“Florent Schmitt has been the victim of a caprice of time”: Émile Vuillermoz’s portrait of Florent Schmitt, written for the Christian Science Monitor (1927).

“A genius essentially dynamic, fed by strong rhythms and dark and violent colors …”

— Émile Vuillermoz, French arts critic and author

In 1927, Durand brought out the first biography of Florent Schmitt, one of the brightest stars in the publishing firm’s galaxy of composers. At the time, Schmitt was 57 years old and at the peak of his creative powers. His catalogue of works numbered close to eighty works, and there would be nearly sixty more to come from his pen during the remaining three decades of his life.

That biography, titled Autour de Florent Schmitt, was authored by Pierre-Octave Ferroud, a younger composer who had studied privately with Schmitt and knew him well.

Rather than filling his book with a formal chronology of events and data, Ferroud approach his subject more in the form of a portrait — a book of 120-page focusing on Schmitt’s key compositions and the the important musical influences underlying them — as well as Schmitt’s own influence on other musicians.

For the next 25 years Ferroud’s book would remain the most important biographical treatment of Florent Schmitt, supplanted only in 1953 with the release of Yves Hucher’s full-length biography of the composer, published when Schmitt was in his 80s (and still yet to bring forth several important late compositions including his Trumpet Suite, Flute Suite, the quartet Pour presque tous les temps, the Symphony No. 2 and the Messe en quatre parties).

Unfortunately, to this day both the Ferroud and Hucher biographies are available to read only in the original French; neither has been translated into English.

At the time of its publication, the Ferroud book was recognized as filling a gap in the chronicles of modern French music. Among those that acknowledged this fact was the musician, author and critic Émile Vuillermoz, who penned an insightful essay about the Ferroud book that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor newspaper on the last day of December 1927.

Vuillermoz was a writer who knew his topic well; he and Schmitt had been acquaintances ever since the two were fellow-students in Gabriel Fauré’s composition class at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1890s. This professional and personal association gave Vuillermoz a special vantage point from which to assess not only the composer’s musical legacy, but also his personal characteristics. (All told, the two men’s acquaintance would continue all the way to the late 1950s — a full six decades.)

Émile Vuillermoz was a singular character in his own right. With his multifaceted involvement across various artistic fields, he could be considered a true “renaissance person.” Born in Lyon in 1878, Vuillermoz studied music (piano and organ) while simultaneously pursuing law and literary studies in his home city. Eventually deciding on a career in the arts, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying harmony with Antoine Taudou as well as composition with Fauré.

Establishing consequential friendships with the important musicians of the day, Vuillermoz was a founding member of Les Apaches as well as the Société musicale indépendante – two organizations of which Florent Schmitt was also a founding member.

By 1910, Vuillermoz had begun to focus his activities on writing about music rather than being a composer; he would eventually author books about Ravel, Fauré, Debussy and even Chopin. In 1911 Vuillermoz became the editor-in-chief of Revue musicale, the SMI’s official publication. He also served for a time as a ghostwriter for Henry Gauthier-Villars (aka “Willy”), a poet and author who is perhaps best-known for being the onetime-husband of novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. A comprehensive listing of Vuillermoz’s extensive writings — books, newspaper and magazine articles — has been indexed and can be viewed here.

Vuillermoz was also instrumental in establishing the Grand Prix du Disque competition, an awards program recognizing classical music recordings of special merit (later part of the Académie Charles Cros). For decades thereafter, winning the coveted Grand Prix du Disque was considered one of the highest achievements in the classical music recording industry worldwide.

In another initiative of cultural significance, in the early 1950s Vuillermoz was one of the leading lights in the founding of the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors — a program which continues to the present day (and for which Florent Schmitt served as the chairperson of the jury at the first competition held in 1951).

Another aspect of Vuillermoz’s life is less known but equally significant – his involvement in the world of film. Vuillermoz is considered by many to be the de facto founder of film criticism in France, publishing numerous articles in various Parisian newspapers (sometimes under the pseudonyms “Gabriel Darcy” or “Claude Bonvin”) as well as serving on the editorial board of L’Impartial français. In 1924 Vuillermoz helped organize the earliest important exhibition on film, “L’Exposition de l’art dans le cinéma français,” at the Musée Galliera.

