About Henriette Renié
What does Henriette Renié's name mean to you?
All things considered, this quote from Marie d'Agoult: "Thalberg is the first pianist in the world. Liszt is the only one ”. That’s it. The first harpists in the world, there are many. Henriette Renié is the only one.
Does this mean that you would see on her some common with Liszt?
Yes, but not only in terms of virtuosity and mastery of his instrument. On a much smaller scale, there is also its musical relationship to faith, the dramaturgy, the symphonic poem form, the melodic conducts, etc. The music of Renié seems to me very impregnated with that of Liszt, and I think that she knew her Liszt on the tips of her fingers.
Since Berlioz, however, it has been Parish-Alvars, the "Liszt of the harp"…
Yes, it's true. But Berlioz wrote that in 1842, when Liszt had not yet written anything as brilliant as his Sonata in B or his Faust Symphony. Berlioz then compared Parish-Alvars to Liszt only for his virtuosity, and he said it very clearly. For me, Henriette Renié, from a more general point of view, is a hundred times more "Lisztian" than Parish-Alvars: Liszt cannot be reduced to mere virtuosity. See Contemplation, or the two suites of the six pieces, with the little Valse mélancolique and Au bord du ruisseau, for example, it is obvious that there are enormous links with the Consolations of Liszt. Or the little Andante Religioso, for violin and harp… even the title itself is already Lisztian. It’s even more obvious by doing the opposite. Listen to Gnomenreigen by Liszt, and you will feel like you are listening directly to what inspired the Danse des lutins. Or take the beginning of the Héroïde funèbre, and the Pièce symphonique will immediately come to mind.
For you, is it more a reference or a model?
You are absolutely right to talk about benchmarks. The figure of Liszt may indeed be very present in Renié, it never seems to listen to "sub-Liszt", which would have been the case if it had taken it as a model. No, it only refers to Liszt, as if it were her roots, in a sense. But its primary language remains that of its time. Finally, at least, the pre-war era, she did not compose anything afterwards.
While it was born the same year as Ravel, and it is about the same generation as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok and Varese, it remains for you, still inked in its time?
Yes ! The names you mention should not obscure everyone else. Renié's music shares the same horizons as that of Paris organists, I think of Charles-Marie Widor, Léon Boëllmann, Charles Tournemire ... But above all, Louis Vierne, the most innovative of all, it seems to me. Besides, if you make an organist listen to any Renie piece "blindly", he replies that it could be Vierne. And last but not least, he will probably have more hesitation if you give him Vierne's Rhapsody, for harp, op.25.
It’s not so easy to hear Vierne’s organ in Renié’s harp…
Take César Franck, for example. His writing for the piano is not quite the same as that for the organ. Simply because the piano is a resonant instrument, while the organ is fixed. Therefore, you have a completely different type of treatment, the "cantabile" is no longer quite the same type, the accompaniment formulas are different, everything is adapted to the instrument. It's the same with Renié and Vierne: common languages, but realizations inherent in the instruments.
But you are right, except from time to time as in the Andante of Légende, or the Tranquillo of Danse des lutins, where you would almost hear an old harmonium from a small country church, the music of organ is not perceived directly, simply because these are different realisations. These are just certain types of composition that we find in organists, in particular in Vierne. I'm not talking about rhythm or harmony, that, of course, Renié and Vierne have the same affinities, the same types of dissonance and harmonic resolutions, the same ways of organizing the pedals, etc.
No, it's more on the issue of thematic treatment. That is to say that the themes are neither varied nor developed strictly speaking, but just "photoshoped". In a way, it’s like they’re just changing their costumes. So obviously, it's a certain form of variation, but certainly not in the Beethovenian or Brahmsian sense of the term, it's even the opposite. In reality it is a process that is often found in the improvisations of organists. "Do you see this melody? Now look at how I am able to change its appearance just by changing its harmony”. Suddenly, the risk is to appear a bit demonstrative - on this point, Grandjany's Rhapsody is a caricature - but in Renié, it is always to the benefit of the intelligibility of the symphonic poem form. In the Legend, the Moderato with the well marked song which takes up the theme of the introduction, or the rather slow one (just after the three chords of the minor near the table, on the G flat pedal), which reduces the chorale, are in themselves neither development nor variation, but almost recycling. It is not derogatory, on the contrary: it is not so easy to create a new product in which one recognizes the starting material.
