Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) (14 page)

ME:
Enough of your ruminations; get on with your story.

HIM:
That’s not possible. There are days where I have to ruminate. It’s a disease that must run its course. Where was I?

ME:
On the establishment of a close relationship between the Jew and the renegade.

HIM:
So the pear was now ripe … but you’re not paying attention. What are you thinking about?

ME:
I’m thinking about the way your tone varies; sometimes it’s high-flown, sometimes familiar and low.

HIM:
Can the tone of an imperfect man be uniform? One evening he knocks at his good friend’s door with a terrified air, hardly able to speak, his face pale as death, shaking in every limb … ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ ‘We’re done for.’ ‘What do you mean, done for?’ ‘Done for, I tell you; there’s no escaping it.’ ‘But explain yourself.’ ‘Give me a minute, to get over my fright.’ ‘Yes, yes, take your time,’ the Jew said to him, instead of saying, ‘You’re an unmitigated scoundrel; I don’t know what you’re going to tell me, but you’re a real scoundrel, your terror’s just a sham.’

ME:
But why should he speak to him like that?

HIM:
Because he was faking, and he’d overstepped the mark. It’s clear to me; don’t interrupt me again. ‘We’re done for, there’s no hope for us.’ Don’t you sense the affectation of those repeated
done fors
? ‘A traitor’s betrayed us to the Holy Inquisition, you as a Jew, I as a renegade, an infamous renegade.’ Just listen to the way that traitor unblushingly uses the most odious language. It takes more courage than you might suppose to call
oneself by one’s true name. You don’t know what it takes to reach that point.

ME:
I certainly don’t. But this infamous renegade…

HIM:
Was lying; but it was a very clever lie. The Jew is very frightened, tugs at his beard, flings himself about. He imagines the police at his door, sees himself wrapped up in a
san-benito
, his auto-da-fé set up in readiness …
*
‘My dear, my loving friend, my only friend, what should we do?’ ‘What should we do? Show ourselves, appear perfectly secure, behave as we always do. This tribunal operates in secret, but slowly. This delay must be used to sell off everything. I’ll go and charter a vessel—or arrange for someone else to do that; yes, chartering it through someone else would be best. We’ll store your fortune aboard; because it’s your fortune they’re mainly after; and you and I will leave, and seek on some other shore the freedom and security to serve our God and obey the Law of Abraham and of our conscience. What’s absolutely vital in this dangerous situation, is not to make a rash move.’ No sooner said than done. The ship’s chartered, and supplied with provisions and sailors. The Jew’s fortune is on board. Tomorrow at dawn they’ll set sail. They can dine light-heartedly and sleep securely. Tomorrow they’ll escape their persecutors. During the night the renegade gets up, robs the Jew of his wallet, purse, and jewels, boards the vessel, and away he sails. And you think that’s the end of it? Ha! You haven’t understood. When I was told this tale, I, Rameau, guessed what I’ve kept from you, to test your shrewdness. You were right to be an honest man, you’d never have been more than a scamp. Up to this point, the renegade is just that. He’s a despicable rascal whom no one would choose to emulate. The sublime part of his wickedness is this: he himself had denounced to the Holy Inquisition his good friend the Israelite, who was arrested the next morning, and, a few days later, fuelled a fine bonfire. And that’s how the renegade became the tranquil possessor of the fortune of that accursed descendant of those who crucified our Lord.

ME:
I don’t know which of the two horrifies me more: the villainy of your renegade, or the tone in which you speak of it.

HIM:
And that’s what I was telling you. The atrocity of the act carries you beyond contempt, and that’s why I’m being sincere. I wanted you to realize just how much I excel at my art; force you to admit that I was at least original in my degradation, lay claim, in your thoughts, to my place in the great tradition of super-scoundrels, so that then I can exclaim:
Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator!
*
Come on, Master Philosopher, let’s be merry, all together please:
Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator!

Whereupon he began an extraordinary fugue-like song. At times the melody would be grave and majestic, at times light-hearted and playful; now he’d be imitating the bass, now a treble part; he’d indicate, by outstretched arm and neck, where the notes were sustained; he performed and composed a song of triumph in his own honour, demonstrating that he knew more about good music than good morals.

