The Odd Habits of Composers

THE geniuses who have illustrated music sometimes have odd habits, as do writers. It seems that inspiration needs singular adjuvants to pour out. It seems that Gluck, the protégé of Queen Marie-Antoinette, when he came to France, where his talent reached its peak, imagined, to get himself going, to have his piano carried to the middle of a meadow, and to have it accompanied there by a pedestal table supporting a bottle of Champagne and a glass. He would settle down in front of the horizon of flowers and grass, trees and streams, and create his harmony. Although German, he had worked mainly in Italy, where he went at the age of seventeen. But, there, he did not compose a masterpiece; It took the encouragement of the Queen and our meadows and woods to bring to light his two Iphigenias: Iphigénie en Aulide, whose overture excited such enthusiasm that the public demanded that it be repeated twice; and Iphigénie en Tauride, which was his last opera, but his best.

This musician is not the only one who had strange ideas to get himself going. Sarti is mentioned, born in Faenza, but called by the King of Denmark, who admired the young man of twenty-six who was already capable of charming his compatriots. He felt his genius freeze in this North, so far from his homeland. He had to leave it to recover, and yet he was not inspired by the marvelous sites of Latium or the perfumes of the myrtles; he locked himself in a large dark room, barely lit by a single lamp hanging from the ceiling, and there, alone, enveloped in silence, he played for days on end. The Empress Catherine of Russia then wanted to have him with her. He accepted her brilliant offers, left the sun of Italy again for the other sun of the North, which does not disappear from the sky at certain times, and he went to write Armide in the middle of the snows. He was rewarded with a title of Russian nobility. He also composed in Petersburg a Te Deum, to celebrate the capture of Oksakow, and demanded that his orchestra be accompanied by the noise of twelve cannons thundering in time. He died in 1802 in Petersburg.

Cimarosa, who at twenty years of age was applauded on the principal stages of Europe, was also called to Russia by Catherine II. There he wrote the Secret Marriage, which is his best work. He returned to Venice to die. His working methods were very different from those of his colleagues. Instead of seeking the quiet solitude that allows thought to flourish, he delighted in the midst of tumult and noise, there he gathered harmonies understood only by himself. Often, he gathered his friends together and began to compose while they talked, played, and amused themselves; then, he called out to them to ask their opinion on a musical phrase that he had just written or played. It happened that he invented, in a single night of celebration, eight or ten charming airs, for which he gave the motif and which he then finished without leaving a noisy company. Cherubini also enjoyed composing in society. If inspiration showed itself rebellious, if not an idea sprang from his brain, he turned to his companions and asked them for a pack of cards. But it was not to play a game; he covered it with caricatures, grotesque sketches, extraordinary fantasies. His friends shared these drawings, which he abandoned when an idea crossed his mind, leaving his characters with one foot in the air or with only half a face; he had an equal gift with his pencil as with his pen.

Sacchini, a very poor musician, but so gifted for art that he was sent to the conservatory of Santa Maria de Lorretto where he was noted for the majesty of his religious songs. Later appointed director of the Ospodaletto conservatory in Venice, he had enough leisure to write pious and large compositions. Then he went to England, Germany, Austria, where Joseph II took him under his protection. In all his travels, he was accompanied by his wife and his cat. It was impossible for him to write a line, to put a note on a staff, if his wife was not by his side and if the cat was not playing around him.

Paesiello had another fantasy: he had to compose in his bed; once he got up, inspiration left him. He had to be huddled under his sheets, buried under his covers, to see the ideas spring forth.

A great Italian artist, Pigarelli, also needed to exalt his spirit by reading a beautiful page from the masters of religious eloquence, or to identify with the rhythm of the best Latin poets.

Haydn, a poor little choirboy who sang in church, had a great chance and a great sorrow in his life. The chance was to have the princes Antony and Nicholas Esterhazy as protectors; the sorrow was to have a cantankerous wife, who poisoned his days. Like Socrates' wife, Xantippe, Mrs. Joseph Haydn always found her husband at fault. So the latter, of a gloomy nature fond of solitude, took refuge in work, admitting that composing was his supreme happiness. To put himself in a state of receptivity to the ideas that swarm in the air, he would meditate in front of his piano, put the ring that Frederick II had given him on his finger, meditate, prelude and, suddenly, taking flight, he would play for hours, not even suspecting the time spent. It was especially during his stay in Eisenstadt, with his illustrious friend, that he lived entirely for his art, freed from the cares of the world and the presence of his wife.

Beethoven, deaf, heard in his soul the song of the birds, mingled with that of the trees in the breeze and the murmur or the anger of the Rhine. He composed his splendid Pastoral Symphony while walking the countryside around his beloved city of Bohn. He understood and rendered in melody what he did not hear, but saw. Our senses, united, help and supplement each other. The dreamer hears and sees things that are not on the plane of his evolution, but where his genius transports him. The bizarre customs of great inventors, writers, musicians, painters, they all have a... mania, because they are habits taken to fix their thought, to free it from the routine atmospheres of life, to create a fake one. No human being is completely exempt from manias... the important thing is that they do not bother others.

RENÉE D'ANJOU.