All these are procedures that are often found in organists, in particular in Louis Vierne, but which were already found in Fauré and César Franck. And even more, I would say that these are processes that are found particularly in the improvisations of organists, who have neurons at their fingertips, as everyone knows.
What can you say about the fantastic in Renié's music?
It is one of the most essential components in Renié’s work. I think it was probably marked by the Apprenti Sorcier of Dukas, in 1897. For her Legend, three years later, she did not choose a Goethe ballad like Dukas, but it is just like: in Les Elfes, precisely one of the least Parnassian poems by Leconte de Lisle, where it is a question of this black horseman who gallops in the night, approached by the elves, and who dies at the end. That is to say, it is a bit of a French (and matrimonial) version of Erlkonig, that other Goethe ballad that Schubert made so famous.
Or take the Ballade Fantastique. It has often been said that with this play, Renié had inspired Caplet to write his Conte fantastique in 1923. It is true that there are family ties: Edgar Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart on one side, and the other's the masque of red death ... Super, except that Caplet's Conte Fantastique is simply a new version for the pedal harp and string quartet of his Etude Symphonique, for main chromatic harp and orchestra, from 1909, three years before Renié's Ballad Fantastique. I am sure that Renié was at the premiere of Caplet at the Colonne Concerts with Lucille Wurmser-Delcourt on chromatic harp - under the direction of her friend Gabriel Pierné, whose Konzertstück she had created for harp and orchestra in 1903, and who had elsewhere wrote her opera Les Elfes in 1884, long before her.
And I am almost also sure that she did not miss the premiere by her other friend Camille Chevillard (who had conducted Renié in her concerto in C) of the Palais hanté by Florent Schmitt, still according to Edgar Poe, in 1905. In short, if the fantastic is absolutely essential in Renié, it is because it is at the very basis of the compositional project, and not only in terms of the symphonic poem form. At least for Renié's four great pieces (Légende, Danse des lutins, Pièce symphonique, and Ballade fantastique)..
What impact do you think her works have had on composers for the successor harp?
Listen, frankly, Renié's catalog does not exceed ten works, half of which are not very high voltage either. At the risk of shocking more than one, it seems to me that Renié was not, strictly speaking, really a ”composer”. Just because you write, even great pieces, doesn't mean you are a composer. I think that Renié, on the other hand, had more of an indisputable "composer's profession", and in a way, relatively unusual. But composer is much more than a job! Which explains why she wrote not much and why she did not continue and stopped so early. You know, At the end of his life, Liszt confided to his pupil Carl Lachmund about his Poetic and religious Harmonies "When someone has no ideas, he takes some poetry and it works; you don’t have to understand anything about music and you do program music. " (Wenn Einem nichts einfüllt, dann nimmt man ein Gedicht her und es geht; man braucht da gar nichts von Musik zu verstehen und macht Programm ‐ Musik) I think that Renié was certainly very influenced by certain pieces, and that she s it's just tried it itself, that's all.
So, honestly, her impact as a composer on younger composers is close to zero. Subsequently, those who became interested in the harp probably got closer to Salzedo - obviously not his works, but simply his "modern school of the harp", in which he recorded various new modes of play. On the other hand, for harpists, his works are always as stimulating, and allow them to improve their technique much more than most of the other authors, it is incontestable. At Renié, technical "difficulties" are always at the service of musicality, and on this level, I must say that it is very effective and very stimulating to work.
Your quote from Liszt does not apply to the Concerto, however.
