Reynaldo Hahn
Hahn’s artistry as a song composer sets him apart but, says Roger Nichols, let’s not ignore the adopted Frenchman’s many other assets
Sometime around 1907 the Duchess of Manchester gave a soirée in London in honour of the King and Queen. The music chosen for the occasion was Le Bal de Béatrice d’este for wind band by the 33-year-old French composer Reynaldo Hahn and conducted by him. The Queen was enchanted and, after a pause for refreshments, asked for an encore. The King went off to play bridge, but returned shortly after. A courtier wondered whether, perhaps, some Offenbach? And so Reynaldo sang to his own accompaniment aria after aria by Offenbach, taking the King back to those happy, carefree days when, as Prince of
Wales, he had so often escaped to Paris to be entertained by les petites femmes. If the Queen preferred Le Bal, Reynaldo thought that might have been simply because she was seriously deaf, and quite a few of the tunes were on the trumpet.
Was he then a French aristocrat? Indeed not. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1874 from a Jewish German father and a Roman Catholic Spanish/basque mother. His father had not only built up a thriving commercial empire – helpful, given his ten surviving children – but was a close friend of the head of state, Guzman Blanco. When, in 1878, Blanco fell out of favour and emigrated to Paris, it was not surprising that Carlos Hahn followed.
The young Reynaldo was the Benjamin of the family and later admitted that he had been rather spoilt by his elder sisters. But the charm that distinguished him throughout his life was no doubt already in evidence, as was his talent for music. In 1885 he entered the preparatory class of the Conservatoire and joined a boys’ choir – his first taste of singing, which was to be the bedrock of his life.
When he entered the Conservatoire proper, among his fellow pupils was Maurice Ravel, though they never became friends, possibly because their Basque mothers came from different social classes, Reynaldo’s the upper bourgeoisie, Maurice’s quite a few layers below. But the Conservatoire teaching suited Hahn down to the ground, not least that of Massenet, who did much to launch his career and
At just 15, Hahn gave notice of the invaluable contribution he would make to the repertoire
remained a friend until Massenet’s death in 1912. In 1892, we even find the 18-yearold Hahn being entrusted with reading the proofs of Massenet’s Werther!
Two facts indicate the breadth of Hahn’s early tastes. Like many of his fellow musicians, he was enthralled by Wagner, and especially by Die Meistersinger. But at the same time he was one of a group (perhaps ‘gang’ is a better word) of students, including the 24-year-old Erik Satie, called Les Vieilles Poules (the old hens) to which both of them contributed musical farces. Neither of these interests, though, accords with Hahn’s first success as a composer, the song Si mes Vers avaient des ailes, published in 1889. Even if Massenet’s influence is umistakable, here, at the age of only 15, Hahn gave notice of the invaluable contribution he was to make to the repertoire of the French mélodie.