flow like life itself. "Some phrases taken separately," says Schumann,
"have such an intensity that they will not bear harmonising--_as in many
ancient folk-songs_--and often even an accompaniment spoils their
fulness."[89] These melodies so correspond with the emotions, that they
reproduce the least thrills of body and mind by their vigorous
workings-up and delicate reliefs, by splendid barbarities of modulation
and strong and glowing colour, by gentle gradations of light and shade
or imperceptible ripples of thought, which flow over the body like a
steady tide. It is an art of peculiar sensitiveness, more delicately
expressive than that of Wagner; not satisfying itself with the modern
tonality, but going back to old modes--a rebel, as M. Saint-Saëns
remarks, to the polyphony which had governed music since Bach's day, and
which is perhaps, after all, "a heresy destined to disappear."[90]
[Footnote 89: _Ibid_. "A rare peculiarity," adds Schumann, "which
distinguishes nearly all his melodies." Schumann understands why Berlioz
often gives as an accompaniment to his melodies a simple bass, or chords
of the augmented and diminished fifth--ignoring the intermediate parts.]
[Footnote 90: "What will then remain of actual art? Perhaps Berlioz will
be its sole representative. Not having studied the pianoforte, he had an
instinctive aversion to counterpoint. He is in this respect the opposite
of Wagner, who was the embodiment of counterpoint, and drew the utmost
he could from its laws" (Saint-Saëns).]
How much finer, to my idea, are Berlioz's recitatives, with their long
and winding rhythms,[91] than Wagner's declamations, which--apart from
the climax of a subject, where the air breaks into bold and vigorous
phrases, whose influence elsewhere is often weak--limit themselves to
the quasi-notation of spoken inflections, and jar noisily against the
fine harmonies of the orchestra. Berlioz's orchestration, too, is of a
more delicate temper, and has a freer life than Wagner's, flowing in an
impetuous stream, and sweeping away everything in its course; it is also
less united and solid, but more flexible; its nature is undulating and
varied, and the thousand imperceptible impulses of the spirit and of
action are reflected there. It is a marvel of spontaneity and caprice.
[Footnote 91: Jacques Passy notes that with Berlioz the most frequent
phrases consist of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, or twenty bars. With
Wagner, phrases of eight bars are rare, those of four more common, those
of two still more so, while those of one bar are most frequent of all
(_Berlioz et Wagner_, article published in _Le Correspondant_, 10 June,
1888).]
In spite of appearances, Wagner is a classicist compared with Berlioz;
he carried on and perfected the work of the German classicists; he made
no innovations; he is the pinnacle and the close of one evolution of
art. Berlioz began a new art; and one finds in it all the daring and
gracious ardour of youth. The iron laws that bound the art of Wagner are
not to be found in Berlioz's early works, which give one the illusion of
perfect freedom.[92]
[Footnote 92: One must make mention here of the poorness and awkwardness
of Berlioz's harmony--which is incontestable--since some critics and
composers have been able to see (Am I saying something
ridiculous?--Wagner would say it for me) nothing but "faults of
orthography" in his genius. To these terrible grammarians--who, two
hundred years ago, criticised Molière on account of his "jargon"--I
shall reply by quoting Schumann.
"Berlioz's harmonies, in spite of the diversity of their effect,
obtained from very scanty material, are distinguished by a sort of
simplicity, and even by a solidity and conciseness, which one only
meets with in Beethoven.... One may find here and there harmonies
that are commonplace and trivial, and others that are incorrect--at
least according to the old rules. In some places his harmonies have
a fine effect, and in others their result is vague and
indeterminate, or it sounds badly, or is too elaborate and
far-fetched. Yet with Berlioz all this somehow takes on a certain
distinction. If one attempted to correct it, or even slightly to
modify it--for a skilled musician it would be child's play--the
music would become dull" (Article on the _Symphonie fantastique_).
But let us leave that "grammatical discussion" as well as what Wagner
wrote on "the childish question as to whether it is permitted or not to
introduce 'neologisms' in matters of harmony and melody" (Wagner to
Berlioz, 22 February, 1860). As Schumann has said, "Look out for fifths,
and then leave us in peace."]
