nostalgia for a time that actually had been quite different for the forebears of this same bourgeoisie. In 1886, François Coppée (1842-1908), naturalist poet and close friend of J-K Huysmans, penned verses combining notions about Haydn with imagery of the supposedly carefree court life of Versailles, thereby demonstrating how the composer could evoke the atmosphere of France’s pre- republican past:

En province l’été. A summer in the country.

Le salon de Louis XVI The salon of Louis XVI s’ouvre sur un jardin correct, à la française: opens onto a very correct French des ormeaux ébranchés, des cygnes, un garden; bassin. well-trimmed elms, swans, a pond.

Une petite fille assise au clavecin joue, A little girl seated at a clavecin plays, en frappant très clair les touches un peu striking quite clearly the rather harsh dures keys un andante d’Haydn plein d’appoggiatures. an andante by Haydn, full of

Et le grand-père, un vieux en ailes de appoggiaturas. pigeon, se rappelle, installé dans son And grandfather, the foolish old coot, fauteuil de jonc, settled in his wicker armchair, recalls le temps où, beau chasseur, the time when he, the dashing hunter, il courait la laitière, Et marque chased after the milkmaid, and marks la mesure avec sa tabatière. time with his snuffbox.

24 Here we might speculate about the identity of the andante movement to which

Coppée refers: was it perhaps the first movement of the Sonata in A from 1767

(Hob. XVI: 12), or No. 33 in D, from 1784, or No. 48 in C, the last abounding with affective appoggiaturas and dating from the year of the revolution?43

Charles Grandmougin’s poem, Les musiciens (1874), similarly recalls a pleasantly slower, pre-revolutionary time in which Haydn’s music seemed the artistic correlative to “relaxing conversation along a quiet path that wanders charmingly through verdant fields.” In Haydn’s music Grandmougin heard “a beautiful land, never cold, never rainy -- a village of little children and nice old men.”44 Here we are not far from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s praise for Haydn’s “childlike optimism,” or from his description of the composer’s “eternally youthful world” where there is

“no suffering, no pain, only sweet, melancholy longing.”45

The poetic associations stimulated by Coppée and Grandmougin made Haydn’s music seem delightfully bittersweet, but also anachronistic and even slightly precious. Thus the journalist Amédée Boutarel, perhaps taking a cue from opinions expressed by Anton Rubinstein, referred to the “powdered themes of

Haydn” (“thème poudré de Haydn”).46 Rubinstein had claimed to sense in these melodies the “jargon viennois” and the atmosphere of old Vienna. Sometimes humorous, often energetic, and always enjoyable, such music was never considered profound. Rather, it offered carefree elegance and joy, a “smiling, good-humored music,” as Arthur Pougin described it, “healthy, pure, and graceful.”47

25 Seeking the source of Haydn’s expression, some critics made assumptions about his personality. For example, writing for the Revue Musica in the early 1900s, the music professor Amélie Gédalge and the playwright/critic Maurice Lefèvre stressed the composer’s productivity and work ethic, his strong moral sense and, again, his

“good humor” (“bonne humeur”), qualities Lefèvre found woefully lacking in many nineteenth-century composers.48 Gédalge emphasized Haydn’s position as precursor to Beethoven and his ability to combine successfully his own original musical ideas with the “science of form.” Both authors noted the composer’s unhappy marriage, and suggested it led him to pour all his energies into music and the production of so many wonderful works.49 Lefévre went farther, and in a tone slightly critical of contemporary culture, praised Haydn for dedicating himself to hard work rather than to easy gains, and to a life in the service of tyrannical rulers that had nonetheless produced great art. Lefévre thought it shameful that so many men of lesser accomplishment in France were more highly respected, indeed celebrated, than the composer “of more than sixteen thousand pages of music.”

Among the photos in the two articles by Gédalge and Lefèvre are portraits of

Haydn by Guérin, Farcy, and other painters, pictures of his birthplace, and manuscripts of his first and last compositions. Most striking are two unattributed engravings that depict a strong, robust, and unwavering Haydn contemplating a storm on the deck of the ship that took him to England in the 1790s [Figures 1 and 2]. In each, Haydn is not merely a stalwart, “real” man, he is a hero facing off the tempest as he traverses the deep, a figure that recalls George Washington crossing the Delaware.

