Delsarte System of Oratory by Various

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Delsarte himself possessed this mixed voice; in him, it seemed to start
from the heart, and brought tears to eyes which had never known them.
The power of that tone--allied to the perfection of shading, diction and
lyric declamation--caused every listening soul to vibrate with latent
emotion which might never have been waked to life save by that appeal.

I return to the practice of swelled tones upon the note E flat. This
note certainly acquired broad and powerful tones about which there was
nothing forced, and which were most agreeable. This development was
communicated to the neighboring notes. But did not these advantages take
from the compass of the scale? If so, were they a counterbalance to the
injury? I repeat that I dare not affirm anything in this respect.

Delsarte, assuredly, did not give as much space to vocalization as other
teachers, especially those of the Italian school.

It is also undeniable, that dramatic singing--the style which he
preferred--is dangerous to the vocal organism; particularly when one
practices the _shriek or scream_, which produces a fine effect when
skilfully employed, but is most pernicious in excess.

Delsarte was too conscientious an artist not to sacrifice his voice, at
certain moments, to his pathetic effects; but he was very careful to
warn his scholars against the abuse of this method; he directed them to
use it but very rarely, and with the greatest precaution.

I should also say, in his favor, that light voices were very differently
trained from heavy ones. Madame Carvalho, who began her studies in his
school, did not alter the flexible but feeble organ she brought there.
Mlle. Chaudesaigues and Mlle. Jacob, under Delsarte's tuition, attained
to marvels of flexibility, without losing any of their natural gifts.

_Appoggiatura._

Delsarte brought about a revolution in French music in everything
relating to appoggiatura, or rather, he restored its primitive meaning.
The way in which he interpreted it has created a school.

He taught that the root of the word--appoggiatura--being _appuyer_ (to
sustain), the chief importance should be given in the phrase, to
appoggiatura, by extent and expression; the more so that this note is
generally placed on a dissonance; and, according to this master's
system, it is on the dissonance--and not at random and very frequently,
as is the habit of many singers--that the powerful effect of the
vibration of sound should be produced.

Contrary to this opinion, the appoggiatura was for a long time used in
France as a short and rapid passing note; it thus gave the music a
vivacious character, wholly discordant with the style of serious
compositions; the music of Gluck was particularly unsuited to it.

_Roulade and Martellato._

In every school of singing the roulade is effected by means of the
_staccato_ and _legato_. Delsarte had a marked prejudice in favor of the
martellato, which partakes of both. He compared it, in his picturesque
way of expressing his ideas, to pearls united by an invisible thread.

_Pronunciation._

The master's pronunciation was irreproachable; not the slightest trace
of a provincial accent; never the least error of intonation, the
smallest mistake in regard to a long or short syllable. What is perhaps
rarer than may be thought, he possessed, in its absolute purity, the
prosody of his native language, alike in lyric declamation and in the
_cantabile_. His penetrating tones added another charm to the many
merits which he had acquired by study.

Pronunciation, therefore, was skilfully and carefully taught in
Delsarte's school. The professor's first care was to correct any
tendency to lisp, which he did by temporarily substituting the syllables
_te, de_, over and over again, for the faulty R. This substitution
brought the organ back to the requisite position for the vibration of
the R.

This process is now in common use; but I cannot say whether it was
employed before Delsarte's day. He obtained very happy results from it.

_E mute before a Consonant._

Delsarte did not allow that absolute suppression of the E mute before a
consonant, which seems to prevail at present, and which produces so bad
an effect in delivery. As the evil, at the time of which I speak, was
yet comparatively unknown, he did not make it a case of conscience; but
if he never lent himself to this ellipsis, he, "the lyric Talma," "the
exquisite singer," as he has frequently been called, should we not
regard his abstinence as a condemnation from which there is no appeal? I
do not believe, moreover, that either Nourrit or Dupre authorized by
their example a habit so contrary to the rules of French versification,
so disagreeable to the well-trained ear and so opposed to good taste.
Such young singers as have yielded to it, have only to listen to
themselves for one moment to abandon it forever.

