"Believe me, I _love_ Berlioz, although he keeps apart from me in his
distrust and obstinacy; he does not know me, but I know him. If I have
expectations of any one it is of Berlioz, but not in the direction in
which he has arrived at the absurdities of his _Faust_. If he proceeds
further in that direction he must become perfectly ridiculous. If ever
a musician wanted the poet it is Berlioz, and his misfortune is that he
always prepares this poet for himself, according to his musical whim,
arbitrarily handling now Shakespeare, now Goethe. He wants a poet who
would completely penetrate him," &c.
Mr. Ellis, in his "Life" (vol. iii. pp. 336, 337), deals with the
passage thus:--
"Believe me,--I _love_ Berlioz, however mistrustfully and obstinately
he holds aloof from me; he does not know me,--but I know him. If there
is one man I expect something of, it is Berlioz.... But he needs a poet
who shall fill him through and through," &c.
Mr. Ellis, it will be observed, is not using Hueffer's translation;
and as the passage does not occur in Glasenapp's "Life of Wagner" at
all (which puts out of the question any translation from a mutilated
version), it is clear that Mr. Ellis has translated direct from the
German original. When he tells us that he had no design of concealment
in omitting the phrases about the "Faust Symphony" we are, of course,
bound to believe him. But it is unfortunate that in his sudden and most
unusual passion for economy of space he should stop just short of the
word that is so awkward for Wagner. And one would rather he had not
given a factitious air of sequence to the clauses of his quotation by
removing the "but" from its proper position (after "If there is one
man I expect something of, it is Berlioz"), endowing it with a capital
letter, and making it the commencement of a new sentence. The English
reader will see what has happened by looking at Hueffer's version:
everything from "not in the direction" to "now Goethe" has been
omitted, and the "but" carried down from its proper place after "it is
of Berlioz," and improperly made to begin another sentence. The German
reader will see that the "nicht aber" (not however) of the sentence
"nicht aber auf dem Wege, auf dem er bis zu den Geschmacklosigkeiten
seiner Faust-symphonie gelangte" has been shelved, and a fresh "Aber"
called from the void and made to preface the sentence "Er gebraucht den
Dichter," &c.
Let us now examine the _Benvenuto Cellini_ case. The passage in
Wagner's letters to Liszt of 13th April and 8th September 1852 run thus
(Hueffer's translation):--
"What is this you have heard about me in connection with your
performance of _Cellini_? You seem to suppose that I am hostile to it.
Of this error I want you to get rid.... In the consequences which, as I
am told, you expect from the performance of _Cellini_ I cannot believe,
that is all."--"B. (Bülow) has shewn quite correctly where the failure
of _Cellini_ lies, viz., in the poem and in the unnatural position in
which the musician was forcibly placed by being expected to disguise
by purely musical intentions a want which the poet alone could have
made good."
Unable to give a jot of evidence that Wagner could possibly have known
_Cellini_, Mr. Ellis guesses that he was condemning the work not on
the score of the music, but on the basis of "a libretto or second-hand
report." Even if this were so, it would not justify Wagner's remarks.
