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The last two works were composed after Auber had passed his eightieth year. The indifference of this Anacreon of music to renown is worthy of remark. He never attended the performance of his own pieces, and disdained applause. The highest and most valued distinctions were showered on him; orders, jeweled swords, diamond snuffboxes, were poured in from all the courts of Europe.
The admittedly inferior musician is the one who, like Auber and Offenbach, not to mention our purveyors of drawing-room ballads, can produce an unlimited quantity of symmetrical tunes, but cannot weave themes symphonically. When this is taken into account, it will be seen that the fact that there is a great deal of repetition in The Ring does not distinguish it from the old-fashioned operas.
The line of procession, led by a band playing extracts from Meyerbeer's music, passed the Opéra Comique and the Grand Opéra, both of which were dressed in black. Auber was among the pall-bearers, and Gounod among the mourners. Behind the coffin were carried on a cushion the various decorations with which sovereigns and societies had decked the composer.
The Princess proposed to Auber to give his arm to Jenny Lind, and to put her at his right hand, la place d'honneur, adding, with her most ironical smile, "le genie avant la beaute." Auber made a charming host, telling one funny anecdote after the other in his quiet and typical manner.
They were devotees of learned music; "poseurs," others said, who pretended to admire works they did not understand at all. There was no melody in Beethoven; some even denied that there was any in Mozart. Melody was found, we were told, only in the works of the Italian school, of which Rossini was the leader, and in the school of Herold and Auber, which was descended from the Italian.
Auber has never been so popular in England as abroad, and the only two works of his which are now performed in this country 'Fra Diavolo' and 'Masaniello' represent him, curiously enough, at his best and worst respectively. The scene of 'Fra Diavolo' is laid at a village inn in Italy.
No one knows beforehand." "Yes, yes; I know, though. Monsieur Auber told me. I am to go into Monsieur Provost's class. Monsieur Beauvallet wanted me, but his voice is too loud for me!" A disagreeable girl exclaimed, "Can't you stop that? And so they all want you!" A pretty girl, who was too dark, though, for my taste, came nearer and asked me gently what I had recited.
An aggressive disposition, an energy and faith that accepted no rebuffs, and the power of "toiling terribly," had enabled Gounod to battle his way into the front rank. Unlike Rossini and Auber, he disdained social recreation, and was so rarely seen in the fashionable quarters of Paris and London that only an occasional musical announcement kept him before the eyes of the public.
Auber looked up to heaven, and, with a sweet smile, said, "Nothing but that Mozart should have been here to listen." Looking and listening, "Here," thought I, "is another jewel in the crown of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all." I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of woman in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can.
It seemed natural enough that something should be dead in this sepulcher; but the living weeds, fighting bitterly for life, seemed out of place. I looked about and thought of Poe. Surely just beyond those summits where the melancholy sky touched the melancholy hills, one would come upon the "dank tarn of Auber" and the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
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