As soon as the profound originality of Berlioz's music has been grasped,
one understands why it encountered, and still encounters, so much secret
hostility. How many accomplished musicians of distinction and learning,
who pay honour to artistic tradition, are incapable of understanding
Berlioz because they cannot bear the air of liberty breathed by his
music. They are so used to thinking in German, that Berlioz's speech
upsets and shocks them. I can well believe it. It is the first time a
French musician has dared to think in French; and that is the reason why
I warned you of the danger of accepting too meekly German ideas about
Berlioz. Men like Weingartner, Richard Strauss, and Mottl--thoroughbred
musicians--are, without doubt, able to appreciate Berlioz's genius
better and more quickly than we French musicians. But I rather mistrust
the kind of appreciation they feel for a spirit so opposed to their own.
It is for France and French people to learn to read his thoughts; they
are intimately theirs, and one day will give them their salvation.
* * * * *
Berlioz's other great originality lay in his talent for music that was
suited to the spirit of the common people, recently raised to
sovereignty, and the young democracy. In spite of his aristocratic
disdain, his soul was with the masses. M. Hippeau applies to him Taine's
definition of a romantic artist: "the plebeian of a new race, richly
gifted, and filled with aspirations, who, having attained for the first
time the world's heights, noisily displays the ferment of his mind and
heart." Berlioz grew up in the midst of revolutions and stories of
Imperial achievement. He wrote his cantata for the _Prix de Rome_ in
July, 1830, "to the hard, dull noise of stray bullets, which whizzed
above the roofs, and came to flatten themselves against the wall near
his window."[93] When he had finished this cantata, he went, "pistol in
hand, to play the blackguard in Paris with the _sainte canaille_." He
sang the _Marseillaise_, and made "all who had a voice and heart and
blood in their veins"[94] sing it too. On his journey to Italy he
travelled from Marseilles to Livourne with Mazzinian conspirators, who
were going to take part in the insurrection of Modena and Bologna.
Whether he was conscious of it or not, he was the musician of
revolutions; his sympathies were with the people.
[Footnote 93: _Mémoires_, I, 155.]
[Footnote 94: These words are taken from Berlioz's directions on the
score of his arrangement of the _Marseillaise_ for full orchestra and
double choir.] Not only did he fill his scenes in the theatre with
swarming and riotous crowds, like those of the Roman Carnival in the
second act of _Benvenuto_ (anticipating by thirty years the crowds of
_Die Meistersinger_), but he created a music of the masses and a
colossal style. His model here was Beethoven; Beethoven of the Eroica,
of the C minor, of the A, and, above all, of the Ninth Symphony. He was
Beethoven's follower in this as well as other things, and the apostle
who carried on his work.[95] And with his understanding of material
effects and sonorous matter, he built edifices, as he says, that were
"Babylonian and Ninevitish,"[96] "music after Michelangelo,"[97] "on an
immense scale."[98]
[Footnote 95: "From Beethoven," says Berlioz, "dates the advent in art
of colossal forms" (_Mémoires_, II, 112). But Berlioz forgot one of
Beethoven's models--Händel. One must also take into account the
musicians of the French revolution: Mehul, Gossec, Cherubini, and
Lesueur, whose works, though they may not equal their intentions, are
not without grandeur, and often disclose the intuition of a new and
noble and popular art.]
[Footnote 96: Letter to Morel, 1855. Berlioz thus describes the
_Tibiomnes_ and the _Judex_ of his _Te Deum_. Compare Heine's judgment:
"Berlioz's music makes me think of gigantic kinds of extinct animals, of
fabulous empires.... Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the
wonders of Nineveh, the daring buildings of Mizraim."]
[Footnote 97: _Mémoires_, I, 17.]
[Footnote 98: Letter to an unknown person, written probably about 1855,
in the collection of Siegfried Ochs, and published in the _Geschichte
der französischen Musik_ of Alfred Bruneau, 1904. That letter contains a
rather curious analytical catalogue of Berlioz's works, drawn up by
himself. He notes there his predilection for compositions of a "colossal
nature," such as the _Requiem_, the _Symphonie funèbre et triomphale_,
and the _Te Deum_, or those of "an immense style," such as the
_Impériale_.]
