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July 2007 • VOLUME 23 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
AN ESSAY
Classical Horsemanship
An Elusive Ideal by Jean-Claude Racinet I recently received a phone call from a person who claimed she had, for two years, studied dressage in Germany under the tutelage of the most prestigious German rider. Her goal now was to learn about another way, which she called "classical horsemanship." She had sought everywhere in the United States, and she was surprised that she couldn't find anybody to teach her "classical" riding. "How come?" she would say. I was tempted to answer, "Perhaps because classical horsemanship does not exist." But let us investigate the matter. First, what does the word "classical" mean? Not so surprisingly, the dictionary provides us with a lot of definitions covering an extensive scope of domains and somewhat contradictory. For instance, "classical" applies as well for what is aristocratic (reserved, elegant, sober) as for that which is banal or trite ("a classical case of embezzlement"). Classical also may refer to a certain past, certain periods of history. In sculpture and architecture, the classical period is that of the Greek and Roman antiquity. In music, the classical period was that of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. But here again, the word "classical" remains ambiguous, since what is today commonly called "classical" music includes many musicians of the romantic school, which was a reaction against classicism. For instance, nobody nowadays would deny Beethoven's works the quality of "classical" music, although he was the first romantic (and the model, in this revolt, for several generations of musicians to come). But let us focus a little on this latter aspect, that is, the fight of romanticism against classicism. For all its gruesome aspects, the French Revolution was not waged in vain, since by abolishing the privileges and favouring - at least purportedly - merit over birth, it was to create a new society, the society for the coming age of capitalism and industrial revolution. And when the great storm of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars was over and for all the efforts made by some nostalgic escapees of the past to restore the ancient order, the European youth was not ready to come back to corny forms, arbitrary constraints, in the expression of art. It just exploded in what was to become the romantic movement. The romantic movement includes such prestigious names as those of Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Keats, and Shelley for the British; Herder, Goethe, and Schiller for the Germans; Alexandre Dumas, Lamartine, Musset, and Victor Hugo for the French; and in the USA, Poe, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Whitman are considered as having a sensitivity very close to that of the romantics. But, though "romantics," aren't these names "classical" glories of western literature? Now, what about horsemanship? Isn't horsemanship an art, and as such, shouldn't it have followed the same pattern? Of course, and it sure did. And we can say without fear of exaggeration that the romantic reaction in horsemanship came with Baucher. At about the time when Victor Hugo, with his first drama, "Hernani" (1830), declared war on the old "classic" guard, Baucher was writing his first book, Dictionaire raisonné d'équitation (Dictionary of reasoned horsemanship, 1833), which late General Decarpentry called a "revolutionary manifest." At the first presentation of "Hernani," a gang of youngsters, clad in the most outrageous way (the poet Theophile Gauthier was wearing a dazzling red "pourpoint," very unbecoming at this place and time) had come to support Victor Hugo and made such a racket that nobody could hear one word of the drama. 12 years later, Theophile Gauthier was to wear his red "pourpoint" once more, this time to support...Baucher, who was presenting Gericault at the cirque des Champs Elysees! Gericault was no ordinary horse. A three-year-old English Thoroughbred stallion, he was bucking off all his riders, and his owner, Lord Seymour, a wealthy Englishman who was very in fashion with the Parisian society, had declared he would give him away to anyone who could, without falling, tour on his back the "Bois de Boulogne" (a park close to Paris). Vicomte de Tournon, a student of Baucher's archenemy Comte d'Aure, had tried and failed.
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