Musical Memories | Page 2

himself
by running his fingers through her splendid black hair, he would talk to
her about art, music, painting--beauty in every form. So she got it into
her head that if she ever had sons of her own, the first should be a
musician, the second a painter, and the third a sculptor. As a result,
when I came home from the nurse, she was not greatly surprised that I
began to listen to every noise and to every sound; that I made the doors

creak, and would plant myself in front of the clocks to hear them strike.
My special delight was the music of the tea-kettle--a large one which
was hung before the fire in the drawing-room every morning. Seated
nearby on a small stool, I used to wait with a lively curiosity for the
first murmurs of its gentle and variegated crescendo, and the
appearance of a microscopic oboe which gradually increased its song
until it was silenced by the kettle boiling. Berlioz must have heard that
oboe as well as I, for I rediscovered it in the "Ride to Hell" in his La
Damnation de Faust.
At the same time I was learning to read. When I was
two-years-and-a-half old, they placed me in front of a small piano
which had not been opened for several years. Instead of drumming at
random as most children of that age would have done, I struck the notes
one after another, going on only when the sound of the previous note
had died away. My great-aunt taught me the names of the notes and got
a tuner to put the piano in order. While the tuning was going on, I was
playing in the next room, and they were utterly astonished when I
named the notes as they were sounded. I was not told all these details--I
remember them perfectly.
I was taught by Le Carpentier's method and I finished it in a month.
They couldn't let a little monkey like that work away at the piano, and I
cried like a lost soul when they closed the instrument. Then they left it
open and put a small stool in front of it. From time to time I would
leave my playthings and climb up to drum out whatever came into my
head. Gradually, my great-aunt, who fortunately had an excellent
foundation in music, taught me how to hold my hands properly so that I
did not acquire the gross faults which are so difficult to correct later on.
But they did not know what sort of music to give me. That written
especially for children is, as a rule, entirely melody and the part for the
left hand is uninteresting. I refused to learn it. "The bass doesn't sing," I
said, in disgust.
Then they searched the old masters, in Haydn and Mozart, for things
sufficiently easy for me to handle. At five I was playing small sonatas
correctly, with good interpretation and excellent precision. But I

consented to play them only before listeners capable of appreciating
them. I have read in a biographical sketch that I was threatened with
whippings to make me play. That is absolutely false; but it was
necessary to tell me that there was a lady in the audience who was an
excellent musician and had fastidious tastes. I would not play for those
who did not know.
As for the threat of whippings, that must be relegated to the realm of
legends with the one that Garcia punished his daughters to make them
learn to sing. Madame Viardot expressly told me that neither she nor
her sister was abused by their father and that they learned music
without realizing it, just as they learned to talk.
But in spite of my surprising progress my teacher did not foresee what
my future was to be. "When he is fifteen," she said, "if he can write a
dance, I shall be satisfied." It was just at this time, however, that I
began to write music. I wrote waltzes and galops--the galop was
fashionable at that period; it ran to rather ordinary musical motives and
mine were no exception to the rule. Liszt had to show by his Galop
Chromatique the distinction that genius can give to the most
commonplace themes. My waltzes were better. As has always been the
case with me, I was already composing the music directly on paper
without working it out on the piano. The waltzes were too difficult for
my hands, so a friend of the family, a sister of the singer Geraldy, was
kind enough to play them for me.
I have looked over these little compositions lately. They are
insignificant, but it is impossible to find a technical error in them. Such
precision was remarkable for a child who