It was the _Symphonie funèbre et triomphale_ for two orchestras and a
choir, and the _Te Deum_ for orchestra, organ, and three choirs, which
Berlioz loved (whose finale _Judex crederis_ seemed to him the most
effective thing he had ever written[99]), as well as the _Impériale_,
for two orchestras and two choirs, and the famous _Requiem_, with its
"four orchestras of brass instruments, placed round the main orchestra
and the mass of voices, but separated and answering one another at a
distance." Like the _Requiem_, these compositions are often crude in
style and of rather commonplace sentiment, but their grandeur is
overwhelming. This is not due only to the hugeness of the means
employed, but also to "the breadth of the style and to the formidable
slowness of some of the progressions--whose final aim one cannot
guess--which gives these compositions a strangely gigantic
character."[100] Berlioz has left in these compositions striking
examples of the beauty that may reveal itself in a crude mass of music.
Like the towering Alps, they move one by their very immensity. A German
critic says: "In these Cyclopean works the composer lets the elemental
and brute forces of sound and pure rhythm have their fling."[101] It is
scarcely music, it is the force of Nature herself. Berlioz himself calls
his _Requiem_ "a musical cataclysm."[102]
[Footnote 99: _Mémoires_, II, 364. See also the letter quoted above.]
[Footnote 100: _Mémoires_, II, 363. See also II, 163, and the
description of the great festival of 1844, with its 1,022 performers.]
[Footnote 101: Hermann Kretzschmar, _Führer durch den Konzertsaal_.]
[Footnote 102: _Mémoires_, I, 312.]
These hurricanes are let loose in order to speak to the people, to stir
and rouse the dull ocean of humanity. The _Requiem_ is a Last Judgment,
not meant, like that of the Sixtine Chapel (which Berlioz did not care
for at all) for great aristocracies, but for a crowd, a surging,
excited, and rather savage crowd. The _Marche de Rakoczy_ is less an
Hungarian march than the music for a revolutionary fight; it sounds the
charge; and Berlioz tells us it might bear Virgil's verses for a
motto:--
" ... Furor iraque mentes
Praecipitant, pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis."[103]
When Wagner heard the _Symphonic funèbre et triomphale_ he was forced to
admit Berlioz's "skill in writing compositions that were popular in the
best sense of the word."
"In listening to that symphony I had a lively impression that any
little street boy in a blue blouse and red bonnet would understand
it perfectly. I have no hesitation in giving precedence to that
work over Berlioz's other works; it is big and noble from the first
note to the last; a fine and eager patriotism rises from its first
expression of compassion to the final glory of the apotheosis, and
keeps it from any unwholesome exaggeration. I want gladly to
express my conviction that that symphony will fire men's courage
and will live as long as a nation bears the name of France."[104]
[Footnote 103: Letter to some young Hungarians, 14 February, 1861. See
the _Mémoires_, II, 212, for the incredible emotion which the _Marche de
Rakoczy_ roused in the audience at Budapest, and, above all, for the
astonishing scene at the end:--
"I saw a man enter unexpectedly. He was miserably clad, but his
face shone with a strange rapture. When he saw me, he threw himself
upon me and embraced me with fervour; his eyes filled with tears,
and he was hardly able to get out the words, 'Ah, monsieur,
monsieur! moi Hongrois ... pauvre diable ... pas parler Français
... un poco Italiano. Pardonnez mon extase.... Ah! ai compris votre
canon.... Oui, oui, la grande-bataille.... Allemands chiens!' And
then striking his breast violently: 'Dans le coeur, moi ... je vous
porte.... _Ah! Français ... révolutionnaire ... savoir faire la
musique des révolutions_!'"]
[Footnote 104: Written 5 May, 1841.]
How do such works come to be neglected by our Republic? How is it they
have not a place in our public life? Why are they not part of our great
ceremonies? That is what one would wonderingly ask oneself if one had
not seen, for the last century, the indifference of the State to Art.
What might not Berlioz have done if the means had been given him, or if
his works had found a place in the fêtes of the Revolution? Unhappily,
one must add that here again his character was the enemy of his genius.