Yes, but like the Trio or the Cello sonata, I do not count her Concerto in the truly "authentic" works of Renié. Firstly because she wrote this concerto for her classes at the conservatory, at the age when she needed to demonstrate what she was capable of, but above all, because the concerto genre really does not suit her - I’m not even talking about orchestration that is fairly summary, not to say naive, take Chopin for example. We cannot say that his great specialties are symphony or quartet, but on the contrary, he excels rather in genre pieces, like Mazurkas, Polish, Waltzes or Prelude. As soon as he got into the concerto, he married the serious genre, of the Beethovenian model, which had nothing to do with the rest of his production. But it's still Chopin. In the same way, for Mozart, there is nothing more serious for a mass than to write a fugue, while the fugue is no longer classic style at all. This is what I mean by "serious genre", to use Diderot's expression, but which, in fact, corresponds to a certain form of return to the old.
To come back to the harp, it is too much at Parish-Alvars: whether it is the little Concertino op.34, the concerto in E flat op.98, or the great concerto in G minor op.81, c is almost always a counterfeit of the Chopinian model. And things are going much less well at Parish-Alvars than his character pieces, like his Mandoline, Serenade, or all of his brilliant fantasies. Renie's Concerto has exactly the same effect on me. I'm not saying it's an uninteresting concerto, on the contrary! But only, the concerto form, three old-fashioned movements, it's not really the universe of Renié…
At the time, harpists were playing on Erard. What can you tell us about the relationship between Renié and the firm Erard? Do you think that Henriette Renié would have liked to play on Lyon Healy harps if she had known them?
Indeed, Henriette Renié played on an Erard harp - it doesn't matter much, but I can tell you that her first harp was a 47-string gothic maple string, no.2258 from 1892, a model specially made for her, and thereafter, her Erard harps, exclusively of Gothic style, were no. 2676, 2785, 3374 and 3681.
But it must be said that she really had no choice but to play Erard: in France, the few other brands that could be found in her time had nothing of the qualities of Erard harps. Some of Raphael's harps were imported from Milan, and there were still old Pleyel double action sometimes, or old English ones like the Blazdell, Grosjean, or Erat. But for new harps, of course, the benchmark was Erard, and the question did not arise. For obvious reasons of bad neighborhood, there was no German harp, I think the wonderful harps of Loeffler. Likewise, the American harps of Lyon & Healy and Wurlitzer were almost impossible to find in France.
In fact, the Erard firm has always helped harpists, and the story of Henriette Renié is very linked to Erard. It was at Erard's that she received her very first lessons, with Hasselmans. It was at Salle Erard that she gave her first concerts. It’s the Erard house that always managed to find her some contracts when she needed the money… I should also add that the making of harps at Erard really didn’t mean much compared to pianos. In all, when production stopped in 1959, Erard France did not even count 5,000 harps, against just over 130,000 pianos, or not even 4%! That means quite nothing. If the harp market for Erard was clearly not their most important source of profit, the house continued by tradition and by respect for Sébastien on the one hand, and then simply because they were the best. So everything that Erard could do to help the harpists was not at all interested, but on the contrary, truly authentic and sincere. For example, for a time, Erard offered a harp at each first prize unanimously from the conservatory (this is the model commonly called "first conservatory prize", empire style with twisted bronzes). Or again, the letters of Amédée Blondel, the boss of Erard, congratulating Caplet for having written for Micheline Kahn, accompanied by a "small envelope" to thank him for having thus promoted the harp Erard. Bref, to return to Henriette Renié, driving for another firm would have resulted in a bloody divorce with Erard. And besides, I cannot believe that Henriette Renié could, even for a moment, imagine leaving the ship.
Do you play her works yourself on one of your Erard harps? What are the differences with modern harps?
Yes, but be careful not to confuse modern harp and recent harp… The Lyon & Healy style 23 dates back to 1890, when it is already a harp of “modern” design: large table, internal mechanics, separation of movements in the head string rather than each note, etc. So, paradoxically, there are much younger Erard harps, much more recent than some modern harps.
