CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MUSIC Cornell University Library ML 410.B51A206 Hector jBerlloz. selections from his iett 3 1924 022 328 409 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022328409 AMATEUR SERIES. HECTOR 'B,ERLIOZ SELECTIONS FROM HIS LETTERS, AND ^ESTHETIC, HUMOROUS, AND SATIRICAL WRITINGS TKANSLATBD, AND PRECEDED BY A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR BY WILLIAM F. APTHORP NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1879 Copyright, 1879, By henry holt & CO. TRANSLATORS PREFACE. T N making the following selections from the prose ■^ writings of Hector Berlioz, my main object has been to give to the English-reading public such passages as are most strikingly characteristic of the man. In the three volumes, entitled respectively " Les Soirees d' Orchestre," "Les Grotesques de la Musique," and "A Travers Chants," there might have been found several chapters of more serious value to the art of Music than many that I have selected ; but they only cover ground that has been gone over often before, and do not throw so much light upon Berlioz's own intrinsic nature as do some of the apparently more trivial selec- tions I have preferred to make. The "Lamentations of Jeremiah," for instance, may be called the most futile imaginable bit of rambling penny-a-lining, but it admirably reflects the state of iii iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. mind of a man of Berlioz's sensitive temperament, who is forced to get bread and butter by irksome critical hack-work. The ten letters from Germany form part of Berlioz's Autobiography, although they were published in France long before that work appeared in print. It seems to me that they give a more vivid picture of certain phases of a composer's professional life than any letters of the sort that have ever been published. They are open letters, written for publication, and although ex- tremely familiar in their form, it is only in the one to Franz Liszt that we find the writer using the brotherly "tu." The chapter on the production of Der Freischiits in Paris is also taken from the Autobiography, but I have thought best to put it under the head "v4 Travers Chants," as it is too short to form a separate division of this volume. My especial reason for putting it in at all was that it forms a very good companion piece to the chapter on the same subject in my friend Mr. Edward L. Burlingame's Art Life and Theories of Richard Wagner, and gives the reader an authentic view, from within, of a much discussed transaction. A few words about the spirit in which I have made these translations may not be out of place here. Ber- lioz's style is peculiarly colloquial, often slangy, for a TRANSLA TOR'S PREFA CE. v Frenchman. His writing seems singularly careless, no- tably in the matter of a proper connection of tenses ; he flies from present to aorist with the most sublime nonchalance. In this I have followed him closely. I have also been more anxious to preserve what I could of the characteristic cut of French phraseology, than to make a translation which could lay claim to distinct literary merit from a purely English point of view. In writing the Biographical Sketch I have, as before, dwelt more especially upon incidents in Berlioz's life which show his individual personality in the strongest light, than upon those which are of merely historical value. I have tried to show what the man was, rather than what he did. The intrinsic value to the world of his artistic doings is, as yet, problematical, although we see to-day ever-increasing signs of his having won an enduring place in the temple of Fame. But if all his compositions were to sink into total oblivion, his per- sonality, and the influence he exerted upon his sur- roundings, and the art of Music in general, would still be interesting and worthy of serious note. Take him for all in all, he was a man ; one so genuine, through and through, that it may be doubted whether he could even form a conception of what a sham really was. And surely History can show us few figures in which utter veracity of character exhibits itself in so explosive and drastic a shape. vi TRANSLA TOR'S PRE FA CE. I have depended for facts almost exclusively upon the Autobiography ; but, as no man can be reasonably expected to report authentically upon his own death, I have taken some facts from a very excellent notice of Berlioz, written after his death, by his intimate friend Ernest Reyer. The catalogue of Berlioz's published works, which forms the second Appendix to this volume, is as com- plete and exact as I could make it by correcting the composer's own catalogue by Hofmeister's more recent one of music published in Europe. The various num- bers of the latter work were put at my disposal through the courtesy of Mr. Arthur P. Schmidt, and Mr. Carl Priifer, of Boston, whom I herewith thank. W. F. A. Boston, June 19, 1S79. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Translator's Preface - - - - - iii Biographical Sketch ----- 3 First Journey to Germany: First Letter, to Monsieur A. Morel, (Brussels, Mayence, Frankfort) - - - 81 Second Letter, to Monsieur Girard, {Stuttgard, Hechingen) - - - - 95 Third Letter, to Franz Liszt, (Mankezm, Weimar) - - - - no Fourth Letter, to Stephen Heller, (Leipzig) - - ■ - - - 123 Fifth Letter, to Ernst, (Dresden) - - - - - 138 Sixth Letter, to Henri Heine, (Brunswick, Hamburg) - - - - 150 Seventh Letter, to Mademoiselle Louise Berlin, (Berlin) - - - - - - 164 Eighth Letter, to Monsieur Habeneck, (Berlin) - - - - - - 176 Ninth Letter, to Monsieur Desmarest, (Berlin) - - - - - 191 Tenth Letter, to Monsieur G. Osborne, (Hanover, Darmstadt) - - - - 207 vii viii CONTENTS. Selections from "Evenings in the Orchestra " : Prologue _ . _ _ - - 225 Seventh Evening. An Historical and Philosophical Study De viris illustribus urbis Romae. — A Roman Woman. — Vocabulary of the Language of the Ro- mans __..-- 228 Eighth Evening. Romans of the New World. — Mr. Barnum. — Jenny Lind's Trip to America - - 255 Ninth Evening. The Opera in Paris. — The Lyric Theatres in London. — A Study of Morals - 262 Selections from "Musical Grotesques" : Prologue. Letter to the Author from the Chorus of the Op6ra .____. 279 The Author's Reply to the Chorus of the Opfera 282 Introduction - - - - - - 289 The Right of Playing in i^ in a Symphony in D 291 A Crowned Virtuoso - - - - - 292 A New Musical Instrument _ _ _ 292 The Regiment of Colonels - - - - 293 A Cantata ----.. 294 The Evangelist of the Drum - - - 295 The Apostle of the Flageolet - - - 297 The Prophet of the Trombone - - - 298 Orchestra Conductors - . . . 298 Appreciators of Beethoven - - . . 300 Sontag's Version . _ . Not to be danced in £: A Kiss from Rossini - - . A Clarinet Concerto - - _ - 302 Musical Instruments at the Universal Exposi- tion - - - - - . A Rival of Erard - - . . . Prudence and Sagacity of a Provincial. — Alex- andre's Melodium-Organ - - - 315 Prudent Matches - - - _ Great News - - - _ . 300 301 301 304 314 3'8 - 3J8 Barley-Candy.— Severe Music - - .319 CONTEXTS. ix The Dilettanti in Blouses and Serious Music 332 Lamentations of Jeremiah - - - - 326 Success of a Miserere - - . . 340 Little Miseries of Big Concerts - - 340 Death to Flats ----- 344 The Flight into Egypt - . . 345 A First Appearance. — Despotism of the Director of the Opera ----- 349 A Saying of M. Auber's - _ . 354 Sensibility and Laconicism. — A Funeral Ora- tion IN three Syllables - - 354 Selections from " A Travers Chants " : \. Music - - - 357 IL Beethoven in Saturn's Ring. — The Mediums 371 in. The Present Condition of the Art of Sing- ing in the Lyric Theatres of France and Italy, and the Causes that have brought IT about. — Large Halls. — Claqueurs, In- .