I was fourteen when Stamaty, my piano teacher, introduced me to Benoist, the teacher of the organ, an excellent and charming man, familiarly known as “Father Benoist.”  They put me in front of the keyboard, but I was badly frightened, and the sounds I made were so extraordinary that all the pupils shouted with laughter.  I was received at the Conservatoire as an “auditor.”

So there I was only admitted to the honor of listening to others.  I was extremely painstaking, however, and I never lost a note or one of the teacher’s words.  I worked and thought at home, studying hard on Sebastian Bach’s Wohltemperirte Klavier.  All of the pupils, however, were not so industrious.  One day, when they had all failed and Benoist, as a result, had nothing to do, he put me at the organ.  This time no one laughed and I at once became a regular pupil.  At the end of the year I won the second prize.  I would have had the first except for my youth and the inconvenience of having me leave a class where I needed to stay longer.

That same year Madeleine Brohan won the first prize in comedy.  She competed with a selection from Misanthrope, and Mlle. Jouassin gave the other part of the dialogue.  Mlle. Jouassin’s technique was the better, but Madeleine Brohan was so wonderful in beauty and voice that she carried off the prize.  The award made a great uproar.  To-day, in such a case, the prize would be divided.  Mlle. Jouassin won her prize the following year.  After leaving school, she accepted and held for a long time an important place at the Comedie-Francaise.

Benoist was a very ordinary organist, but an admirable teacher.  A veritable galaxy of talent came from his class.  He had little to say, but as his taste was refined and his judgment sure, nothing he said lacked weight or authority.  He collaborated in several ballets for the Opera and that gave him a good deal of work to do.  It sounds incredible, but he used to bring his “work” to class and scribble away on his orchestration while his pupils played the organ.  This did not prevent his listening and looking after them.  He would leave his work and make appropriate comments as though he had no other thought.

In addition to his ballets, Benoist did other little odd jobs for the Opera.  As a result one day, without thinking, he gave me the key to a deep secret.  In his famous Traite d’Instrumentation Berlioz spoke of his admiration for a passage in Sacchini’s Oedipus a Colone.  Two clarinets are heard in descending thirds of real charm just before the words, “Je connus la charmante Eriphyle.” Berlioz was enthusiastic and wrote: 

“We might believe that we really see Eriphyle chastely kiss his eyes.  It is admirable.  And yet,” he adds, “there is no trace of this effect in Sacchini’s score.”

Now Sacchini, for some reason or other which I do not know, did not use clarinets once in the whole score.  Benoist was commissioned to add them when the work was revived, as he told me as we were chatting one day.  Berlioz did not know this, and Benoist, who had not read Berlioz’s Traite, knew nothing of the romantic musician’s enthusiastic admiration of his work.  These happily turned thirds, although they weren’t Sacchini’s, were, none the less, an excellent innovation.