With his film industry reputation firmly established, in 1936 Vuillermoz served as a member of the jury at the 4^th Venice International Film Festival — a precursor of the Cannes Film Festival, which would be established by Vuillermoz in coordination with French actor, writer and cinema historian René Jeanne shortly after the end of World War II.

But returning to 1927, Vuillermoz’s Christian Science Monitor article was the most informative and insightful portrait of Florent Schmitt that American readers would have ever encountered up to that time. The fact that he Vuillermoz wrote it in flawless English — he was fluent in the language — makes one wish that he would have been inspired to translate Ferroud’s biography into English as well.

Vuillermoz’s article is reprinted in its entirety below.

THE ART OF FLORENT SCHMITT

By: Émile Vuillermoz, Christian Science Monitor, December 31, 1927

Paris, Nov. 25, 1927 – A book has at last just been published, a tiny little book, on the life and work of Florent Schmitt — and thus a veritable injustice has been repaired. It is surprising to see, indeed, that so many young composers who have so far given us nothing but more or less solid hopes, have for a long time possessed their flattering biographies in which their most modest services are detailed, while the powerful author of La Tragédie de Salomé never had the benefit of a similar act of devotion, which moreover was fully due to him.

Florent Schmitt has been the victim of a caprice of time. This energetic and powerful composer fell from the skies at the moment when music, weary of Wagnerian overfeeding, turned in the direction of an ideal of lightness, sensibility, refinement and grace which immediately charmed the whole world. If he had come into the world a few years earlier, this magnificently muscular symphonist would have been more famous than Richard Strauss. But the classmate of Ravel and junior of Debussy, Florent Schmitt found himself a little out of place among a company of music-lovers where there were more gourmets than large eaters.

It would be tremendously unjust, however, not to render homage to the splendid effort that this robust artist has achieved. When one compares his gigantic frescoes to the weak little works of our present poor avant-garde, one feels a start of revolt at the ingratitude of our contemporaries. Certainly, Florent Schmitt is not a martyr; he is honored and respected by us. Everyone bows before the solidity of his genius. But the distribution of his works abroad is still far too small.

In any case, without wishing to diminish in any way the worth of that excellent musician, Arthur Honegger, one cannot help deploring the ignorance of our public and providers of our music pleasures in seeing the tremendous success of Le Roi David, when the Psaume XLVII, so rarely played, which is anterior to it, is a work of far greater individuality, splendor and high ideals. Florent Schmitt’s “oratorio” constitutes a model of its kind, and it is very sad to see it forgotten and neglected when the most modest imitations of this masterpiece are greeted as revelations.

This is why one must welcome with satisfaction the little work that [Pierre-Octave] Ferroud has just devoted to him who is familiarly known as the “Wild Boar of the Vosges.” His book is called Autour de Florent Schmitt, a pleasing title that indicates a very sympathetic modesty on the part of its author. He does not indeed pretend to exhaust such a majestic subject. The work of Florent Schmitt is a monument of vast proportions, the round of which one makes respectfully. One can enclose in a leaflet of 120 pages the talent of certain of our musicians of today, withal their accessories; it is not possible to do as much for Florent Schmitt. But the book is nonetheless filled with interesting notes and vivid details.

Won Prix de Rome

Florent Schmitt, born at Meurthe-et-Moselle, began his musical studies at Nancy and went to complete them at the Paris Conservatoire. He won the Prix de Rome after five successive competitions. He was energetically supported by that far-seeing and sensible master, Gabriel Fauré, who had to contend against the hostility of members of the institution who scented in his pupil an artist of too much independence and of too vast extent. Florent Schmitt, at this period, lived in the atmosphere of the Beethoven of the sonatas, the Wagner of Tristan, the Bach of the cantatas — at the same time absorbing the works of the Russian musicians who had just been introduced into France, those of Chabrier, whose originality was beginning to be understood, the orchestral technique of Richard Strauss and the harmonic discoveries of Debussy.