^struments of Percussion - 376 IV. The Bad Singers. — The Good Singers. — The Public. — The Claqueurs - 392 V. The Freischutz at the Opera - - 395 VI. To BE, or not to be. — PARAPHRASE - 400 Appendix A. Funeral Discourse over the body of Hector Berlioz, delivered by M. Guillaume, President of the Academie des Beaux-Arts - . - - 405 Appendix B. Catalogue of Berlioz's published works - 409 Index ------- 423 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. THE remarkable man whose name stands at the head of these pages, and whose "grand profile of a wounded eagle" figured for half a century or more in French and European musical life, was born on the iith of December, 1803, in the little town of La Cote- Saint- Andre in the Department of the Jsere. in France, a small county-towTTTymg between Vienne, Grenoble, and Lyons. "During the months preceding my birth," he writes, "my mother did not dream, like Virgil's, that she would bring forth a laurel -bough. However painful this avowal may be to my self-love, I must add that she did not even believe, like Olympias, the mother of Al- exander, that she bore a flaming brand in her breast. Passing strange, I admit, but nevertheless true. I sim- ply saw the light without any of the precursory signs, usual in poetic ages, announcing the advent of those predestined to glory. Is it because our times are want- ing in poetry ?"/ Born, then, after the simple fashion of common mortals, and, we will suppose, ushered into the world with the usual amount of midwifery, parental admiration, and wailing; destined in after life to reap 4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. what he sowea and no more, in quite the common way. But he was not in the least a common mortal ; in fact, one of the strangest shapes this earth has yet witnessed, sowing in the most remarkable manner, and reaping no loss remarkable crops, very often to his own astonish- ment and confusion ; whizzing and whirring through existence by such fitful, eccentric, ignis-fatuus paths that men were often, and to some extent still are, at a loss to discover what meaning and virtue lay in him. The virtue that we discern in him is Faith ; an imshaken be- lieTthat Truth is the proper life-element of men of all degrees; that from Truth all good must come,lihd that Untruth either in thought or deed can breed nothing but evil. It is this faith alone, which was a very living- faith with him, and did not exist on paper merely, to be worn round the neck as a label or price-ticket for the. inspection of mankind, but was of a much deeper and 'more efficient nature, that makes his life a lovely spec- j tacle to us. It is the one pure, sterling element in a character in which all else was more or less distorted. A character in which much was awry and which an ex- ceptionally hard experience of life did not tend to straighten ; but which has come to the not too discern- ing vision of men in such a topsy-turvied shape, re- fracted through the distorting media of the man's own personal vanity, and the utter, at times wanton, misap- prehension of his contemporaries, that it seems at first sight very chaotic indeed. — In his relation to art we must as yet be content to take Berlioz to a great extent at his own valuation.' A.11 that he did was so original, both in essence and out- ward form, that the world has not yet had time tq thoroughly digest it — has indeed found it indigestible to quite an unprecedented degree. Here is his own ac- count (much abridged) of his musical doings and suf- ferings : BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. c "The principal cause of the long war that has been waged against me lies in the antagonism that exists be- tween my musical sense and that of the great (grosj Paris public. A host of people must have looked upon me as a madman, since I looked upon them as children and simpletons. All music that steps out of the narrow path in which the makers of comic operas amble along was necessarily mad music for these people for a quartet of a century. Beethoven's masterpiece (the Ninth Sym- phony) and his colossal piano-forte sonatas are still mad music in their eyes. "Then I had the professors of the Conservatoire against me, stirred up by Cherubini and Fetis, whose self-love had been severely ruffled and whose faith had been revolted by my heterodoxy in matters of theory in harmony and rhythm. I am a skeptic in music, or rather I am of the religion of Beethoven, Weber, Gluck, and Spontini, who believe, profess, and prove by their works that everything is good or that everything is bad; the effect alone that certain combinations produce being able to condemn or absolve them. "Now even those professors who are the most obsti- nate in upholding the old rules, overstep them more or less in their works. _ "Among my adversaries must also be counted the partisans of the sensualistic Italian school, whose doc- trines I have often attacked and whose gods I have blasphemed. " "I am more prudent to-day. I still abhor, as I used to abhor,' those operas which the crowd proclaims to be masterpieces of dramatic music, but which are in my eyes infamous caricatures of sentiment and passion;, only I have the strength not to speak of them any more. "Nevertheless, my position as critic still makes me many enemies. And the most ardent in their hatred are not so much those whose works I have blamed, as 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. those whom I have either never mentioned, or else praised ill. f — ■"! have, since a few years, some new enemies^ from [the superiority people have seen fit to allow me in the art of conducting orchestras. The musicians have made blmost all the conductors of orchestras in Germany hos- tile to me, by the exceptional talent they exhibit under my direction, by their warm demonstrations and the hints they occasionally let drop. The same thing has been true for a long time in Paris. You will see in my Memoires the strange effects of the displeasure of Ha- beneck and M. Girard. The same is true in London, where M. Costa attacks me covertly wherever he has a 4boting. " You will admit that I have had a fine phalanx to combat. Let us not forget the singers and players, whom I call to order quite roughly enough whenever they allow themselves to take irreverent liberties in in- terpreting masterpieces ; nor envious persons, who are always prompt to anger whenever anything presents it- self with a certain degree of brilliancy. "But this life of fighting has a certain charm when the opposing party has been reduced to moderate pro- portions, as it has to-day. I like to make a fence crack now and then, breaking through instead of clearing it. It is the natural effect of my passion for music, a passion which is ever incandescent and is never satisfied but for ■a moment. The love of money has never allied itself in a single instance with this love of art ; I have always^ on the contrary, been ready to make all sorts' of sacri- fices to go in search of the beautiful, and insure myself against contact with those paltry platitudes which are crowned by popularity. You might offer me a hundred thousand francs to indorse certain works which have had an immense success, and I would refuse them with wrath. I am so constituted. You can easily imagine BIOCRAPUICAL SKETCH. 