André Cluytens. Itinéraire d'un chef d'orchestre by Erik BaeckReview by: Jan DewildeFontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 57, No. 3, Special Topic: Public Libraries (July-September 2010), pp.328-330Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23512161 .

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328 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 57/3

information communicated by piano rolls of

composers performing their own works. Like

the earlier chapters devoted to performance

practice, these pages fluently combine editorial

commentary with pianistic expertise. If the ad vice is familiar to pianists experienced with

playing French music, it will inspire further confidence in customary approaches. Howat in

cludes appendices addressing piano technique, musical titles, composers' recordings and in

struments, and critical editions—information available elsewhere, but useful to have gathered

in one place.

The sections devoted to pedaling, and par

ticularly the sostenuto pedal, are especially

helpful. Missing from many pianos, the sostenuto pedal is awkward to incorporate as

part of a regular practicing routine, and its use

may seem anachronistic to pianists concerned

with performing in a historically informed

style. Howat assures readers that the sostenuto

pedal is sometimes appropriate, providing ex

amples of when and how to deploy it and sug

gesting both Ravel and Debussy's familiarity

with the device. Howat's book will prove both practicable

and inspiring for advanced pianists and piano

teachers. Scholars and graduate students en

gaged by his methodological fluency may also

wish that he had sharpened his analytical focus,

avoided well-worn claims, and allowed his in

terpretations to converse with the most recent

research in the field.

Jessie Fillerup University of Mary Washington

André Cluytens. Itinéraire d'un chef

d'orchestre. By Erik Baeck. Wavre: Mardaga, 2009. [416 p. ISBN 978-2-8047-0011-9. €39]

André Cluytens (1905-1967) was undeniably one of the great conductors of the twentieth

century; witness his recordings that are still re

issued. In 2009 CDs appeared with his record ings of Mozart's KV 491 with Clara Haskil and

the Orchestre National de la RTF (Andromeda ANDRCD 9050) and with Brahms' second con certo featuring Arthur Rubinstein and the

Orchestra Sinfonica della RAI de Torino (Arts 43081-2). Both recordings testify to Cluytens'

qualities as an excellent and inspiring accompa nist; the recording with the Turin radio orches tra shows, moreover, that Cluytens managed

to achieve excellent results with all levels off

orchestras and not just the top-rate ones. For

those who want to see Cluytens at work, in 2003

EMI issued a DVD with recordings of works by Ravel, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky (first pi ano concerto with Emil Gilels) (EMI DVA

4901249). It is a pleasure to admire Cluytens in

action, not only because he was an exception

ally elegant conductor with an impeccable tech

nique, but also because he continually commu

nicates intensely with the whole orchestra.

Furthermore he manages to exude a conta

gious delight in making music. André Cluytens was born in Antwerp in

1905, descending from a family of musicians. His father Alphonse was a conductor at

Antwerp's then two opera houses (the Théâtre

Royal Français and the Royal Flemish Opera), as well as a productive composer of three op

eras, several cantatas, songs, choral works,

orchestral works and piano works. (The library

of the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp

holds more than 80 scores of Cluytens senior,

among them a completion of Schubert's Un

vollendete) . After his piano studies at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp, Cluytens

followed his father to the Théâtre Royal

Français, first as a pianist-rehearser, then as a

conductor. This resulted in a lifelong liaison

with opera.

