Prof. Arrested during Field Trip, Saved by a Canon

During a class field trip inviting students to drop in on an elderly composer at home, young Henri-Montan Berton, already a conservatory professor but not yet to embark on his career as a composer of comic opera, was to find himself placed under provisional arrest by over-cautious officials not long into the French Revolution.

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It was perhaps 12 months since the founding of the Conservatoire de Paris, that Henri-Montan Berton, Professor of Harmony, managed to find himself in jail in the middle of a 16 kilometer journey with students from his harmony class. The anecdote is related in between canons in his privately-sold collection of "Rascal Canons" dating from around 1820. [1]

According to that account a canon, improvised by one of his students was sung by them as a means to release Mr. Berton from custody and continue on their journey. He writes,

Je place cé canon dans le Receuil quoiqu'il ne foit pas de moi, la notice qui suit expliquera comment j'ai acquis ce droit de propriété sur cette amiable plaisanterie de mes amis.

I place this canon in the Compendium although it is not mine; the following notice will explain how I acquired this property right on this amicable joke from my friends.

Na: B: En l'an 4tre de lat République, nous fîmes avec les Elêves de ma classe au conservatoire de musique, la partie d'aller visiter en son hermitage de Montmorenci le Moliere de la Musique Francaise, Nous nous mîmes en marche le 19. Fructidor. Notre petite caravane avait cheminé gayement jusques à St. Denis lorsqu'en passant devant la Municipalité l'un des membres m'invita fort poliment à y entrer, mais a'ayant pas trouvé mon portefeuille fuffisament garni de papiers civiques, il me déclara qu'il me mettoit provisoirement en arrestation, mes elêves venrent aussitôt me reclamer et comme on paraissait douter qu'ils fussent Musiciens de profession ainsi qu moi, et que l'on en demaindait des preuves, l'un deux Mr. Potier, improvisa le Canon ci dessous qui fut à l'instant chanté par Mm. Pradere, Quinebeaux, Berteau, Courtin, et Lui: Nos Juges qui dans le fond étaient de Bons diables furent sensibles aux accens de ces jeunes orphées, et nous permirent de continuer notre route, ce que nous fîmes encore plus gayement au'avant notre mésavanture, improvisant et chantant des Canons à qui meiux mieux.

NB: In the fourth year of the Republic [1796], with the pupils of my class at the music conservatory, we did our part of going to visit the Molière of French music [undoubtedly André Grétry] in his hermitage of Montmorency, We started on the 19th Fructidor [5 Sept. 1796 - French revolutionary calendar]. Our little caravan had walked gayly to St. Denis when when passing in front of the Municipality one of the members very politely invited me to enter, but having not found my wallet sufficiently furnished with civic papers, he declared to me that I was under provisional arrest. My pupils immediately came to claim me and as he seemed to doubt that they were Musicians by profession as well as I, and that there could be proof of it the next day, one of them Mr. Potier, improvised the Canon below which was immediately sung by Msrs. Pradere, Quinebeaux, Berteau, Courtin, and himself: Our Judges, who in the background were good devils, were sensitive to the accents of these young Orpheuses, and allowed us to continue our journey , which we did even more gayly before our misfortune, improvising and singing canons to whom better.

Now, anyone who has read Molière's "Le Medicin malgre lui" would understand the comparison that Berton makes between this comic genius and the reigning king of French revolutionary comic opera, André Grétry whom these young composers were undoubtedly going to call. The destination was to be l'Ermitage de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And this is where an inconsistency crops up up in the story.

I am inclined to believe that the tale related in conjunction with this canon's appearance in Berton's collection is true, but that more than twenty years hence, he misremembered the year. For one thing, he technically did not yet have Conservatory harmony students yet in September of 1796. The very first classes at the Conservatory began in October of that founding year, not in September. (Keep in mind that his former place of employment became the Conservatory when the latter was established, and so the transition may not have felt quite memorable.) What is more, some of the students in question would be quite young—young enough that a year or two would matter a great deal. If the age of the students was so young as to be 16 years old, then the question would be asked why his son was not along for the trip. Most importantly, Grétry only purchased and rehabbed his retreat in Montmorency in 1798.

My guess is that Berton remembered or documented the year wrong, and that this trip happened in the year 1798, as Grétry's renovations would have been complete in September in preparation for the coming first winter at the new residence. Perhaps the year was not remembered wrong, but simply documented incorrectly. Although Berton used and Arabic numeral 4 in his account, it was common to use Roman numerals with the Revolutionary years, and perhaps somewhere along the way, a "I" and "V" became reversed, the year IV being confused with the year VI. It seems likely that the old calendar, abolished by an act of Napoleon in 1805, was neither a part of common parlance nor part of one's mental calendar. If the year were in fact 1798, then 19 Fructidor would still correspond with September 5 (since there was no intervening leap year). Such confusions are forgivable and fit the generally gibing spirit implied by the anecdote as a whole.