If I prefer to play Renié on Erard rather than on recent harp, it is really not for the sake of authenticity. Besides, authenticity, when it favors the historical argument to the detriment of musical interest, does not interest me at all. If I like to play Renié on Erard, it is only for the question of the timbre. On Erard, you often have very high attack precision, and above all, the extreme registers have nothing to do with American harps of the same era. Compare the beginning of the Légende, for example with the pedal of the grave C, on Erard and on recent harp, that has absolutely nothing to do. On Erard, it really sounds like a death knell, the timbre is so defined. On a modern harp, you have to play low enough in the strings so that it is not too "fuzzy". Same for the funeral march of the Pièce Symphonique, the ostinato descending on the bass is much more oppressive on Erard than on any recent harp. Or even in the little Angelus, there is a quality of velvety in the medium, which is less encountered on recent harp. Or, the Danse des lutins is much lighter and crystalline in the high register of the Erard, and in a way, the Erard almost encourages to play scherzando, which gives more account of the marvelous, the fantastic.
Pedals on Erard are not as comfortable as on recent harp…
But Erard harps have not always been old! Almost the entire generation before me started the harp on Erard, and it worked very well ... Today, for sure, there are few Erard harps whose mechanics have remained as impeccable as they once were, so it is imperative to take care of them and be careful not to do anything with your feet. But to come back to your point, playing Renié on Erard is not necessarily more difficult than on a recent harp, it just requires more attention, that's all.
Henriette Renié was one of the first to promote and support the production of chromatic harps. Claude Debussy dedicated to him the sacred and profane dances written for this new harp. However, she never played on these harps and transcribed the dances for pedal harp. What do you think could be the reasons?
I’m going to disappoint you: Henriette Renié has absolutely no connection with the chromatic harp. I suppose that you get your information from the book devoted to her by her goddaughter, Françoise des Varennes, in which she writes that Gustave Lyon, the boss of Pleyel, would have designed the chromatic harp especially for her. Well, it’s certainly a pretty story, but it’s completely wrong. I’m not saying that Gustave Lyon didn’t give him a little kick with his harp, but he certainly didn’t draw his harp for her. We have to go back to 1894, when Félix Godefroid and Alphonse Hasselmans went to see Gustave Lyon (he had just taken over from Auguste Wolff at the head of Pleyel), to ask him to take over the manufacture of the double action harps that the house had stopped in 1855. Gustave Lyon could not betray the line of Wolff (incidentally, his stepfather), he declined the proposal. He invented for them a harp without pedals, the chromatic harp with crossed strings, with two rows of strings: the white ones (natural), and the black ones (sharp). Gustave Lyon promoted it by ordering from modern composers of the time: Henri Büsser, Reynaldo Hahn, Florent Schmitt, Paul Le Flem, Alfredo Casella, Joseph Jongen, and of course, Claude Debussy. It was Wurmser-Delcourt who played the first performance of his Danses sacrée et profane in 1904, with the Colonne orchestra, on Pleyel chromatic harp, therefore.
Subsequently, even if the score says "transcription", let’s say that Renié rather made the adaptation for the Erard harp: it only brought indications of pedals and fingering. She created it on Erard in 1910, with her friend Camille Chevillard. Despite the Erard's triumph, the Danses remain dedicated to their sponsor, Gustave Lyon, and in no case to Henriette Renié.
To be honnest, I think Henriette Renié had no regard for the chromatic harp.
Moreover, in 1897, the house of Erard sent him to defend his pedal harp at the Brussels exhibition against the new Pleyel harp. The two firms are in the same room, and Renié takes no pains to ridicule both his chromatic counterpart, Jean Risler, and his big Pleyel… Risler was not a bad harpist, however, his instrument did not even a year, so…
And what do you think were the reasons for such contempt?
I guess they were exactly the same as today ... When you ask the harpists why not try the chromatic harp, we tell you why, since our pedals allow us to do so many things ... For proof, look at the theme of the gallop of the Légende, or the descending mouvement of the cadence of Introduction and Allegro, it's so chromatic… So what good is it to spend on a harp that has so many faults, while the pedal harp brings so much satisfaction?
