Monsieur Harel, director of the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin, had made it clear: ‘I want an air entirely subservient to the words’. Hence there was no question of accepting, for the première of Lucrèce Borgia (12 february 1833) a music ‘one would listen to and which would distract from the drama’, even if this was wanted by the author Hugo, personally.
Yet, in this piece, music occupies quite a special place, since it brings about the coup de théâtre which leads to the dénouement with this duet between the drinking-song and the De Profundis, between the monks’ procession and the accents of orgy whose lines were the poet’s and the notes the conductor’s, Alexandre Piccini, grandson of the so-called Gluck’s rival who was content to transcribe the rhythm of the refrain on the basis of the primitive beat hammered by the dramatist on a table corner.
It is said that Meyerbeer and Berlioz had also intended to write this music but Piccini was able to produce something as plain as desired by Director Harel:
The incidental music (simple ‘orchestral tremolos’) thus did not preserve any trace of the wishes such as formulated by the drama’s author in his famous letter of 16 january 1833 to the Belgian musicographer François Joseph Fétis, disappointed or-ganizer of the Concert Historique of 16 december 1832 (concert repeated 13 january 1833): ‘Dear Sir, I cannot tell you just how delighted I was with your concert the other day. By exhibiting these marvels, you are accomplishing an antiquarian’s and an artist’s work. I thank you in this dual capacity... I have another request to make. I would like to hear brought forth by the gondolier whom, in my first act, I send out onto the lagoons of Venice at night, a few phrases from the Romanesca and Vilhancico which charmed us the other day. Would it be indiscreet to ask whether you could communicate to me these two admirable tunes with their music for our executants? This would be doing me a really great favour which I would value very highly indeed and which I would be happy to receive from you’.
Victor Hugo was 31 years old. The Concert Historique of 13 january counted among its listeners the man in France who was considered, wrongly so, as the most closed to music with his famous ‘I only like the barrel organ and the tunes of Dédé’ (alias his daughter Adèle, in the absence of Léopoldine?); but are there not legends which last for centuries?
L.a.s. Léopoldine Hugo, Private Collection
All Hugo’s dramas contain one or several songs. He writes some himself or approaches composers. In 1831, the July government commissions a Hymne from him to celebrate the anniversary of ‘Those who piously died for the Fatherland’. Hérold (Prix de Rome 1812), composer of Zampa, of Pré aux Clercs and of the ballet La Somnambule (1927) is asked to provide the music. Hugo writes to him thus: ‘I don’t know whether you would feel like doing something with the lines I have had the honour of sending you, and I do invite you not to do anything with them. If, however, you do decide to give soul and life to these dead words, I herewith forward to you two linesI have changed...’.
The composers converse with the Poet with due coquetry. Charles Gounod writes to him from Saint-Cloud, 39, route Impériale:
‘Dear Sir and very illustrious Master,
Your gigantic way of moving, like worlds, ideas and images, this organ of the mind all whose keyboards resound under your fingers, all this throws such powerful sonority into the soul that henceforth one does not dare add one’s weak note, lost as it would be in the hurricanes unleashed by you’.
In 1839, Gasparo Spontini, famous author of La Vestale (6 december 1807) turns to him in these terms: ‘I, too, would have some ideas to put to you in order to facilitate your search for a suitable opera subject, passionate, voluptuous, with continual ballets, religious ceremonies, with war hymns, songs, heroic ballads, voluptuous huntresses...’.
A self-confident 32-year-old, Ernest Reyer, who was to become famous with Sigurd and Salammbô, takes the liberty, on 22nd december 1855, to ask for his authorization to set to music the Vieille Chanson du Jeune Temps, recognizing at the same time: ‘it does not need this at all, that is true, but I would be quite proud to shelter my little-known name under your benevolent renown’. Permission granted nine months later, Reyer expresses profuse thanks: ‘... I shall thus take a share of the legitimate and resounding success of the Contemplations’.
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