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| ISBN-13: | 9780871273949 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton Book Company |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 127 |
| Sales rank: | 539,044 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
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Every Little Movement
A Book About Delsarte
By Ted Shawn
Princeton Book Company
Copyright © 1954 Ted ShawnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87127-394-9
CHAPTER 1
SECTION I
FRANÇOIS DELSARTE — The Man and His Philosophy
FRANÇOIS DELSARTE was born November 11, 1811, at Solesmes, France. There are a number of biographical sketches of Delsarte's life, and the accounts of his childhood are conflicting, some lurid and melodramatic; but they all agree that his father died, bankrupt, when he was six years old — that his mother and a younger brother and he went to Paris, where the mother hoped to obtain work to support herself and the children. However, both the mother and brother died within a few years, leaving François an orphan, alone and destitute. He is variously reported as working for a ragpicker, a baker, and doing any odd jobs he could get, and sleeping on pallet or rags, in attics and doorways.
His natural musicianship was discovered by a Pere Bambini, who took the boy under his wing, and eventually secured him some sort of scholarship in the Conservatory, where he started studying to be both singer and actor. But due to criminally bad instruction of his teachers, his voice was ruined, and he had to abandon any thoughts of a career as a singer. It is related, however, that he managed to secure some sort of a sinecure with the theatre, a job which carried with it an annual stipend sufficient to take care of his minimum living expenses, but which left almost his entire time free to pursue what had become his major goal and objective in life — the discovery and formulating of the laws of expression.
He had found in the Conservatory, that all his teachers were ignorant of any principles of art, and that their instruction was entirely a matter of passing on personal styles or idiosyncracies to their pupils. So, having had his own career ruined, Delsarte dedicated his life to the task of discovering great general laws and principles of art and expression, hoping thus to save future generations of students from the tragedy which had befallen him.
The acting techniques and pantomimic gestures existing in Paris at the time of Delsarte's student days at the Conservatory were stylized and untrue to nature to a degree that we, today, can hardly imagine. Repudiating these false usages and customs of the theatre and opera, Delsarte set out to discover exactly how real people do move and speak, in every possible emotional situation. For many years, before he began to teach or lecture at all, he devoted his entire time to accumulating facts — assembling a vast amount of data in regard to the way human beings of all ages, social strata, and different temperaments react to emotional stimuli. He observed children at play in the parks, their nurses and mothers; he watched the poor and outcast, the rich and arrogant. He travelled great distances to observe, as on one occasion, a mine disaster — to study as a dispassionate scientist the attitudes, gestures, tone of voice and manner of speech of those waiting at the surface while rescue crews were endeavoring to excavate the entombed miners; the suspense, fear, hope and eventually the joy or grief, of wives, mothers, and children of the victims. He managed to go through a complete course of medical school to know the anatomy of the human body; he dissected corpses, he studied the insane in asylums; in fact he observed human beings in every aspect and condition of life and death, normal and abnormal.
Sometime before 1839, from this almost overwhelming accumulation of facts and information, a great pattern of a network of laws had become visible to him, and he began to teach and lecture in his own studio to a group of students and disciples. These lessons were given in a course of lectures, generally about twenty to the course, and he called it a "Cours d'Esthetique Applique." This science of applied aesthetics, Delsarte believed, included all the basic principles that affect every form of art — the graphic and plastic arts, music, both instrumental and vocal, as well as acting and oratory. And indeed, the list of his known pupils includes painters, sculptors, composers, as well as opera singers, actors, lawyers, statesmen, clergymen, and critics. The most famous artists of the period, the politically and socially eminent, and writers and composers of world fame attended his salon, many coming year after year.
Accounts covering a period of twenty years or more all indicate that these lectures were illustrated by Delsarte, who gave examples both of singing and speaking, and even of silent gestures, (pantomime), and that his own performance at such times had almost magic power to move his audience to laughter or to tears. Once a year, he gave a public recital in which he appeared with his leading pupils, and although his voice had been ruined, his great genius rose above the faulty instrument, and the most eminent critics praised extravagantly his musicianship, his phrasing and his interpretative powers.
Hector Berlio? writes of these recitals: "In execution he cannot be surpassed. He renders the expression of the great masters with such brilliance and force that their masterpieces become accessible to the most rebellious spirits, while the dullest susceptibilities are awakened by his inflections."
His last public appearances were at the Sorbonne in 1867, where in the great Amphitheatre of Medicine he gave expression to wholesome and fortifying truths which caused the press to say of him,: "Those were noble words. Orator, poet, metaphysician, artist, Delsarte has spread out new horizons before the soul."
