More than a score of years have passed since Berlioz died, in Paris,
that city which was the object of his youthful dreams, the scene of his
bitter struggles and his sublime defeats. It was in the midst of those
Parisians, who had accorded him little more than mockery and scorn, that
he had wished to die, weighed down by sadness and discouragement,
supported by a few intimate friends and rare disciples. Moreover, did he
not foresee that sad end when writing the following lines which
subsequent events proved only too true? “It was about that time of my
academic life that I experienced again the attack of a cruel malady
(moral, nervous, imaginary, whatever you like) which I will call
sickness of isolation, and which will kill me some day.... This is not
spleen, though it leads to that later on; it is the boiling away, the
evaporation of the heart, the senses, the brain, the nervous fluid.
Spleen is the congelation of all that, it is the block of ice.”
Therefore death was for him a blessed release. For some years before,
there remained of Hector Berlioz nothing but an earthly frame, an inert
and suffering body; the moral being was crushed. The fall of _The
Trojans_ was the rudest possible shock to that nature so well tempered
to receive it; hitherto the proud artist had returned blow for blow;
never had a defeat, however grave, completely overthrown him. For the
first time, in witnessing the downfall of the work of his predilection,
the athlete had faltered. He had laid down his arms and thenceforth,
weary of life and of the struggle, had contented himself with the hollow
diversions which the capital offered him, “preoccupied solely with
material interests, inattentive and indifferent to that which impassions
poets and artists, having a morbid taste for scandal and mockery,
laughing with a dry and mirthless laugh when this strange taste is
gratified.” A certain heartache, a vague suffering of the soul, vain
regrets, preyed upon him at least as much as bodily ills; his shade
alone wandered among us, dumb, taciturn, _isolated_, and one beautiful
morning in the month of March it vanished.
Berlioz’s militant career may be divided into two distinct periods; that
in which he struggles for position, and which lasts from his arrival in
Paris until after _Romeo and Juliet_ and the _Funeral and Triumphal
Symphony_, in 1842; that in which, tired of struggling without profit
though not without glory, he starts off to establish his reputation
outside the frontier, and to return afterwards to Paris, victorious and
triumphant; this lasts until his death. So soon as he achieved a success
abroad, great or small, “Be sure that Paris knows it!” was the cry to
his friends. And Paris, being informed of it, had forgotten it
instantly. It was during the intervals between these tours, when he came
back to France to see if his foreign successes had given him a better
standing in the eyes of his countrymen, that his last principal works
were produced: _The Damnation of Faust_, _The Childhood of Christ_, _The
Te Deum_ and _Beatrice and Benedict_, finally _The Trojans_.
It was towards the end of 1821 that Berlioz came to Paris, ostensibly to
study medicine, but with a secret longing to devote himself to music. He
was then nearly eighteen years of age, being born at La Côte Saint-André
(Isère), Dec. 11, 1803, and had already received some lessons in music
from the poor stranded artists at La Côte. We are indebted to Berlioz
himself for the names of these artists, which were Imbert and Dorant.
On arriving at Paris, where his father, a simple health officer, but a
devotee to the sciences and to medicine, had allowed him to come on the
express condition that he should follow exactly the course of the
Faculty, he set to work as best he could to carry out this program. But
one evening he goes to the Opera to hear Salieri’s _Danaïdes_:
immediately music regains possession of his soul, and he spends all his
spare time in the library of the _Conservatoire_, studying the scores of
Gluck’s operas; there he meets a pupil of Lesueur who introduces him to
that master, and he attaches himself with much affection to the author
of the _Bardes_, who admits him to his class. At length he informs his
family of his settled determination to devote himself to music, and he
has performed at Saint-Roch a mass which he burns almost immediately
after, saving only the _Resurrexit_ which obtains grace in his sight, at
least for a time. He then took part in the preparatory concours for the
prize of Rome, and was not even judged worthy to be a competitor.
