In the long list of brilliant names which have illustrated the fine
arts, there is none attached to a personality more interesting and
impressive than that of Hector Berlioz. He stands solitary, a colossus
in music, with but few admirers and fewer followers. Original,
puissant in faculties, fiercely dogmatic and intolerant, bizarre, his
influence has impressed itself profoundly on the musical world both
for good and evil, but has failed to make disciples or to rear a
school. Notwithstanding the defects and extravagances of Berlioz, it
is safe to assert that no art or philosophy can boast of an example of
more perfect devotion to an ideal. The startling originality of
Berlioz as a musician rests on a mental and emotional organisation
different from and in some respects superior to that of any other
eminent master. He possessed an ardent temperament; a gorgeous
imagination, that knew no rest in its working, and at times became
heated to the verge of madness; a most subtile sense of hearing; an
intellect of the keenest analytic turn; a most arrogant will, full of
enterprise and daring, which clung to its purpose with unrelenting
tenacity; and passions of such heat and fervour that they rarely
failed when aroused to carry him beyond all bounds of reason. His
genius was unique, his character cast in the mould of a Titan, his
life a tragedy. Says Blaze de Bussy--"Art has its martyrs, its
forerunners crying in the wilderness, and feeding on roots. It has
also its spoiled children sated with bonbons and dainties." Berlioz
belongs to the former of these classes, and, if ever a prophet lifted
up his voice with a vehement and incessant outcry, it was he.
HECTOR BERLIOZ was born on December 11, 1803, at Côte Saint André, a
small town between Grenoble and Lyons. His father was an excellent
physician of more than ordinary attainments, and he superintended his
son's studies with great zeal, in the hope that the lad would also
become an ornament of the healing profession. But young Hector, though
an excellent scholar in other branches, developed a special aptitude
for music, and at twelve he could sing at sight, and play difficult
concertos on the flute. The elder regarded music only as a graceful
ornament to life, and in nowise encouraged his son in thinking of
music as a profession. So it was not long before Hector found his
attention directed to anatomy, physiology, osteology, etc. In his
father's library he had already read of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, etc.,
and had found a manuscript score of an opera which he had committed to
memory. His soul revolted more and more from the path cut out for
him. "Become a physician!" he cried, "study anatomy; dissect; take
part in horrible operations? No! no! That would be a total subversion
of the natural course of my life."
But parental resolution carried the day, and, after he had finished
the preliminary course of study, he was ordered up to Paris to join
the army of medical students. So at the age of nineteen we find him
lodged in the Quartier Latin. His first introduction to medical
studies had been unfortunate. On entering a dissecting-room he had
been so convulsed with horror as to leap from the window, and rush to
his lodgings in an agony of dread and disgust, whence he did not
emerge for twenty-four hours. At last, however, by dint of habit he
became somewhat used to the disagreeable facts of his new life, and,
to use his own words, "bade fair to add one more to the army of bad
physicians," when he went to the opera one night and heard "Les
Danaïdes," Salieri's opera, performed with all the splendid
completeness of the Académie Royale. This awakened into fresh life an
unquenchable thirst for music, and he neglected his medical studies
for the library of the Conservatoire, where he learned by heart the
scores of Gluck and Rameau. At last, on coming out one night from a
performance of "Iphigénie," he swore that henceforth music should have
her divine rights of him, in spite of all and everything. Henceforth
hospital, dissecting-room, and professor's lectures knew him no more.
But to get admission to the Conservatoire was now the problem; Berlioz
set to work on a cantata with orchestral accompaniments, and in the
meantime sent the most imploring letters home asking his father's
sanction for this change of life. The inexorable parent replied by
cutting off his son's allowance, saying that he would not help him to
become one of the miserable herd of unsuccessful musicians. The young
enthusiast's cantata gained him admission to the classes of Le Sueur
and Reicha at the Conservatoire, but alas! dire poverty stared him in
the face. The history of his shifts and privations for some months is
a sad one. He slept in an old, unfurnished garret, and shivered under
insufficient bed-clothing, ate his bread and grapes on the Pont Neuf,
and sometimes debated whether a plunge into the Seine would not be the
easiest way out of it all. No mongrel cur in the capital but had a
sweeter bone to crunch than he. But the young fellow for all this
stuck to his work with dogged tenacity, managed to get a mass
performed at St. Roch church, and soon finished the score of an opera,
"Les Francs Juges." Flesh and blood would have given way at last under
this hard diet, if he had not obtained a position in the chorus of the
Théâtre des Noveauteaus. Berlioz gives an amusing account of his going
to compete with the horde of applicants--butchers, bakers,
shop-apprentices, etc.--each one with his roll of music under his arm.
The manager scanned the raw-boned starveling with a look of wonder.
"Where's your music?" quoth the tyrant of a third-class theatre. "I
don't want any, I can sing anything you can give me at sight," was the
answer. "The devil!" rejoined the manager; "but we haven't any music
here." "Well, what do you want?" said Berlioz. "I sing every note of
all the operas of Gluck, Piccini, Salieri, Rameau, Spontini, Grétry,
Mozart, and Cimarosa, from memory." At hearing this amazing
declaration, the rest of the competitors slunk away abashed, and
Berlioz, after singing an aria from Spontini, was accorded the place,
which guaranteed him fifty francs per month--a pittance, indeed, and
yet a substantial addition to his resources. This pot-boiling
connection of Berlioz was never known to the public till after he
became a distinguished man, though he was accustomed to speak in vague
terms of his early dramatic career as if it were a matter of romantic
importance.
At last, however, he was relieved of the necessity of singing on the
stage to amuse the Paris _bourgeoisie_, and in a singular fashion. He
had been put to great straits to get his first work, which had won him
his way into the Conservatoire, performed. An application to the great
Chateaubriand, who was noted for benevolence, had failed, for the
author of _La Génie de Christianisme_ was then almost as poor as
Berlioz. At last a young friend, De Pons, advanced him twelve hundred
francs. Part of this Berlioz had repaid, but the creditor, put to it
for money, wrote to Berlioz _père_, demanding a full settlement of the
debt. The father was thus brought again into communication with his
son, whom he found nearly sick unto death with a fever. His heart
relented, and the old allowance was resumed again, enabling the young
musician to give his whole time to his beloved art, instantly he
convalesced from his illness.
The eccentric ways and heretical notions of Berlioz made him no
favourite with the dons of the Conservatoire, and by the irritable and
autocratic Cherubini he was positively hated. The young man took no
pains to placate this resentment, but on the other hand elaborated
methods of making himself doubly offensive. His power of stinging
repartee stood him in good stead, and he never put a button on his
foil. Had it been in old Cherubini's power to expel this bold pupil
from the Conservatoire, no scruple would have held him back. But the
genius and industry of Berlioz were undeniable, and there was no
excuse for such extreme measures. Prejudiced as were his judges, he
successively took several important prizes.