feel she was by his side when death should come.
"To be at your feet, my head on your knees, your two hands in
mine--so to finish."[48]
He was a little child grown old, and felt bewildered and miserable and
frightened before the thought of death.
Wagner, at the same age, a victor, worshipped, flattered, and--if we are
to believe the Bayreuth legend--crowned with prosperity; Wagner, sad and
suffering, doubting his achievements, feeling the inanity of his bitter
fight against the mediocrity of the world, had "fled far from the
world"[49] and thrown himself into religion; and when a friend looked at
him in surprise as he was saying grace at table, he answered: "Yes, I
believe in my Saviour."[50]
[Footnote 48: _Mémoires_, II, 415.]
[Footnote 49: "Yes, it is to that escape from the world that _Parsifal_
owes its birth and growth. What man can, during a whole lifetime, gaze
into the depths of this world with a calm reason and a cheerful heart?
When he sees murder and rapine organised and legalised by a system of
lies, impostures, and hypocrisy, will he not avert his eyes and shudder
with disgust?" (Wagner, _Representations of the Sacred Drama of Parsifal
at Bayreuth, in 1882_.)]
[Footnote 50: The scene was described to me by his friend, Malwida von
Meysenbug, the calm and fearless author of _Mémoires d'une Idéaliste_.]
Poor beings! Conquerors of the world, conquered and broken!
But of the two deaths, how much sadder is that of the artist who was
without a faith, and who had neither strength nor stoicism enough to be
happy without one; who slowly died in that little room in the rue de
Calais amid the distracting noise of an indifferent and even hostile
Paris;[51] who shut himself up in savage silence; who saw no loved face
bending over him in his last moments; who had not the comfort of belief
in his work;[52] who could not think calmly of what he had done, nor
look proudly back over the road he had trodden, nor rest content in the
thought of a life well lived; and who began and closed his _Mémoires_
with Shakespeare's gloomy words, and repeated them when dying:--
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."[53]
[Footnote 51: "I have only blank walls before my windows. On the side of
the street a pug dog has been barking for an hour, a parrot screaming,
and a parroqueet imitating the chirp of sparrows. On the side of the
yard the washerwomen are singing, and another parroqueet cries
incessantly, 'Shoulder arrms!' How long the day is!"
"The maddening noise of carriages shakes the silence of the night. Paris
wet and muddy! Parisian Paris! Now everything is quiet ... she is
sleeping the sleep of the unjust" (Written to Ferrand, _Lettres
intimes_, pp. 269 and 302).]
[Footnote 52: He used to say that nothing would remain of his work; that
he had deceived himself; and that he would have liked to burn his
scores.]
[Footnote 53: Blaze de Bury met him one autumn evening, on the quay,
just before his death, as he was returning from the Institute. "His face
was pale, his figure wasted and bent, and his expression dejected and
nervous; one might have taken him for a walking shadow. Even his eyes,
those large round hazel eyes, had extinguished their fire. For a second
he clasped my hand in his own thin, lifeless one, and repeated, in a
voice that was hardly more than a whisper, Aeschylus's words: 'Oh, this
life of man! When he is happy a shadow is enough to disturb him; and
when he is unhappy his trouble may be wiped away, as with a wet sponge,
and all is forgotten'" (_Musiciens d'hier et d'aujourd'hui_).]
Such was the unhappy and irresolute heart that found itself united to
one of the most daring geniuses in the world. It is a striking example
of the difference that may exist between genius and greatness--for the
two words are not synonymous. When one speaks of greatness, one speaks
of greatness of soul, nobility of character, firmness of will, and,
above all, balance of mind. I can understand how people deny the
existence of these qualities in Berlioz; but to deny his musical genius,
or to cavil about his wonderful power--and that is what they do daily in
Paris--is lamentable and ridiculous. Whether he attracts one or not, a
thimbleful of some of his work, a single part in one of his works, a
little bit of the _Fantastique_ or the overture of _Benvenuto_, reveal
more genius--I am not afraid to say it--than all the French music of his
century. I can understand people arguing about him in a country that
produced Beethoven and Bach; but with us in France, who can we set up
against him? Gluck and César Franck were much greater men, but they were
never geniuses of his stature. If genius is a creative force, I cannot
find more than four or five geniuses in the world who rank above him.