It is certain that E mute can in no instance be assimilated to the
accented E; but to suppress it entirely, is to break the symmetry of the
verse, to put the measure out of time. It is unmistakable that the
weakness of the vowel, or mute syllable, concerns the sound, not the
duration. Let it die away gently; but for Heaven's sake, do not murder
it! Voltaire wrote: "You reproach us with our E mute, as a sad, dull
sound that dies on our lips, but in this very E mute lies the great
harmony of our prose and verse." Littre recognizes two forms of the E
mute: the E mute, faintly articulated as in "_ame_;" and the E mute
sounded as in _me, ce, le;_ but he does not allude to an E which is
entirely null.

Once more, then, that there may be no misunderstanding, let me say that
the word _mute_ added to the E, has but a relative sense, in view of the
two vowels of the same name and marked with an acute or a grave accent.

One fact throws light on the question: did any author ever make a
character above the rank of a peasant or a lackey, say:

/ "_J'aime' ben Lisett' J'crois qu'ell' m'en veut!"_ P/

Take an example from Voltaire (tragedy of the Death of Caesar): "_Voila
vos successeurs, Horace, Decius_." Evidently, if the E mute had not been
counted, the second hemistich of the Alexandrine verse would have had
but five syllables instead of six.

Would any one like to know how the heresiarchs of the E mute would
manage?

In this instance they would repeat the A of the penultimate, aspirating
it and pronouncing thus: "_Voila vos successeurs, Hora ... as',
Decius_."

In this way they would have the requisite number of syllables; but they
would be wholly at odds with the dictionary of the good actors of the
Theatre Francais.

This falsification is especially common in singing, though it is no less
revolting in that field of art. How often at concerts--the force of
tradition saves us at the theatre--do we hear even artists of great
reputation pronounce:

"_Quel jour prosp'..er' plus de myste..er_," instead of: "_Quel jour
prospere plus de mystere._" And, in one of the choruses of the opera
"_La Reine de Chypre_":

"_Jamais, jamais en Fran ... anc'
Jamais l'Anglais ne regnera!_"

Instead of:

"_Jamais, jamais en France,
Jamais l'Anglais ne regnera!_"

This anomaly is most offensive in the final syllable of a verse, because
there the measure is more impaired than ever, and in this way that
alternation of male and female rhymes is suppressed, which produces so
flowing and graceful a cadence in French verse.

_E mute before a Vowel._

The encounter of E mute in a final syllable, with the initial vowel of
the word which follows it, makes the defect more apparent and
accordingly easier to fight against.

Delsarte's process was as follows: When a silent syllable is
immediately followed by a word beginning with another vowel, the E mute
(by a prolongation of the sound of the penultimate) is suppressed with
the next letter. Thus in the aria of _Joseph_ (opera by Mehu):

"_Loin de vous a langui ma jeune.. sexilee;_" and in _Count Ory: "Salut,
o venera ... blermite._"

In these cases, by an unfortunate spirit of compensation, the abettors
of the innovation, suppressing the grammatical elision, sing thus:

"_Loin de vous a langui ma jeune ... ess'exilee."
"Salut, o venrera ... abl'erm ... it!_"

Littre's Dictionary gives us the same pronunciation as Delsarte; and his
written demonstration is even more positive. We find _favorables
auspices, arbres abattus_, written in this way:
"_fa-vo-ra-ble-z-auspices, arbre-z-abattus._"

It is, however, very difficult to express these differences exactly, in
type: what Littre expresses _radically_ by typographic characters, is
blended with most natural delicacy by the voice of a singer.

Thus, according to Delsarte, the E mute of a final syllable should be
suppressed before a vowel, on condition of a prolongation of the sound,
in harmony with the penultimate syllable.

According to Delsarte again, according to Voltaire, according to Littre,
the E mute is weakened, more or less, but never completely suppressed,
before a consonant.

Finally Legouve, whose voice is preponderant in these matters, whose
books are in the hands of the whole world, has never entered into this
_lettricidal_ conspiracy.

I hope to be pardoned this long digression, thinking it my duty to
protest against such a ludicrous method of treating French prosody; I do
so both in the name of aesthetics and as a part of my task as biographer
of Delsarte.[6]

Chapter III.

Was Delsarte a Philosopher?

If we consider philosophy in the light of all the questions upon which
it touches, the subjects which it embraces, we must answer "No;" but if
we concentrate the word within the limits of aesthetics, we may reply in
the affirmative. Did not Delsarte point out the origin of art, its
object and its aim?