As this apostle of musical freedom, in the second part of his life,
became afraid of himself and recoiled before the results of his own
principles, and returned to classicism, so this revolutionary fell to
sullenly disparaging the people and revolutions; and he talks about "the
republican cholera," "the dirty and stupid republic," "the republic of
street-porters and rag-gatherers," "the filthy rabble of humanity a
hundred times more stupid and animal in its twitchings and revolutionary
grimacings than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo."[105]
[Footnote 105: Berlioz never ceased to inveigh against the Revolution of
1848--which should have had his sympathies. Instead of finding material,
like Wagner, in the excitement of that time for impassioned
compositions, he worked at _L'Enfance du Christ_. He affected absolute
indifference--he who was so little made for indifference. He approved
the State's action, and despised its visionary hopes.] What
ingratitude! He owed to these revolutions, to these democratic storms,
to these human tempests, the best of all his genius--and he disowned it
all. This musician of a new era took refuge in the past.
* * * * *
Well, what did it matter? Whether he wished it or not, he opened out
some magnificent roads for Art. He has shown the music of France the way
in which her genius should tread; he has shown her possibilities she had
never before dreamed of. He has given us a musical utterance at once
truthful and expressive, free from foreign traditions, coming from the
depths of our being, and reflecting our spirit; an utterance which
responded to his imagination, to his instinct for what was picturesque,
to his fleeting impressions, and his delicate shades of feeling. He has
laid the strong foundation of a national and popular music for the
greatest republic in Europe.
These are shining qualities. If Berlioz had had Wagner's reasoning power
and had made the utmost use of his intuitions, if he had had Wagner's
will and had shaped the inspirations of his genius and welded them into
a solid whole, I venture to say that he would have made a revolution in
music greater than Wagner's own; for Wagner, though stronger and more
master of himself, was less original and, at bottom, but the close of a
glorious past.
Will that revolution still be accomplished? Perhaps; but it has suffered
half a century's delay. Berlioz bitterly calculated that people would
begin to understand him about the year 1940.[106]
After all, why be astonished that his mighty mission was too much for
him? He was so alone.[107] As people forsook him, his loneliness stood
out in greater relief. He was alone in the age of Wagner, Liszt,
Schumann, and Franck; alone, yet containing a whole world in himself, of
which his enemies, his friends, his admirers, and he himself, were not
quite conscious; alone, and tortured by his loneliness. Alone--the word
is repeated by the music of his youth and his old age, by the _Symphonie
fantastique_ and _Les Troyens_. It is the word I read in the portrait
before me as I write these lines--the beautiful portrait of the
_Mémoires_, where his face looks out in sad and stern reproach on the
age that so misunderstood him.
[Footnote 106: "My musical career would finish very pleasingly if only I
could live for a hundred and forty years" _(Mémoires_, II, 390).]
[Footnote 107: This solitude struck Wagner. "Berlioz's loneliness is not
only one of external circumstances; its origin is in his temperament.
Though he is a Frenchman, with quick sympathies and interests like those
of his fellow-citizens, yet he is none the less alone. He sees no one
before him who will hold out a helping hand, there is no one by his side
on whom he may lean" (Article written 5 May, 1841). As one reads these
words, one feels it was Wagner's lack of sympathy and not his
intelligence that prevented him from understanding Berlioz. In his heart
I do not doubt that he knew well who was his great rival. But he never
said anything about it--unless perhaps one counts an odd document,
certainly not intended for publication, where he (even he) compares him
to Beethoven and to Bonaparte (Manuscript in the collection of Alfred
Bovet, published by Mottl in German magazines, and by M. Georges de
Massougnes in the _Revue d'art dramatique_, 1 January, 1902).]
WAGNER
"SIEGFRIED"
There is nothing so thrilling as first impressions. I remember when, as
a child, I heard fragments of Wagner's music for the first time at one
of old Pasdeloup's concerts in the Cirque d'Hiver. I was taken there one
dull and foggy Sunday afternoon; and as we left the yellow fog outside
and entered the hall we were met by an overpowering warmth, a dazzling
blaze of light, and the murmuring voice of the crowd. My eyes were
blinded, I breathed with difficulty, and my limbs soon became cramped;
for we sat on wooden benches, crushed in a narrow space between solid
walls of human beings. But with the first note of the music all was
forgotten, and one fell into a state of painful yet delicious torpor.