What would _he_ have said of any one who ran down _Tristan_ without
knowing any more of it than "a libretto or a second-hand report," and
on the strength of this threw cold water on a theatrical manager's
scheme for performing it? But there is no reason to believe that Wagner
had even so much as a libretto. Liszt's tone to Wagner throughout
the correspondence is that of a man fully acquainted with _Cellini_
at first hand to a man who is only repeating current tittle-tattle
about it. The reason Wagner gave for objecting to the revival of the
opera was that he had heard that Berlioz was "recasting" it, and that
it would become him much better to write a new work than to touch-up
an old one. On the 7th October 1852 Liszt, after agreeing that "the
weakness of Berlioz's mode of working" comes from his poem, goes on to
say, "but you have been erroneously _led to believe_ that Berlioz is
writing his _Cellini_. This is not the case; the question at issue is
simply as to a very considerable cut--nearly a whole tableau--which
I have proposed to Berlioz, and which he has approved of.... If it
interests you _I will send you the new libretto together with the old
one_, and I think you will approve of the change...." Is it not clear
that Liszt assumes as a matter of fact Wagner's complete ignorance
of the work? In an earlier letter, dated 23rd August, Liszt tells
him that in November he is expecting Berlioz, "whose _Cellini_ (with
a considerable cut) must not be shelved, for _in spite of all the
stupid things that have been set going about it_, '_Cellini_' is and
remains a remarkable and highly estimable work. _I am sure you would_
_like many things in it._" The latter of the two passages I have here
italicised shows once more that Liszt speaks to Wagner as to a man who
does not know the opera; and the former passage indicates that there
was a good deal of stupid and malevolent gossip afloat concerning
it among people who also were ignorant of it. Moreover, on the 31st
October 1853, Liszt again assumes Wagner's ignorance: "For this work
I retain my great predilection, which you will not think uncalled
for when you know it better." Mr. Ellis, indeed, practically admits
that all Wagner had to go upon was a report of Bülow's in the _Neue
Zeitschrift_ of April 1852. (See, above, Wagner's letter to Liszt of
8th September 1852: "B. (_i.e._ Bülow) has shewn quite correctly where
the failure of '_Cellini_' lies, viz., in the poem," &c. It will be
noticed that the letter in which Wagner first sniffs at _Cellini_ is
dated the 13th of this same month of April.) What would Mr. Ellis say
of any anti-Wagnerian who should criticise _Tristan_ not even from the
libretto, but from the second-hand idea of it derived from some one
else's article on it?
Mr. Ellis's plea that Wagner was talking of _Cellini_ not publicly, but
in a private letter, is irrelevant. A public article would have been
read by a few curious people and forgotten; in throwing cold water on
Liszt's revival of the opera, Wagner was in danger of doing Berlioz
a serious injury. For about fourteen years after its first failure
_Cellini_ had not had a performance anywhere. There was only one man in
Europe who combined the qualifications of knowing the opera, admiring
it, being able to conduct it, and having at his own disposal an opera
house where the work could be given. That man was Liszt; upon him, and
him alone, it depended whether Berlioz should have a chance of showing
that _Cellini_ had been unjustly condemned in 1838. Had Liszt been weak
enough to have been privately influenced by Wagner, Berlioz would have
undoubtedly suffered far more than he could have done from a public
article.
Now for the _Faust_ affair. Wagner was not in Paris in 1846, when
_Faust_ received its two performances. Mr. Ellis, however, sagely
opines that "it is not absolutely impossible (!) that Wagner should
have heard fragments (!) either of the earlier _Huit Scènes_ (_i.e._
the eight numbers referred to on p. 95 of the present volume),
or the _Damnation_ itself." This invocation of the aid of the
"not-absolutely-impossible" does not help us very much, I am afraid.
"But for argument's sake," continues our intrepid apologist, "let us
say he had not; about the work he must have heard, or he could not
know of its existence." (Here, at any rate, Mr. Ellis's penetrating
intelligence has struck home. Even _I_ am compelled to admit that
Wagner must have heard about the work, or he could not have known
of its existence.) "And if about it, why should the general outline
of common artistic repute (Wagner still maintaining desultory
correspondence with old Paris friends of good art-judgment, as we know)
not be enough to furnish him with grounds for deploring its scheme in a
private letter?" I have already dealt with the contention that Wagner
was justified in running down works he did not know so long as the
running-down was done privately. For the rest, the argument is just our
old friend the "not-absolutely-impossible" again. It is not absolutely
impossible that Wagner should have known some one who heard the work in
Paris six years previously; it is not absolutely impossible that Wagner
should have corresponded with this friend on the subject of _Faust_;
it is not absolutely impossible that this friend should have been a
man "of good art-judgment." Such a string of "may-have-beens" may be
confidently left to its fate. But once more, if any one had disparaged
a work of Wagner's on the strength of such dubious information, what
would Wagner have said of him then, and what would Mr. Ellis say of him
now?
