V.

To continue the record of Berlioz's life in consecutive narrative

would be without significance, for it contains but little for many

years except the same indomitable battle against circumstance and

enmity, never yielding an inch, and always keeping his eyes bent on

his own lofty ideal. In all of art history is there no more masterful

heroic struggle than Berlioz waged for thirty-five years, firm in his

belief that some time, if not during his own life, his principles

would be triumphant, and his name ranked among the immortals. But what

of the meanwhile? This problem Berlioz solved, in his later as in

earlier years, by doing the distasteful work of the literary scrub.

But never did he cease composing; though no one would then have his

works, his clear eye perceived the coming time when his genius would

not be denied, when an apotheosis should comfort his spirit wandering

in Hades.

Among Berlioz's later works was an opera of which he had composed both

words and music, consisting of two parts, "The Taking of Troy," and

"The Trojans at Carthage," the latter of which at last secured a few

representations at a minor theatre in 1863. The plan of this work

required that it should be carried out under the most perfect

conditions. "In order," says Berlioz, "to properly produce such a work

as 'Les Trojans,' I must be absolute master of the theatre, as of the

orchestra in directing a symphony. I must have the good-will of all,

be obeyed by all, from prima-donna to scene-shifter. A lyrical

theatre, as I conceive it, is a great instrument of music, which, if I

am to play, must be placed unreservedly in my hands." Wagner found a

King of Bavaria to help him carry out a similar colossal scheme at

Bayreuth, but ill luck followed a man no less great through life. His

grand "Trojans" was mutilated, tinkered, patched, and belittled, to

suit the Théâtre Lyrique. It was a butchery of the work, but still it

yielded the composer enough to justify his retirement from the

_Journal des Débats_, after thirty years of slavery.

Berlioz was now sixty years old, a lonely man, frail in body,

embittered in soul by the terrible sense of failure. His wife, with

whom he had lived on terms of alienation, was dead; his only son far

away, cruising on a man-of-war. His courage and ambition were gone. To

one who remarked that his music belonged to the future, he replied

that he doubted if it ever belonged to the past. His life seemed to

have been a mistake, so utterly had he failed to impress himself on

the public. Yet there were times when audiences felt themselves moved

by the power of his music out of the ruts of preconceived opinion into

a prophecy of his coming greatness. There is an interesting anecdote

told by a French writer:--

"Some years ago M. Pasdeloup gave the _septuor_ from the 'Trojans' at

a benefit concert. The best places were occupied by the people of the

world, but the _élite intelligente_ were ranged upon the highest seats

of the Cirque. The programme was superb, and those who were there

neither for Fashion's nor Charity's sake, but for love of what was

best in art, were enthusiastic in view of all those masterpieces. The

worthless overture of the 'Prophète,' disfiguring this fine

_ensemble_, had been hissed by some students of the Conservatoire,

and, accustomed as I was to the blindness of the general public,

knowing its implacable prejudices, I trembled for the fate of the

magnificent _septuor_ about to follow. My fears were strangely

ill-founded; no sooner had ceased this hymn of infinite love and

peace, than these same students, and the whole assemblage with them,

burst into such a tempest of applause as I never heard before. Berlioz

was hidden in the further ranks, and, the instant he was discovered,

the work was forgotten for the man; his name flew from mouth to mouth,

and four thousand people were standing upright, with their arms

stretched towards him. Chance had placed me near him, and never shall

I forget the scene. That name, apparently ignored by the crowd, it had

learned all at once, and was repeating as that of one of its heroes.

Overcome as by the strongest emotion of his life, his head upon his

breast, he listened to this tumultuous cry of 'Vive Berlioz!' and

when, on looking up, he saw all eyes upon him and all arms extended

towards him, he could not withstand the sight; he trembled, tried to

smile, and broke into sobbing."

Berlioz's supremacy in the field of orchestral composition, his

knowledge of technique, his novel combination, his insight into the

resources of instruments, his skill in grouping, his rich sense of

colour, are incontestably without a parallel, except by Beethoven and

Wagner. He describes his own method of study as follows:--

"I carried with me to the opera the score of whatever work was on the

bill, and read during the performance. In this way I began to

familiarise myself with orchestral methods, and to learn the voice and

quality of the various instruments, if not their range and mechanism.