Perhaps one's very discomfort made the pleasure keener. Those who know
the intoxication of climbing a mountain know also how closely it is
associated with the discomforts of the climb--with fatigue and the
blinding light of the sun, with out-of-breathness, and all the other
sensations that rouse and stimulate life and make the body tingle, so
that the remembrance of it all is carved indelibly on the mind. The
comfort of a playhouse adds nothing to the illusion of a play; and it
may even be due to the entire inconvenience of the old concert-rooms
that I owe my vivid recollection of my first meeting with Wagner's work.
How mysterious it was, and what a strange agitation it filled me with!
There were new effects of orchestration, new timbres, new rhythms, and
new subjects; it held the wild poetry of the far-away Middle Ages and
old legends, it throbbed with the fever of our hidden sorrows and
desires. I did not understand it very well. How should I? The music was
taken from works quite unknown to me. It was almost impossible to seize
the connection of the ideas on account of the poor acoustics of the
room, the bad arrangement of the orchestra, and the unskilled
players--all of which served to break up the musical design and spoil
the harmony of its colouring. Passages that should have been made
prominent were slurred over, and others were distorted by faulty time or
want of precision. Even to-day, when our orchestras are seasoned by
years of study, I should often be unable to follow Wagner's thought
throughout a whole scene if I did not happen to know the score, for the
outline of a melody is often smothered by the accompaniment, and so its
sentiment is lost. If we still find obscurity of meaning in Wagner's
works you can imagine how much worse it was then. But what did it
matter? I used to feel myself stirred with passions that were not human:
some magnetic influence seemed to thrill me with both pleasure and pain,
and I felt invigorated and happy, for it brought me strength. It seemed
as if my child's heart were torn from me and the heart of a hero put in
its place.
Nor was I alone in the experience. On the faces of the people round
about me I saw the reflection of my own emotions. What was the meaning
of it? The audience consisted chiefly of poor and commonplace people,
whose faces were lined with the wear and tear of a life without interest
or ideals; their minds were dull and heavy, and yet here they responded
to the divine spirit of the music. There is no more impressive sight
than that of thousands of people held spellbound by a melody; it is by
turns sublime, grotesque, and touching.
What a place in my life those Sunday concerts held! All the week I lived
for those two hours; and when they were over I thought about them until
the following Sunday. The fascination of Wagner's music for youth has
often troubled people; they think it poisons the thoughts and dulls the
activities. But the generation that was then intoxicated by Wagner does
not seem to have shown signs of demoralisation since. Why do not people
understand that if we had need of that music it was not because it was
death to us, but life. Cramped by the artificiality of a town, far from
action, or nature, or any strong or real life, we expanded under the
influence of this noble music--music which flowed from a heart filled
with understanding of the world and the breath of Nature. In _Die
Meistersinger_, in _Tristan_, and in _Siegfried_, we went to find the
joy, the love, and the vigour that we so lacked.
At the time when I was feeling Wagner's seductiveness so strongly there
were always some carping people among my elders ready to quench my
admiration and say with a superior smile: "That is nothing. One can't
judge Wagner at a concert. You must hear him in the opera-house at
Bayreuth." Since then I have been several times to Bayreuth; I have seen
Wagner's works performed in Berlin, in Dresden, in Munich, and in other
German towns, but I have never again felt the old intoxication. People
are wrong to pretend that closer acquaintance with a fine work adds to
one's enjoyment of it. It may throw light upon it, but it nips one's
imagination and dispels the mystery. The puzzling fragments one hears at
concerts will take on splendid proportions on account of all the mind
adds to them. That epic poem of the _Niebelungen_ was once like a forest
in our dreams, where strange and awful beings flashed before our vision
and then vanished. Later on, when we had explored all its paths, we
discovered that order and reason reigned in the midst of this apparent
jungle; and when we came to know the least wrinkle on the faces of its
inhabitants, the confusion and emotion of other days no longer filled
us.
But this may be the result of growing older; and if I do not recognise
the Wagner of other days, it is perhaps because I do not recognise my
former self. A work of art, and above all a work of musical art, changes
with ourselves. _Siegfried_, for example, is for me no longer full of
mystery. The qualities in it that strike me to-day are its cheerful
vigour, its clearness of form, its virile force and freedom, and the
extraordinary healthiness of the hero, and, indeed, of the whole work.