But even Mr. Ellis, I imagine, does not take these phantom speculations
of his very seriously. From his own point of view, indeed, there was
never any need for him to indulge in them, so confident is he that in
his closing paragraph he has a piece of evidence, that is shattering
in its conclusiveness. He will not have it that to call _The Damnation
of Faust_ a symphony is to betray ignorance of it. Was not Berlioz's
_Romeo and Juliet_ a "dramatic symphony"? It was indeed; but in the
first place, Berlioz himself called _Romeo and Juliet_ a symphony,
whereas he never applied that title to _Faust_; and in the second
place, _Romeo and Juliet_ really _is_ a symphony, in the sense that
time after time the work is carried on by means of orchestral movements
pure and simple--while _Faust_ is not a symphony in any sense, and
could hardly have been called one by any one who knew it. Mr. Ellis
is "credibly informed" that it was called a symphony "in Paris at the
time." I take leave to doubt it; but in any case, Mr. Ellis's credible
informant might have given him some evidence that it was so called by
any one who had heard it. Adolphe Adam, for example, writing about
it to a friend on the morrow of its performance, calls it "a kind
of opera in four parts" (see J. G. Prodhomme's _Hector Berlioz_, p.
278). Berlioz himself, as Mr. Ellis notes, styled it a "Legend" or
"Dramatic Legend." Uninformed gossip no doubt gave it the title of
"symphony," in the years after 1846, from a vague idea that it must
necessarily have been of the same type of structure as _Romeo and
Juliet_. Gossip may have had something else to go upon too. In 1829
Berlioz had really thought (as we see from a letter to Humbert Ferrand
quoted in Adolphe Jullien's _Hector Berlioz_, p. 182) of writing a
"symphonie descriptive de _Faust_." Shortly before that he had tried
to get a commission from the Opera for a ballet on the same subject.
These facts may have lingered in the air for years, and in the general
vagueness upon the matter after 1846 it may well be that Berlioz's
name was often associated with a _Faust_ "symphony." It was apparently
this ill-informed gossip that Wagner was repeating. Fragments of
_Faust_, by the way, were given at some of Berlioz's Russian and German
concerts, and there was a complete performance of it at Berlin in 1847.
Wagner, of course, was in Dresden at that time. There is hardly the
slightest likelihood, again, that he had a score of the _Huit Scènes_,
a few copies of which Berlioz had rashly had engraved at his own
expense in 1829, and published at 30 francs; and even if Wagner _did_
know these eight fragments, that would not justify him in criticising
_The Damnation of Faust_ without knowing it. I repeat that the only
conclusion we can come to is that he called it a symphony because he
was ignorant of it.
But now Mr. Ellis's great discovery comes in. He quotes from a letter
of Liszt to Breitkopf and Härtel, the music publishers, of 30th
October 1852: "I am expecting M. Berlioz here ... and on the 21st the
symphonies of _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Faust_ will be performed, which I
proposed to you to publish." Here Mr. Ellis imagines me crying out, "It
is all that wretched Wagner's fault; he had put the word into Liszt's
innocent head six weeks before." "But Berlioz," Mr. Ellis goes on to
say, "arrives at Weimar, conducts les 2 premiers actes' of his _Faust_
at one concert with his _Romeo_, and behold--no longer innocent, Liszt
writes Professor Christian Lobe, editor of the _Fliegende Blätter für
Musik_, May 1st 1853: 'The German public is still unacquainted with
the greater part of Berlioz's works, and after many enquiries that
have been addressed me in the past few months, I believe a German
translation of the catalogue might have a good effect; perhaps with
division into categories, _e.g._ OVERTURES, _Francs Juges_, &c....