7 the consequences of such an organization being placed in the midst of the musical world of Paris, such as it was twenty years ago. "If I were now to draw the opposite side of the pict- ure, I might once for all be wanting in modesty. The sympathy I have met with in France, Germany, and Russia has consoled me for many troubles. I could even cite some very singular manifestations of enthusi- asm. Need I call attention to Paganini's royal present and the so cordially artist-like letter that accompanied it ? . . . "I will only mention a pretty speech of Lipinski, the Conzertmeister at the theatre in Dresden. I was in that capital of Saxony three years ago. After a splendid concert, at which my legend of La Damnation de Faust had been given, Lipinski introduced to me a musician who, he said, wished to compliment me, but who did not speak a word of French. So, as I do not speak German, Lipinski offered to act as interpreter, when the artist steps forward, takes me by the hand, stammers out a few words and bursts into sobs that he could no longer restrain. Then Lipinski, turning to me and pointing to his friend's tears, says : 'You understand ! ' "Still another, an antique speech. Several move- ments of my choral symphony of Romeo et Juliette' were to be given lately in Brunswick. On the morn- ing before the concert a stranger to me who sat next me at the table d'hote told me that he had made a long journey to hear this score in Brunswick. "'You ought to write an opera on that theme,' said he; 'by the way you have treated it as a symphony, and the way you understand Shakspere, you would do something unheard of — something marvelous.' "'Alas, sir,' I answered, 'where are the artists to sing and act the two leading parts ? They do not exist ; and even if they did, thanks to the musical manners and 3 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. morals and the customs of our lyric theatres, if I were to put such an opera in rehearsal, I should be sure to die before the first performance.' " In the evening my amateur goes to the concert, and, talking between the parts with one of his neighbors, repeats to him the answer I gave him in the morning about an opera of Romeo et Juliette. His neighbor says nothing for a moment, then strikes a great blow upon the railing of his box, and cries out: 'Well, let him die ! but let him do it !' "I see that I have said nothing technical about my manner of writing. ^ "My style is in general very daring, but it has not the J slightest tendency to destroy any of the constructive elements of art. On the contrary, I seek to increase the number of those elements. I have never dreamed, as has been foolishly imagined in France, of writing music without melody. That school exists to-day in Germany, and I have a horror of it. It is easy for any one to convince himself that, without confining myself to taking a very short melody for a theme, as the great- est masters have often done, I have always taken care "to JnyesLmy-compositions with a real wealth of melody. The value of these melodies, their distinction, their nov- elty and charm can be very well contested ; it is not for me to appraise them ; but to deny their existence is either bad faith or stupidity. Only as these melodies are often of vejy^ large dimensions, infantile and short-sighted minds do not clearly/distinguish their form ; or else they are weddedjo other secondary melodies^ which veil their outlines from those same infantile minds ; or, upon the whole, these melodies are so dissimilar to the little wag- geries that the musical plebs call melodies, that they cannot make up their minds to give the same name to both. ';The dominant qualities of my music are passionate BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. g exgression, i nternal fire, r hythmic anima tion and unex- \ pected c hanges. When I say passionate expression, I mean an expression that eagerly strives to reproduce the most inward meaning n f the subject, even when the subject itself is foreign _to_passion. and sweet and tender sentime'nts, or the most profound calm are to be ex- pressed. " It is the sort of expression that people have thought to find in the Enfance du Christ, and especially in the scene in Heaven of the Damnation de Faust, and in the Sanctus of the Requiem. " The mention of this last work suggests to me that it would be well to notice a class of ideas which I am almost the only modern composer to have entertained, and the extent of which the ancients did not even sus- pect. I am speaking of those enormous compositions to which certain critics have given the name of archi- tectural, or monumental, music, and which have led the German poet Henri Heine to call me a colossal night- ingale, a lark of eagle's size, such as they tell us existed in the primeval world. ' Yes,' the poet goes on to say, 'Berlioz's music in general has in it something primeval,-^ if not antediluvian, to my mind ; it makes me think of gigantic species of extinct atiimals, of fabulous empires full of fabulous sins, of heaped-up impossibilities; his magical accents call up to our tninds Babylon, the hang- ing gardens, the wonders of Nineveh, the daring edifices of Mizraim, as we see them in the pictures of the En- glishman, Martin.' "In the same paragraph of his book (Lntece), H. Heine, still comparing me to the eccentric Englishman, affirms that I have little melody, and that I have no naivete at all. The first performance of the Enfance du Christ took place three weeks after the publication oi Lutece ; the next day I received a letter from Heine in which he broke out into overwhelming expressions of regret at having thus misjudged mc, ' I hear on all lO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. sides; he wrote from his bed of suffering, 'that you have just plucked a nosegay of the sweetest melodious flowers; and that your oratorio is throicghout a masterpiece of naivete. I shall never forgive myself for having been so utijust to a friend: I went to see him, and he broke out afresh intt) self- recriminations. 'But,' said I to him, •why did you let yourself go, like a vulgar critic, and express a dogmatic opinion of an artist whose whole work you are far from being acquainted with ? You keep thinking of the Witches' Sabbath, the March to the Scaffold, the Dies irm and Lachrymosa of my Requiem. Yet I think that I have done, and can do things of a wholly different character.' . . . "Those musical problems which I have tried to solve, and which gave rise to Heine's mistake, aire exceptional from the employment of extraordinary means. In my Requiem, for instance, there are four orchestras of brass instruments separated from, and answering one another from a distance, grouped around the grand orchestra and mass of voices. In the Te Deum it is the organ that converses from one end of the church with the orchestra and two choirs placed at the other end, and with a very large chorus of voices in unison, rep- resenting the assemblage of the people which takes part from time to time in this vast religious concert. But it is above all the breadth of style and the for- midable prolongation of certain progressions of which the final goal is not divined, that give these works their strangely gigantic physiognomy and colossal as- pect. It is also this immensity of form that either makes you comprehend nothing, or else crushes you with a terrible emotion. How often at the perform- ■afices of my Requiem has there not stood by the side of a trembling listener, convulsed to the very depths of his soul, another who opened his ears wide without hearing anything. That man was in the position of the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETC/f. I I inquisitive people who go up into the statue of St. Charles Borromeo at Como, and who are greatly sur- prised on being told that the room in which they have just sat down is inside the head of the saint. "Those of my works which critics have called archi-"" tectural music are : my Symphonie funebre et triompliale for two orchestras and chorus ; the Te Deum, of which the finale (Judex crederis) is beyond all doubt the grandest thing I have produced ; my cantata for tw choruses, L' hnperiale, performed at the concerts in th| palais de I'lndustrie in 1855, and above all ray Reqnien As for those of my compositions which are conceive' within ordinary proportions, and in which I have ha recourse to no exceptional means, it is precisely thei inter nal fire , their e xpress ion j.nd_rhythmical origiiialitj that 'have most injured~ftim~m"TEieeyFs of the world on account of the qualities of execution they demand/^ To render them well the performers, and especially the| conductor, m.