26

Figure 1: “Joseph Haydn contemplant la tempête”. Amélie Gédalge, “J. Haydn (1732-1809)” La Musica (July 1907): 99-101 (Institut national d’histoire de l’art).

27

Figure 2: “Haydn contemplant la tempête”. Maurice Lefèvre, “Le Centenaire de Joseph Haydn,” La Musica (May 1909): 67-68 (Institut national d’histoire de l’art).

28 A tension lies between Gédalge’s and Lefèvre’s descriptions of Haydn and the images portraying him. The engravings draw attention to the pondering Haydn and the workings of the great man’s mind as he observes the storm. They romanticize the composer, and even seem to protest too much that here was a person who had undergone exceedingly dramatic and moving experiences indeed, situating Haydn, as it were, within the symbolism of the characteristically sublime storm. Yet, combine their literal, natural qualities (which could preclude any possibility of the requisite romantic enigma or mystery) with the opinions and biographical elements related by Gédalge and Lefèvre, and the resultant picture is one of Haydn as too much the Everyman, albeit one in an exceptional situation: a man admirable, accessible and easily explained.50

The critic Jules Jemain, reviewing a performance of the Surprise Symphony by the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1907, exposed this strain in the imagery when he wrote that music “by good old Haydn,” (“du bon vieil Haydn”) charmed the senses more than it stirred the emotions.51 Paul Dukas expressed a corresponding view in 1904 when, in a comparison of Haydn and Berlioz he wrote: “Haydn’s art certainly appears more naïve to us.”52 Accessibility almost justifies dismissal in such comments, wherein we hear echoes of observations made earlier by

Schumann, Hanslick, and Carpani that suggest nothing much in the way of an emotional punch was expected from Haydn, the “old friend.”53

29 VI. The Haydn Revival in the Context of the Fêtes Galantes

Both Romantic and Modern sensibilities no doubt partially account for this softened view of Haydn. The French reception at the turn of the twentieth century must also be understood in light of developments stretching beyond the world of music that point up the confusion and contradiction characterizing

Third-Republic society. The fêtes galantes, the purpose and symbolism of which form a nexus of musical, extra-musical, and socio-political currents in fin-de- siècle France, provide the example, and help place the imagery surrounding

Haydn within a larger context for resurgent Classicism. A chief means of articulating the vogue for eighteenth-century style and fashion among the upper echelons of the French beau monde, these elegant parties organized by titular nobility such as the Princesse de Polignac, the Prince Borghèse, and the Comtesse de Noailles traced their roots to the extravagant soirées of the defunct aristocracy.

The fêtes galantes were imbued with historical awareness and reverence for pre- revolutionary French culture; moreover, their mimicry of eighteenth-century décor and costumes, captured for posterity in Nadar’s photography, embodied the world described by Coppée and Grandmougin.54

In her recent book, Composing the Citizen, Jann Pasler traces the French fascination with all things classical from the garden parties of high society to royalist hopes for reinstating the monarchy; false hopes, in the end, that arose between 1886 and 1889 after flagging public support for the Republic sent tremors across the political landscape.55 Public endorsements of the Comte de

Paris’s claim to the throne, made in 1887 by the very revelers of the fêtes

30 galantes, including the Duchesse d’Uzés, the Comte de Dillon, and the Prince de

Polignac, stimulated demonstrations of monarchist sentiment. Royalists indulged their dreams of a return to power and cultural dominance through costume parties, society balls, concerts, and opera, using music and dance to illuminate their vision and articulate their agenda. Emmanuel Chabrier’s Le Roi malgré lui, an opera from 1887 featuring old dances such as the bourrée and the pavane, was an important musical informant of the trend, as was d’Indy’s Suite dans le style ancien, which contains a sarabande and a menuet, and dates from the same year.

Other similarly styled contemporary works include dances composed by Délibes in 1882 for the Comédie-Française, the menuets and pavanes used by Saint-

Saëns in his Henry VIII (1883), and Massenet’s Manon, the menuets of which were danced by society ladies at an Opéra gala in 1912.56

Pasler argues that royalists tried to inculcate their children with the customs and tastes of the Ancien Régime by teaching them the original forms of these dances.