And it is certain that the rendering of the date is intended with the most deep-felt sarcasm and derision. Berton, who so eagerly accepted the revolutionary republican ideals ten years earlier, having written among his first comic operas Les Rigueurs du Cloître (https://archive.org/details/lesrigueursduclo00bert/), the pro-Republican work for which he owed much of his success, was now in many ways jaded, burdened and impoverished by the new order.

French Revolutionary 10-hour metric clock (source: Wikimedia Foundation)

The Republic was to blame for the two early monetary successes of Berton in one way or another. And this success was not a matter of vanity. Absolutely destitute in 1798, Berton was rescued in different ways both by Grétry and by his students, some of whom are commemorated in his anecdote.

And his wife's & or father's pensions?

This episode should have taken place during the respite from Berton's poverty whose severity having been rescued by his teaching appointment was reinstated as his fixed salary became all but worthless in the intense monetary inflation during these years.

citation for day names at napoleon.org

https://www.napoleon.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/the-names-of-the-days-of-the-republican-calendar.pdf

It is quite likely that early in his career, as Berton's own comic operas withstood the decimation of the opera houses by Napoleon, and before Berton's premères throughout Europe and the United States (1803), he made such a pilgrimage with his harmony students, some of whom listed were also involved in comic opera. And to his defense, Berton's students at the École Royale de Chant would have continued on and matriculated when that school and the Institute National de Musique were combined into the Conservatoire at its founding.

The Canon

The lyric reads: "Citoyens rendez nous notre professeur c'est un bon." ["Citizens, give us back our teacher; he's a good one."]

Henry-Montan Berton

Our H-M Berton was the son of Pierre-Montan Berton, and the father of _________ Berton. it is curious that his son, also named Henri, was not mentioned, as he was the same age as some of these students and also attended the Conservatory in the same year. Perhaps he was neither in the harmony class nor singing organization.

Musicologie.org maintains a biography and list-of-works site for Berton at https://www.musicologie.org/Biographies/b/berton_henri_montan.html.

It should be remembered about H-M Berton, that he was not only a successful composer of opera buffa, not only a pioneer in authoring both the music and the libretto of some of his operas, and not only was he later the musical director at the Théâtre de l'Impératrice from 1807 to 1810, but accomplished all of this at a time when Napoleon I had decimated the opera scene in Paris.

I've written on these pages about Berton's colleagues, Gossec, Cherubini, and Garat, and perhaps touched upon some of the upheaval connected with the French Revolution. Berton's rascal image was perhaps a badge of honor, and the paranoia of officials would have been a remembrance.

Aside from its connection with the Conservatory, and Opera Buffa in Paris this little story touches on several topics related to the French Revolution

Société de la Goguette

I have not been able to learn much about the particular society referred to in the title of Berton's collection, but would be interested to know more. Singing clubs of 10 or less were common during this time period throughout Europe and Great Britain. At some point in the nineteenth century these groups became known as goguettes. The tradition emerged from dinner societies in the middle of the eighteenth century. The real heyday of goguettes is the middle and late nineteenth century.

On Wikipedia, you can learn more here:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_des_arts_et_de_l%27amitié_en_goguette

Bibliothèque Impériale de Paris

Berton's collection of canons was self-published and as its cover indicates was submitted to the Imperial Library of Paris.

The French Public Library?

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_de_la_Bibliothèque_nationale_de_France

The artistic remnants of the French Revolution, beyond that which was created as a part of its political thrust, speak as all such times do of the cry for normalcy during wartime. Remembering twenty years later, Berton calls to mind the craziness of these times, both in the anecdote relating to our canon, but also in the texts of the other canons in the collection. And other musical explorations I have had the opportunity to relate on these pages echo that craziness, whether it was the bombing of a première, or the arrest of citizens. I touched on this craziness in mentioning the story of the bombing of a premiere.

The Hike

Gretry famously bought the former home of the great philosopher and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), a few miles north of Paris, and lived there until his death in 1813. (Grove)

The trip seems to have made a lasting impression upon its trekkers, as a few appear to have collaborated decades later in the realm of comic opera.

The hike is about 3 hours long from the Conservatory to the Hermitage.

Now according to all sources, the first classes began in October of 1796, and therefore perhaps this was something more akin to a new-student orientation than a field trip (my speculation). It is possible that Berton remembered the year wrong, but more likely in my opinion that his students at the École Royale de Chant continued on and matriculated to the Conservatoire when that school and the Institute National de Musique were combined into the Conservatoire at its founding at this very time, and that the continuity blurred the distinction. In either case this was the beginning of the first year of the Conservatoire de Paris which was essentially on the same campus. [see Wikipedia: Conservatoire de Paris - accessed April 2020]

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Footnotes

1. The dating of this collection of canons is recorded in the library entry as an estimate. No date appears in the document itself.

among his first comic operas Les Rigueurs du Cloître https://archive.org/details/lesrigueursduclo00bert/

Paris ca. 1820