BERLIOZ'S REQUIEM
The reading of the score of Berlioz's _Requiem_ makes it appear
singularly old-fashioned, but this is true of most of the romantic
dramas, which, like the _Requiem_, show up better in actual performance.
It is easy to rail at the vehemence of the Romanticists, but it is not
so easy to equal the effect of _Hernani_, _Lucrèce Borgia_ and the
_Symphonie fantastique_ on the public. For with all their faults these
works had a marvellous success. The truth is that their vehemence was
sincere and not artificial. The Romanticists had faith in their works
and there is nothing like faith to produce lasting results.
Reicha and Leuseur were, as we know, Berlioz's instructors. Leuseur was
the author of numerous works and wrote a good deal of church music. Some
of his religious works were really beautiful, but he had strange
obsessions. Berlioz greatly admired his master and could not help
showing, especially in his earlier works, traces of this admiration.
That is the reason for the syncopated and jerky passages without rhyme
or reason and which can only be explained by his unconscious imitation
of Leuseur's faults. In imitating a model the resemblances occur in the
faults and not in the excellences, for the latter are inimitable. So the
excellences of the _Requiem_ are not due to Leuseur but to Berlioz. He
had already thrown off the trammels of school and shown all the richness
of his vigorous originality to which the value of his scores is due.
In his _Memoirs_ Berlioz related the tribulations of his _Requiem_. It
was ordered by the government, laid aside for a time, and, finally,
performed at the Invalides on the occasion of the capture of Constantine
(in Algeria) and the funeral services of General Damrémont. He was
astonished at the lack of sympathy and even actual hostility that he
encountered. It would have been more astonishing if he had experienced
anything else.
[Illustration: Hector Berlioz]
We must remember that at this time Berton, who sang _Quand on est
toujours vertuex, on aime à voir lever l'aurore_, passed for a great
man. Beethoven's symphonies were a novelty, in Paris at least, and a
scandal. Haydn's symphonies inspired a critic to write, "What a noise,
what a noise!" Orchestras were merely collections of thirty or forty
musicians.
We can imagine, therefore, the stupefaction and horror when a young man,
just out of school, demanded fifty violins, twenty violas, twenty
violoncellos, eighteen contrabasses, four flutes, four oboes, four
clarinets, eight bassoons, twelve horns, and a chorus of two hundred
voices as a minimum. And that is not all. The _Tuba Mirum_ necessitates
an addition of thirty-eight trumpets and trombones, divided into four
orchestras and placed at the four cardinal points of the compass.
Besides, there have to be eight pairs of drums, played by ten drummers,
four tam-tams, and ten cymbals.
The story of this array of drums is rather interesting. Reicha,
Berlioz's first teacher, had the original idea of playing drum taps in
chords of three or four beats. In order to try out this effect, he
composed a choral piece, _L'Harmonie des Sphères_, which was published
in connection with his _Traité d'Harmonie_. But Reicha's genius did not
suffice for this task. He was a good musician, but no more than that.
His choral piece was insignificant and remained a dead letter. Berlioz
took this lost effect and used it in his _Tuba Mirum_.
However, it must be confessed that this effect does not come up to
expectations. In a church or a concert hall we hear a confused and
terrifying mingling of sounds, and from time to time we note a change in
the depth of tone but we are unable to distinguish the pitch of the
chords.
I shall never forget the impression this _Tuba Mirum_ made on me when I
first heard it at St. Eustache under Berlioz's own direction. It
amounted to an absolute neglect of the author's directions. The
beginning of the work is marked _moderato_, later, as the brass comes
in, the movement is quickened and becomes _andante maestro_. Most of the
time the _moderato_ was interpreted as an _allegro_, and the _andante
maestro_ as a simple _moderato_. If the terrific fanfare did not
become, as some one ventured to call it, a "Setting Out for the Hunt,"
it might well have been the accompaniment for a sovereign's entrance to
his capital. In order to give this fanfare its grandiose character, the
author did not take easy refuge in the wailings of a minor key, but he
burst into the splendors of a major key. A certain grandeur of movement
alone can preserve its gigantesque quality and impression of power.
Granting all his good intentions, in trying to give us a suggestion of
the last judgment by his accumulation of brass, drums, cymbals, and
tam-tams, Berlioz makes us think of Thor among the giants trying to
empty the drinking-horn which was filled from the sea, and only
succeeding in lowering it a little. Yet even that was an accomplishment.