Republicans, on the other hand, admired classical styles and dances for their ability to strengthen so-called French characteristics and traditions. While pretending with the past might comfort aristocrats set adrift, it also could bind them to a republican future, in essence prevail over them, by demonstrating, as

Pasler points out, “that the past had a value that could inform present-day thinking . . . that progress was not merely a continuous process of linear evolution but something that could turn back on itself in order to propel itself forward.”57

31 For Michel Faure, the fêtes galantes of the Belle Époque reflected the politically conservative nature of the times, and exposed the persistence of elitist principles in a nation that had ostensibly committed itself to an egalitarian agenda. “The select circles [of France] . . . saw themselves in the mirror of the fêtes galantes,” writes Faure. “They abandoned themselves to nostalgia . . . and clung to the worship of memories and the pleasure of beauty, in other words, to that which yesterday had been the prerogative of the nobility.”58 One senses this same wistful, invented memory in Ravel’s tribute to Haydn and in the poems of

Grandmougin and Coppée. Its evocation through art suggests almost the antithesis of the madeleine-de-Proust: an imagined past conjured to help one ignore unpleasant, contemporary realities. Faure concludes:

The originality of the middle class fête stemmed from an anxiety of the

period that the aristocracy had so superbly denied. . . . from a charitable

pretext, which revealed bad social conscience as much as generous

ostentation, and from the obscurity and immobility by which the modern

fêtes galantes attempted to hypnotize history.59

Hypnotizing history: did anyone, true royalist or bourgeois prince, get the joke?

Paul Dukas similarly expressed a desire to freeze time, to go back, in his description of Mozart’s music as a “refuge into a forgotten Eden.”60 Amédée

Boutarel suggested Mozart’s music actually transmitted something of pre- revolutionary life, that it expressed the “exchange of quaint, discrete vows between princes and princesses before pretentious little waterfalls amidst the

32 hedges.”61 At the turn of the twentieth century, Mozart and Haydn seemed to present a buffer against the incertitude brought on by France’s most recent revolution, with its social restructuring at the hands of a post-Second Empire bourgeoisie. Yet ironically, they also offered a return to a world that, had it continued, would likely have made impossible the sovereignty now enjoyed by the new ruling class.

To return to Botstein’s claim that Haydn was “deified into irrelevance,” as discussed earlier in comments by Jemain and Dukas, the French response suggests a similar assessment, but other critics convey a different perspective.

Botstein maintains the “rituals” of nineteenth-century biography made Haydn appear a victim of the old order, an unfortunate populist figure of former times who could be set aside from the concerns of contemporary post-revolutionary life. Yet Haydn played a positive role in France’s wishful remembering, for his image as a self-made sophisticate fostered identification among an upwardly mobile middle class. Botstein maintains that any understanding of Haydn’s art would have been associated with a patrician, rather than a bourgeois acquisition of musical sensibilities; in other words, obtained by virtue of class appellation, and not through personal achievement. This was an attractive quality, however, one that France’s grasping beau monde could not resist and wished to possess. It made Haydn more relevant.

33 VII. Conclusion

Both the French- and German-speaking worlds considered Haydn the benchmark of musical value, the gauge of cultural worth. Botstein attributes this to the importance Bildung held for a European middle-class needing the education requisite for supporting its claims of political and social superiority. This education followed the model of self-cultivation originally attributed to the upper classes, for though the Revolution had displaced the old order’s power structure, aristocratic influence upon artistic values had remained intact. The French bourgeoisie expropriated these values, projecting them through the fêtes galantes and boosting its appetite for Viennese Classicism. French appreciation of Haydn, therefore, was an expression of solidarity with a severely diluted, but not entirely obliterated status quo ante. More importantly, this effectively borrowed connoisseurship of Haydn offered a way of coming to grips not with the past, but with the present, and could have fostered the awareness necessary for recognizing, as Botstein states, “truth in one’s own time.”62

Leo Treitler has written of art’s unique power to expose dangerous fractures in the social structures of civilizations, and of the perils facing communities that ignore contradictions of image and identity within their cultures.63 Treitler’s point reminds us that societies inevitably manipulate musico-historical facts and circumstances to feed fantasies of identity, and this was true of Haydn’s reception in France. Moreover, it is certain that France’s fin-de-siècle concert-going bourgeoisie relied upon Haydn’s music, as Pierre Lasserre asserted in 1917, to speak a distinctly European language, one that fulfilled “all the healthy, normal

34 needs of expression.”64 Yet such “expression” involved imagining Haydn as much as listening to or performing his works, and engaged eclipsed sensibilities and lingering attachments to a world that itself would be re-imagined with the advent of Neoclassicism in the twentieth century.