\i°Xfeel as I do. I must have extreme pre- cision wedded to irresistible verve, a well-tempered en- thusiasm, a dreamy sensibility, an almost morbid mel- ancholy, without which the prime outlines of my figures are changed, or completely wiped out. It is conse- quently excessively painful for me to hear the greater part of my compositions played under any directiojj. other than my own. I almost had a fit while listening to my overture to King Lear in Prag, conducted by a Kapellmeistet whose talent is yet undoubted. It is con- ceivable what I suffered from even the involuntary blun- ders of Habeneck during the long assassination of my opera Benvenuto Cellini at rehearsals. "If you ask me now which one of my compositions I prefer, I will answer, I am of the same opinion as most artists. I prefer the adagio (love scene) in Romeo et Juliette. One day in Hanover, at the close of this movement, I felt myself pulled backwards, without know- • 12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ing by whom; on turning round I saw that it was the musicians near me kissing the skirts of my coat. But I should take good care not to have this adagio played in certain halls and before certain audiences. "I could also quote, illustrating some French preju- dices against me, the story of the chorus of shepherds in the Enfance du Christ, which was performed at two concerts under the name Pierre Ducre, an imaginary chapel-master of the eighteenth century.' What praises were heaped upon that simple melody! How many said: 'Berlioz is not the man to do a thing like that!' "One evening in a drawing-room a song was sung, on the title-page of which was written the name of Schubert. An amateur who was penetrated with a holy horror of my music cried out: 'There! there is melody, there is sentiment, clearness and good sense! No Berlioz would have hit upon that!' It was CellinVs song in the second act of the opera of that name. "A dilettante complained at a party of having been most improperly mystified, as follows: "'One morning,' said he, 'I dropped in to hear one of the rehearsals for the concert of the Sainte-Cecile, conducted by M. Seghers. I heard a brilliant move- ment for orchestra, extremely spirited, but essentially different in style and instrumentation from any sym- phony I knew of. I stepped up to M. Seghers and asked : "'What is that overture you have just been playing? It quite carried me away.' " ' It is the overture to the Carnaval romain by Ber- Hoz.' "'You will agree . . .' "'Oh yes!' said one of my friends, interrupting him, 'we must agree that it is indecent to surprise the religion of respectable people in such a way.' ' Vide page 345. BIOGKAPHICAL SKETCH. 1 3 "I am allowed, both in France and elsewhere, the maestria in the art of instrumentation, especially since I have published a text-book on the subject. But I am reproached with an excessive use of the Sax instmz, ments (no doubt because I have often praised the talent of that skillful maker). Now, up to the present time, I have only used them in one scene of the Prise de Troie, an opera of which no living soul as yet knows a single page. I am reproached with an excess of noise, a pr5=\ dilection for the big-drum, which I have used only in a \ small number of my compositions, where its use is per- fectly natural, and I alone among all critics have for' twenty years obstinately protested against the revolting abuse of noise, against the insensate use of the big- drum, trombones, etc., in small theatres, in small orches- tras, in small operas, in little songs, where they now even use the snare-drum. _^^ "Rossini was the real introducer of banging instru- mentation into France, in the Siege de Corinthe, and not a French critic has spoken of him in this matter, or reproached Auber, Halevy, Adam and twenty others with their odious exaggeration of his system, but they reproach me, nay, much more, they reproach Weber with it! (see the Life of Weber in Michaut's Biog- raphie tmiverselle) Weber, who only used the big- drum once in his orchestra, and who used all instru- ments with incomparable reserve and talent ! "As far as it concerns myself, I fancy that this comical mistake has arisen from the festivals at which I have been seen conducting immense orchestras. Indeed, Prince Metternich said to me one day in Vienna : "'Are not you the man, monsieur,'^ who composes music for five hundred performers ? ' "To which I replied: "'Not always, monseigneur; I sometimes write for four hundred and fifty.' 14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "But what matters it ? . . . my scores are published now ; the exactness of my assertions can be easily veri- fied. And even if they are never verified, what matters it still ! " . . . T Berlioz's passion for music began to develop at a very early age. When quite a little boy he found an old -^geolet one day while rummaging among some chests of drawers, and began to try to play Malbrook upon it, much to the discomfort of his father's nerves. His father at last taught him the mechanism of the instru- ment in self-defense, and he was soon able to regale the whole family with' that "heroic" air. He afterwards 'Acquired quite a respectable proficiency on the flute and guitar, and wrote two or three pieces of,concerted music, which he used to play together with some musical 'friends. "You see," says he, "that I was a master of these majestic and incomparable instruments, the flageo- let, the flute and the guitar ! Who would dare not to -recognize in this judicious choice my natural impulse toward the most immense orchestral effects and music in the Michelagnolo vein ! ! . . . The flute, the guitar, and the flageolet !!!... I never had any other ex- ecutive talent ; but these strike me as quite respectable enough. No, I wrong myself, I also played the drunir^ '^He also evinced a taste for voyages and adventures, and passed much of his time reading books of travel and looking over maps. "He knows the names of all the Sandwich Islands," his father used to say, "of the Moluccas and Philippines; he knows the Straits of Torres, Timor, Java, and Borneo, and could not tell you the number of departments in France if you asked him." He wag* brought up at home under his father's tutorship. His favorite poets were La Fontaine and Virgil, though his taste for the classic authors did not show itself at first. He was also much impressed by Florian's pastoral of Estelle et Nemorin, which he used BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. j, to read and reread in secret, Having abstracted the book from his father's hbrary. At the age of twelve he fell violently in love widi a young lady of eighteen, niece of a Madame Gautier,. who had a villa in Meylan, near Grenoble and the Sa- voy frontier. Her name was ^Estelle. "She who bore'' it," he writes, "was eighteen years old; she was tall and graceful of figure, had great, piercing eyes, though gay and laughing withal, a head of hair worthy to adorn the helmet of Achilles, and . . . pink boots ! . . . I had never seen any before. . . . You laugh ! ! . . . Well, I have forgotten the color of her hair (which, however, I think was black), but I never can think of her without seeing her great eyes and httle pink boots' sparkling together." Of this Estelle we shall hear more by and by. Suf- fice it to say that his passion took entire possession of him, as is not unusual with calf-love of that sort, and he set many of the songs of his favorite pastoral to music in his beloved's honor. The theme of one of these ap- peared afterwards in the opening largo of his Fantastic Symphony : Largo. VnL con sordini. He was brought up, as he says, "in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman faith. This charming religion (since it has left off burning people) made my happiness for seven whole years ; and although we have long since quarreled, I have always kept a very tender remem- brance of it." His father, who was a physician, wished him to fol- low the same profession, but he had no inclination that way. He was, however, persuaded