(1803-1869)
To the concert-goer the name Hector Berlioz calls up a series of vast
and magnificent whirlwinds of vocal and orchestral sonority, the
thoughts of scores that sound and look imposingly complex to the eyes
and ears of both the educated and uneducated in the composer's art. We
have a vision of close pages embodying the most unequivocal and drastic
of musical "realism." The full audacity and mastery of a certain sort of
genius are represented in his vast works. They bespeak, too, the
combative musician and reformer. Berlioz took the kingdom of music
by violence.
[Illustration: Hector Berlioz]
His _chef d'oeuvres_ do not all say to us as much as he meant them to
say, not as much as they all uttered twenty years ago. There is much
clay as well as gold in them. But such tremendous products of his energy
and intellect as the 'Requiem,' the 'Te Deum,' 'The Damnation of Faust,'
his best descriptive symphonies such as the 'Romeo and Juliet,' are yet
eloquent to the public and to the critical-minded. His best was so very
good that his worst--weighed as a matter of principle or execution,
regarded as music or "programme music"--can be excused.
Berlioz's actual biography is a long tale of storm and stress. Not only
was he slow in gaining appreciation while he lived; full comprehension
of his power was not granted him till after his energetic life was over.
Recognition in his own country is incomplete to day. He was born in
1803, near picturesque Grenoble, in the little town of Côte St. André,
the son of an excellent country doctor. Sent to Paris to study medicine,
he became a musician against his father's wish, and in lieu of the
allowance that his father promptly withdrew, the young man lived by
engaging in the chorus of the Gymnase, and by catching at every straw
for subsistence. He became a regular music-student of the Conservatory,
under the admirable Lesueur and Reicha; quitted the Conservatory in
disgust at its pedantry, in 1825; and lived and advanced in musical
study as best he could for a considerable time. His convictions in art
were founded largely on the rock of Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and
Weber; and however modern, and however widely his work departs from such
academic models, Berlioz never forswore a certain allegiance to these
great and serene masters. He returned to the Conservatory, studied hard,
gained the Prix de Rome, gradually took a prominent place among Parisian
composers, and was as enthusiastically the subject of a cult as was
Wagner. His concerts and the production of his operas encountered
shameful cabals. His strongest works were neglected or ill-served. To
their honor, German musicians understood him, Schumann and Liszt in
especial. Only in Germany to-day are his colossal operas heard. The
Italian Paganini showed a generous interest in his struggles. Russia and
Austria too admired him, while his compatriots hissed. His career was
one of endless work, disappointments, brief successes, battles, hopes,
and despairs. Personally, too, it was full of the happiness and
unhappiness of the artistic temperament.
It was between the two periods of his Conservatory life that he endured
his chief sentimental misfortune,--his falling in love with and finally
marrying Henrietta Smithson. Miss Smithson was a young English actress
playing Shakespearean roles in France with a passing success. She was
exquisitely lovely--Delaroche has painted her spirituelle beauty in his
'Ophelia.' The marriage was the typically unfortunate artist-match; and
she became a paralytic invalid for years. After her death, tours in
Germany and elsewhere, new works, new troubles, enthusiasms, and
disappointments filled up the remainder of the composer's days. He
returned to his beloved Dauphiné, war-worn and almost as one who has
outlived life. In his provincial retreat he composed the huge operatic
duology 'The Trojans at Carthage,' and 'The Taking of Troy,' turning
once more to Virgil, his early literary love. Neither of them is often
heard now, any more than his amazing 'Benvenuto Cellini.' Their author
died in Dauphiné in 1869, weary, disenchanted, but conscious that he
would be greater in the eyes of a coming generation than ever he had
been during his harassed life.
Berlioz's literary remains are valuable as criticisms, and their
personal matter is of brisk and varied charm. His intense feeling for
Shakespeare influenced his whole æsthetic life. He was extremely well
read. His most unchecked tendency to romanticism was balanced by a fine
feeling for the classics. He loved the greater Greek and Latin writers.
His Autobiography is a perfect picture of himself emotionally, and
exhibits his wide æsthetic nature. His Letters are equally faithful as
portraiture. He possessed a distinctively literary style. He tells us
how he fell in love--twice, thrice; records the disgraceful cabals and
intrigues against his professional success, and explains how a landscape
affected his nerves. He is excellent reading, apparently without taking
much pains to be so. Vivacity, wit, sincerity, are salient traits. In
his volume of musical essays entitled 'A Travers Chants' (an
untranslatable title which may be paraphrased 'Memoirs of Music and
Musicians') are superior appreciations of musicians and interpreters and
performances in opera-house and concert-hall, expressed with grace and
taste in the _feuilletonist's_ best manner. In the Journal des Débats,
year by year, he wrote himself down indisputably among the great French
critics; and he never misused his critical post to make it a lever for
his own advantage. His great treatise on Orchestration is a standard
work not displaced by Gevaert or more recent authorities. He was not
only a musical intelligence of enormous capacity: he offers perhaps as
typical an embodiment of the French artistic temperament as can be
pointed out.