Today, working Pleyel harps are increasingly rare, but it seems to me that the hostility is almost the same as before. Probably larger, even, precisely because of the shortcut which consists in saying that it was not for nothing that Pleyel stopped manufacturing. In fact, it is such a different instrument, and so far removed from the fingering of the pedal harp, that it is considered that the Pleyel is simply not playable, or that it is not worth it. Hostility is often caused by ignorance…
Even today, you will find plenty of harpists who will give you this speech, without even having put their fingers on it. Add the stories of curling due to the gap between the strings, the difficulty of managing the harmonics, and especially the impossibility of making our favorite glissandi, and you fuel a reputation and a certain haughty contempt. While the Pleyel has obvious potential.
In addition to Debussy's Dances which she therefore tore from the chromatic repertoire, Henriette Renié extensively transcribed for the harp. Can you tell me about her transcriptions?
If we compare Henriette Renié's transcriptions with what we could generally find at the beginning of the century, we can be surprised by a certain fidelity to the text. So much so that they are not really transcriptions per se, but more adaptations, which do not really present significant modifications compared to the original scores. Finally, original scores... not quite, but let's say, of reference: Urtext editions were not in use at the time in France, and the editions considered to be the most serious were often those reviewed by the great masters (I think of the complete Rameau reviewed by Saint Saens, or later Chopin edited by Cortot).
If one looks at the transcriptions of baroque music by Grandjany, be it the concerto or the harpsichord pieces by Haendel, it is obvious that there is much more Grandjany than Handel in there. These scores appear as a fairly precious historical testimony to what Grandjany meant to this music. It’s exactly the same with Busoni and his Bach transcriptions - except that Busoni was a true composer of genius.
In this regard, the transcriptions by Renié of baroque pieces are disappointing… insofar as they are not really transcriptions, but more adaptations. If one listens to his two collections of pieces by Bach (his 10 pieces and his 10 preludes from the well-tempered keyboard), his Harmonious Blacksmith, or his Cuckoo by Daquin, one cannot, when listening, s 's transcriptions of Renié. At most, she writes ornaments "in full" rather than in sign, pedals, nuances, fingering, indications of tempo, phrasing, etc... In short, not enough to recognize the Renié style, as we would recognize those of Grandjany and Busoni.
Even in her transcriptions of pieces less known today, like the charming First waltz of Auguste Durand, a few pieces by Théodore Dubois, or on the contrary in the famous En bateau of Petite suite by Debussy, each time she tries to be fairly authentic and true to the original text. As for her Liszt transcriptions, and I especially think of Rossignol and Sospiro, yes, she was forced to modify certain cadences to make them playable on the harp, but each time, staying close enough to what she thought the original spirit, a bit like Posse had done with the three Liebestraüme.
You yourself have transcribed many Liszt, but also Beethoven and Bach, of which you have engraved the Goldberg Variations. How do you think you will converge or on the contrary differ in your approach with it?
I especially feel close to Renié about the need for transcription. What she says about it in her introduction to her second volume of her complete method is full of truth.
To say the truth, i didn't transcribe anything from Bach or Beethoven, since you just have to play the scores as they are. For Liszt, on the other hand, yes, we sometimes need to transcribe a little, to modify certain sections to make them roughly playable on the harp.
Basically, Renié's transcriptions seem to me to be "normal" transcriptions, if I can say. That is to say, they are more adaptations of performer than transcriptions of composer. Suddenly, I had not really asked myself the question, but to think about it, I am a little the line of Renié. And I will add almost "unfortunately". Because in fact, personally, the transcriptions that interest me the most, it is not the transcriptions that anyone could make, but on the contrary, those of real creators, that is, composers.
For example, I have a lot of consideration for Liszt's transcripts, and especially his paraphrases. They tell me about the listening Liszt, that is to say how he heard the music of his colleagues, the creative Liszt, how he reimagined it, and the pianist Liszt, how he transcended it. Liszt for me remains one of the greatest transcriptionists.
It is exactly the same with the transcriptions of Bach from the concertos of Marcello and Vivaldi, or of Johannes Schöllhorn with Explosante-Fixe by Boulez. Or even, to stay on Boulez, his transcriptions for orchestra of his Notations, which are much more transcriptions than simple orchestrations. Or to go even further, the Doors who take over Kurt Weill, or Jimmy Hendrix who takes over Bob Dylan: there is a real process of appropriation. Jazzmen have made it their specialty, and a standard as well known as Caravan does not sound at all in the same way as it is played by Dizzy Gillespie, Thelenious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Oscar Peterson, or Wynton Marsalis, and I still forget many others. Each time, this standard is, I would say, reappropriated.