Having mastered the métier of opera con

ducting in Antwerp, Cluytens widened his hori

zon and went to France at the age of 27. He

served as chief conductor at several opera

houses, until in the ominous year of 1944 he be came first conductor at the Opéra in Paris. The

fact that he compromised himself with the

Vichy regime did not interfere with his career afterwards. On the contrary, between 1950 and

1954 he occupied four important positions as a

conductor: at the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire and

the Orchestre National de la RTF. Both within the opera and the symphonic orchestra, he ex

plored a large range of repertoire, from

baroque to contemporary (with world pre mières of, among others, Jolivet, Milhaud, and

Messiaen). His repertoire gravitated around

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REVIEWS 329

the Viennese classics, the French and Russian deal with the clichés, platitudes or contradic

repertoire, and Wagner. From the early 1950s tions present in the reviews. Where Baeck is in

onwards he became much in demand at the big an excellent position to judge for himself, for international opera houses and orchestras on example concerning the recordings, ironically both sides of the ocean and 1955 saw his début enough he abdicates. As a result the author at the Bayreuther Festspiele with Tannhäuser, fails to make clear what exactly made Cluytens which gave significant momentum to his ca- such a great and important conductor. On the

reer. During five seasons at the Festspiele he other hand, where Baeck does become as

was to conduct 48 performances, until in 1965 sertive, he sometimes walks on thin ice. Thus he decided to refrain from conducting Parsifal he describes the early twentieth-century musi the following season. This was ostensibly be- cal cultural life of Antwerp, and more specifi cause of health problems, but in fact was due to cally the education imparted to Cluytens at the

marital difficulties. Cluytens had fallen in love Royal Flemish Conservatory, as nationalistic with the young German soprano and femme fa- romantic and retarded. However, the facts belie

tale Anja Silja, at that time Wieland Wagner's this. During the first decades of the twentieth lover. century, concert life in Antwerp was very di

At the peak of his impressive international verse and au fait with contemporary and inter

career Cluytens, who had become a French cit- national developments. As Baeck himself men

izen in 1940, signed a contract in 1960 as the tions, there were two opera houses and several

first musical director of the National Orchestra concert associations. The most important of

of Belgium, thus returning to his roots. those was the Maatschappij der Nieuwe

Although the cooperation was a climax in the Concerten (New Concerts Association), which

history of the orchestra, for Cluytens they were hosted many important international soloists,

difficult years. He suffered from severe eye conductors and orchestras in Antwerp and pro

problems and the relationship he had started grammed a generous amount of contemporary with Anja Silja after Wieland Wagner's death re- music. These orchestras consisted to a large suited in personal and domestic problems. extent of teachers and alumni of the Royal

Despite those physical and emotional problems Flemish Conservatory. At this same conserva

he renewed his contract with the ONB until tory Cluytens studied with eminent pianists

1972 and continued to give fascinating con- such as Emile Bosquet, himself a pupil of certs. He conducted his very last concert in Arthur De Greef in Brussels, and Emmanuel

Stuttgart on 25 April 1967. Only a few weeks Durlet, who after his formative years in

later he died, on 3 June, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Antwerp had pursued master classes with

The monograph by Erik Baeck is oppor- Leopold Godowsky in Vienna. On several occa

tune, for so far there was only a brochure by sions Cluytens fondly recalled the quality of the

Bernard Gavoty available (in the series Les music instruction that he had enjoyed in

grands interprètes, 1955). The strength of the Antwerp. Posthumously blaming Peter Benoit,

present book lies in the wealth of factual mate- the founding father of the Antwerp Conserva

rial, more specifically the lists of concerts and tory, as the person responsible for preventing

opera performances and the extensive discog- Flemish music from getting into the modernist

raphy. These lists enable us to follow Cluytens' mainstream remains a shaky thesis as long as

steep ascent through the great international or- the author does not give it a more adequate un

chestras and opera houses and provides us with derpinning. And what about a composer such

an understanding of his varied and large reper- as August Baeyens (1895-1966), who also stud toire. However, herein also lies the book's ied at the Antwerp Conservatory, and devel

weakness. The author hardly goes beyond past- oped into one of the first Flemish modernists?

ing those concerts together and sprinkling Another questionable point concerns the ca

them with extracts from reviews (in French sual way in which Baeck deals with Cluytens' translations). Not only does this result in tire- activities during the Second World War. The some reading matter, it also means that the au- fact that Cluytens had no scruples when renew

thor is hiding behind the reviewers and doesn't ing his contract with the Grand-Théâtre in

