SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
M. d’Indy
M. d’Indy claims that this system may be applied as successfully to instrumentalists and singers as to future composers. «For it is as profitable for them to know,» he says, «how to sing a liturgic monody properly, or to be able to play a Corelli sonata in a suitable style, as it is for composers to study the structure of a motet or a suite.» M. d’Indy, moreover, obliged all students, without distinction, to attend the lectures on vocal music; and, besides that, he instituted a special class to teach the conducting of orchestras–which was something quite new to France. His object, as he clearly said, was to give a new form to modern music by means of a knowledge of the music of the past.
On this subject he says:
«Where shall we find the quickening life that will give us fresh forms and formulas? The source is not really difficult to discover. Do not let us seek it anywhere but in the decorative art of the plain-song singers, in the architectural art of the age of Palestrina, and in the expressive art of the great Italians of the seventeenth century. It is there, and there alone, that we shall find melodic craft, rhythmic cadences, and a harmonic magnificence that is really new–if our modern spirit can only learn how to absorb their nutritious essence. And so I prescribe for all pupils in the School the careful study of classic forms, because they alone are able to give the elements of a new life to our music, which will be founded on principles that are sane, solid, and trustworthy.»[230]
[Footnote 230: Tribune de Saint-Gervais, November, 1900.]
This fine and intelligent eclecticism was likely to develop a critical spirit, but was rather less adapted to form original personalities. In any case, however, it was excellent discipline in the formation of musical taste; and, in truth, the École Supérieure de musique of the Rue Saint-Jacques became a new Conservatoire, both more modern and more learned than the old Conservatoire, and freer, and yet less free, because more self-satisfied. The school developed very quickly. From having twenty-one pupils in 1896, it had three hundred and twenty in 1908. Eminent musicians and professors learned in the history and science of music taught there, and M. d’Indy himself took the Composition classes.[231] And in its short career the Schola may already be credited with the training of young composers, such as MM. Roussel, Déodat de Séverac, Gustave Bret, Labey, Samazeuilh, R. de Castéra, Sérieyx, Alquier, Coindreau, Estienne, Le Flem, and Groz; and to these may be added M. d’Indy’s private pupils, Witkowski, and one of the foremost of modern composers, Alberic Magnard.
[Footnote 231: There are actually nine courses of Composition at the Schola–five for men and four for women. M. d’Indy takes eight of them, as well as a mixed class for orchestra.]
this was: M. D’Indy
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