Not that this master never exceeded the limits of his science and his
method. He had sketched out a "Treatise on Reason," and had begun to
classify the faculties of being, entering into the subject more
profoundly than the categories of Kant; but all this only exists in mere
outline, in a technology whose terms have not been weighed and connected
together by a solid chain of reasoning: logic has not uttered its final
word therein.

A separate volume would be required to give an idea of these _gigantic
sketches_, which must remain in their rudimentary state.

If Delsarte had finished his work, it would seem that he must have
leaned toward the scholastic method, now so much out of favor; but
certainly he would put his own personality into this, as into everything
that he undertook to investigate; for he was held back on the steeps of
mysticism by the science which he had created, and which could only
afford a shelter to the supernatural as an extension of those psychical
faculties which have been called intuition, imagination, etc.

Then the influence of Raymond Brucker, who died shortly after Delsarte,
being lessened, and conscientious and patient study having fed the flame
in that vast brain, we might have obtained affirmations of a new order.
And Delsarte might have met with thinkers like Leibnitz, Descartes and
Jean Reynaud, on that height where religion is purged of superstition
and fanaticism, philosophy set free from atheism and materialism!

If Delsarte had a fault, it was that he regarded all modern philosophy
as sensuous naturalism; and if reason sometimes seemed to him
suspicious, it was because he often confounded it with sophistry, which
reasons indeed, but is far from being _reason_.

Let us regret that Delsarte never finished his complete philosophy; but
let us be grateful to him for having raised his art and all arts to the
level of philosophy, by giving them truth as a basis and morality as a
final aim; which fairly justifies, it seems to me, the title of
_artist-philosopher_, which I have sometimes applied to him.

I should not neglect, in this connection, to set down the explanation,
given by Delsarte, of what he meant by the word _trinity_, as used in
his scientific system. The reader cannot fail to see the elements of a
system of philosophy in this succinct statement, this outline to be
filled up:

"The principle of the system lies in the statement that there is in the
world a universal formula which may be applied to all sciences, to all
things possible: --this formula is _the trinity_.

"What is requisite for the formation of a trinity?

"Three expressions are requisite, each presupposing and implying the
other two. Each of three terms must imply the other two. There must also
be an absolute co-necessity between them; thus, the three principles of
our being--life, mind and soul--form a trinity.

"Why?

"Because life and mind are one and the same soul; soul and mind are one
and the same life; life and soul are one and the same mind."

Chapter IV.

Course of Applied AEsthetics.

_Meeting of the Circle of Learned Societies_.

Independently of its method, which was especially applicable to dramatic
and lyric arts, Delsarte's doctrine, as we have seen, drew from the
primordial sources, which are the law of things, the principles of all
poetry, all art and all science. The intense light which he brought
thence was too dazzling for young scholars, whose minds were rarely
prepared by previous education. It, nevertheless, overflowed into the
daily lessons, and gave them that peculiar and somewhat singular aspect,
which acted even upon those whose intelligence could not cope with it.
Such is the mysterious magic of things which penetrate before they
convince.

But these lofty problems demanded an audience in harmony with their
elevation. Delsarte soon attracted such. Under the title "Course of
Applied AEsthetics," he collected in various places, notably at the
"Circle of Learned Societies," profane and sacred orators, and learned
men of all sorts. There he could develop points of view as new as they
seemed to be strikingly true. It was on leaving one of these meetings,
that a distinguished painter thus expressed his enthusiasm: "I have
learned so much to-day, and it is all so simple and so true, that I am
amazed that I never thought of it before."

The Course of Applied AEsthetics was addressed to painters, sculptors,
orators, as well as to musicians, both performers and composers; and was
finally extended to literary men. This audience of scholars was no less
astonished and enchanted than others had been.

_Theory of the Degrees_.

The theory of degrees was largely developed at these meetings, and I
have purposely delayed it till this chapter. To understand this
theory--one of the most striking points in Delsarte's method, and
original with him,--one should have some idea of the grammar which he
composed for the use of his pupils.