Immediately summoned home by his parents, who had no faith in his
“pretended irresistible vocation,” he arrived there so sad, so crushed,
so misanthropic, that his father, uneasy about him, permitted him to
return to try once more his fortune in Paris. He came back for the
winter of 1826, having nothing to live on but a small allowance from his
family, on which he was obliged to economize in order to pay back,
little by little, a loan which a friend had made him for the execution
of his mass. His existence at this time, which was shared by another
student, his friend Carbonnel, was a very miserable one, their meals
consisting on certain days of vegetables and dried fruits. He gave
lessons in solfeggio at a franc a lesson, and even applied for the
position of chorus singer at the _Théâtre des Nouveautés_. But artistic
pleasures counterbalanced the material privations, and his heart danced
for joy whenever he could go to the _Opéra_ or to the _Odéon_ and hear
some masterpiece by Spontini, Gluck or Weber; his fourth god, Beethoven,
was not revealed to him till two years later, when Habeneck founded the
_Société des concerts du Conservatoire_ for the dissemination of the
works of that prodigious genius. He continued however in the classes of
Lesueur and Reicha, so that he was able to pass the preliminary
examination for the concours of 1828. The subject given out by the board
of examiners was a scene from _Orpheus torn to pieces by Bacchantes_,
and Berlioz’s music was declared by the judges as _impossible to be
played_. His only response was to prepare for its performance at the
concert to be given at the Conservatoire, the superintendent of the
Beaux-Arts, M. de Larochefoucauld, to whom he had been recommended,
having placed that hall at his disposal, notwithstanding the violent
protestations of the director, Cherubini. But chance favored the
self-love of the members of the Institute, for Berlioz was obliged to
give up his plan, on account of an indisposition of the singer Alexis
Dupont.
It would have been strange indeed, if Berlioz, with his ardent
imagination and brain always on fire, had allowed the romantic movement
to pass by without attaching himself to it with all the fury and passion
which he threw into everything. He soon became one of the leaders of the
new school, poor enough in musicians, counting only himself and Monpau,
whereas it abounded in writers and artists. Like all his comrades in
romanticism, even exceeding them all, Berlioz was an enthusiastic and
constant visitor at the _Odéon_, where some of Shakespeare’s plays were
then being given by a company of English tragedians. Here he received a
double blow; from Shakespeare who floored him, as he said, and from Miss
Smithson who intoxicated him. It was to attract the attention of the
beautiful tragedienne that he organized, with his overtures to
_Waverley_ and _Francs-Juges_ and his cantata of _la Mort d’Orphée_, a
concert which she never heard anything about. It was also this idea of
reaching her through the medium of music which inspired him to write his
_Fantastic Symphony_, in which he put himself in the scene with his
beloved, and which, in fact, was to end by gaining him Miss Smithson’s
heart.
As these first attempts of Berlioz are little known, it is well to
specify them, if for no other reason than because one may find in these
forgotten pieces the plan of certain pages of the _Damnation of Faust_
and the _Childhood of Christ_. His overtures to _Waverley_ and to the
_Francs-Juges_ were performed for the first time at the concert which he
gave at the Conservatoire, in honor of Miss Smithson, May 26, 1828; on
this occasion he also had played the _Resurrexit_ from his first mass,
in place of _The Death of Orpheus_, which could not be given owing to
the illness of Alexis Dupont, a march of the Magi going to visit the
manger, and a grand scene on the Greek Revolution. Finally, on the 1st
of November, 1829, he had his two overtures repeated, together with his
_Resurrexit_ under a new title, _The Last Judgment_, and a new work
entitled _Chorus of Sylphs_, the plan of which is as follows:
“Mephistopheles, in order to excite in Faust’s soul the love of
pleasure, assembles the sprites of the air and bids them sing. After a
prelude on their magic instruments, they describe an enchanted country,
the inhabitants of which are intoxicated with perpetual delights.
Gradually the charm operates, the voices of the Sylphs die away and
Faust, fallen asleep, remains plunged in delicious dreams.” Everybody
knows to-day what this adorable bit has become.
In the meantime Berlioz obtained the “Prix de Rome” in July, 1830, after
having tried for it four times in vain. He set out at once for Rome,
first giving, however, a farewell concert at which was played his
cantata of _Sardanapalus_ and the _Fantastic Symphony_, aimed at Miss
Smithson whom Berlioz execrated because of her ignorant indifference,
and who, moreover, had not the slightest suspicion of his mad passion
and frantic hatred. The young composer departed quite proud of his
success and also of the sharp response of Cherubini who said, when asked
if he was going to hear the new production of Berlioz, “I do not need to
go to find out _how things should not be done_.” He stayed in Italy
nearly two years, in order to conform to the regulations of the Academy,
but it was time wasted for him from an artistic point of view. With his
just and profound distaste for Italian music, he was in no condition to
be benefited by it. The only comfort he took was in fleeing to the
country, where he strolled with his new friend Mendelssohn; but this
companionship proved uncongenial and was short-lived. He shortened his
sojourn in Italy as much as possible, and as soon as the director Horace
Vernet gave him leave, he returned to Paris, taking with him an overture
to King Lear and the monodrama of _Lelio or the Return to Life_, a
series of old pieces worked over, which completed the _Fantastic
Symphony_. This work he could have done just as well in Paris as in
Rome; indeed he would probably have accomplished more by remaining in
Paris, instead of strolling about the country near Rome playing on his
guitar and frittering away his time.
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