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36

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Endnotes

1 This article is an expanded version of a paper read at two colloquia in 2009: the “Conference on 19th-Century Music” (University of Kansas, July 16-18) and “Celebrating Haydn: His Times and Legacy” (York University, August 6-9). The

2 Camille Saint-Saëns, Portraits et souvenirs (Paris: Société d’édition artistique, 1900), 197: “Haydn possède un atticisme étonnant, analogue à celui des écrivains français du temps passé. Il sait toujours s’arrêter à temps, et sa musique n’engendre jamais l’ennui. Elle n’est ni shakespearienne, ni byronienne, c’est évident: Haydn n’était pas un agité. . . . La recherche de la sensation, lorsqu’elle devient le but de la musique, la tue à bref délai. . . .” All translations of both primary and secondary French sources in this article are by the author.

3 With qualifications, the French thought similarly of Mozart. This topic requires separate consideration.

38

4 See Castile-Blaze’s review of the “old” Drum Roll Symphony in the Journal des Débats (14 Mar. 1822): 4. In Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revut Gazette Musicale de Paris, 1834-1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 83-87. Katherine Ellis discusses Berlioz’s tendency to trivialize Haydn, and to complain of weak or overly mild expression in the finales of his symphonies. Berlioz expected much more from a symphony or other large work. “Nowadays we are no longer content with music alone,” he wrote. See the Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris 2.8 (22 Feb. 1835): 66

5 Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France, 30-31; Kerry Murphy, Hector Berlioz and the Development of French Music Criticism, Studies in Musicology, no. 97, edited by George Buelow (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1988), 146- 147. See also James Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) for a general discussion of Haydn’s reception in late-eighteenth-century France.

6 Leon Botstein, “The Consequences of Presumed Innocence: the Nineteenth- Century Reception of Joseph Haydn,” in Haydn Studies, edited by W. Dean Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1-34.

7 Arthur Dandelot, La Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828-1897 (Paris: G. Havard, 1898); Édouard Deldevez, La Société des Concerts de 1860 à 1885 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1887); D. Kern Holoman, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828-1967 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

8 Dandelot, 19-20.

9 Dandelot, 32. I have used D. Kern Holoman’s concordance of Haydn symphonies on the companion website to his book, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828-1967, to convert Dandelot’s and Deldevez’s numberings to the Hoboken classification. See http://hector.ucdavis.edu/sdc.

10 Holoman, The Société des Concerts, website: http://hector.ucdavis.edu/sdc.

11 Dandelot, 50.

12 The Symphony in C, inédite (Hob. I.c3), misattributed to Haydn, was performed at least seven times between 1870 and 1914 at the Conservatoire concerts.

13 Anton Rubinstein, La Musique et ses représentants (Paris: Heugel, 1892), cited in Raymond Bouyer, “Petites notes sans portée. Résurrection de la musique,” Le Ménestrel 67.15 (14 April 1901), 117.

14 Bouyer, “Résurrection de la musique.”

39

15 Ibid.

16 Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music from the Genesis of the Concept through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic, Studies in Musicology, no. 101, edited by George Buelow (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1988).

17 Jean Moréas, Le Figaro (14 Sept. 1891), quoted in Messing, 7. See also Jean- Moréas, Cent soixante-treize letters de Jean Moréas à Raymond de la Tailhede et divers correspondants, edited by Robert A. Jouanny (Paris: Lettres modernes, 1968), 148-149.

18 Moréas’s writings include the poetic collections Les Syrtes (1884), Les Cantilènes (1886), Le Pèlerin passioné (1891), and Les Stances (1905). Maurras’s ideas about French classicism appeared most forcefully in articles written before World War I for the monarchist Revue de l’Action Française (after 1908 the daily newspaper Action Française). A founding member of the Ècole romane, Raymond de la Tailhède championed Greek classical ideals in art and culture until the 1920s, when in Un debat sur le romantisme he changed course and defended French romantic poetry against Maurras’s criticisms. Raynaud’s most important work includes writings on Verlaine, Baudelaire, and articles for La Revue critique des idées et des livres. Du Plessys’s work appeared in the same journal, and also includes Dédicace à Apollodore (1891), Ètudes lyriques (1896), and Chant royal en l’honneur de la Très Sainte Vierge (1920).

19 Botstein, “Aesthetics and Ideology in the Fin-de-Siècle Mozart Revival,” Current Musicology 51: 5-25 discusses similar Greco-Roman revivals in nineteenth-century Italy, Spain, Austria, and Germany.

