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By Oliver Daniel WHICH American composer has been heard by larger audiences throughout the world for a longer period of time than any other? Gershwin? Sousa? Rodgers? Berlin? Copland? Guess again. Who was the first American composer to win the Prix de Rome? Why, Ernest Guiraud, that's who. Ernest who? It is perhaps going just a bit too far to call Guiraud a "shadow composer," but millions of listeners have heard his music countless times without realizing it, simply because all we get of it today is symbiotically attached to the works-and standard works, at that-of other com posers. Guiraud was apparently a natural collaborator, his instincts leading him to place his talents in the service of music rather than in the service of his reputation, and that is why we know him as The Man Who: the man who wrote all the recitatives for Bizet's Carmen, who wrote the Farandole for the L'Arle sienne Suite (the theme was Bizet's), who completed and orchestrated Offenbach's unfinished opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Generous as he was with his helping hand, Guiraud was not merely a collaborator, having composed a number of works of his own as well. We are given a welcome opportunity to sample at least one of these, the symphonic poem The Fantastic Hunt, on a new recording by the Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester conducting (Louisville LS-743, $6.98, from the Louisville Symphony, 211 Brown Building, Louisville, Ky. 40202). If the music seems to be more than a little reminiscent of that of Dukas, the reason is quite simple: we are familiar with the music of Dukas because it has been lucky enough to find a place in the standard repertoire-but Guiraud was Dukas' teacher. His rip-snorting Hunt was based on a passage from Victor Hugo's The Legend of the Handsome Pecopin and the Beautiful Bauldour (!), and the Louisville recording makes a very strong case for this neglected composer's rediscovery, perhaps even, in the Bicentenni al Year upcoming, a little overdue attention--a statue?--from his home town. Ernest Guiraud was born in New Orleans on June 23, 1837, five years after his immigrant parents arrived from Paris. His father was a composer and teacher, his mother a pianist. In 1849, young Ernest was taken to Paris for a stay of two years. On returning to New Orleans at age fifteen, he had the gratifying experience of seeing his first opera, Le Roi David, performed before an enthusiastic audience. One member of that audience was another New Orleans musical celebrity, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who was eight years Guiraud's senior. Writing to a professor at the Paris Conservatoire after the performance of the opera, Gottschalk remarked that "young Guiraud undoubtedly has genius." And he advised the young com poser: "Return to Paris as soon as you can, just as I am going to do." Which is precisely what Ernest did; for the rest of his life France was to be his home. Even in his teens Guiraud began to play the role of midwife to other com posers. "Guiraud's son has been helpful to me," wrote Hector Berlioz while working on his L'Enfance du Christ. "He is a charming boy." This evidently did not mean that he was neglecting his own work, for he mastered his compositional craft so well and so quickly that he was able to win a Prix de Rome in 1859 at age twenty-two (his father had won it thirty-two years earlier). A fellow award winner at the Paris Academy was Georges Bizet, his junior by one year. They became fast friends and companions (in letters to his mother Bizet de scribed the young American as "pleas ant, modest, frank and loyal"). While in Rome he composed a one-act opera, Sylvie, which was presented at the Paris Opera-Comique, as were two subsequent works, En Prison and Le Kobold. After serving in the army (with Bizet) during the Franco-Prussian war, he composed his most successful opera, Piccolina, based on a play by Sardou; it ran for fifty-two performances in Paris and later in London. Guiraud's orchestral compositions figured prominently in Paris concerts of the time as well. His Caprice for Violin and Orchestra, for example, was in the repertoire of the great violinist Pablo Sarasate. In 1871 he became one of the founding members-with Saint-Satins, Franck, Faure, and Lalo- of the Societe Nationale de Musique. Highly esteemed by his colleagues (Tchaikovsky noted in his diary that he had an "intimate talk" with him during one of his visits to Paris), he also became a member of the Legion of Honor in 1878 and of the Institut de France in 1891 (succeeding Leo Delibes). WHEN Carmen was first presented this year is its hundredth anniversary, by the way-it shocked Paris audiences, and the initial reception was anything but warm. The day of March 3, 1875, had begun well for Bizet (he received the announcement that he had been appoint ed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor), but the chilly reaction of the audience to that evening's premiere of Carmen caused the profoundly upset composer to wander the streets until daybreak with his friend Guiraud. Bizet died only three months later, and Guiraud adapted for his funeral music a Pie Jesu from the first act of Les Pecheurs de Perles. Carmen was presented again in Vienna in October of that year, and for the occasion Guiraud composed the recitatives that have been in almost continuous use everywhere since. (Although the Metropolitan has in the past used the standard-Guiraud, that is-version in the house, Regine Crespin's performances this coming season will be of the Opera Comique version with spoken dialogue, for that, perverse as it may seem, is the French way.) The Vienna performance was a hit, of course, and it established Carmen- with Guiraud's recitatives-as a fixture in the world's opera houses. Before his death in 1880, Jacques Offenbach had written only a piano score and a few orchestral excerpts for his Tales of Hoffmann. At the request of the family, Guiraud stepped in to complete the work and orchestrate the whole. Music lovers without number will step forward today to testify that he did a brilliant job, a fact evidently not lost on his colleagues either: fittingly, when Guiraud himself died, his five-act opera Fredegonde was completed by Saint Saens and the first three acts were orchestrated by Dukas after the composer's sketches.
Guiraud was also, it appears, one of the major influences in the development of Claude Debussy. In December 1880, Debussy enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire as a student of Guiraud. Among the other students were Paul Dukas and Erik Satie. Although Guiraud noted that after three years of study Debussy still seemed to "write music clumsily," a close bond nonetheless developed be tween the two. They became fast friends, often dining together, playing billiards, and strolling the Paris boulevards, Debussy pouring out his ideas, theories, and thoughts about music (particularly his changing reactions to Wagner) to his sympathetic teacher. And Guiraud was obviously an excel lent teacher, for pupil Debussy emulated him by winning the Prix de Rome in 1884. There is, further, abundant evidence that Guiraud's gifts for brilliant tonal color and effective orchestration were passed on to his students: we find it in the orchestral works of Debussy, in Dukas, and in Charles Martin Loeffler. In the case of Satie, however, Guiraud apparently had little positive influence. According to the memoirs of Henri Biisser, another Guiraud student. Debussy introduced Satie, "a mysterious person, aged between twenty-five and twenty-eight ... with a very strong recommendation." It was not, however, an ideal match. When Guiraud suggested kindly that he try to develop a better sense of form, Satie responded by writing his famous Trois Morceaux en Forme de Poire, a retort significantly more malicious than it appears on the surface, for one of the slang meanings of "poire" is simpleton (is it mere coincidence that another shape, the "square," would con vey very much the same meaning in English?). Guiraud's assistant at the Conservatoire was so outraged with Satie that "the unfortunate young man . . . never set foot in the Conservatoire again." Satie was indeed "a mysterious person," for the incident took place in 1890 and the attribution date of the pieces in the published edition is no less than thirteen years later. In any case, it couldn't have mattered to Guiraud: the dedicated teacher died at the Conservatoire of a stroke on May 2, 1892, six weeks before his fifty-fifth birthday, having left an indelible, if faint, mark on the history of music. ------- Col. J. H. Mapleson presented Carmen for the first time in New York on October 23, 1878, at the old Academy of Music. Scene is the beginning of Act IV. Also see: |
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