By this attentive comparison of the effect with the means employed to

produce it, I found the hidden link uniting musical expression to the

special art of instrumentation. The study of Beethoven, Weber, and

Spontini, the impartial examination both of the _customs_ of

orchestration and of _unusual_ forms and combinations, the visits I

made to _virtuosi_, the trials I led them to make upon their

respective instruments, and a little instinct, did for me the rest."

The principal symphonies of Berlioz are works of colossal character

and richness of treatment, some of them requiring several orchestras.

Contrasting with these are such marvels of delicacy as "Queen Mab," of

which it has been said that the "confessions of roses and the

complaints of violets were noisy in comparison." A man of magnificent

genius and knowledge, he was but little understood during his life,

and it was only when his uneasy spirit was at rest that the world

recognised his greatness. Paris, that stoned him when he was living,

now listens to his grand music with enthusiasm. Hector Berlioz to the

last never lost faith in himself, though this man of genius, in his

much suffering from depression and melancholy, gave good witness to

the truth of Goethe's lines:--

"Who never ate with tears his bread,

Nor, weeping through the night's long hours,

Lay restlessly tossing on his bed--

He knows ye not, ye heavenly Powers."

A man utterly without reticence, who, Gallic fashion, would shout his

wrongs and sufferings to the uttermost ends of the earth, yet without

a smack of Gallic posing and affectation, Berlioz talks much about

himself, and dares to estimate himself boldly. There was no small

vanity about this colossal spirit. He speaks of himself with outspoken

frankness, as he would discuss another. We cannot do better than to

quote one of these self-measurements:--"My style is in general very

daring, but it has not the slightest tendency to destroy any of the

constructive elements of art. On the contrary, I seek to increase the

number of these elements. I have never dreamed, as has foolishly been

supposed in France, of writing music without melody. That school

exists to-day in Germany, and I have a horror of it. It is easy for

any one to convince himself that, without confining myself to taking a

very short melody for a theme, as the very greatest masters have, I

have always taken care to invest my compositions with a real wealth of

melody. The value of these melodies, their distinction, their novelty,

and charm, can be very well contested; it is not for me to appraise

them. But to deny their existence is either bad faith or stupidity;

only as these melodies are often of very large dimensions, infantile

and short-sighted minds do not clearly distinguish their form; or else

they are wedded to other secondary melodies which veil their outlines

from those same infantile minds; or, upon the whole, these melodies

are so dissimilar to the little waggeries that the musical _plebs_

call melodies that they cannot make up their minds to give the same

name to both. The dominant qualities of my music are passionate

expression, internal fire, rhythmic animation, and unexpected

changes."

Heinrich Heine, the German poet, who was Berlioz's friend, called him

a "colossal nightingale, a lark of eagle-size, such as they tell us

existed in the primeval world." The poet goes on to say--"Berlioz's

music, in general, has in it something primeval if not antediluvian to

my mind; it makes me think of gigantic species of extinct animals, of

fabulous empires full of fabulous sins, of heaped-up impossibilities;

his magical accents call to our minds Babylon, the hanging gardens,

the wonders of Nineveh, the daring edifices of Mizraim, as we see them

in the pictures of the Englishman Martin." Shortly after the

publication of "Lutetia," in which this bold characterisation was

expressed, the first performance of Berlioz's "Enfance du Christ" was

given, and the poet, who was on his sick-bed, wrote a penitential

letter to his friend for not having given him justice. "I hear on all

sides," he says, "that you have just plucked a nosegay of the sweetest

melodious flowers, and that your oratorio is throughout a masterpiece

of _naïvetè_. I shall never forgive myself for having been so unjust

to a friend."

Berlioz died at the age of sixty-five. His funeral services were held

at the Church of the Trinity, a few days after those of Rossini. The

discourse at the grave was pronounced by Gounod, and many eloquent

things were said of him, among them a quotation of the epitaph of

Marshal Trivulce, "_Hic tandem quiescit qui nunquam quievit_" (Here he

is quiet, at last, who never was quiet before). Soon after his death

appeared his _Mémoires_, and his bones had hardly got cold when the

performance of his music at the Conservatoire, the Cirque, and the

Chatelet began to be heard with the most hearty enthusiasm.