20 Henri Ghéon, Nouvelle Revue Française (1 Aug. 1912): 378-380: “On aura encore besoin de chant pur, moins chargé de sous-entendus, moins alourdi de commentaires. Il ne s’agira pas toujours de peindre les âmes les plus ravagées, les plus sombrement oppréssées par le problème du destin.”

21 Bouyer, “Petites notes sans portée,” Le Ménestrel 67.44 (3 Nov. 1901), 347-348. Bouyer was referring specifically to the young audiences of the Concerts-Colonne who, he claimed, were not as familiar with Haydn as the elite audiences of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire.

22 Bouyer, “Autres problèmes soulevés par l’évolution de l’orchestre,” Le Ménestrel 74.10 (7 Mar. 1908), 75-76: “[C]ette période n’arrive à son apogée qu’après 1750, avec Haydn. . . .”

23 Ibid.: “. . . l’art musical, comme tous les autres arts, se réfugie désormais dans l’intimité. Les œuvres contemporaines ont l’air d’être obscurément élairées par un jour d’orage. . . . On parle à voix basse, presque mystérieusement. On recherche moins le grand <> des poèmes symphoniques de Liszt et

40 de ses remarquables héritiers originaux de la musique russe . . . que le recueillement subtil et les combinaisons plus rares entre les plus aériens des timbres. De là . . . la vogue renaissante de Mozart, de Rameau, des anciens qui furent les jeunes.”

24 Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin, “J-B. Sammartini et Joseph Haydn, les pères de la symphonie,” Le Ménestrel 61.1 (6 Jan. 1895), 3.

25 Hippolyte Barbedette, “Concerts Lamoureux,” Le Ménestrel 60.44 (4 Nov. 1894), 348: “La sonorité, c’est autre chose, chose toute relative; il y a plus de sonorité dans un quatuor de Beethoven, même ou d’Haydn, que dans une ouverture de Wagner, et les belles symphonies du même Haydn satisfont l’oreille autant et même mieux que les truchantes compositions de nos jeunes auteurs.” The critic and conductor Arthur Pougin, “Revue des grands concerts,” Le Ménestrel 72.7 (18 Feb. 1906), 52 scorned modern orchestration in even stronger language – comparing Mozart’s orchestra in the Jupiter Symphony with the “twisted, searching, tortured, crashing” ensembles of the nineteenth century: “. . . cette musique contournée, cherchée, tourmentée, sans cesse modulante, avec un orchestre fracassant. . . .” This aversion to the Romantic orchestra bears some relation to similarities drawn by Leon Botstein between the new Classicism and developments in Austrian architectural design of the period, and shows that the change in perspective was not confined to France. Botstein, “Aesthetics and Ideology,” 8, notes that a “return to Mozart,” and it seems safe to include Haydn in this particular instance, “became the musical analogue of a fin-de-siècle credo of stylistic integrity that favored visual simplicity, directness, and a respect for ideas of structure and function, rather than the late-nineteenth-century penchant for decoration and aesthetic camouflage (i.e. the visual analogue of Wagnerism).”

26 Bouyer, “Petites notes sans portée. Orchestre et literature,” Le Ménestrel 74.12 (21 Mar. 1908), 91-92: “. . . on joue suave avec une armée sonore; on frappe fort, on joue gros, avec l’orchestre classique: Haydn et Mozart lui-même sonnent vigoureusement dans la bonbonnière Gaveau. C’est un renouvellement de la palette orchestrale. Et n’est-ce pas là l’une des dernières originalités de l’art ultra- byzantin qui devient le nôtre?”

27 Bouyer, “Petites notes sans portée” (3 Nov. 1901): “Haydn, aujourd’hui . . . se relève immortel de son tombeau. C’est la loi des métamorphoses. . . . Il faut commander à l’histoire de l’art et diriger les faits. Il est temps d’émonder la forêt confuse.” Théodore de Wyzewa, “À propos du centenaire de la mort de Joseph Haydn,” Revue des Deux Mondes 5. Période, Année 79, 51/4 (1909), 935-946, similarly writes in hopes of a day when the current generation will give way to another that can move beyond Wagner by reexamining the music of former times.

28 These were published in La Revue Musicale 6 (1910): 1-16.

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29 Bryan Proksch, “Vincent d’Indy as Harbinger of the Haydn Revival,” Journal of Musicological Research 28 (2009), 162-188.

