DOI article:
Willeby, Charles: The composer of "Carmen"
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0072
68 The Composer of " Carmen "
bound, aghast as it were ; I have not eyes, ears, intelligence,
enough even to admire. But when I see ' L'Ecole D'Athenes,'
or 'La Vierge de Foligno,' when I hear ' Les Noces de Figaro,'
or the second act of ' Guillaume Teil,' I am completely happy ;
I experience a sense of comfort, a complete satisfaction : in effect,
I forget everything."
This, then, is what Rome did for Bizet; but, be it said, for
Bizet trh jeune encore. For a time the result is patent in his
work, but afterwards there comes, although no revulsion, a distinct
Variation of feeling, which has in it something of compromise.
The genius innate in him was inspirational before it was—if it
ever was—erudite. Even in his later days there was for him no
cowering before his culture. In 1867 ne wrote in the Revue
Nationale—the only critique, by the way, he ever wrote—under
the pseudonym of Gaston de Betzi : " The artist has no name,
no nationality. He is inspired or he is not. He has genius or he
has not. If he has, we welcome him ; if he has not, we can at
most respect him, if we do not pity and forget him."
He was the same in all things : " I have no comrades," he said,
"only friends." And there is one sentence that he wrote from
Rome that might well be held up to the gamins of the French
Conservatoire. "Je ne veux rien faire de chic ; je veux avoir des
idees avant de commencer un morceau."
In August of his second year Bizet left Rome on a visit to
Naples. He carried a letter to Mercadente. On his return good
news and bad awaited him. Ernest Guiraud, his good friend and
quondam fellow-student in the class of Marmontel, has just been
proclaimed Prix de Rome. And this at the very moment Bizet
was to leave the Villa; for the Academy would have it that their
musical pensionnaires should pass the third year in Germany.
The prospect was entirely repugnant to Bizet. So he went to
work
bound, aghast as it were ; I have not eyes, ears, intelligence,
enough even to admire. But when I see ' L'Ecole D'Athenes,'
or 'La Vierge de Foligno,' when I hear ' Les Noces de Figaro,'
or the second act of ' Guillaume Teil,' I am completely happy ;
I experience a sense of comfort, a complete satisfaction : in effect,
I forget everything."
This, then, is what Rome did for Bizet; but, be it said, for
Bizet trh jeune encore. For a time the result is patent in his
work, but afterwards there comes, although no revulsion, a distinct
Variation of feeling, which has in it something of compromise.
The genius innate in him was inspirational before it was—if it
ever was—erudite. Even in his later days there was for him no
cowering before his culture. In 1867 ne wrote in the Revue
Nationale—the only critique, by the way, he ever wrote—under
the pseudonym of Gaston de Betzi : " The artist has no name,
no nationality. He is inspired or he is not. He has genius or he
has not. If he has, we welcome him ; if he has not, we can at
most respect him, if we do not pity and forget him."
He was the same in all things : " I have no comrades," he said,
"only friends." And there is one sentence that he wrote from
Rome that might well be held up to the gamins of the French
Conservatoire. "Je ne veux rien faire de chic ; je veux avoir des
idees avant de commencer un morceau."
In August of his second year Bizet left Rome on a visit to
Naples. He carried a letter to Mercadente. On his return good
news and bad awaited him. Ernest Guiraud, his good friend and
quondam fellow-student in the class of Marmontel, has just been
proclaimed Prix de Rome. And this at the very moment Bizet
was to leave the Villa; for the Academy would have it that their
musical pensionnaires should pass the third year in Germany.
The prospect was entirely repugnant to Bizet. So he went to
work