The Critic.
One of the very few great musicians who have been able to write their own
language with vigour and perspicuity, Berlioz was for many years among
the kings of the feuilleton, among the most accomplished journalists of
the best epoch of the Parisian press. He had an abundance of wit and
humour; his energy and spirit were inexhaustible; within certain limits
he was a master of expression and style; in criticism as in music he was
an artist to his finger-ends; and if he found writing hard work what he
wrote is still uncommonly easy reading. He is one of the few--the very
few--journalists the worth of whose achievement has been justified by
collection and republication. Louis Veuillot has been weighed in this
balance, and found wanting; and so has Janin prince of critics. With
Berlioz it is otherwise. If you are no musician he appeals to you as a
student of life; if you are interested in life and music both he is
irresistible. The _Memoires_ is one of the two or three essays in
artistic biography which may claim equal honours with Benvenuto's story
of himself and his own doings; the two volumes of correspondence rank
with the most interesting epistolary matter of these times; in the
_Grotesques_, the _A Travers Chants_, the _Soirees de l'Orchestre_ there
is enough of fun and earnest, of fine criticism and diabolical humour, of
wit and fancy and invention, to furnish forth a dozen ordinary critics,
and leave a rich remainder when all's done. These books have been
popular for years; they are popular still; and the reason is not far to
seek. Berlioz was not only a great musician and a brilliant writer; he
was also a very interesting and original human being. His writings are
one expression of an abnormal yet very natural individuality; and when he
speaks you are sure of something worth hearing and remembering.
A Prototype.
Apart from Cellini's ruffianism there are several points of contact
between the two men. Berlioz made the roaring goldsmith the hero of an
opera, and it is not doubtful that he was in complete sympathy with his
subject. In the Frenchman there is a full measure of the waywardness of
temper, the impatience of authority, the resolute and daring humour, the
passion of worship for what is great in art and of contempt for what is
little and bad, which entered so largely into the composition of the
Florentine. There is not much to choose between the Berlioz of the
_Debats_, the author of the _Grotesques de la Musique_ and the _A Travers
Chants_, and the Benvenuto who, as Il Lasca writes of him,
'Senza alcun ritegno o barbazzale
Delle cose malfatte dicea male.'
Benvenuto enlarges upon the joys of drawing from the life and expatiates
upon the greatness of Michelangelo in much the same spirit and with much
the same fury of admiration with which Berlioz descants upon the rapture
of conducting an orchestra and dilates upon the beauty of _Divinites du
Styx_ or the adagio of the so-called _Moonlight Sonata_. It is written
of Benvenuto, in connection with Vasari's attack upon that cupola of
Santa Maria del Fiore which himself was wont to call 'the marvel of
beautiful things,' that if he had lived to see the result,
'Certo non capirebbe nelle pelle;
_E saltando_, _e correndo_, _e fulminando_,
S' andrebbe querelando,
E per tutto gridando ad alta voce
_Giorgin d'Arezzo meterebbe in croce_,
Oggi universalmente
Odiato della gente
_Quasi publico ladro e assassino_';
and you are reminded irresistibly of Berlioz betrampling Lachnith and the
ingenious Castil-Blaze and defending Beethoven against the destructive
pedantry of Fetis. And, just as the _Vita_ is invaluable as a personal
record of artist-life in the Italy of the Renaissance, so are the
_Memoires_ invaluable as a personal record of the works and ways of
musicians in the Paris of the Romantic revival. Berlioz is revealed in
them for one of the race of the giants. He is the musician of 1830, as
Delacroix is the painter; and his work is as typical and as significant
as the _Sardanapale_ and the _Faust_ lithographs.
His Theory of Autobiography.
To read the _Memoires_ is to feel that in writing them the great musician
deliberately set himself to win the heart of posterity. He believed in
himself, and he believed in his music: he divined that one day or another
he would be legendary as well as immortal; and he took an infinite deal
of pains to make certain that the ideal which was presently to represent
him in men's minds should be an ideal of which he could thoroughly
approve. It is fair to note that in this care for the good will and the
good word of the future he was not by any means alone. The
_romantiques_, indeed, were keen--from Napoleon downwards--to make the
very best of themselves. The poet of the _Legende des Siecles_, for
example, went early to work to arrange the story of his life and
character at least as carefully as he composed the audiences of his
_premieres_; and he did it with so light a hand, and with such a sense of
the importance of secrecy, that it is even now by no means so well and
widely known as it should be that _Victor Hugo raconte par un Temoin de
sa Vie_ is the work of the hero's wife, and was not only inspired but may
also have been revised and prepared for publication by the hero himself.
Again, the dramatist of _Antony_ and the novelist of _Bragelonne_ was
never so happy as when he was engaged upon the creation of what he hoped
would be the historical Dumas; he made volume after volume of delightful
reading out of his own impressions and adventures; he turned himself into
copy with a frankness, a grace, a gusto, a persistency of egoism, which
are merely enchanting. Berlioz, therefore, had good warrant for his
work. It is more to the point, perhaps, that he would have taken it if
he had not had it. And I hold that he would have done well; for (in any
case) a great man's notion of himself is, _ipso facto_, better and more
agreeable and convincing, especially as he presents it, than the idea of
his inferiors and admirers, especially as presented by them. Berlioz, it
is true, was prodigal in these _Memoires_ of his of wit and fun and
devilry, of fine humanity and noble art, of good things said and great
things dreamed and done and suffered; but he was prodigal of invention
and suppression as well, and the result, while considerably less
veracious, is all the more fascinating, therefor. One feels that for one
thing he was too complete an artist to be merely literal and exact; that
for another he saw and felt things for himself, as Milton did before
him--Milton in the mind's eye of Milton the noblest of created things and
to Mr. Saintsbury almost as unpleasing a spectacle as the gifted but
abject Racine; and for a third that from his own point of view he was
right, and there is an end of it.