By Carjat.
]
The portrait is pretty, and coming from the pen of Wagner, is flattering
enough, save in its conclusion, which appears somewhat absurd to-day.
But this amazing aptitude for obtaining from an orchestra more than any
other composer had been able to compass, was exactly the origin of the
misunderstanding between Berlioz and the public. Certainly the so-called
learned criticisms of the most serious journals and the chaffing of the
less dignified press, contributed much to transform Berlioz, in the eye
of the masses, into a species of charlatan hungry for fame and banging
his drum vigorously to attract the mob; denying him genius except for
drawing attention to himself. These slurs, however, would not have taken
a firm hold in the minds of their readers if the adverse criticisms had
been wholly without an appearance of justice. In brief, with what did
they reproach him? of lacking melodic invention and of replacing it by
inextricable orchestral tangles; of rejoicing in diabolical noise and of
entertaining a positive contempt for all music except his own.
Nevertheless, Berlioz was not wanting in melody. His themes, when
separated from their complicated accompaniments, have even a family
likeness to the romanzas of 1840 in the style of Madame Duchambage or of
Blangini; his themes, vocal or instrumental, have generally a dreamy
melancholy, which seem to recall his birthplace, with its tender and
tremulous songs so loved by the peasants of Dauphiny. These perfectly
clear melodies, whenever he was content to give them simple
accompaniments, met with instant recognition and success from the
public. Among them is _La Captive_ in its first version; also the tenor
recitative in _La Fuite en Egypte_. It seemed surprising that the
composer of these delicate melodies should be the one who wrote such
complicated music, and so the ignorant were taught that these melodic
treasure-troves were wholly exceptional with this troublesome, demented
and blustering composer.
What repelled the public and assisted its misunderstanding on this
point, were the intricacies of his deeply-studied and curiously-strange
method of orchestration. In carrying out the idea that by the aid of the
most varied tone combinations every shade of meaning in a piece of music
can be made clear to the listener, Berlioz, imbued as he was with the
teachings of Lesueur, had a tendency to overcharge the more novel
touches of his musical picture, in order to indicate the secondary
details with that distinctness which seemed indispensable to him. From
this practice arose confusion in the mind of the inexperienced hearer,
and produced cloudiness in the music from which the dominant idea could
not be detached without an effort. On the other hand he gave utterance
to many noble and touching thoughts with pathetic declamation, poetic
and richly-colored orchestration, and impressive sonority; essential
qualities in Berlioz that are really wonderful and on which his enemies,
notably Fétis, were careful not to throw light. On the contrary, they
did their uttermost to discourage the public from bestowing attention on
these works, and they succeeded only too well and too long.
Here then is one of the causes that made amateurs rebel, on principle,
against the innovations of this great composer; but another cause,
inherent in the soul of Berlioz, repelled timid people. It was his
spirit of intolerance and of exclusive self-admiration. Carried along by
the impulse of the time and the desire to insure victory for his art
theories, Berlioz did not hesitate to attack the reputations of the most
cherished idols of the hour; therefore, whether he wrote, or whether he
spoke, he indulged his natural disposition to exaggerate everything with
virulent indignation, and outbursts of mad enthusiasm in support of the
artistic faith that swayed him. The public did not and could not
understand him, and irritated by his fierce aggressive tone, held itself
instinctively on guard against the creations of this fighting innovator
and stood ready to pay him the price of his contempt for it. Between a
rancorous public offended by the disdain this iconoclast manifested for
its tastes, and an artist who never exhausted the taunts he had in store
for it, there was always an antagonism, skilfully intensified by the
personal foes of the master and which ceased only at his death.
Antagonism is the true word, for Berlioz in his vocal works at least
never departed from the models so dear to the public. In fact, so far as
opera is concerned, he remained ever the disciple and admirer of
Spontini and of Gluck, without dreaming that he was destined soon to
initiate a revolution in this branch of musical art. Even when, at the
height of his own romantic fervor, he broke down the barriers of the
symphony, there always remained in Berlioz an instinctive respect for
consecrated forms; and as soon as he passed from the concert-room to the
stage he conformed in the most ingenious manner imaginable to the old
methods in all his works written with an eye to the opera house. He was
deliberately revolutionary in the symphony only, and that chiefly in
respect to instrumentation.
With this creator, endowed with a phenomenal genius in a certain way,
the ideas regarding the essential conditions of musical art were so
unsettled, and changed so often from one time and from one style to
another, that he would have been puzzled to formulate them with any
exactness. He emitted fire and flames, he hurled curses and roared
bitter denunciations, but when it came to deciding the ideal that an
artist should follow or the absolute principles he should adopt, he did
nothing.
There exists a radical difference between the two great musicians who
have convulsed the musical world in the second half of this century. The
later-comer, Richard Wagner, pursued a fully defined ideal, a single
problem, on the solving of which he had long concentrated his thoughts
and all the force of his genius, viz.:—the fusion of music and the
drama. He kept steadily in this one path and brought the music-drama to
the highest point it is possible for it to attain. Berlioz, on the
contrary, realized at one stroke all the modifications that seemed to
him desirable to fasten upon the symphony and the opera. He did not seek
an integral reform, but simply wished to enrich each branch of musical
art with new descriptive and picturesque elements. But while his
flexible brain turned now toward the stage, now toward the church, or
the concert-room, he did not deviate much from the traditional forms,
though he endowed them with new and wonderful characteristics.