SYMPHONIES, (1) _Episode_, (2) _Harold_, (3) _Romeo and Juliet_, (4)
_Damnation of Faust_; VOCAL PIECES, &c. &c.'"
Alas! Mr. Ellis is no happier here than in his other attempts to get
out of the difficulty. It is not clear, to begin with, why he should
suppose that Liszt's or any one else's knowledge of _Faust_ should
prove Wagner to have known it. But putting that aside, what seems
to have shaped itself in Mr. Ellis's mind is some such ramshackle
syllogism as this: "If Liszt, who knew the _Faust_ so well, wrongly
calls it a symphony, the use of the erroneous title by Wagner makes it
possible that he too may have known it." It all looks promising enough;
but it has one fatal flaw, one point upon which Mr. Ellis, in his hurry
to whoop, forgot to make quite sure. His confident assumption that
Liszt _did_ know _Faust_ is unjustified.
My previous point that people who did not know the work had got into
the habit of calling it a symphony is proved by other letters of Liszt
in which he thus speaks of it. On the 4th September 1852, for example,
he writes to Cornelius: "On the 12th November I expect a visit from
Berlioz, who will spend a week at Weimar. Then we shall have _Cellini_,
the symphony of _Romeo and Juliet_, and some pieces from the _Faust_
symphony." Mr. Ellis may think this confirms his own theory. But it
is worth while looking again at the above-quoted letter of Liszt of
30th October 1852 to Breitkopf and Härtel, and the circumstances that
called it forth. On the 7th June Berlioz had written to Liszt that he
was going to give a concert in Paris, at which he would perform some
fragments of _Faust_. "_I am truly sorry_," he says, "_that you do not
know this work._ I cannot get a publisher to take it; they find it too
big to engrave (_trop riche de planches_). I must apply to Ricordi of
Milan.... In any case, if you were to find a daring German publisher
capable of undertaking this rash act, you can tell him that _Faust_ has
been well translated into German." It is evident that after receiving
this letter, Liszt wrote to Breitkopf and Härtel recommending them
to publish the work; this is the proposal he refers to in his letter
of 30th October 1852. So that the very letter of Liszt's which Mr.
Ellis quotes triumphantly for its use of the term "Faust Symphony" was
prompted by a letter from Berlioz, in which he distinctly says that
Liszt does not know the work!
Bearing this in mind, let us follow up the subsequent course of
events, and see whether Liszt knew it _after_ Berlioz's visit to
Weimar--whether, that is, he was not still in much the same state of
ignorance about it when he wrote the letter of 1st May 1853 to Lobe.
It can be shown that Liszt had nothing to do with the performance of
the first two acts of _Faust_ at Weimar; that Berlioz brought the score
and parts with him from Paris and took the rehearsals and the concert
himself, whereas Liszt himself took charge of _Cellini_. On the 10th
October 1852 Berlioz writes to Liszt in terms that once more place the
latter's complete ignorance of the work beyond dispute. Berlioz has
actually to tell him the number and quality of soloists to engage. "I
will leave here for Weimar on the 12th November, certain. I will arrive
on the 15th, and can stay in your neighbourhood eight days, but no
more.... Now tell me by the next post if it is necessary for me to send
you the vocal parts of _Faust_, or if it will suffice that I should
bring them with me. The soloists and chorus would in that case have to
learn in four or five days the fragments to be given at the concert.
Only a tenor and a bass (_soli_) are needed for these fragments of
_Faust_, Marguerite appearing only in the last two acts." Berlioz would
not tell an elementary fact like that to a man who already knew the
work.