But the most telling example is certainly the transcriptions of Gérard Pesson, great transcriber before the eternal. See his Nebenstück, for example, his transcription of Brahms' first Ballade op.10, for quintet with clarinet. Or his transcription of Harold in Italy, or that of his Bruckner. In reality, these transcriptions are the opposite of interpreter transcriptions, there he completely rethinks the music. And even, it rethinks the perception of music, even see the perception of the perception of music. In a way, I feel like Pesson is telling us "this is what is left of my memories of Brahms". Or rather "This is how I think I perceive today what I once perceived from Brukner's music". It’s quite fascinating. Obviously, this appropriation process interests me a thousand times more than Renié's more or less authentic transcriptions of pieces by Liszt or Handel.
So to sum up, yes, I do indeed feel close to Renié's transcriptions, in that they have absolutely no compositional interest. My own transcripts, like Renié's transcripts, any daring harpist could do. They do not require any particular creativity. Simply to question his technique to make it evolve, and to know his instrument enough to imagine what could make it sound best, but that's it.
If I follow your reasoning, do you prefer Grandjany's transcriptions to those of Renié?
It’s not as binary. I will take a perhaps more telling example. Beethoven's cadence for the 1st movement of Mozart's 20th concerto. It really doesn't have much to do with Mozart's style, it's clearly Beethoven, with his trills, his extreme registers, his suspensive patterns, his false cadences, and his melodic phrases like a sonata allegro coda. It is clearly not Mozart, but it interests me more than a cadence in the most perfect Mozartian style: it is the great Beethoven who is not hiding, an assumed Beethoven, who does not try to fake Mozart. Stylistically, this is certainly not very consistent, but historically, I have the impression of hearing a kind of "souvenir photo" of a Beethoven improvising on Mozart.
In short, this cadence is one example among others of the way in which creators appropriate the music of others. Fake Mozart, fake Beethoven, you learn to write in all writing classes: with a little skill, anyone could make you miles. I don’t despise, no, I’m just saying that it’s just a job, not a creative genius. Basically, what interests me is simply to see how one author or performer appropriates the music of another.
Besides, you asked me the question of my proximity to Renié's transcriptions, but with the cadences, it is the same responsibility. My own cadences for Mozart, Handel, Haydn or Boieldieu have no compositional interest, just like my transcriptions, it's just "profession", that's all.
Of course, Grandjany is nothing like the genius of Beethoven or Liszt, but still, it's the same idea. On a plan, let's say, almost anthropological, his cadence for Haendel's concerto interests me for his "self-portrait" aspect, but obviously, certainly, not for his strictly stylistic qualities.
When you listen to Grandjany's recording at RCA in 1947, in which he plays this Haendel concerto himself with his own rhythms, well it’s perfectly coherent, and it’s very touching. It’s just a picture of the past, a testimony of an era.
But today, playing this version of Grandjany seems pretty ridiculous to me: to be consistent, you would have to play everything "old-fashioned", and not just the harp part. That is to say that it would take an orchestra, let's say ... Stokowsky way, and there, the question does not arise so much that makes sense, nobody wants to hear it played like that today.
So, to sum up, from a "heritage" point of view, then yes, Grandjany's transcripts interest me more than those of Renie. But from a stylistic point of view, decontextualized to be brought up to date today, then there, certainly not, obviously.
Renié's works often require a very solid technique… How was her technique new?