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330 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 57/3

Lyons on 3 March 1943, a few days after the ter

rible anti-Jewish razzias in that city (which in cluded victims of his native Antwerp), is made little of and attributed to indifference, resulting out of Cluytens' dynamism, energy and ambi

tion. The passages devoted to Cluytens' marital problems and his affair with Anja Silja are also problematic. Cluytens' wife is maligned in a

way that comes close to the gutter press. Too

much reliance is placed on evidence provided by Silja, even for facts and events that she did not actually witness. By contrast, the well

documented chapter on Cluytens' tenure at the

National Orchestra of Belgium is very interest

ing and Baeck's research really comes to its

own in this section. It's a shame the book

doesn't contain an index. One also wonders why an unfinished dissertation on Cluytens, written towards the end of the 1990s at the Université de Paris IV, is not included in the bibliography despite some similarities with the current publication.

Jan Dewilde Centre for the Study of Flemish Music, Antwerp

Royal Conservatoire, Antwerp

Camille Saint-Saëns on Music and

Musicians. Edited and translated by Roger Nichols. New York: Oxford University Press,

2008. [xii, 187 p. ISBN-13: 9780195320169. $29.95]

From Hector Berlioz's incisive concert reviews

to the witty ruminations of Debussy's alter-ego Monsieur Croche, French composers have been

astute observers of contemporary musical

trends. And yet their contributions to music criticism are often overlooked in favor of

German writers such as Robert Schumann,

E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Theodor Adorno. One of the liveliest and most prolific essayists of the French fin-de-siècle was Camille Saint-Saëns, remembered today mostly for Samson and

Dalilah, Carnival of the Animals, and Danse macabre. History has not treated him kindly, in

part because of changing tastes but also his

self-professed conservatism. Railing as late as

1913 against "the mania for reform" (p. 55), Saint-Saëns concluded his career with a series

of sonatas that largely ignored developments in

modern music as practiced by Debussy, Ravel,

and Stravinsky. Saint-Saëns's traditionalist views, however,

should not imply that he had nothing of value to

say. Roger Nichols assembled a diverse collec

tion drawn mostly from essays, reviews, and

personal recollections. Of the thirty-eight selec

tions in this compact book, sixteen are trans

lated into English for the first time. The writ

ings cover nearly four decades, ranging from

an 1876 eyewitness assessment of the world

premiere of Wagner's Ring to a 1912 critique of

Saint-Saëns's chief rival Massenet.

Organized into two tidy sections, the book

opens with several broad essays on the nature

of music itself. Topics include the role of music in French society, shifting artistic trends in Europe, and the challenges French composers

faced in maintaining their national identity. Part two centers on individual composers and per

formers. Although I have great faith in the ac

curacy and reliability of Nichols's translations, it is regrettable that none of the French texts

are included, if only for the pleasure of reading

Saint-Saëns's witty prose in its original language.

Full source citations are included for each en

try should readers wish to track them down.

Many of the selections reflect Saint-Saëns's

role as a composer who, to use Nichols's words,

"believed in balance, in proportion" (p. vi). When writing about the value of art to society, Saint-Saëns rejects a moralistic or program matic view, writing simply that "the aim of Art is Art, and nothing else" (p. 15). He singles out

for special disdain Italian vocal music and its

supporters who only want to hear lyrical melodies. Stendahl's well-known Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio—described as

"the bedside companion of the majority of critics"—is presented as a book "whose disas

trous influence is still felt today" (pp. 16-17). His views on global music reflect a myopic colo nialist bias when he flippantly describes the music of Africa as "childish and without inter est" (p. 20), an ironic comment given his ap propriation of exotic styles in works such as

the fifth piano concerto. Saint-Saëns is most

convincing when he comes to the defense of

French music, especially his reasoned argument for opéra-comique as a French antidote to

German operatic conventions.

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