The Spirit of French Music/To Monsieur André Messager
TO MONSIEUR ANDRÉ MESSAGER
My Dear Master,
An artist favoured by the Muse that inspired of old Grétry, Monsigny and Boïeldieu has every right to the homage of a book in which the praise of French music is sung.
It would have been enough for me to have inscribed your name at the head of these studies, had I had no motive but this for dedicating them to you. But your generous welcome of the first musical work for which I sought a public hearing gives me another motive—gratitude. My prayer is that I may deserve well enough of musical art for it to be said that in giving me access to this second career you have not served it ill.
Is this the time to give ourselves up to such dreams? When the majority of French families are in mourning, while War continues to reap its harvest of the youth of this country, ought we writers and artists to devote ourselves passionately to our work? Yes, more than ever we should. After the cataclysm the needs of human nature will be unchanged; a long privation will have rendered them more pressing. What we do goes beyond the sphere of utility. But the need of truth and beauty lies closer to the heart of humanity than the need of what is useful; and a period which does not satisfy this superior need, or which only provides it with clouded and alloyed satisfactions, is a period in which many things are not well, in which what are called practical interests themselves suffer deep injury. This truth is applicable to all civilised peoples, and eminently so to France. Our works represent the most precious part of the nation's capital, the part whose decline would bring with it the decadence of all other parts. A France whose culture did not turn out the finest products would be a France that the world would hold in slight esteem; or rather the world would not recognise her; not receiving from her those unique gifts that it expects, it would be little disposed to seek out the more ordinary products that she would offer. Our work, then, is something higher than useful, yet it has utility. It is the radiation of our letters and our arts which will open world-routes to our merchants and our ships.
To work then! Let us work with an ardour redoubled by grief and hope. The dead who have saved us require of us that we add to our duties and labours those which awaited them. Let us work, striving after that perfection for which the conditions of modern existence are, alas! none too favourable, but which remains nevertheless the strict law of our professional sincerity.