to enter upon a j5 biographical sketch. course of studies in osteology, by the bribe of a new flute furnished with all the new keys, which his father sent for to Lyons. At the age of nineteen (1822) he was sent to Paris to study medicine under Amussat. His disgust for the science grew stronger day by day, in spite of his con- scientious studies. The dissecting-room was his special horror. He seems to have felt more interest in some lectures on chemistry by Thenard and Gay-Lussac, and especially in a course on literature by Andrieux. But every moment he could snatch from his studies he spent' in the library of the Conservatoire, reading the scores of Gluck's operas, music being irrepressibly his ruling passion. At last he hears Madame Branchu and Deri- vis at the Opera in Salieri's Danaides, to which Spontini had added considerable ballet-music, also Mehul's Strat- onice and a ballet called Nina, the music arranged by Persuis, in which Mademoiselle Bigottini's dancing and pantomime strike him as much to be admired. But in spite of these distractions he keeps his promise to his father, and works away manfully at medicine. Yet Gluck's scores gain more and more influence over him, and one night, coming out from the Opera and his first hearing of Iphigenie en Tmiride, he takes a vow that he must and will be a musician in spite of father, mother, uncles, aunts, grand-parents, and friends. The dissect- ing-room never saw him more. He writes this, his in- flexible determination, home to his father, conjuring him to no longer thwart him in following his evident voca- tion. His father answers affectionately but firmly, be- ing indeed a man of much heart and high integrity of character. "Be either great and highest in the arts, or leave them alone." That is the paternal dictum. "Noth- ing is so loathsome as a bad artist ! " And a bad phy- sician ? thinks Hector ; but keeps this repartee to him- self Yet he will not take No for an answer, and writes BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 1 7 back more and more urgently, at last even explosivel)-, but to no purpose. So he takes the bit in his teeth, and applies to Lesueur for a place among his pupils. He had met at the Conservatoire library a young man, Ge- rono by name, who was then studying under Lesueur, and who introduced him to his master. Berlioz had found time during his flaming correspondence with his father to write some music, and he presented himself before Lesueur armed with a cantata for voices and or- chestra on Millevoye's poem, Le Cheval arabe, and a three-part canon. Lesueur examined the cantata and said: "There is much fire and dramatic movement in the thing, but you do not yet know how to write, and your harmony is so full of mistakes that it would be useless to point them out. Gerono will have the kind- ness to teach you our principles of harmony, and as soon as you know them well enough to be able to un- derstand me, I shall be happy to receive you among my pupils." So Berlioz sets to work under Gerono's super- - vison, and is soon admitted as private pupil of Le- ' sueur. He takes it into his head after a while to write an opera, so, remembering the delight Andrieux's lect- ures on hterature had given him, he applies to him for a libretto. By no means wanting in audacity is our young man ! This is the answer he receives : "Sir: "Your letter has interested me deeply; the enthusi- asm you show for the beautiful art you are cultivating is a guaranty of your success; I wish you may win it with all my heart, and that I could contribute my share towards it. But the task you propose to me is one no longer fitted to my age; my thoughts and studies are turned in other directions; - you would think me a barba- rian were I to tell you how many years have passed by since I have set foot inside the Opera or the Feydeau. jg BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. I am sixty-four, and it would ill suit me to set to turning love verses; and as for music, I must hardly think of any, save the Requiem-mz.ss. I regret that you did not come thirty or forty years sooner, or I later. We might have worked together. Accept my excuses, which are only too good, and my sincere and affectionate greeting. "June //, z82j. Andrieux." Disappointed in this quarter, Berlioz turns to Gerono, who seems to have had some supposed aptitude for verse-making, and asks him to dramatize Florian's Es- telle for him. The two concoct a sort of musical drama between them; most futile, rose-tinted bit of musical gossamer that perhaps ever spotted music paper. Too evidently worthless to be done anything with. He next writes a scene for bass voice and orchestra, the text bor- rowed from Saurin's Beverley ou le Joueur, a very gloomy, blood-thirsty composition, which he had some thoughts of offering to Derivis, but did not. M. Masson, chapel-master at the church of Saint- Roch, proposed to him to write a mass, to be performed in that church on Childermas Day. When the work was completed it was put into the hands of the choir-boys to copy the parts. Valentino, who was then conductor of the Opera orchestra and had his eye upon the lead- ership of that of the Royal Chapel, agreed to conduct the performance, but when the day for rehearsal came the promised "grand vocal and instrumental masses" were found to consist of only thirty-two singers, nine violins, one viola, an oboe, a horn and a bassoon. The parts were moreover so full of clerical errors that all idea of performance had to be given up, Berlioz retiring from the scene in an exceedingly volcanic condition. Valentino comforted him to the best of his ability, prom- ising to stand by him whenever the work should really come to a performance. So he set to work to entirely BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ig rewrite the mass, having recognized many blemishes in it, and spent three months in copying the parts himself, being unable to pay professional copyists. But as he had no money to organize a performance himself, he applied to M. de Chateaubriand, by the advice of his friend Humbert Ferrand, for a loan of twelve hundred francs. This is the reply he received : " Paris, December j i, 1824. "You ask me, sir, for twelve hundred francs; I have not got them; I would send them to you if I had. I have no means of serving you with the ministers. I take, sir, a deep interest in your troubles. I love the arts and honor artists ; but the trials to which talent is subjected sometimes make it triumph at last, and the hour of success amply repays for all sufferings. "Accept, sir, all my regrets; they are very sincere. " Chateaubriand." So that bid did not come to much. At last a young enthusiastic friend of his, A. de Pons by name, lends him the twelve hundred francs, and the mass comes to a performance at Saint-Roch, Valentino conducting. This was the first public performance of a work by Ber- lioz, date not given, but supposably in the early part of 1825. The work was repeated in the church of Saint- Eustache in 1827 on the day of the great riot in the rue Saint-Denis. Berlioz conducted in person ior the first time. After the performance, becoming convinced of the worthlessness of the work, he burned it, together with the scene from Beverley, the opera of Estelle and a Latin oratorio. The Passage through the Red Sea, which he had just finished. What success the mass had (at Saint-Roch in 1825) brought about a temporary cessation of hostilities be- tween Berlioz and his family, the stern father being 20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. sensibly pleased in spite of himself; but the truce was of short duration, and wholly ended on Berlioz's failing to gain a prize, or even to be admitted as a competitor, at the Conservatoire. As matters seemed well-nigh desperate, he bethought himself of returning to the Cote-Saint-Andre, and trying to alter his father's deter- mination. This succeeded to a certain extent, the father