For my own part, I couldn’t decide whether to stay or leave, laugh or be angry. I stayed, intending to shift the conversation onto some subject that would cleanse my soul of the horror filling it. I was beginning to find it hard to tolerate the presence of a man who could discuss a horrible deed, an abominable, heinous crime, the way a connoisseur of painting or poetry discusses the beauties of a fine work of art, or the way a moralist or a historian points out and emphasizes every aspect of a heroic action. In spite of myself, I was overcome with depression. Observing this, he enquired:

HIM:
What’s the matter? Are you feeling unwell?

ME:
A little, but it’ll pass.

HIM:
You look anxious, as if you’re worrying over some disturbing idea.

ME:
That’s so.

After a moment’s silence on his part as on mine, during which he
paced up and down whistling and humming, I said, to bring him back to the subject of his talent: ‘What are you doing now?’

HIM:
Nothing.

ME:
That’s most exhausting.

HIM:
As it was, I was feeling quite stupid enough already, then I went to hear the music of Duni and our other young composers and that really finished me.

ME:
So you approve of that style of music?

HIM:
Definitely.

ME:
And to your ear these new melodies sound beautiful?

HIM:
Do they sound beautiful! My goodness! A thousand times yes. Such declamation! Such truth! Such feeling!

ME:
All imitative art takes its models from nature. What is the model the musician uses in composing a melody?

HIM:
Why not start at the beginning? What is a melody?

ME:
That question, I admit, is beyond me. We’re all the same. Our memories contain only words which, from the frequent and even the appropriate use we make of them, we believe we understand, and our minds contain only vague notions. When I utter the word ‘melody’, I have no clearer idea in my mind than do you and most of your fellow men when they say ‘reputation, blame, honour, vice, virtue, modesty, decency, shame, ridicule’.

HIM:
Melody is an imitation, using the notes of a scale invented by art or copied from nature (you decide), with the human voice or an instrument as its medium, that mimics physical sounds or tones of passion; and, as you can see, by changing the necessary terms in that definition it would precisely fit painting, eloquence, sculpture, and poetry. Now, as to your question. What’s the model for the musician or melody? It’s declamation, if the model breathes and thinks, sound, if the model’s inanimate. Declamation should be pictured as a line, and melody as another line that snakes up and down above it. The more powerful and true the declamation—the model for the song—the more the song mirroring it will break it into
separate phrases; then the truer the song, and the more beautiful. And that’s what our young musicians have understood so well. When you hear: ‘I’m a poor devil’, you feel you’re listening to a miser’s lament; if he weren’t singing, he’d be using that same tone to say, as he entrusts his gold to the earth: ‘Oh earth, receive my treasure’.
*
And that young girl who feels her heart beating rapidly and, blushing, flustered, begs
monseigneur
to permit her to leave, would she express herself otherwise? These works present a great variety of characters and a wide range of declamatory styles. They’re sublime, I tell you. Go and listen, please, listen to the piece where the dying youth cries out: ‘My heart’s forsaking me’.
*
Listen to the song; listen to the accompaniment, and afterwards tell me in what way the actual tones of the dying man, and the form of this melody, differ. You’ll see if the modulations of the melody do not perfectly coincide with those of the spoken word. I’m saying nothing about the metre, which is another essential component of melody; I’m only concerned with the expression; nothing could be more self-evident than this maxim, which I read somewhere:
musices seminarium accentus
: metre is the source of melody.
*
From which you can see how difficult, and how essential, it is to know how to perform recitative properly. There’s no beautiful melody which cannot be made into a beautiful recitative, and no beautiful recitative from which a clever musician cannot create a beautiful melody. I’d hesitate to assert that someone who declaims well would sing well, but I’d be surprised if a fine singer weren’t good at declamation. You must believe all this that I’m telling you, for it’s the truth.

ME:
There’s nothing I’d like better than to believe you, if I were not prevented by a trifling difficulty.

HIM:
Which is?

ME:
If this music is sublime, then it follows that the music of the divine Lully, of Campra, of Destouches, of Mouret and even—just between you and me—even that of the dear uncle must be a bit dull.

