Paris-Manchester 1918
Conservatoires in time of war

It was during the winter of 1914, east of Verdun, in the little village of Ville-en-Woëvre. Philippe Gaubert was a stretcher-bearer in an infantry regiment. I was an artillery sergeant in the same sector.

A friendship sprang up, formed by music and the war, a brotherly affection that kept its youthful character, despite the vicissitudes of life.

In his infantry greatcoat, Gaubert had the piccolo with which, at the age of 15, he had won his first prize at the Conservatoire. In the château of Ville-en-Woëvre, with its gaping windows and shell-blasted wings, a group of musicians had set up a concert hall, and there, a few hundred yards from the enemy’s trenches, one could hear Beethoven and Wagner; and Philippe Gaubert, accompanied by Jacques Bousquet at the piano, would play a Bach prelude. Beneath the flares merging into the blanket of winter stars, the sweet cantilena rose like a promise of hope . . .

Gaubert, a winner of the prix de Rome,[1] worked by day on musical compositions, whenever his duties as a stretcher-bearer allowed him a break.

I was one of his most admiring and faithful listeners. He would show me his first drafts. I can still see my dear friend Philippe, with his fine, tousled head of hair and pure Roman profile, deciphering and singing at the piano a poem from Henri de Régnier’s[2] “Médailles d’argile”.[3]

Even the thunder from Éparges^[4], where artillery salvoes tore through the Meuse fog, could not prevent poetry and music from communing in a humble room at the front, where the muddy hands of soldiers kept alight the torch of beauty.