allowing him to return to Paris and continue his musical studies on condition that if he found out after a certain time that he was not likely to succeed as a musician, he should be content to resume his studies in medicine. But his mother viewed the project in a different light. She, good woman, being much inclined to look upon all artists and poets as born children of the Evil One, and thus predestined to eternal damnation, could not be brought to consent to her son's enlisting, even for a time, in the army of Satan, and finding the young man impervious either to argument or entreaty, especially after his father's consent, could find nothing better to do than to give him her formal curse and throw him off forever. With which he very sorrowfully, for he loved his parents much, returned to Paris. His first care was to pay off his debt to de Pons. He hired a little room up five flights at the corner of the rue de Harley and the quai des Orfevres in the Cite. His meals cost him from seven to eight sous per diem, and consisted mostly of bread, raisins, prunes and dates. These he ate usually while sitting at the foot of the great ' bronze Henri IV on the pont Neuf He managed to get some pupils on the guitar, the flute, and in solfeggio. At this time he wrote an opera, Les Francs-Juges, to a libretto by Humbert Ferrand. But it was refused by the committee of the Academic Royale de Musique, and only the overture ever saw the light. This overture was the first of his works that gained any lasting repu- tation. By the severest thrift he had managed to pay BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 back six hundred francs to de Pons ; but he, being much pressed for money and of a rather dissolute turn, wrote secretly to Berlioz's father, telling him of the debt. The father immediately paid off the debt and wrote to Hector definitely that if he did not drop all connection with music at once his allowance would be stopped, and that he would henceforth have only himself to look to for support. Berlioz, having just entered Reicha's class in counterpoint at the Con- servatoire, could not make up his mind to give up his chosen career, and his intercourse with his family was entirely suspended for some time. His funds were at a very low ebb, and he tried to get a position as first or second flute in several orchestras, but in vain. At last he applied for the position of chorus-singer at the Thea- tre des Nouveautes. Here is his account of his luck with the examiners : "The examination of candidates was to take place in the Free Mason's Hall in the rue de Grenelle-Sainte- Honore. I went there. Five or six poor devils like myself were already awaiting their judges in anxious silence. I found among them a weaver, a blacksmith, an actor who had been turned away from a small thea- tre on the boulevard, and a singer from the church of Saint-Eustache. The examination weis to be for basses; my voice could only pass for a fair baritone ; but I thought that our examiner might perhaps not be too particular. "It was the stage-manager himself He appeared, followed by a musician of the name of Michel, who now' plays in the orchestra of the Vaudeville. They had neither piano-forte nor pianist. Michel's violin was to accompany us. "The trial begins. My rivals sing in turn after their » 1850. 2* 22 BIOGKAPUICAL SKETCH. own fashion several airs which they had carefully stud- ied. When my turn comes, our enormous stage-mana- ger, whose name was, oddly enough, Saint- Leger, asks me what I have brought. '"I? Nothing.' '"How nothing ? What will you sing then ?' '"Faith, what you like. Isn't tliere some score here, some solfeggi, or a book of vocalises?' . . . "'We haven't got anything of the sort. Besides,' continues the manager in sufficiently contemptuous tone, 'you don't sing at sight I suppose ?' . . . '"I beg your pardon, I will sing at sight anything you show me.' '"Ah! that alters the case. But as we haven't any music, don't you know some familiar piece by heart ?' '"Yes, I know by heart Les Danaides, Stratonice, La Vestale, Cortes, CEdipe, both the Iphigenies, Orphee, Armide ..." "'Stop! stop! The devil! what a memory! Let us see, since you are so learned, sing us the air from Sacchini's Qidipe : Elle m'a prodigiie.' "'Certainly.' "'Can you accompany it, Michel?' "'Of course I can; only I have forgotten what key it is in.' "'In E-flat. Shall I sing the recitative?' "'Yes, let's have the recitative.' "The accompanyist gives me the chord of E-flat, and I begin : " 'Antigone me reste, Antigone est ma fille,' etc "The other candidates looked piteously at each other as I sang the noble melody, and saw well that compared with me, who am yet neither a Pischek nor a Lablache, they had sung, not like shepherds but like sheep. And in fact, I saw by a little look of the manager that they BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 2, were, in stage language, knocked into the tliird row un- derground. Next day I received my official nomina- tion ; I had beaten the weaver, the blacksmith, the actor, and even the singer from Saint-Eustache. My service began immediately, and I had fifty francs a month. "So here you see me, while waiting for the time when I can become an accursed dramatic composer, a chorus- singer in a second-rate theatre, outcast and excommu- nicated to the very marrow of my bones. How I ad- mire the success of my parents' efforts to snatch me from the abyss !" From this point his fortunes seem to mend a little. He gets some fresh pupils, and, above all, meets an old friend from his native town, one Antoine Charbonnel, who had come to Paris to study pharmacy. The pair of friends hire two little rooms in the rue de la Harpe, where they live for some time in comparative comfort, Berlioz going to the length of buying a piano-forte. "It cost me a hundred and ten francs. I could not play upon it ; yet I always like to have one to strike chords upon now and then. Besides, I am fond of the companionship of musical instruments, and if I were rich enough I should always have around me, while I work, a grand piano, two or three Erard harps, some Sax trumpets, and a collection of Stradivarius violins and basses." In spite of their modest way of living, the friends still had their little vanities. Charbonnel would always walk on the other side of the street when Berlioz was carrying home provisions from market, and Berlioz, for his part, never confessed to his chum what his business was every evening at the theatre. In fact, what he used to call his "dramatic career" remained a dead secret for years, until it by some chance got into the newspapers. When the time came round again for a competition for prizes in composition at the Conservatoire, he passed 2 A BIOGRArHICAL SKETCH. the preliminary examination and set himself to work on a lyric scene with grand orchestra. The subject given out by the board of examiners was Orpheus torn to Pieces by Bacchants. The piece was not wholly devoid of merit, but the very second-rate pianist whose busi- ness it was to sketch out the orchestral part on the piano-forte found the Bacchanale too much for his clumsy fingers, and the board of examiners, composed of Cherubini, Paer, Lesueur, Berton, Boieldieu and Catel condemned the work as impossible to be played: There were many similar nonsensicalities in the then, regulations of the Conservatoire. Berlioz had obtained a leave of absence from the Theatre des Nouveautes to finish this work. After this, his second failure, he set to work again with redoubled vigor, but his health failed him, and he was at last forced to give up almost all work, being kept to his room by a severe attack of quinsy, of which he all but died. He saved himself by one night operating upon his own throat with a pen- knife. His family only heard of his danger when it was over ; but his father, touched by his industry and per- severance, made friendly overtures and again made him an allowance of money, which