Then, on the 6th November, he writes: "I send you to-day the parcel
containing the _Faust_ vocal parts, the choruses, the rôles, and a
German libretto ... and the vocal score (for sixty-three people). The
orchestral parcel is too large; I will bring it myself. It would be of
no use to you before my arrival." Clearly Liszt was not even going to
conduct the rehearsals, which would not be begun until Berlioz arrived
at Weimar. (The _Faust_ fragments were evidently rehearsed hurriedly;
there is a letter of Frau Pohl's extant describing the success of the
performances, and saying how amazing it was that so much should have
been accomplished in so short a time.) Berlioz's further remarks once
more show that he assumes Liszt's complete ignorance of the work:
"It is not difficult; only the chorus and the principal parts are
dangerous. We will announce for the concert the first two parts only,
for which no Marguerite is required. You will need a tenor (Faust),
a deep bass (Mephisto), and another bass (Brander). It will last an
hour." All this, pointing conclusively to Liszt's total ignorance of
the work, is in the identical letter which Mr. Ellis actually cites in
another connection!
Even after the Weimar concert, which took place about the 20th November
1852, Liszt knew no more of _Faust_ than what he had heard there. It is
clear from a letter of his to Radecke of 9th December 1852, and one of
27th February 1853 to Schmidt, that the parcel containing the score and
the parts was sent on to Berlioz in Paris a few days after the concert.
Liszt, in fact, though he looked after _Cellini_ and the other works,
had practically nothing to do with _Faust_. Berlioz brought the score
and parts with him, conducted the rehearsals, conducted the concert,
and then on his departure left the parcel with Liszt, to be forwarded
to him in Paris. Moreover, we may be pretty sure that all he took with
him was the score of the first two parts--all that were given at the
concert. The bulky manuscript score, now in the Conservatoire library
at Paris, is bound up in three (or four) volumes--I forget which at
the moment. If any one should conjecture that Berlioz might have taken
with him the score of the whole work to show to Liszt, that supposition
is disposed of by a letter of Berlioz, dated Dresden, 22nd April 1854.
The complete _Faust_ had just been given there. Berlioz wishes Liszt
had been present: "I regret that you could not have heard the last two
acts, _which you do not know_." Everything points to the fact that
even Liszt's knowledge of _Faust_ was limited to a hearing of the
first two acts at the Weimar concert. There is plenty of subsequent
correspondence with Berlioz, but it is all about _Cellini_, which
Liszt had produced and knew thoroughly. In after years people used to
write to him--people who were compiling books on Berlioz, or trying to
get hold of his correspondence, or investigating the history of the
Weimar theatre--and ask Liszt to tell them something of his relations
with Berlioz. Liszt's reply is always the same; he is proud of having
refloated _Cellini_, but he does not mention _Faust_. Even when he
tells the Grand Duke Carl Alexander that Berlioz gave three concerts
in Weimar, there is still no mention of the _Faust_ fragments, which
apparently had been no affair of his.
In 1853 and 1854 he calls the work a symphony, knowing no better,
having neither seen the score nor heard a complete performance of
it. But in 1854 the score is published, and a copy sent to Liszt. In
December of that year he writes two letters on the same day. In one
of them, to Mason, the old habit is still too strong for him, and he
speaks of the "dramatic symphony of _Faust_";[64] in the other, to
Wasielewski, he refers to it as _Faust_ only. Thereafter, so far as I
can discover, he never speaks of it as a symphony. See, for example,
his letters of 9th February 1856 to Edward Liszt, 19th February 1856 to
Brendel, 3rd January 1857 to Turanyi, 16th September 1861 to Brendel,
March 1883 to Vicomte Henri Delaborde, 12th September 1884 to Pohl, 1st
January 1855 ("Do you know the score of his _Damnation de Faust_?"),
and 24th December 1855 to Wagner.
So much for the question of Liszt and _Faust_, which Mr. Ellis dragged
in so gleefully to help his own case and Wagner's. In the absence of
any new facts, I contend that it is abundantly clear that Liszt too
called _Faust_ a symphony only because he did not know it. If Wagner
is to be whitewashed at all, it must be by a less brittle brush than
this. As regards his disparagement of both _Cellini_ and _Faust_, the
defence seems to me to have broken down completely; he knew nothing of
either of them.
E. N.