I mention this detail to
give an idea of the splendidly courageous and confident spirit that
Charles Bordes possessed.]
M. d'Indy claims that this system may be applied as successfully to
instrumentalists and singers as to future composers. "For it is as
profitable for them to know," he says, "how to sing a liturgic monody
properly, or to be able to play a Corelli sonata in a suitable style, as
it is for composers to study the structure of a motet or a suite." M.
d'Indy, moreover, obliged all students, without distinction, to attend
the lectures on vocal music; and, besides that, he instituted a special
class to teach the conducting of orchestras--which was something quite
new to France. His object, as he clearly said, was to give a new form to
modern music by means of a knowledge of the music of the past.
On this subject he says:
"Where shall we find the quickening life that will give us fresh
forms and formulas? The source is not really difficult to discover.
Do not let us seek it anywhere but in the decorative art of the
plain-song singers, in the architectural art of the age of
Palestrina, and in the expressive art of the great Italians of the
seventeenth century.
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