When I have named Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Händel, and Wagner, I do not
know who else is superior to Berlioz; I do not even know who is his
equal.
He is not only a musician, he is music itself. He does not command his
familiar spirit, he is its slave. Those who know his writings know how
he was simply possessed and exhausted by his musical emotions. They were
really fits of ecstasy or convulsions. At first "there was feverish
excitement; the veins beat violently and tears flowed freely. Then came
spasmodic contractions of the muscles, total numbness of the feet and
hands, and partial paralysis of the nerves of sight and hearing; he saw
nothing, heard nothing; he was giddy and half faint." And in the case of
music that displeased him, he suffered, on the contrary, from "a painful
sense of bodily disquiet and even from nausea."[54]
The possession that music held over his nature shows itself clearly in
the sudden outbreak of his genius.[55] His family opposed the idea of
his becoming a musician; and until he was twenty-two or twenty-three
years old his weak will sulkily gave way to their wishes. In obedience
to his father he began his studies in medicine at Paris. One evening he
heard _Les Danaïdes_ of Salieri. It came upon him like a thunderclap. He
ran to the Conservatoire library and read Gluck's scores.
[Footnote 54: _A travers chants_, pp. 8-9.]
[Footnote 55: In truth, this genius was smouldering since his childhood;
it was there from the beginning; and the proof of it lies in the fact
that he used for his _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_ and for the _Symphonie
fantastique_ airs and phrases of quintets which he had written when
twelve years old (see _Mémoires_, I, 16-18).]
He forgot to eat and drink; he was like a man in a frenzy. A
performance of _Iphigénie en Tauride_ finished him. He studied under
Lesueur and then at the Conservatoire. The following year, 1827, he
composed _Les Francs-Juges_; two years afterwards the _Huit scènes de
Faust_, which was the nucleus of the future _Damnation_;[56] three years
afterwards, the _Symphonie fantastique_ (commenced in 1830).[57] And he
had not yet got the _Prix de Rome_! Add to this that in 1828 he had
already ideas for _Roméo et Juliette_, and that he had written a part of
_Lelio_ in 1829. Can one find elsewhere a more dazzling musical debut?
Compare that of Wagner who, at the same age, was shyly writing _Les
Fées, Défense d'aimer_, and _Rienzi_.
[Footnote 56: The _Huit scènes de Faust_ are taken from Goethe's
tragedy, translated by _Gérard de Nerval_, and they include: (1) _Chants
de la fête de Pâques_; (2) _Paysans sous les tilleuls_; (3) _Concert des
Sylphes_; (4 and 5) _Taverne d'Auerbach_, with the two songs of the Rat
and the Flea; (6) _Chanson du roi de Thulé_; (7) _Romance de
Marguerite_, "D'amour, l'ardente flamme," and _Choeur de soldats_; (8)
_Sérénade de Méphistophélès_--that is to say, the most celebrated and
characteristic pages of the _Damnation_ (see M. Prudhomme's essays on
_Le Cycle de Berlioz_).]
[Footnote 57: One could hardly find a better manifestation of the soul
of a youthful musical genius than that in certain letters written at
this time; in particular the letter written to Ferrand on 28 June, 1828,
with its feverish postscript. What a life of rich and overflowing
vigour! It is a joy to read it; one drinks at the source of life
itself.]
He wrote them at the same age, but ten years later; for _Les Fées_
appeared in 1833, when Berlioz had already written the _Fantastique_,
the _Huit scènes de Faust, Lelio_, and _Harold; Rienzi_ was only played
in 1842, after _Benvenuto_ (1835), _Le Requiem_ (1837), _Roméo_ (1839),
_La Symphonie funèbre et triomphale_ (1840)--that is to say, when
Berlioz had finished all his great works, and after he had achieved his
musical revolution. And that revolution was effected alone, without a
model, without a guide. What could he have heard beyond the operas of
Gluck and Spontini while he was at the Conservatoire? At the time when
he composed the _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_ even the name of Weber was
unknown to him,[58] and of Beethoven's compositions he had only heard an
_andante_.[59]
Truly, he is a miracle and the most startling phenomenon in the history
of nineteenth-century music. His audacious power dominates all his age;
and in the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's
example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not
see what a poor figure the young Wagner cut at that time, working away
in laborious and self-satisfied mediocrity? But Wagner soon made up for
lost ground; for he knew what he wanted, and he wanted it obstinately.