30 Peter Revers, “Die Hommage-Kompositionen der Société Internationale de Musique (S.I.M.) zur Haydn-Zentenarfeier 1909 (Hahn, Widor, d’Indy, Dukas Ravel, Debussy,” in Aspekte der Haydnrezeption, ed. Joachim Brügge and Ulrich Leisinger (Freiburg: Rombach, 2011), 157-174.

31 Michel Faure, Musique et société du second empire aux années vingt (Paris: Flammarion, 1985), 279.

32 Though it seems a stretch, it could be argued that Debussy’s slo and somber opening alludes humorously to Haydn’s penchant for slow introductions in his late symphonies.

33 For discussion of the clef allemande, see Andrew Shenton, Olivier Messiaen’s System of Signs: Notes Towards Understanding His Music (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), 74.

34 If these speculations proved true, Debussy would not have been alone in his contempt for the Haydn hommage project. Camille Saint-Saëns, in a letter to Gabriel Fauré (16 July 1909, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, N.L.A. 3, letter #242) described the endeavor as a “ridiculous affair” (“une aventure ridiculez”).

35 Faure, Musique et société, 279-280.

36 Bostein, “The Consequences of Presumed Innocence,” 16.

37 Proksch, 167-168.

38 Vincent d’Indy, “De Bach à Beethoven,” La Tribune de Saint-Gervais 5.8 (Sept.-Aug. 1899), 193-198; 5.9: 231-236. D’Indy quotes the German inscription for the statue: “die erhliche Abstammung der Sinfonie” (sic).

39 D’Indy, “De Bach à Beethoven”: “J’avoue ne point comprendre comment les Allemands . . . on pu admettre et vouloir consacrer, par l’érection d’un monument, la flagrante erreur . . . d’une filiation esthétique entre Haydn et Mozart, ces Italiens chanteurs, et le Germain inquiet, souffrant, toujours préoccupé d’au-déla, véritable incarnation de l’âme de notre siècle, qui fut Ludwig van Beethoven.” I have translated “Germain” here as something of a pun: “German cousin,” since d’Indy seems to want to suggest an assumed German quality, even if the word “Allemand” would be more appropriate (note the capitalization in the source), and “germain” is usually used to mean “first cousin,” as in cousin germain. D’Indy’s response to Beethoven is given detailed consideration by Steven Huebner, “D’Indy’s Beethoven,” in French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939, edited by Barbara L. Kelly

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(Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 236-238, and Brian Hart, “Vincent d’Indy and the Development of the French Symphony,” Music and Letters 87.2 (2006), 240-242.

40 D’Indy, Cours de composition musicale, 3 volumes (Paris: Durand, 1901-02), vol. 2, 115: “La forme est toujours celle du Concert et le style très italien, avec quelque influence du folklore viennois.”

41 D’Indy used the terms premier theme, pont, second theme, développement, and réexposition.

42 D’Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, 119: “C’est quelque chose comme l’ancienne cadence rompue (généralement sur une vaste septième diminuée) de la fine des Fugues de Bach, précédant la cadence réelle, et l’on peut y voir le point du départ de ce qui deviendra, chez Beethoven, le développement terminal.”

43 François Coppée, Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1886) vol 1, 326. Coppée was one of the foremost Parnassian poets of his generation. His most notable works include Le Reliquaire (1866), Les Intimités (1867), the dramatic poem Olivier (1876), and the novel La Bonne souffrance (1898).

44 Charles Grandmougin, “Quelques souvenirs sur Raoul Pugno,” Le Ménestrel 81.10 (7 Mar. 1914), 75-76: “Haydn, sentier rempli de calmes causeries/Qui fait dans les près verts des méandres charmants/Pays délicieux, sans froidure, sans pluies/Villa des bons viellards et des petits enfants.” Today Grandmougin (1850- 1930) is remembered as the poet who inspired Massenet’s La Vierge and and Franck’s Hulda. His Les musiciens, which includes stanzas describing Gluck, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn, and others in addition to Haydn, is styled as a tribute to Baudelaire’s Phares.

45 E.T.A. Hoffmann, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, edited by David Charlton, translated by Martyn Clarke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 97. Botstein (“The Consequences of Presumed Innocence”) notes that Hans von Bülow, referring to the “childhood immediacy” of Haydn as the culprit, claimed audiences were fond of the composer’s music for all the wrong reasons, and faulted the fake connoisseurship by which listeners equated “good” music with all things cheerful.

