Delsarte retained a grateful memory of another teacher. M. Deshayes, he
said, spurred him on to scientific discovery, as Bambini directed his
attention and his taste to the works of the great masters.
One day, as the young man was studying a certain role, M. Deshayes,
busily talking with some one else and not even glancing toward his
pupil, exclaimed:
"Your gesture is incorrect!"
When they were alone Delsarte expressed his astonishment.
"You said my gesture was incorrect," he exclaimed, "and you could not
see me."
"I knew it by your mode of singing."
This explanation set the young disciple's brain in a whirl. Were there,
then, affinities, a necessary concordance between the gesture and the
inflections of the voice? And, from this slight landmark, he set to
work, searching, comparing, verifying the principle by the effects, and
_vice versa_.
He gave himself with such vigor to the task that, from this hint, he
succeeded little by little in establishing the basis of his system of
aesthetics and its complete development.
After these beginnings, which Delsarte considered as a favorable
initiation, Father Bambini--his faithful patron--thought that he
required a more thorough musical education, and chose the Conservatory
school. There, that broad and impulsive spirit in its independence ran
counter to classic paths, to rigid processes; there, that exceptional
nature, that potent personality, which was already a marked one, that
vivid intuition--which already went beyond the limits of the traditional
holy of holies--had little chance of appreciation.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248