[Footnote 58: _Mémoires_, I, 70.]
[Footnote 59: _Ibid_. To make amends for this he published, in 1829, a
biographical notice of Beethoven, in which his appreciation of him is
remarkably in advance of his age. He wrote there: "The _Choral Symphony_
is the culminating point of Beethoven's genius," and he speaks of the
Fourth Symphony in C sharp minor with great discernment.]
[Footnote 60: Beethoven died in 1827, the year when Berlioz was writing
his first important work, the _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_.]
The zenith of Berlioz's genius was reached, when he was thirty-five
years old, with the _Requiem_ and _Roméo_. They are his two most
important works, and are two works about which one may feel very
differently. For my part, I am very fond of the one, and I dislike the
other; but both of them open up two great new roads in art, and both are
placed like two gigantic arches on the triumphal way of the revolution
that Berlioz started. I will return to the subject of these works later.
But Berlioz was already getting old. His daily cares and stormy domestic
life,[61] his disappointments and passions, his commonplace and often
degrading work, soon wore him out and, finally, exhausted his power.
"Would you believe it?" he wrote to his friend Ferrand, "that which used
to stir me to transports of musical passion now fills me with
indifference, or even disdain. I feel as if I were descending a mountain
at a great rate. Life is so short; I notice that thoughts of the end
have been with me for some time past." In 1848, at forty-five years old,
he wrote in his _Mémoires_: "I find myself so old and tired and lacking
inspiration." At forty-five years old, Wagner had patiently worked out
his theories and was feeling his power; at forty-five he was writing
_Tristan_ and _The Music of the Future_. Abused by critics, unknown to
the public, "he remained calm, in the belief that he would be master of
the musical world in fifty years' time."[62]
[Footnote 61: He left Henrietta Smithson in 1842; she died in 1854.]
[Footnote 62: Written by Berlioz himself, in irony, in a letter of
1855.]
Berlioz was disheartened. Life had conquered him. It was not that he had
lost any of his artistic mastery; on the contrary, his compositions
became more and more finished; and nothing in his earlier work attained
the pure beauty of some of the pages of _L'Enfance du Christ_ (1850-4),
or of _Les Troyens_ (1855-63). But he was losing his power; and his
intense feeling, his revolutionary ideas, and his inspiration (which in
his youth had taken the place of the confidence he lacked) were failing
him. He now lived on the past--the _Huit scènes de Faust_ (1828) held
the germs of _La Damnation de Faust_ (1846); since 1833, he had been
thinking of _Béatrice et Bénédict_ (1862); the ideas in _Les Troyens_
were inspired by his childish worship of Virgil, and had been with him
all his life. But with what difficulty he now finished his task! He had
only taken seven months to write _Roméo_, and "on account of not being
able to write the _Requiem_ fast enough, he had adopted a kind of
musical shorthand";[63] but he took seven or eight years to write _Les
Troyens_, alternating between moods of enthusiasm and disgust, and
feeling indifference and doubt about his work. He groped his way
hesitatingly and unsteadily; he hardly understood what he was doing. He
admired the more mediocre pages of his work: the scene of the Laocoon,
the finale of the last act of the _Les Troyens à Troie_, the last scene
with Aeneas in _Les Troyens à Carthage_.[64] The empty pomposities of
Spontini mingle with the loftiest conceptions. One might say that his
genius became a stranger to him: it was the mechanical work of an
unconscious force, like "stalactites in a dripping grotto." He had no
impetus. It was only a matter of time before the roof of the grotto
would give way. One is struck with the mournful despair with which he
works; it is his last will and testament that he is making. And when he
has finished it, he will have finished everything. His work is ended; if
he lived another hundred years he would not have the heart to add
anything more to it. The only thing that remains--and it is what he is
about to do--is to wrap himself in silence and die.
[Footnote 63: _Mémoires_, I, 307.]