But Renié's technique was nothing new, quite the contrary. It seems to me that there is not a trait in her music that does not come directly from the teaching of Hasselmans, and she readily recognizes this in her method. I don't know, see the Légende, the tremolos come from the Follets op.48, the C pedal in repeated notes on the right hand with the left hand harmonics, from the Harpe d'Eole op.32, and I'm not talking to you no arpeggios… No, Renié's technique is fully in this line. Besides, one should not neglect the more modest pieces of Renié, those that she wrote especially for her students. I’m thinking of the six short pieces from 1910, the six pieces from 1919, Au Bord du Ruisseau, the three Feuillets d’Album, and even the Contemplation, which are exactly the continuation of Hasselmans’s little pieces. I would like to take this opportunity to also quote Gabriel Verdalle, soloist of the Paris Opera, whose works are extremely close to those of Hasselmans, although today his name has completely obscured him (they are both born and died the same years, 1845-1912).
In reality, without wanting to seem chauvinistic, it is a little of what is called the French school of the harp that Henriette Renié is the heiress, in the same way as Lily Laskine, Micheline Kahn, Marcel Grandjany, Pierre Jamet, and many other pupils of Alphonse Hasselmans. Strictly speaking, Renié did not invent anything really new in instrumental technique, but she was just so talented that she carried this "French school" to its climax.
Precisely, do you regret that she did not obtain the succession of Hasselmans to the class of the Paris conservatory?
Yes of course ! But on several aspects, which ask to put in context.
1912, Alphonse Hasselmans died after 28 years of teaching at the conservatory, not without having assured Fauré of his succession by his best former pupil, Henriette Renié. Despite these recommendations, Fauré preferred Marcel Tournier to him, when in 1912 Renié had already been well known for a long time, and not simply from the small circle of harpists: she had succeeded in raising his instrument to the rank of soloist, and its popularity was indisputable. It was obvious that she should have had the class of Paris.
It has long been said that if she did not get the job, it was simply because she was a woman. There is probably a great deal of truth, unfortunately, but not only. After all, Marguerite Long, her one year old elder, had already been teaching the piano there since 1906. And then, in terms of institutions, Nadia Boulanger had already won a second prize from Rome in 1908, and her sister Lili Boulanger a first price in 1913. Above all, Renée Lénars took over the chromatic harp class exactly the same year, succeeding Marie Tassu-Spencer!
And then there was Cécile Chaminade, then Wanda Landowska… It is indisputable, women's rights were not yet what it became, certainly, but all the same, Renié was so widely recognized that she would no doubt have could, by fighting a little, access the Conservatory.
No, we must not forget that it was in 1912, that is to say under the third republic, and Henriette Renié was listed as "reactionary" in part because of her hostility to the law of 1901 on the separation of Church and State. Finally, that's what we modestly say, because in reality, she was "very royalist", at least according to Théodore Dubois. So, in any case, she had no chance of gaining an official position. While Marcel Tournier, on the contrary, was a real “product of the institution”, if I may say: not only a harpist at the Opera, he had above all won the second grand prix of Rome in 1909, with his cantata Russalka, and the Rossini Prize awarded the same year by the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France, for Laure et Pétrarque.
To top it all, it is said that Delvincourt would have proposed to Renié the succession of Tournier when he left in 1948, to which she would have replied that if Tournier retired, she was still four years older than him.
Well, but most of all, Hasselmans' daughter Marguerite, who taught music theory at the conservatory, was largely opposed to it, and quite actively. Formerly a good friend of Renié, Marguerite Hasselmans, 36 years old, had never digested all the reproaches of pious Renié about her affair with Gabriel Fauré, 67.
Renié's music was perhaps considered less modern than that of Tournier…
Obviously, if we put the Légende and the Images side by side, Tournier seems a little more modern than Renié. But it would be forgetting that there is a difference of thirty years between the two!
So here again, it is necessary to contextualize: before his appointment to the conservatory, at 33, the most adventurous play by Tournier was undoubtedly Au matin, written two years earlier. Compare the modernity of Renié's Ballade Fantastique, 1912, with the two Romantic preludes (1909) or the Theme and variations (1913) of Tournier, obviously, there is no photo. It was only after the war that the language of Tournier came a little closer to Ravel. I think of Féerie, 1920, Vers la source dans le bois, 1922, or its four suites of Images, from 1925 to 1932. Or obviously, its Sonatine, from 1924, that is to say… twenty years after Sonatine by Ravel. No, when Tournier took the conservatory class, he was not as "modern" as his future work might suggest - if ever there was one, truly "modern".