HIM
[coming right up to me and murmuring his reply in my
ear]: I don’t want to be overheard, for there are plenty of people here who know me; but the fact is, it
is
dull. It’s not that I’m worried about the dear uncle—since ‘dear’ is what we’re calling him. He’s made of stone. He’d see me with my tongue hanging out a foot from my mouth and wouldn’t give me a glass of water. But however hard he tries—with octaves, with sevenths (tum, tum, tatata, tirelee, tirelee, da) making the devil of a din, those who’re beginning to see through him, and no longer confuse a tremendous racket with music, won’t ever come to terms with it. There should be a police order forbidding anyone, regardless of their rank or position, from having Pergolesi’s
Stabat Mater
sung. That
Stabat
ought to have been burnt by the public executioner. My goodness, those damned Italian
bouffons
, with their
Serva padrona
and their
Tracollo
, have really given us a good kick in the pants.
*
In the old days a
Tancrède
, an
Issé
, a
Europe galante, Les Indes, Castor, Les Talents lyriques
played for four, five, six months. An
Armide
ran forever.
*
These days, they keep coming one after the other, falling like ninepins. So Rebel and Francœur
*
are foaming at the mouth. They’re saying they’re done for; ruined; and that if people put up with those trashy fairground music-makers any longer, the national music will go to the devil, and that the Académie Royale, down in the back alley
*
—the Opéra—might as well put up its shutters. And they do have a point. The old fossils who’ve been going there every Friday for thirty or forty years no longer find it as much fun as they did in the past; they’re bored and they nod off without knowing why; they wonder about it, but can’t come up with an explanation. Why don’t they ask me? Duni’s prediction will come true, and the way things are going, I’d stake my life that within four or five years of the
Peintre amoureux de son modèle
,
*
you won’t see a living soul in the famous alley. Those simple souls, they’ve deserted their own symphonies for the Italian ones. They imagined their ears would become attuned to the latter without it affecting their vocal music, as if a symphony were not, in relation to song—allowing always for the range of the
instrument and the dexterity of the fingers—what song is in relation to actual declamation. As if the violin were not the ape of the singer, who’ll one day become, when complexity’s replaced beauty, the ape of the violin. The first musician to perform Locatelli was the apostle of the new music. There’ll be others, many others. We’ll grow accustomed to imitations of the accents of passion or the phenomena of nature, through melody, voice, and instruments, for that’s the real range of the purpose of music. Do you then suppose that we’ll keep our taste for pillage, spears, triumphal marches, ovations, victory celebrations? ‘Go and see if they’re coming, Jean.’
*
They’d imagined the public would weep or laugh at tragic or comic scenes that had been transmuted into music; that they could let the public hear tones of rage, hatred, and jealousy, genuine love laments, and the ironies and jokes of the Italian or French theatre, and that they’d still admire
Ragonde
and
Platée.
*
My reply to that is: fiddle-faddle. They’d imagined that they could regularly let the public experience with what ease, flexibility, and fluidity the harmony and metre of the Italian tongue, with its ellipses and inversions, adapt themselves to the art, movement, expression, and structure of the songs and the measured rhythm of the sounds, and that they’d still fail to notice how stiff, hollow, heavy, unwieldy, pedantic, and monotonous is their own tongue.
*
But such is the case. They’ve told themselves that the public, after mingling its tears with the tears of a mother bewailing the death of her son, after shuddering at a tyrant’s murderous decree, wouldn’t be bored by their fairyland decors, their insipid mythology, their mawkish little madrigals which reveal as much about the poet’s bad taste as they do about the sterility of the art that tolerates them. The simple souls! It is not so, and never will be. The rights of the true, the good, and the beautiful will always prevail. They may be contested, but in the long run they’re admired. Art lacking in these qualities may be admired for a time, but eventually the applause gives way to yawns. So yawn away, my friends, yawn to your hearts’ content. Don’t be embarrassed. The supremacy
of nature and of my trinity is such that the forces of hell can never prevail against it—Truth which is the Father, engendering Good, which is the Son, whence comes Beauty, which is the Holy Spirit—my trinity establishes its dominion imperceptibly. The foreign god humbly takes his place upon the altar, at the side of the indigenous idol; little by little he consolidates his position until, one fine day, he gives his neighbour a gentle shove; and—lo and behold! the idol falls. It’s said that that’s how the Jesuits introduced Christianity into China and India. And whatever those Jansenists may say, this political system that makes straight for its target without commotion, or bloodshed, or martyrs, without hurting a hair of anybody’s head, strikes me as the best.