[Footnote 64: About this time he wrote to Liszt regarding _L'Enfance du
Christ_: "I think I have hit upon something good in Herod's scena and
air with the soothsayers; it is full of character, and will, I hope,
please you. There are, perhaps, more graceful and pleasing things, but
with the exception of the Bethlehem duet, I do not think they have the
same quality of originality" (17 December, 1854).]
Oh, mournful destiny! There are great men who have outlived their
genius; but with Berlioz genius outlived desire. His genius was still
there; one feels it in the sublime pages of the third act of _Les
Troyens à Carthage_. But Berlioz had ceased to believe in his power; he
had lost faith in everything. His genius was dying for want of
nourishment; it was a flame above an empty tomb. At the same hour of his
old age the soul of Wagner sustained its glorious flight; and, having
conquered everything, it achieved a supreme victory in renouncing
everything for its faith. And the divine songs of Parsifal resounded as
in a splendid temple, and replied to the cries of the suffering Amfortas
by the blessed words: "_Selig in Glauben! Selig in Liebe_!"
II
Berlioz's work did not spread itself evenly over his life; it was
accomplished in a few years. It was not like the course of a great
river, as with Wagner and Beethoven; it was a burst of genius, whose
flames lit up the whole sky for a little while, and then died gradually
down.[65] Let me try to tell you about this wonderful blaze.
Some of Berlioz's musical qualities are so striking that it is
unnecessary to dwell upon them here. His instrumental colouring, so
intoxicating and exciting,[66] his extraordinary discoveries concerning
timbre, his inventions of new nuances (as in the famous combining of
flutes and trombones in the _Hostias et preces_ of the _Requiem_, and
the curious use of the harmonics of violins and harps), and his huge and
nebulous orchestra--all this lends itself to the most subtle expression
of thought.[67]
[Footnote 65: In 1830, old Rouget de Lisle called Berlioz, "a volcano in
eruption" (_Mémoires_, I, 158).]
[Footnote 66: M. Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in his _Portraits et
Souvenirs_, 1900: "Whoever reads Berlioz's scores before hearing them
played can have no real idea of their effect. The instruments appear to
be arranged in defiance of all common sense; and it would seem, to use
professional slang, that _cela ne dut pas sonner_, but _cela sonne_
wonderfully. If we find here and there obscurities of style, they do not
appear in the orchestra; light streams into it and plays there as in the
facets of a diamond."]
[Footnote 67: See the excellent essay of H. Lavoix, in his _Histoire de
l'Instrumentation_. It should be noticed that Berlioz's observations in
his _Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes_ (1844) have
not been lost upon Richard Strauss, who has just published a German
edition of the work, and some of whose most famous orchestral effects
are realisations of Berlioz's ideas.]
Think of the effect that such works must have produced at that period.
Berlioz was the first to be astonished when he heard them for the first
time. At the _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_ he wept and tore his hair, and
fell sobbing on the kettledrums. At the performance of his _Tuba mirum_,
in Berlin, he nearly fainted. The composer who most nearly approached
him was Weber, and, as we have already seen, Berlioz only knew him late
in life. But how much less rich and complex is Weber's music, in spite
of its nervous brilliance and dreaming poetry. Above all, Weber is much
more mundane and more of a classicist; he lacks Berlioz's revolutionary
passion and plebeian force; he is less expressive and less grand.
How did Berlioz come to have this genius for orchestration almost from
the very first? He himself says that his two masters at the
Conservatoire taught him nothing in point of instrumentation:--
"Lesueur had only very limited ideas about the art. Reicha knew the
particular resources of most of the wind instruments; but I think
that he had not very advanced ideas on the subject of grouping
them."
Berlioz taught himself. He used to read the score of an opera while it
was being performed.