Warmly romantic with Shakespeare, purely classic with Virgil, who were
his literary deities, he was eclectic in literature as in music. The
splendid lyric accents of Gluck are not in full harmony with the deep
poetic and chivalric inspiration of Weber, and the lack of resemblance
between Spontini and Beethoven is still more striking, yet Berlioz loved
them all. It matters not that Berlioz confounded these masters in his
religious admiration of them and made for himself a double personality,
repudiating all rule and tradition when he wrote for the orchestra and
for the concert stage, and becoming a pious observer of hallowed forms
when he turned to the theatre. In his _Les Troyens_, the voice parts are
of a wholly classic purity while the orchestra abounds in modern
romanticism; in _Béatrice et Bénédict_, delightful inspirations,
exquisite in their poetry, are mingled with the conventional forms that
Berlioz mercilessly condemned in the works of others: inexplicable vocal
flourishes, repetitions of words, outrages on prosody, the clipping of
rebellious words; all this by a composer in whose eyes correct
declamation was a fundamental essential of song.
Such was the composer Berlioz, such the critic, and the critic was not
unhelpful to the composer. In fact, all that he was in France, all that
he was able to win, during his lifetime, he owed to his position as a
writer for the press and as the friend of influential journalists. But
he made many enemies, less by the aggressiveness of his writings than by
his caustic wit. There was in him an imperative necessity to tell the
public his hates and his loves, and if he did not always feel free to
give bold expression to the disgust with which certain works filled him,
he invariably let his contempt be seen through his polished and even
laudatory phrases. At least, nobody was ever deceived. The musician in
Berlioz is impassioned, now tender, now vigorous. It is the same with
the writer. His style is picturesque and incisive, sometimes trivial.
Side by side are exclamations of admiration and contempt; quasi
religious respect and genuinely holy anger, all equally energetic and
sincere—the word and the blow. To appreciate this at its full value, it
suffices to select at hazard one of the collection of articles published
by himself in book form under the titles, _Les Soirées de l’orchestra,
Les Grotesques de la musique_, in which the humorist tone prevails and
_A travers chants_, which contains his most serious thoughts; the two
volumes of letters published after his death, _Correspondance inédite et
lettres intimes_; and finally his amusing and fascinating _Mémoires_, in
which he travesties himself unreservedly and confuses somewhat the dates
and facts. This book is a genuine romance.
Berlioz, bitter and unsympathetic as it here pleases him to appear, was
wholly unconventional; he was the athlete constantly stripped for the
combat, and armed for the fight. How different from the Berlioz seen in
his profession and in society! As much as those, who knowing him but
slightly, judged him hard and unsociable, so much did those to whom his
affections went out, laud his extreme kindness and his tenderness of
feeling. He was not prepossessing in appearance or manner. His esteem
and friendship had to be won little by little, in order to open by some
means or other, the way to his heart. He no sooner found himself among
friends, than his spirits rose and often urged him into countless
pleasantries. Nevertheless, even toward these he showed the most
variable disposition: he would arrive sullen and morose, and then
without warning, would break into wild and infectious gaiety, to fall
just as suddenly into icy reserve. A troublesome thought would suffice
for this, and it only needed an inopportune word to make him
intractable. If he chanced to be in the mood for brilliant paradoxes or
merry persiflage, it was necessary to refrain from interrupting or
opposing him. In the heat of conversation, no matter how serious, he
loved to utter wretched puns, and absurd verbal extravagances. These
irrepressible sallies, at which he was generally the only one to laugh,
were something very serious in his eyes. “Genius is akin to madness.”
“Berlioz, one of the most eminent musicians of all time, perhaps the
most extraordinary artist in every way who ever lived.” Thus he was
characterized by M. Reyer in speaking at the foot of Berlioz’s statue.
He was, truly, an extraordinary artist in every sense; apostle and
sectarian at one and the same time; one who conceived great things and
sometimes partly realized them; who was in turn sarcastic and
sentimental, emotional and passionate almost to weeping; who nourished
an intolerant worship of his art and never knew moderation in his
judgments; who was gifted with admirable creative faculties and opened
new paths to the art of instrumentation; who was in perpetual strife
with the pretenders of true melody, to whom he never yielded; who aimed
to be at once as noble and as majestic as Spontini, as imaginative and
as impassioned as Weber, as sweet and as tender as Virgil, as sublime
and as trivial as Shakespeare, as grand and pathetic as Goethe and
Beethoven, yet who knew how to be himself by force of will and loftiness
of genius. Berlioz had a rare grasp of mind, and was keenly sensitive to
the beauties of certain great literary works, hence the “romantic
movement” in France deeply influenced him. With enormous will power and
bordering on insanity, he aspired in his youthful dreams to be
considered, some day, the Victor Hugo, the Delacroix of musical art,
and, in some respects, his aspiration was more than realized—after he
was dead!
[Illustration: Ad. Julien]
[Illustration: