Monstrous mementos

Thursday, November 2nd., 4 Rue de Calais, Paris.

"Carmen" on Tuesday night with J.D. I thought it as fine as ever.

Montmartre Cemetery

Yesterday was All Saints Day, and I walked in the Montmartre Cemetery. It was rather like a City of the Dead. Certainly as much a relic of barbarism as anything one is likely to see in Paris, with its tons of flowers and ugly wreaths ornamenting the most deplorable monuments and houses of corpses. Vast crowds of people, many in black, but not all. Many, if not most, out for an airing: moonstruck crowds before certain monstrous mementos of surpassing vulgarity. A very few women here and there with moist eyes. A file of soldiers (seasoned) at the gates, made to supply the absence of an iron railing to separate incoming from outgoing crowds - and naturally looking stupid. Also policemen and officials. in the street flowershops and stalls, and wreath shops and stalls and quantities of cabs. Unavoidable not to contemplate one's own mortality in such a setting, or at least one's final resting place. I think I should like Burslem Cemetery best, somewhere near the Longsons. Just a simple headstone with my name, dates and the word "Author". That would be enough.

M D Calvocoressi

Last evening I went to Calvocoressi's and met Vignes the pianist, an extraordinary enthusiast for Russian music and an exceedingly fine player. The two first played a duet and then Vignes had the piano to himself. What struck me was the fine pure quality of the pleasure we obtained, all of us, the simplicity of the enthusiasm; and yet what years of cultivation had gone to provide it, in all of us. Calvocoressi's mother sat upright, on an ordinary cane chair, half blind with cataract, and encouraged our enthusiasm. I expressed my pleasure. "Mais croyez-vous que nous ne sommes pas heureux comme tout, tous les quatres!" said Calvocoressi, his face beaming.

Ricardo Vignes

Vignes, having played a piece, would usually turn back the pages to find some particular passage and would end by playing the whole thing again. When explaining the beauties of passages while he played them he became quite incomprehensible to me, what with his bad accent and his rapidity. Yes, what struck me as I came away was the singular 'purity' of it all, the absence of sex, of anything in the nature of an aftertaste. It reminded me of fine musical evenings in London.
Sadly, later, it also reminded me of the lack of success of "Sacred and Profane Love" - perhaps I was too influenced by my own response to great piano playing, and overdid my heroine's 'enthusiasm'.

Parisian 'culture'

Friday, May 29th.,  Villa des Nefliers, Fontainebleau.

Just to note what the Bal des Quat'z Arts was in 1908. Calvocoressi went to this year's ball, being officially invited as a director of the Russian opera.
See also, 'Musical Evening' - November 2nd. http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/musical-evening.html

He said that there were a large number of women there absolutely naked, and many men who wore nothing better than a ceinture of bones which concealed nothing. Calvo said that on leaving at 4 a.m. he saw a naked woman calmly standing outside in the street, smoking a cigarette, surrounded by a crowd of about 200 people. He said he had heard that afterwards a procession of nudities was formed and went down the Champs Elysee. The ball was held at the "Bowling Palace" (or some such hall) at Neuilly, so as to be 'out of bounds' of the City.

Organised for the first time in 1892 in Montmartre , the Bal Quat'Z'Arts involved students in architecture , painting , sculpture and engraving . It was a great Parisian carnival feast prepared each spring by students of the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, created at the initiative of the architect Henri Guillaume. Participants came in costume but this tended to disappear over the course of the evening, which often took an orgiastic turn. In 1893 there was a protest against licentious behaviour on the streets, denouncing this "fact of extreme gravity and unacceptable ... shamelessness." A lawsuit was filed to the organizers of the ball by the President of the League for the Defence of Morality . The judge in the case asked about what happened and was informed that the ball was the occasion of the exhibition of decorative naked women practising the profession of models and not an orgy. As a result, the judge reassured and amused, condemned the organizers of the ball but imposed only a symbolic fine.

He took me yesterday afternoon to make the acquaintance of the Godebskis at Valvin. Husband, wife, two small kids. Poles. Among the most charming people I have ever met. Purely artistic. Godebski once owned and edited a little review. Looks like a Jew but is not one. I saw on a table a copy of Mallarme's "Divagations", with the envoi from the author "A son vieil ami, Godebski". Not interested in anything but artistic manifestations. I said I had gas and they hadn't. Godebski said he didn't like gas lamps. I said: "For cooking." "Yes", he said, carelessly, "but with alcohol and oil they can manage." Didn't care a damn about inconveniences. A whole crowd of artistic youth there; various French accents. A picturesque, inconvenient house, full of good and bad furniture in various styles. A large attic with rafters formed the salon; a good grand piano in it.

Godebski by Pierre Bonnard

Xavier Cyprien (known as 'Cipa') Godebski (1874-1937) was the son of a Polish-born sculptor. 'Cipa' and his family were at the centre of a large circle of artists, writers and musicians; one of the most devoted of their friends was Maurice Ravel. After the death of Ravel's father, the Godebskis became in effect his second family. He often stayed at their country house La Grangette, at Valvins near Fontainebleau, and it was here that Ravel completed his composition of Ma mère l'oye for Mimie and Jean. It was intended that the two children should give the work's first performance, but the terror of that prospect was too much for them. Although they were of modest means, living in the rue Saint-Florentin, and then in rue d'Athènes, the family was artistic and held Sunday evenings at home for many musicians and painters, including Roussel, and Florent Schmitt. Cipa had also given support to Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted his portrait. Ravel dedicated his Sonatine to Cipa and Ida. Mimie later recalled how her father and Ravel, close friends as they were, used to argue fiercely over musical matters, especially Mozart, who for Ravel was "pure genius", whereas Cipa loudly asserted his boredom with so many repetitions and elaborations.

Deodat de Severac played his new suite. He seemed a very simple sincere person, especially in his ingenuous explanations of his music: "J'ai voulu evoqure. J'ai voulu evoquer," again and again.

http://www.mqcd-musique-classique.com

Déodat de Séverac (1872 – 1921) was a French composer. Of aristocratic background, he was profoundly influenced by the musical tradition of his native Languedoc. He is noted for his vocal and choral music, which include settings of verse in Provençal (the historic language of Languedoc) and Catalan (the historic language of Roussillon) as well as French poems by Verlaine and Baudelaire. His compositions for solo piano have also won critical acclaim, and many of them were titled as pictorial evocations and published in the collections Chant de la Terre, En Languedoc, and En Vacances. A popular example of his work is The Old Musical Box in B-flat major, but his masterpiece is the suite Cerdaña (written 1904—1911), filled with the local colour of Languedoc.

Curious, everybody was enthusiastic about the inventive fancy shown in knockabout turns on English music halls. By chance this was all they found on this occasion to praise about England. But Mme. Godebski said to me, "I love the English language, and everything English."

I worked well at "Old Wives' Tale" yesterday, but indifferently today. I lack male society. A monotonous effect. Also the gardener spent too much money on stocking the garden. So that tonight I felt as if I wanted a change rather acutely.

Musical evening

Thursday, November 2nd., Paris

"Carmen" on Tuesday night with J.D. I thought it as fine as ever. Yesterday was All Saints Day, and I walked in the Montmartre Cemetery.

Montmartre cemetery

It was rather like a City of the Dead. certainly as much a relic of barbarism as anything one is likely to see in Paris, with its tons of flowers and ugly wreaths ornamenting the most deplorable monuments and houses of corpses. vast crowds of people, many in black, but not all; many, if not most, out for an airing: moonstruck crowds before certain monstrous momentos of surpassing vulgarity.

A very few women here and there with moist eyes. A file of soldiers (seasoned) at the gates, made to supply the absence of an iron railing to separate incoming from outgoing crowds - and naturally looking stupid. Also policemen and officials. In the street flower shops and stalls, and wreath shops and stalls and quantities of cabs.

At night I went to Calvocoressi's, and met Vignes the pianist, and extraordinary enthusiast for Russian music and an exceedingly fine player. The two first played a duet, and then Vignes had the piano to himself. What struck me was the fine pure quality of the pleasure we obtained, all of us, the simplicity of the enthusiasm; and yet what years of cultivation had gone to provide it, in all of us. Calvocoressi's mother sat upright, on an ordinary cane chair, half blind with cataract, and encouraged our enthusiasm. I expressed my pleasure. "Mais croyez-vous que nous sommes pas heureux comme tout, tous les quatre!" said Calvocoressi, his face beaming.

Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (1877, Marseille, France – 1944,London, England) was a multilingual music writer and critic who promoted musicians such as Franz Liszt and Modest Mussorgsky. Calvocoressi was born in France of Greek parents. At first, he studied law at the Lycée Janson de Sailly, and then studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris with Xavier Leroux. He became friends with Maurice Ravel. As a talented polyglot, Calvocoressi began a career in 1902 as a music critic and correspondent for several English, American, German and Russian periodicals. He also translated song texts, opera librettos and books from Russian and Hungarian into French and English. The subject of his first book was Liszt, but he was a strong proponent of Mussorgsky and other Russian musicians.

Vignes, having played a piece, would usually turn back the pages to find some particular passage and would end by playing the whole thing again. When explaining the beauties of passages while he played them he became quite incomprehensible to me, what with his bad accent and his rapidity. Yes, what struck me as I came away was the singular "purity" of it all, the absence of sex, of anything in the nature of an aftertaste. It reminded me of fine musical evenings in London.

Ricardo Viñes (1875 – 1943) was a Spanish pianist. He first publicly performed many important works by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Manuel de Falla, Déodat de Séverac and Isaac Albéniz. He was born in Lleida, Catalonia, and studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire under Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, and composition and harmony with Benjamin Godard and Albert Lavignac. He was influential as a close associate of Ravel. Viñes was effeminate, and both he and Ravel were eternal bachelors. These facts have led many to suspect that there was more to their friendship, although Viñes's ten-year diary of their times together makes no confirmation of this. Viñes became known for presenting new music, especially of French and Spanish origin. Viñes died in Barcelona in 1943.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2EWuW6MM_4>