I'm not saying that Tournier was a bad teacher, he still released some renowned harpists. I just think that Renié would have been even better. To be honest, the rare works by Renié require much more solid technique and endurance than many of Tournier’s plays, even among the most difficult. In short, yes, I regret that Renié was unable to teach at the conservatory. First for Renié herself, but above all, for the harp.
I guess your disappointment in her ouster rests on his Complete Method, which you think highly, I believe. What is more than the others?
Absolutely. Renié wrote her method during the second war, that is to say when she was already of an advanced age, and above all, with a certain perspective on her own experience. Her experience as a harpist, but also as an educator. The first volume talks about technique, and on this point of view, it is a little the method that Hasselmans never wrote, even if it often takes examples from Naderman. But it is especially in the second volume that we can appreciate the scope of this method. Besides the management of stage fright, the mastery of tempo, the presence on stage, she mainly addresses the question of the different applications of her first volume, which makes her cite countless examples of the entire repertoire for harp, both solo and in orchestral parts.
In fact it is much more than a simple method for learning to play the harp: it is a method for learning to become a harpist. She fully shares all of her experience, as if she bequeathed all of her teaching to subsequent generations. It goes far beyond the kind of "instructions for use" found in most methods ... She really delivers everything she can say about the harp, even going as far as advice on how to fix her Erard!
For me, for sure, his method is like a real testament.
And in relation to the Treaty of Tournier, written almost at the same time?
But this book is appallingly stupid! Everything is said in the first sentence: "A historian wrote somewhere that it was reserved for the white race to create the true art of music, a mission that the yellow and black races could not fulfill. On the sidelines, we will write that the old musical instruments were created by these same yellow and black races, and that it was also for the white race that the mission of developing and perfecting them was reserved." It is distressing.
All the rest of his work reports the same tricolor chauvinism. The first part does not deal with the history of the harp around the world as he claims very little modestly, but in reality, the way in which the harp would have evolved to reach its most perfect form, the French harp : "Because it is here on the soil of France, that the harp will reach a final perfection, which will amaze the musical world of all countries". I'll let you judge. The second part, the writing for the harp, is hardly a little less silly, but in any case it brings absolutely nothing to everything that had already been written many times in the past.
Obviously, we can always pretend that it was another era, that this war probably increased his patriotic feeling, or that Tournier was an old man, etc. Only, that does not excuse anything: he was only 66 years old, and Renié 70 when writing their works, at the end of the war. And anyway, I'm only talking about this book, I don't question the qualities of his music.
For me, the Tournier treaty is the exact opposite of Renié's method. That of Tournier is, I would say, almost naive in its proselytism and its stupidity, speaking sometimes of magic glissandos, sometimes of wonderful and enchanting sounds. Renié, she never falls into the instrument cliché of the muses and their little shepherds, she is in the truth, in the profession, from the first to the last sentence.
Admittedly, it is not the same project, a treaty on the one hand, a method on the other, but all the same. At Tournier, that’s all I can do with my harp. At Renié, that's all you will be able to do with your harp.
Everything you have said about Renié is not necessarily very positive, especially about her transcripts or her catalog. Would you always draw the parallel with Liszt that you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation: “The first harpists in the world, there are plenty. Henriette Renié is the only one?
Yes, absolutely, but I repeat again that this is another scale. Renié doesn't equal Liszt, that's for sure, and harpists don't equal pianists either, that's a fact. I challenge you to name five harpist names today as great / awesome as Barenboim, Argerich, or Brendel. Or, to put Renié back in his time, Alfred Cortot, Clara Haskil, Wilhelm Backhaus, or Arthur Schnabel, whom I adore. Except Renié, I don't see any.
Basically, to come back to this remark, the biggest common point between Liszt and Renié is not in their works, but in their relationship to music. And therefore, their relationship to virtuosity. It's never free, never demonstrative, but always in the service of music. In Liszt as in Renié, there is as much virtuosity in their music as there is music in their virtuosity.