His most active period, when he was at the height of his powers, seems to have been 1839 through 1859, during which time he was showered with all the honors and degrees and citations it was possible for any man to receive. He was invited by the Duc d'Orleans to perform at a party which was given in honor of Louis Phillipe, the last king of France. Delsarte made his own conditions, which included that he receive no pay. The king met him at the door of the Palace as an equal, and the success of his singing and his "declamations" was such that one critic, M. Imgres, wrote "today the real king of France is François Delsarte." The King of Bavaria sent the leading singers of his state theatre to be coached by Delsarte, and awarded him an order of merit. The greatest actors and actresses and the stars of opera came to him for private lessons, to be coached in the interpretation of their roles.
But somewhere around 1860 he seems to have entered a period of ill health, and the last ten years of his life were passed in semi-retirement, almost in obscurity. It was after such a period of eclipse, and only two years before his death, that Steele Mackaye began to study with Delsarte. This young American genius, who was to affect the whole history of theatre in America so profoundly, then only 27 years old and at the beginning of a rich and varied career as actor, director, playwright, lecturer, teacher, inventor, and producer, had gone to Paris to study acting (after a previous period during which he had studied painting as his life's objective). Steele Mackaye himself planned to study with Regnier at the Conservatory, but on the request of his father, who had heard of Delsarte, first had an interview with this aging, retired, and now no longer fashionable teacher of singing and declamation. There was an immediate and mutual affinity — and Mackaye never again thought of Regnier or the Conservatory, but studied daily with Delsarte for eight months, from October, 1869 to July, 1879. His own natural talents and previous thinking so fitted him to this study with Delsarte that the master called him "My son, my greatest pupil and disciple," and stated that Mackaye was the one on whom his mantle would fall, and the one best fitted to carry on his science to future generations.
Within five months, Steele Mackaye was so advanced that he shared in giving the lectures at Delsarte's salon, and it was in such a lecture-demonstration given jointly with François Delsarte that Mackaye was seen by Francis Durivage, an American who lived in Paris and was correspondent for various newspapers and magazines in the United States. Durivage later published the first article to appear in Amercia about Delsarte, in the Atlantic Monthly, for May, 1871 (material for which he got from Steele Mackaye).
It was also during this period that Steele Mackaye showed Delsarte, and got Delsarte's approval for, the system of gymnastics designed to prepare the student physically to apply and use Delsarte's laws of gesture. Delsarte himself had never taught any such gymnastics (although there was much controversy on this matter, and it seems that Gustave Delsarte, the son who carried on his father's teaching in Paris, is later reported to have taught exercises which were in every respect the same as Mackaye's "Harmonic Gymnastics").
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War cut the stay of the Mackaye family short, and they had to return to America. The advance of the Germans on Paris caused the Delsarte family to flee to his birth place, Solesmes, where they were almost without food, destitute and suffering great hardships. Steele Mackaye came back to America aflame with the new revelation, and started giving lectures on the science of Delsarte and proposed bringing Delsarte to America to head a great institution — to be the first real dramatic school in America. With the news of the misfortunes of the Delsarte family, all the proceeds from these lectures were sent to buy food, clothing, and fuel for these unfortunate people. The lectures were a great success, attended by the most illustrious people of the country; from this start the Delsarte craze swept America and held absolute sway for the next twenty years. Just as in present day America comic strip characters have given rise to the manufacturing and sale of such articles as Hop-a-long Cassidy costumes for children, and space-helmets, etc., in the 1890's one finds in magazines advertisements for "Delsarte corsets," "Delsarte cosmetics," "Delsarte gowns"; and one manufacturer even advertised a "Delsarte wooden leg!"
The teaching of a pure and exact science had only a limited audience, but Mackaye's Harmonic Gymnastics could be used (and abused) by millions. While there were a number of serious students who spent their lives learning and teaching this science, the majority grabbed a smattering, and then went out to cash in by teaching "decomposing" exercises (this was the first name given to relaxation exercises) and to invent "statue posing" and to apply badly and falsely the laws of gesture to "elocution," which was then the rage. Before the day of movies and radio, to say nothing of television, there was much more in the way of living entertainment provided by each community for its own audiences, and endless programs of "recitations" were given all over the land. Of the many so-called "Delsarte" books that appeared, many of them are collections of selections for such elocutionary readings, some with directions as to the proper gestures to be used, and illustrated with pictures of men and women in the costume of the period (not an aesthetically beautiful period!) in poses representing (falsely and ridiculously) every human emotion.