His regulation stay at the Villa Medici in Rome was marked by many heroic-comic incidents caused by his love of travel. This undisciplined pensioner traversed Europe in every direction with a whim and obstinacy that more than once won him severe remonstrances. His vagabond tendency led him into the most unforeseen places and allowed him to form life-imagination and his heart at the same time as his talent.

Those 50 months spent outside France had a decisive influence on his outlook. [Quoting Ferroud], one may consider as essential “in the makeup of this exceptional person the ingredient of visual experience, of the reflection on things and costumes, to the same degree as that of the musical training pure and simple. To develop himself, it was necessary for him to pick up what was lacking in the places immediately surrounding him.”

Ferroud notes again some very striking peculiarities of this precise technician, whose ideal is so dignified. It has been said of him that he was as meticulous as a watchmaker — but a watchmaker who scored to make watches and preferred to construct the astronomical clock of the Strasbourg Cathedral.

As Louis Aubert has remarked, Florent Schmitt is, among present composers, the one who is most at ease in vehement subjects; far from being afraid of them, he has an actual preference for them. Ferroud makes us observe that “this inclination for tours de force is one of the most astonishing characteristics of this tamer of fancy. He does not let an idea go before he has followed it out to its ultimate consequences. He seems to want to exhaust the form after the matter.”

Certainly, if he profited by his exile to contemplate the grand footsteps of past civilizations, if he developed, together with the taste for immensity that of majesty of line, in his pious visits, we should note from this point of view. the good influence that those with whom he was then most allied were able to exert over him: Paul Bigot, the “architect of the Palatine” to whom he offered the dedication of the Psaume “in memory of their mutual adventures”; and Tony Garnier, the [Giambattista] Piranesi of modern times.

It was by living in intimacy with these two men, whose conceptions surpassed the usual scale, that he felt, little by little growing within himself also the energy to overthrow the limitations of his sphere, and realized that no obstacle could prevent him from peopling “the eternal silence of infinite space,” if such were his good pleasure.

Notes on the Scores

One will find in this work excellent notes on the scores of Florent Schmitt – whether it be on the Reflets d’Allemagne, La Tragédie de Salomé, Le Petit elfe Ferme-l’oeil, Danse de Devadasis, Antoine et Cléopâtre, Le Palais hanté, Salammbó, Mirages, the [Piano] Quintet or the Sonate [libre].

One will find here, shown in the truest and most musical way, the Herculean side of Florent Schmitt’s genius – a genius essentially dynamic, fed by strong rhythms and dark and violent colors. His writing, which is very condensed and close, is however never guided by excesses of pure form. He is one of the last musicians of today to be keen about the sound of vocal ensembles.

Such is the man, such the artist, to whom a modest homage, too long deferred, has now been rendered. Let us hope that this little book will help to swell the number of musicians and good people who hold the author of La Tragédie de Salomé to be one of the greatest musicians of the present period. Through a scruple for which one must give him credit, the author of this work proclaims the difficulty of his task and declares that his book is not an attempt at codification. And he resumes his subject very ably by saying:

“It is very risky to judge a living musician, in all the force of his genius – above all, such a musician, whose efforts are so diverse. To observe him in complete impartiality, we should have to possess the insect’s eye.

His music is music only. It can be defended only by the arguments of music and has not to rely on a literary or aesthetic bodyguard. No metaphysic can be drawn from it. Good speakers are out of place and find themselves silenced. 

Let it suffice them to listen. They cannot fail to be captivated and sometimes entranced by the charm of sound, the magnificence, the ardor, the almost superhuman humor, and the sovereign tenderness which draws tears from the eyes – especially by the pitiless logic which governs all his fancy, and which guides Florent Schmitt through all his metamorphoses.”

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With a lifetime spent at the nexus of the musical and visual arts in Paris and in France — as well as being an acquaintance of Florent Schmitt over the entire period — it comes as little surprise that Vuillermoz was able to capture the persona of Florent Schmitt and his contribution to French music equally insightfully in a later essay that was published in the September 29, 1958 issue of the Jeunesses Musicales publication Journal musical français approximately one month after the death of Schmitt.

Vuillermoz’s piece, titled “The True Face of Florent Schmitt,” depicts the composer with a poignancy that fully lives up to the article’s headline. It can be read in an English translation here.