I will not say that this treatise was complete in the sense usually
attached to the word grammar. There is no mention of orthography or of
lexicology; but all that is the very essence of language, that from
which no language, no idiom can escape--the constituent parts of
speech--are examined and investigated from a philosophic and psychologic
point of view. Just as the author examined the constituent modalities of
our being in the light of aesthetics, he seized the affinities between
the laws of speech, as far as regards the voice--_logos_--and the moral
manifestations of art.

This production of Delsarte has undergone the fate of almost all his
works--it has not been printed. Indeed, I greatly fear that, all his
notes on the subject can never be collected; nevertheless that which has
been gathered together presents a certain development. I will not enter
into the purely metaphysical part, limiting myself, as I have done from
the beginning of this study, to making known the conceptions of Delsarte
only in so far as they refer to the special field of aesthetics.

In this category, we find the following definitions which serve to
classify the quantitative values or degrees: that is the extent assigned
to each articulation or vocal emission to enable it to express the
thoughts, sentiments and sensations of our being in their truth and
proportionate intensity:

1. _Substantive_ is the name given to a group of appearances, to a
totality of attributes.

2. _Adjective_ expresses ideas, simple, abstract, general and
medicative; it is an abstraction in the substantive.

3. _Verb_ is the word that affirms the existence and the co-existence
between the being existing and its manner of existing: that is to say it
connects the subject with the attribute. The verb is not a sign of
action, but of affirmation, and existence.

4. The _participle_ alone is a sign of action.

5, 6, 7. The _article, pronoun and preposition_ fit into the common
definitions.

8. The _adverb_ is the adjective of the adjective and of the participle
(in so far as it is an attribute of the verb); it modifies them both,
and is not modifiable by either of them; it is a sign of proportion, an
intellectual compass.

9. The _conjunction_ has the same function as the preposition: it unites
one object to another object; but it differs from it, inasmuch as the
preposition has but a single word for its antecedent, and a single word
for its objective case, while the conjunction has an entire phrase for
antecedent, and the same for complement. It characterizes the point of
view under the sway of which the relations should be regarded:
restrictive, as _but_; hypothetical or conditional, as _if?_ conclusive,
as _then_, etc., etc. The conjunction presents a general view to our
thought, it is the reunion of scattered facts; it is essentially
elliptical.

10. The _interjection_ responds to those circumstances where the soul,
moved and shaken by a crowd of emotions at once, feels that by uttering
a phrase it would be far from expressing what it experiences. It then
exhales a sound, and confides to gesture the transmission of its
emotion.

The interjection is essentially elliptical, because, expressing nothing
in itself, it expresses at the time all that the gesture desires it to
express, for ellipsis is a hidden sense, the revelation of which belongs
exclusively to gesture.

It must first be noted that these degrees are numbered from one to nine,
and that, of all the grammatical values defined, the conjunction,
interjection and adverb are classed highest.

Delsarte made the following experiment one day in the "Circle of Learned
Societies," during a lecture:

"Which word," he asked his audience, "requires most emphasis in the
lines--

"The wave draws near, it breaks, and vomits up before our eyes,
Amid the surging foam, a monster huge of size?"

The absence of any rule applicable to the subject caused the most
complete anarchy among the listeners. One thought that the word to be
emphasized must be _monster_--as indicating an object of terror; another
gave the preference to the adjective _huge_. Still another thought that
_vomits_ demanded the most expressive accent, from the ugliness of that
which it expresses.

Delsarte repeated the lines:

"The wave draws near, it breaks, and ... vomits up before our
eyes."

It was on the word _and_ that he concentrated all the force of his
accent; but giving it, by gesture, voice and facial expression, all the
significance lacking to that particle, colorless in itself, as he
pronounced the word, the fixity of his gaze, his trembling hands, his
body shrinking back into itself, while his feet seemed riveted to the
earth, all presaged something terrible and frightful. He saw what he was
about to relate, he made you see it; the conjunction, aided by the
actor's pantomime, opened infinite perspectives to the imagination; his
words had only to specify the fact, and to justify the emotion which
had accumulated in the interval.

But this particle, which here allows of eight degrees, is much
diminished when it fills the office of a simple copulative. The extent
of the word or the syllable is always subordinate to the sense of the
phrase; in the latter case it does not require more than the figure 2.

Chapter V.

