La Mélodie française de Berlioz à Duparc; essai de critique historique by Frits NoskeReview by: Jacques BarzunNotes, Second Series, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jun., 1955), pp. 441-442Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/893143 .

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turn it on like a faucet, and their glands are ever ready to pour out inspirational juices right along with sweat. Meanwhile there is a real shortage of conductors who know what they ought to be inspired about, who realize that interpretation is no substitute for an exact knowledge of styles, who have learned that some music has no need for "beauty," who have some sort of historical perspective (books are helpful here), who have gone at least as far as Dolmetsch on embellishments, who know when and how not to reduce poly- phony to a mass of homogenized har- mony, who are eager to use musicology where it can be helpful rather than sneer at it because it challenges their com- fortable ignorance, who . . .

No, it is not their hearts and souls that conductors need to cultivate, but their brains and tastes.

Brains? There's a dangerous word; for the intellect would discipline the heart, and that leads to objectivity. Nowadays,

Mr. Munch, writes, "Objectivity is de- manded of us. We should be ashamed of our feelings, ashamed of being sensitive or even sentimental . . . we are still allowed to listen with our ears but not with our hearts. We may no longer even sing with spirit." Where, I am eager to know, does this healthy situation exist? Who is practising this esthetic? Where- ever it is (certainly not Boston!), that is where I want to go to hear a few con- certs. Just for a change, I would like to hear performances that are only correct.

Mr. Munch, by the way, is a very re- spectable writer; his thinking span rarely goes beyond a paragraph and his chapters are merely collections of paragraphs. ("Musicians are generally not intellec- tuals"-page 64.) Leonard Burkat's translation reads fluently and his intro- duction is informative. Needless to say, the book is intended for the layman, who will surely be inspired by it.

LAWRENCE MORTON

La Melodie fransaise de Berlioz 'a Duparc; essai de critique his- torique. Par Frits Noske. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954. [x, (2), 356 p., music, bibl., 8vo; 20 Guilders]

Mr. Noske's "Essay in Historical Criti- cism" is the first comprehensive study of the genre melodie as defined by the time of its emergence and place of flourishing. As such the book was a much-needed piece of musicological research. The au- thor illustrates his judgments abundantly by musical quotations from the works described, and supplements his discus- sion with a full catalog of the produc- tions in this genre by the following com- posers: Monpou, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Liszt, Wagner, David, Reber, Gounod, Mass6, Reyer, Bizet, Delibes, Massenet, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Franck, C a still on, Faur6, and Duparc. Mr. Noske did most of his work in Paris and has been com- mendably thorough in his examination of the notable works which he uses to char- acterize at once the form and the indi- vidual styles. His book is therefore in- valuable as a work of reference, in addi- tion to being full of sound judgments and happy suggestions. He is particularly

felicitous when discussing the great three on his roster: Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner.

Perhaps because he was producing a dissertation, the author felt bound to take up with equal fullness a quantity of topics related to his subject, and this frequently encumbers his treatment while leading him into errors, both of omission and of commission. For example, his first problem was to distinguish the genre melodie from the romance, which pre- ceded it in popularity, and from the scena, whose features make it a distinct form; and for this purpose he had to describe the romance. But he had no need to spend thirty pages on the sub- divisions of that genre, nor continue for fifty more on French prosody and the opinions of leading and obscure French poets upon music. The book properly begins on page 84. Yet by this point, because of the author's long-windedness and occasional back-tracking, one is not sure to what or to whom he ascribes

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the origin of the genre and of the name by which it is called.

In the remainder of the work, his judgment asserts itself more clearly in musical analysis than in the expression of relative choices among works. It is sometimes hard to know which song in a collection he considers the best or the finest or the greatest, for he has used these and other words in mutually neu

tralizing fashion. It is a pity, too, that he takes up biographical minutiae in footnotes, as he does in disputing with Wotton on page 93, misdating and mis- undersanding the letter he cites in his own support. But these are small specks (like the use of an antiquated text of Rameau's Nephew) upon the very fair surface of his historical reconstruction.

JACQUES BARZUN

Musique et Poesie au XVIe Siecle. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, r19541. r384 p.. music. bibM.R 8vo: 1 600 Fr.I

This volume, published in the series Colloques Internationaux du Centre Na- tional de la Recherche Scientifique, Sci- ences Humaines, V, is the record of a meeting, held at Paris, June 30 to July 4, 1953, during which philologists and musi- cologists from France, England, Italy, the United States, and Spain discussed num- erous aspects of 16th century music and poetry. After two Discours inaugural, delivered by R. Lebegue and J. Chailley from the Sorbonne, 21 papers were read, each followed by a discussion. The meet- ing closed with a Discussion generale, in which an attempt was made to arrive at some general conclusions and summary results.

The papers naturally fall into two groups, according to whether the author approached his problem primarily from the literary or from the musical point of view. It is greatly to the credit of the participants that they endeavored to com- bine both aspects, avoiding that strictly departmental approach so frequently used with detrimental results. In fact, some of the papers could equally be placed in either group, and it is therefore with due reservation that the contributions are grouped here as follows:

Literary Papers: D. P. Walker: Le chant orphique de Marsile

Ficin G. Thibault: Musique et poesie en France

au XVIe siecle avant les Amours de Ronsard

V. L. Saulnier: Maurice Sc6ve et la Musique R. Lebegue: Ronsard et la Musique F. Lesure: Elements populaires dans la chan-

son frangaise au debut du XVIe siecle A. Verchaly: Poesie et air de Cour en France

jusqu'a. 1620 F. A. Yates: Poesie et musique dans les

"Magnificences" au mariage du duc de Joyeuse, Paris, 1581

M. Querol-Gavalda: Importance historique et nationale du romance

Musical Papers: I. Pope: La musique espagnole A la Cour de

Naples dans la seconde moitie du XVe siecle

N. Bridgman: La frottola et la transition de la frottola au madrigal

D. Stevens: La chanson anglaise avant l'ecole madrigaliste

J. A. Westrup: L'influence de la musique italienne sur le madrigal anglais

J. Jacquot: Lyrisme et sentiment tragique dans les madrigaux d'Orlando Gibbons

W. Mellers: La melancolie au debut du XVIIe siecle et le madrigal anglais

K. J. Levy: Vaudeville, vers mesures et airs de Cour

T. Dart: Le R6le de la danse dans 1' "ayre" anglais

J. Chailley: Esprit et technique du chroma- tisme de la Renaissance

F. Ghisi: L' "aria di maggio" et le travestis- sement spirituel de la p#'sie profane en Italie

L. Schrade: L' "Edipo Tiranno" d' Andrea Gabrieli et la Renaissance de la tragedie grecque

N. Pirrotta: Tragedie et comedie dans la Camerata fiorentina

S. Clercx: L'Espagne du XVIe siecle, source d'inspiration du genie heroique de Monte- verdi.

The discussions that followed each paper are reproduced in full. They often provide a very stimulating commentary or shed new light upon the problems pre- sented. Of particular interest is the Dis- cussion generale in which the partici- pants endeavored to summarize the re- sults of the entire session. As may be expected, the discussion centered around the question as to what extent poetry and music of the 16th century present the aspect of unification and integration. The general consensus seems to have been that they are not as fully integrated as they are, for instance, in the German Lied of the 19th century-a result that may also have been expected.

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