But this gets ahead of the story — for in July, 1871, only a few months after the first article had appeared about him in the Atlantic Monthly, and while Steele Mackaye and other friends were still trying to raise money to bring Delsarte to America, ill and broken by the war experiences, François Delsarte died in Paris. In spite of the chaos of the times, obituaries appeared not only in every Paris newspaper, but in practically every newspaper and magazine in France. In one it said "Delsarte was the most profound aesthetician of our times. He alone understood what art is, and he formulated its synthesis." Others said: "The great artist, François Delsarte, one of the most remarkable individuals of our time"; "A great artist, with an encyclopaedic mind, an admirable virtuoso of speech, an unsurpassed professor for whom art had no longer any secrets; and in addition he was a philosopher, a philologian, and one can say he even possessed the innate science of all art"; "Truly one of the most powerful and best organised artists France ever possessed"; "A man of genius — volumes could not do justice to Delsarte for he was one of those possessed of such a divine soul that he illumined all he touched"; "Ardent artist, heart of gold, burning soul, ingenious mind rich in knowledge — he will leave an enduring influence on generations to come"; "The cross of the Legion of Honor was placed on his coffin — a surprise to many for Delsarte was too modest during his life to wear the ribbon." These are only a few of the many tributes, all of which were equally glowing and sincere.
It was mentioned in many obituaries that Delsarte was the leader and prime factor in restoring the music of Gluck to popularity in France after a century of neglect, and that Delsarte was the finest interpreter of the music of Gluck in France during his lifetime.
The obituaries mentioned the names of many of his most famous pupils, Rachel, MacCready, Sontag, Monsabre, Bizet, the composer of "Carmen" (who was Delsarte's nephew), the Abbé of Notre Dame, names of famous trial lawyers, statesmen and orators, and the elite of Parisian cultural society.
Delsarte was also a composer. All of the obituaries speak of a work — "Stances a rEternité" — as his finest composition. He was an editor and publisher of music, having collected the works of Lully, Rameau, Gluck and others of that period, and published them under the title "Archives du chant."
He was an inventor, having invented an instrument which automatically tuned a piano to perfect pitch (about which Hector Berlioz wrote an article), another instrument for taking bearings at sea, and a cardiograph.
He was a deeply religious man, and yet able to evolve, in harmony with his religious beliefs, a philosophy of his own, grand and all embracing. At a time when strong anti-clerical feelings were rife in France, and mobs turned against robed priests and maltreated them, there is an anecdote which tells of Delsarte coming upon such a scene of violence. A Jesuit was being beaten by a mob, and Delsarte stopped them, showing the mob his own crucifix and saying: "Why not beat me, for I am just as foolish as this poor priest." So great was his charm, and so magnetic his personality, and the mob was so impressed by his moral courage, that they dispersed quietly without attempting further injury to their victim.
France never lived through a period of seeing the honored name of François Delsarte become misunderstood and ridiculed, as we have here in America. To France he has always been a cherished and honored son. The town of Solesmes, where he was born, named a public square "Maitre Delsarte" and in 1925 a commemorative plaque was placed upon the house in which he was born, with public ceremonies. An account of this occasion written by François Semaille appeared in "Comedia" on Feb. 23, 1925: "The town of Solesmes numbers among its children the eminent artist and indisputable master, François Delsarte, to whom, in his lifetime, all literary and artistic Paris flocked, and of whom Theophile Gautier said, 'He was the Talma of Music.' A marble plaque was affixed to the house in which François Delsarte was born by the citizens of Solesmes in pious homage."
And yet, so great has been the misunderstanding of Delsarte in America, due to the distortions and falsifications of his great science which flourished here in the latter part of the 19th Century, that as late as Sept. 9, 1946, Life Magazine can dismiss this immortal genius with the phrase "an unsuccessful singing teacher" as sole comment!
In France, during Delsarte's lifetime, some of the other established teachers of drama and singing naturally resented the ever-increasing popularity of this master who taught his new science of the principles of all art. Regnier of the Conservatory (with whom Steele Mackaye had intended to study before he met Delsarte) tried to dismiss Delsarte as a "magnificent sayer of beautiful nothings." At the same time, an equally great contemporary of Delsarte's, Raymond Brucker, wrote: "Delsarte's system is an orthopedic machine to straighten crippled intellects."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Every Little Movement by Ted Shawn. Copyright © 1954 Ted Shawn. Excerpted by permission of Princeton Book Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Introduction: "I Am Speaking of Ted Shawn" by Louise Gifford, Columbia University School of Dramatic Arts,
Author's Foreword,
Section I. François Delsarte, The Man and his Philosophy,
Section II. A Statement of the Laws of Delsarte's Science,
Section III. Application of these Laws to the Art of the Dance,
Section IV. The Influence of Delsarte on the American Dance,
Appendix — Bibliography, with Commentary,
Conclusion,