The Recitation of Fables.

Some years before his death Delsarte substituted for his concerts,
lectures in which he explained his scientific doctrines and his
philosophy of art. He also supplied the place of song by the recitation
of certain fables selected from La Fontaine. He was not less perfect in
this style than in the interpretation of the great roles of tragedy and
grand lyric poems; but it must be acknowledged, that under this new
guise, his talent could not display itself in all its amplitude; save
for the facial expression which gave the lessons of the apologue a
variety of outline of which La Fontaine himself perhaps never dreamed
... and in spite of the fine and scholarly accent which he could give to
all those clever beasts, he was, on many points, deprived of his power
and his prestige: how endow a lion with the proud poses of Achilles; and
lend the foolish grasshopper the satanic charm of Armida?

Instead of noble or terrific attitudes, his gesture was confined to a
few movements of forearm or hand; of his fingers, when the intentions
were more subtle, more refined ... Still it was always most pleasant to
hear him. It was Delsarte restrained, but not diminished. If you did not
recover in his speaking voice that sort of enchantment with which his
slightly-veiled tone pierced the soul, his accent remained so pure, so
intelligent, that you were none the less ravished.

When, in the fable of _The Two Pigeons_, he said:

"Absence is the greatest of ills, ...
Not so for you, cruel one!"

He discovered shades, hitherto unknown, with which to paint reproach
mingled with grief. And when he said:

"_The ant ... is not a lender!..._"

A more affirmative and striking sense of the character attributed to our
thrifty friend, was detached from this delay, filled up by a negative
movement of the narrator's head.

If Delsarte had limited himself in his lectures, to teaching men by
means of the menagerie, which was a sly burlesque of the courtiers of
Louis XIV., perhaps he might have made idolatrous partisans there as
elsewhere; but it seems as if in the exposition of his theory, he posed
rather as a censor than a teacher; he delighted in baffling the mind by
paradoxes. By annexes superimposed and ill-blended with his system, he
sometimes compromised those scientific truths whose splendor bursts
forth when they are freed from heterogeneous accessories. We cannot
otherwise explain the resistance of certain minds, distinguished
otherwise, to the recognition in him of the artist who excited the
enthusiasm of all the most competent critics and brilliant amateurs.

Chapter VI.

The Law of AEsthetics.

However striking and superior the system of Francois Delsarte has been
shown to be, however admirable and attractive the manifestation of art
in his person,--herein lie not his first rights to the grateful sympathy
which we owe to his memory. His works and discoveries in aesthetics are a
benefit of general interest, while they disclose to us the fruitful
resources of his genius.

In the first place, what is a law? We have here to deal, not with the
legislation decreed by man for the regulation of social and political
relations, but with those laws deduced from a natural order, as the
principle of life itself, which govern the relations of beings and of
things. In religion these laws are its dogmas and mysteries;
philosophically speaking, the laws of things are the essentials of their
nature, their specific relations.

Voltaire has written: "Law is the instinct by which we feel justice." In
Littre's Dictionary we find stated that "laws are conditions imposed by
circumstances." Another has said: "The constant, uneludable succession
in which phenomena occur, takes the name of law."

I would here state, that in no one of the last three citations does the
word "law" seem to me to be precisely defined. From the different
explanations of the natural laws which I have been able to compare, I
conclude that laws are forces containing in themselves the reasons, to
us unknown, of a power and permanence which are unchangeable. Plato
named them _ideas_. We must now conclude that the nature of a law, in
the present acceptation of the term, _can_ be but imperfectly
interpreted by exact formulae. Laws are still much involved in the
secrets of creation. Here must we seek their origin or origins.

But courage still! Although these formulae but imperfectly define law,
the facts suffice to establish them. They (facts) show the certain
action and, as stated heretofore, the uneludable nature of these
formulae.

But the discovery of Delsarte is the application to aesthetics of a
natural law, proven and established by science. This law is that which
governs the system of man's organism. Its present application is
justified by a series of scientifically cooerdinated facts. Delsarte
rests upon the principle that man is the object of art. Thus the artist
should aim to manifest _human nature_ in its three modalities, in its
three phases which the master named _life, soul_ and _mind_. In other
words, the beings _physical, moral_ and _mental_.

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