46 Amédée Boutarel, “Revue des grands concerts: Concert Colonne,” Le Ménestrel 68.44 (2 Nov. 1902), 348.

47 Arthur Pougin, “Revue des grand concerts,” Le Ménestrel 68.8 (23 Feb. 1902), 61; 73.12 (23 Mar. 1907), 92. See also Pougin, 71.52 (24 Dec. 1905), 412; 72.7 (18 Feb. 1906), 52 for descriptions using “finesse,” “légèreté”; 75.3 (16 Jan. 1909), 24: “si sincère, si spontané”; and similar in Boutarel, “Concerts Lamoureux,” 60.43

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(28 Oct. 1894), 343; 68.44, and Jules Jemain, “Concerts Lamoureux,” 73.44 (2 Nov. 1897), 348.

48 Amélie Gédalge, “J. Haydn (1732-1809),” Revue Musica (July 1907), 99-101; Maurice Lefèvre, “Le Centenaire de Joseph Haydn,” Revue Musica (May 1909), 67-68. See also Félix Clément, Les Musiciens célèbres depuis le seizième siècle à nos jours (Paris: Libraire Hachette, 1873), 121 for a view of Haydn as the anti- romantic artist. Amélie Gédalge was a well-known pedagogue in Conservatoire circles, having won a number of medals there in her student days.

49 Wyzewa (943-945) speculates that deep-seated unhappiness in Haydn’s personal life, possibly romantic in nature, inspired his most intensely expressive works.

50 Wyzewa (939) imagines Haydn possessing emotions both simple and vigorous, “such as one would expect in a robust German peasant” (“telles qu’on peut les attendre d’un robuste paysan allemand”).

51 Jules Jemain, “Concerts Lamoureux,” Le Ménestrel 73.44 (2 Nov. 1907), 348.

52 Paul Dukas, Chroniques musicales sur deux siècle, 1892-1932 (Pais: Stock, 1980), 59-60: “Son art, assurément nous apparaît plus naïf. . . ."

53 Botstein, “The Consequences of Presumed Innocence,” 9-12, shows that both Hanslick and Schumann referred to Haydn as “an old friend,” and believed he offered nothing new to the music world, even if his works might be respected in the way that one respects a member of the family. Both Schumann and Carpani had compared Haydn to Tintoretto, David, and especially Lorrain, making the composer something of a landscape artist who painted beautiful musical surfaces devoid of profound feeling, canvases (unlike those of Friedrich, who was compared to Beethoven) in which individuals were not the primary subjects.

54 See Anne-Marie Bernard, The World of Proust: as Seen by Paul Nadar, translated by Susan Wise (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 136 and 138 for reproductions of Nadar’s photos from the early 1890s, showing the Prince and Princess Radziwill, the Duc and Duchesse de Luynes, and the Princess de Leon, respectively, in period, Arabian, or Chinese dress.

55 Jann Pasler, Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), especially 498-507.

56 “Au Gala Massenet: Le menuet de ‘Manon,’” Revue Musica (Jan. 1912), 10-11. One is reminded here, again, of later efforts by Debussy and Ravel to pay tribute to their French classical forebears, notably Rameau and Couperin, either directly through hommages or by adaptations of claveciniste traits.

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57 Pasler, 507.

58 Faure, 183.

59 Ibid., 184.

60 Dukas, 38, from the Revue Hebdomadaire (4 May 1901): “Nous pouvons nous réfuger dans son œuvre comme dans un Eden oubliée.”

61 Boutarel, “Concerts Colonne” Le Ménestrel 73.8 (23 Feb. 1907), 61: “Mozart connaissait bien la vie de la cour française Versailles et l’on croit saisir, dans sa musique, l’échange des serments discrets, vieillots, surannées des princes et des princesses, devant les petites cascades prétentieuses au milieu des charmilles.”

62 Botstein, “The Consequences of Presumed Innocence,” 33.

63 Leo Treitler, “The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfillment of a Desired Past,” Journal of the Royal Music Association 116.2 (1991), 280-298.

64 Pierre Lasserre, L’Esprit de la musique française de Rameau à l’invasion wagnérienne (Paris: Payot, 1917), 240: “Elle suffit à tous les besoins sains et normaux de l’expression.”

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