"It was thus," he says,[68] "that I began to get familiar with the
use of the orchestra, and to know its expression and timbre, as
well as the range and mechanism of most of the instruments. By
carefully comparing the effect produced with the means used to
produce it, I learned the hidden bond which unites musical
expression to the special art of instrumentation; but no one put me
in the way of this. The study of the methods of the three modern
masters, Beethoven, Weber, and Spontini, the impartial examination
of the traditions of instrumentation and of little-used forms and
combinations, conversations with virtuosi, and the effects I made
them try on their different instruments, together with a little
instinct, did the rest for me."[69]
[Footnote 68: One may judge of this instinct by one fact: he wrote the
overtures of _Les Francs-Juges_ and _Waverley_ without really knowing if
it were possible to play them. "I was so ignorant," he says, "of the
mechanism of certain instruments, that after having written the solo in
D flat for the trombone in the Introduction of _Les Francs-Juges_, I
feared it would be terribly difficult to play. So I went, very anxious,
to one of the trombonists of the Opera orchestra. He looked at the
passage and reassured me. 'The key of D flat is,' he said, 'one of the
pleasantest for that instrument; and you can count on a splendid effect
for that passage'" _(Mémoires_, I, 63).]
[Footnote 69: _Mémoires_, I, 64.]
That he was an originator in this direction no one doubts. And no one
disputes, as a rule, "his devilish cleverness," as Wagner scornfully
called it, or remains insensible to his skill and mastery in the
mechanism of expression, and his power over sonorous matter, which make
him, apart from his creative power, a sort of magician of music, a king
of tone and rhythm. This gift is recognised even by his enemies--by
Wagner, who seeks with some unfairness to restrict his genius within
narrow limits, and to reduce it to "a structure with wheels of infinite
ingenuity and extreme cunning ... a marvel of mechanism."[70]
But though there is hardly anyone that Berlioz does not irritate or
attract, he always strikes people by his impetuous ardour, his glowing
romance, and his seething imagination, all of which makes and will
continue to make his work one of the most picturesque mirrors of his
age. His frenzied force of ecstasy and despair, his fulness of love and
hatred, his perpetual thirst for life, which "in the heart of the
deepest sorrow lights the Catherine wheels and crackers of the wildest
joy"[71]--these are the qualities that stir up the crowds in _Benvenuto_
and the armies in the _Damnation_, that shake earth, heaven, and hell,
and are never quenched, but remain devouring and "passionate even when
the subject is far removed from passion, and yet also express sweet and
tender sentiments and the deepest calm."[72]
[Footnote 70: "Berlioz displayed, in calculating the properties of
mechanism, a really astounding scientific knowledge. If the inventors of
our modern industrial machinery are to be considered benefactors of
humanity to-day, Berlioz deserves to be considered as the true saviour
of the musical world; for, thanks to him, musicians can produce
surprising effects in music by the varied use of simple mechanical
means.... Berlioz lies hopelessly buried beneath the ruins of his own
contrivances" (_Oper und Drama_, 1851).]
[Footnote 71: Letter from Berlioz to Ferrand.]
[Footnote 72: "The chief characteristics of my music are passionate
expression, inward warmth, rhythmic in pulses, and unforeseen effects.
When I speak of passionate expression, I mean an expression that
desperately strives to reproduce the inward feeling of its subject, even
when the theme is contrary to passion, and deals with gentle emotions or
the deepest calm. It is this kind of expression that may be found in
_L'Enfance du Christ_, and, above all, in the scene of _Le Ciel_ in the
_Damnation de Faust_ and in the _Sanctus_ of the _Requiem_" (_Mémoires_,
II, 361).]
Whatever one may think of this volcanic force, of this torrential stream
of youth and passion, it is impossible to deny them; one might as well
deny the sun.
And I shall not dwell on Berlioz's love of Nature, which, as M.
Prudhomme shows us, is the soul of a composition like the _Damnation_
and, one might say, of all great compositions. No musician, with the
exception of Beethoven, has loved Nature so profoundly. Wagner himself
did not realise the intensity of emotion which she roused in
Berlioz,[73] and how this feeling impregnated the music of the
_Damnation_, of _Roméo_, and of _Les Troyens_.
[Footnote 73: "So you are in the midst of melting glaciers in your
_Niebelungen_! To be writing in the presence of Nature herself must be
splendid. It is an enjoyment which I am denied. Beautiful landscapes,
lofty peaks, or great stretches of sea, absorb me instead of evoking
ideas in me. I feel, but I cannot express what I feel. I can only paint
the moon when I see its reflection in the bottom of a well" (Berlioz to
Wagner, 10 September, 1855).]