Berlioz spoke scornfully of Mozart's _Tuba Mirum_ with its single
trombone. "One trombone," he exclaimed, "when a hundred would be none
too many!" Berlioz wanted to make us really hear the trumpets of the
archangels. Mozart with the seven notes of his one trombone suggested
the same idea and the suggestion is sufficient.
We must not forget, however, that here we are in the midst of a world of
romanticism, in a world of color and picturesqueness, which could not
content itself with so little. And we must remember this fact, if we
would not be irritated by the oddities of _L'Hostias_, with its deep
trombone notes which seem to come from the very depths of Hell. There is
no use in trying to find out what these notes mean. Berlioz told us
himself that he discovered these notes at a time when they were almost
unknown and he wanted to use them. The contrast between these terrifying
notes and the wailing of the flutes is especially curious. We find
nothing analogous to this anywhere else.
The delightful _Purgatoire_, where the author sees a chorus of souls in
Purgatory, is much better. His Purgatory has no punishments nor any
griefs save the awaiting, the long and painful awaiting, of eternal
happiness. There is a processional in which the fugue and melody
alternate in the most felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints,
all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an
appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These
notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and
they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of
light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the
end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications
sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered. No one would dare
to describe this work as profane, but whether it is religious or not is
a question. As Boschot has said, what it expresses above all is terror
in the presence of annihilation.
When the _Requiem_ was played at the Trocadéro, the audience was greatly
impressed and filed out slowly. They did not say, "What a masterpiece!"
but "What an orchestra leader!" Nowadays people go to see a conductor
direct the orchestra just as they go to hear a tenor, and they arrogate
to themselves the right to judge the conductors as they do the tenors.
But what a fine sport it is! The qualities of an orchestra conductor
which the public appreciates are his elegance, his gestures, his
precision, and the expressiveness of his mimicry, all of which are more
often directed at the audience than at the orchestra. But all these
things are of secondary consideration. What makes up an orchestra
conductor's worth are the excellence of execution he obtains from the
musicians and the perfect interpretation of the author's meaning--which
the audience does not understand. If such an important detail as the
author's meaning is obscured and slighted, if a work is disfigured by
absurd movements and by an expression which is entirely different from
what the author wanted, the public may be dazzled and an execrable
conductor, provided his poses are good, may fascinate his audience and
be praised to the skies.
Formerly the conductor never saluted his audience. The understanding was
that the work and not the conductor was applauded. The Italians and
Germans changed all that. Lamoureux was the first to introduce this
exotic custom in France. The public was a little surprised at first, but
they soon got used to it. In Italy the conductor comes on the stage
with the artists to salute the audience. There is nothing more laughable
than to see him, as the last note of an opera dies away, jump down from
his stand and run like mad to reach the stage in time.
The excellence of the work of English choristers has been highly and
justly praised. Perhaps it would be fairer not to praise them so
unreservedly when we are so severe on our own. Justice often leaves
something to be desired. At all events it must be admitted that Berlioz
treated the voices in an unfortunate way. Like Beethoven, he made no
distinction between a part for a voice and an instrument. While except
for a few rare passages it does not fall as low as the atrocities which
disfigure the grandiose _Mass in D_, the vocal part of the _Requiem_ is
awkwardly written. Singers are ill at ease in it, for the timbre and
regularity of the voice resent such treatment. The tenor's part is so
written that he is to be congratulated on getting through it without any
accident, and nothing more can be expected of him.
What a pity it was that Berlioz did not fall in love with an Italian
singer instead of an English tragedienne! Cupid might have wrought a
miracle. The author of the _Requiem_ would have lost none of his good
qualities, but he might have gained, what, for the lack of a better
phrase, is called the fingering of the voice, the art of handling it
intelligently and making it give without an effort the best effect of
which it is capable. But Berlioz had a horror even of the Italian
language, musical as that is. As he said in his _Memoirs_, this aversion
hid from him the true worth of _Don Juan_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_. One
wonders whether he knew that his idol, Gluck, wrote music for Italian
texts not only in the case of his first works but also in _Orphée_ and
_Alceste_. And whether he knew that the aria _"O malheureuse Iphigenie"_
was an Italian song badly translated into French. Perhaps he was
ignorant of all this in his youth for Berlioz was a genius, not a
scholar.
The word genius tells the whole story. Berlioz wrote badly. He
maltreated voices and sometimes permitted himself the strangest freaks.
Nevertheless he is one of the commanding figures of musical art. His
great works remind us of the Alps with their forests, glaciers,
sunlight, waterfalls and chasms. There are people who do not like the
Alps. So much the worse for them.