rendered a return to the stage unnecessary. From this time Berlioz's musical work went on with- out interruption up to the year 1 830, when he went to Rome. He worked at everything that came to his hand with the enthusiasm that was such a notable part of his character. This enthusiasm was gradually worked up almost to the pitch of delirium by the works of Weber and Beethoven, which were at that time getting their first hearings in France. It has been a matter of much doubt how much real appreciation there was in Berlioz's frantic admiration for Gluck, Weber and Beethoven.. Berlioz had certainly one of the clearest heads going; his power of insight was sharp, if not deep. It can be BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 well doubted whether his was upon the whole a veryv profound nature. A wholly true and veracious nature in surely was, but his capacity for diving below the surfaceX, of things was small. His apt]tude_fojr^ the^jntense Js ^ perhaps unparalleled in the history of art, and it often / seems" a^ if 4iis highest ideal in art were a sort of delir- / ium tremens set to music, an aesthetic typhomania and ' chaos regained. He was t otally devo idof reticence, the most loud-shrieking mortaT alive. But we~sHould think twice before calling him merely theatrical. His slightest joys and sorrows had~ to Ibe^Hrieked over until the whole world rang with them, there was not an in- nermost recess of his heart that he did not lay bare for public sympathy to peer into, he made the universe his confidant ; but though his shriekings and bowlings often failed to reach the hearts of his hearers or to lay bare the heart of the subject that affected him, as such violent, inarticulate methods usually do fail, they_yetjcame from the very bottom of his own heart; they might seem theafricar to the rest of the world, but they were very real to him. A man most grimly in earnest in all he did, not of deep insight, but of clear, and withal of such a frank and open generosity, ever wishful to sympathize and admire, as he himself yearned for sympathy; so tenacious of the good repute of all he did admire ! Hear this that he says of Castilblaze and Lachnith who took such notorious liberties with Mozart's and Weber's scores : "These corrections, meseems, do not come from above downward; but from below upward, and vertically at that! " Let no one tell me that these arrangers, in working over the masters, have sometimes made happy hits; for such exceptional consequences cannot justify introduc- ing this monstrous immorality into art. "No, no, no, ten million times no, musicians, poets, 3 26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. prose-writers, actors, pianists, orchestra conductors of the third and second rank, and even of the first, you have no right to lay hands upon the Beethovens and Shaksperes, to throw your science and your taste as alms to them. "No, no, no, a thousand million times no, no man, whoever he may be, has the right to force another man, whatsoever he may be, to change his own physiognomy for another's, to express himself in a fashion that is not his own, to assume a form he has not himself chosen, to become a manikin set agoing by another's will while ahve, or to be galvanized when dead. If the man is mediocre, let him lie buried in mediocrity! If on the other hand he is one of God's own elect, let his equals, or even his superiors, respect him, and his inferiors hum- bly bow down before him. "After Kreutzer, in the late sacred concerts at the Opera, had made divers cuts in one of Beethoven's sym- phonies, have we not seen Habeneck leave out certain instruments from another by the same master? Do we not hear in London parts for the big-drum, trombones and ophicleide added by M. Costa to the scores of Don Giovmini, Figaro and the Barber? . . . And if or- chestra conductors dare, according to their whim, to strike out or introduce certain parts in works of this sort, who will prevent the violins or horns, or the last and least of the players, from doing as much? . . . An4 then will not translators, editors, and even copyists, engravers and printers have a good pretext for follow- ing in their wake? . . . "Is not this the ruin, the entire destruction, the fina) end of art ? . . . And ought not we, we who are all filled with the glory, and jealous of the indefeasible rights of the human mind, to denounce the culprit, whenever we see them vi^ronged, and pursue him and cry out with the whole strength of our wrath: 'Your crime is ridiculous; BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 Despair ! ! Your stupidity is criminal ; Die ! ! Be baf- fled, be spit upon, be accursed! Despair and die! I'" It was at this period of his life that, goaded to mad- ness by the attacks which the Rossinist papers were continually making upon Gluck and Spontini, he wrote a flaming reply to the "rambling discourses of one of those idiots" and offered it to M. Michaud, the editor of the Quotidienne. He admits that the article was "very disordered and badly written, and overstepped all bounds of polemic writing." Michaud, scared at its audacity, would not print it, saying: "All that is true, but you break windows." He afterwards wrote several admiring articles on Gluck, Spontini and Beethoven, which appeared in the Revue ezcropeenne, but he did not take up critical writ- ing as a fixed calling for several years. He says of his writing: "My laziness has always been great in writing prose. I have spent many nights in composing my scores; even the rather fatiguing work of instrumenta- tion keeps me sometimes eight consecutive hours at my desk without moving, and I do not even feel a desire to change my posture ; /But it is not without effort that I can make up my mind to begin a page of prose, and I get up after writing ten lines (with very rare exceptions) and walk about my room; I look out of the window; I open the first book I. happen to lay hands on; in a word,^ I try all means to combat the ennui and fatigue that I so soon begin to feelN I have to make eight or ten bites of it before I can finish an article for the Journal des Debats. It usually takes me two days to write one, even when the subject I am writing on pleases me, amuses me, or even greatly excites me. And what erasures! what blots! you should just see my first copy." It was about this time also that his Shaksperean en- thusiasm began. He writes : "I come here to the greatest drama of my life. I ^8 BIOGRArHTCAL SKETCH. shall not give all the painful catastrophes of it. I will only say this : An English company came to Paris to give some plays of Shakspere, at that time wholly un- known to the French public. I went to the first per- formance of Hamlet at the Odeon. I saw in the part of Ophelia Henriette Smithson, who became my wife five years afterwards. The effect of her prodigious talent, or rather her dramatic genius, upon my heart and imagination is only comparable to the complete over- turning the poet, whose worthy interpreter she was, caused in me. "Shakspere, coming upon me thus suddenly, struck me as with a thunder-bolt. His lightning opened the heaven of art to me with a sublime crash, and lighted up its furthest depths. I recognized true dramatic grandeur, beauty, and truth. I measured at the same time the boundless inanity of the notions of Shaks- pere that had been spread abroad in France by Vol- taire, . . . " ' Ce singe de g^nie, Chez I'homme, en mission, par le diable envoyd,'' " (That ape of genius, an emissary from the devil to man), and the pitiful poverty of our old poetry of pedagogues and ragged-school teachers. I saw ... I understood . . . I felt . . . that I was alive and must arise and walk. "The next day Romeo and Juliet was advertised. . . . I had my passes to the orchestra of the Odeon ; well, fearing that the door-keeper of the theatre might have orders not to let me pass as usual, I ran to the booking- ofifice as soon as I saw the redoubtable drama advertised, so as to make assurance doubly sure. It was more than enough to finish me. "Exposing myself to the burning sun and balmy nights of Italy, seeing this love, quick and sudden as ' Victor Hugo in the Chants dii Creptiscule. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 thought, burning like lava, imperious, irresistible, bound- less, and pure and beautiful as the smile of angels, those furious scenes of vengeance, those distracted embraces, those struggles between Love and Death, was too much, after the melancholy, the gnawing anguish, the tearful love, the cruel irony, the sombre meditations, the heart- rackings, the madness, tears, mourning, the calamities and dark chances of Hamlet, after the gray clouds and icy wind of Denmark. After the third act, hardly breathing, in pain as if a hand of iron were squeezing at my heart, I said to myself, with the fullest convic- tion: 'Ah! I am lost.' I must add that I did not at that time know a single word of English, that I only caught glimpses of Shakspere through the fog of Le- tourneur's translation, and that I consequently could not perceive the poetic web that surrounds his marvelous creations like a net of gold. I have the misfortune to be very nearly in the same ill case to-day. It is much harder for a Frenchman to sound the depths of Shaks- pere's style, than for an Englishman to feel the delicacy and originality of La Fontaine or Moliere. Our two poets are rich continents ; Shakspere is a world. But the play of the actors, above all of the actress, the suc- cession of the scenes, the pantomime and the accent of the voices meant more to me, and filled me a thousand times more with Shaksperean ideas and passions, than the text of my colorless and unfaithful translation. An English critic said last winter in the Illustrated London News that, after seeing Miss Smithson in Juliet, I had cried out: 'I will marry that woman, and write my grandest symphony on this play ! ' I did both things, but I never said anything of the sort." Soon after this Berlioz gave a concert at the Con- servatoire, the program being composed entirely of his own works. The preparations for the concert led to the following characteristic dialogue with Cherubini : 20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. '"You want to give a concert?' said Cherubini with his accustomed politeness of manner. "'Yes, sir.' '"You must have the permission of the Superintend- ent of Fine Arts to do that' "'I have already got it.' '"And M. de Larochefoucault consents?' '"Yes, sir.' "'But . . . but / don't consent; and . . . and . . . and I don't want them to lend you the hall.' " ' But you have no reason for refusing it, sir, as the Conservatoire is not using it at present, and it will be vacant for a fortnight' "'But I tell you that I don't wish you to give this concert Everybody is out of town, and you will not make a sou.' " ' I don't count on making anything by it My only object in giving the concert is to make myself known.' '"There is no need of people's knowing you! Be- sides you must have money to meet the expenses; have you got any?' . . . '"Yes, sir.' "A . . . a . . . ah ! . . . And what are you going to have played at this concert ? ' "'Two overtures, some selections from an opera, my cantata. La Mart d' Orphee . . .' " ' That cantata for the competition ! I don't wish it to be given ! It's bad, it . . . it . . . it's impossible to play.' " 'So you judged it, sir, but I should like very much to judge it myself ... If a poor pianist could not ac- company it, that does not prove that a good orchestra can't do so.' "'Then you mean to ... to ... to insult the Acad- emie ? i " ' I only wish to make a simple experiment, sir. If, as is probable, the Academic was right in declaring my BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ,1 score to be impossible, it stands to reason that it will not be performed. If, on the other hand, the Academie was wrong, people will say that I have profited by its advice, and corrected my cantata since the competition.' "'You can only give your concert on a Sunday!' "'I will give it on a Sunday then.' '"But the people employed in the hall, the box-office- keepers, the box-openers, who are all in the employ of the Conservatoire, only have that day to rest on ; so you want to work all those poor people to death, to . . . to . . . kill them?' . . . "'You are joking, sir; those poor people, who inspire vou with such pity, are only too glad, on the contrary, of a chance to make some money, and you would hurt them by taking it away.' "'I don't want it, I don't want you to give the con- cert. I will write to the Superintendent to take back his authorization.' "'You are very kind, sir, but M. de Larochefou- cault will not break his word. Besides, I will write to him, too, and send him an exact report of the conversa- tion that I have just had the honor of having with you. He will then be able to appreciate both your reasons and my own.'" The concert was given. The Bacchanale of the can- tata, just the movement that the Academie had pro- nounced impossible (inexecutable), was superbly played at the rehearsal ; but Dupont, who was to sing the solo part, had a sudden attack of hoarseness before the con- cert, and the cantata had to be taken off from the pro- gram after all. Some of the newspapers praised the concert in warm terms. In June, 1828, Berlioz at last got the second prize in composition at the Conservatoire. This distinction con- sists in wreaths publicly given to the laureate, a gold medal of hot much value, and free admission to all the 32 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. lyric theatres in Paris. It also gives a good chance of getting the first prize at the next competition. The first prize entails much more important privileges. The lucky competitor is assured an annuity of three thousand francs for five years, on the condition that he passes the first two years at the Academie de France in Rome, and travels in Germany for the third year. The rest of the pension is paid him in Paris, where he is at liberty to do what he can to make a mark in the world, and to keep himself from starving in future. The next year Berlioz tried again, with a cantata on Cleopatra after the Battle of Actium, but failed to get the prize. In the mean time he reads Goethe's Faust with much enthusiasm, and writes a work entitled Eight Scenes from Faust, which he is foolish enough to have engraved at his own cost, before hearing even the first note of his score. The edition was destroyed some years after, but Berlioz used some of its themes in his Damnation de Faust. After the "Eight Scenes" he wrote his first great Symphony, the Symphonic fantas- tique, and his Fantasy on Shakspere's Tempest. The latter work was given at the Opera, but a torrent of rain kept almost the whole audience at home. About this time Berlioz's fiery nature led him into an intrigue with a certain Mademoiselle M***, a beautiful young woman with an aptitude for frailty, not yet wedded to her Potiphar. This little episode had an odd termina- tion, of which later. /At last on the iSth of July, i830,,he gets the first prize for his cantata of Sardanapale.) An orchestral movement, describing the burning oi the Babylonian king's palace, which he added to the cantata after the prize had been awarded, came to grief at the public performance of the compositions which had obtained prizes that year. "Five hundred thousand curses," cries he, "on musi- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 clans who don't count their rests ! ! ! A horn-part in my score gave the cue to the drums, the drums gave the cue to the cymbals, and they to the big-drum; tlio first stroke on the big-drum ushered in the final explo- sion ! My confounded horn does not play his note, the drums, not hearing it, don't go off either, and the cym- bals and big-drum are equally mute; nothing goes off! nothing 1 1 ! . . . only the violins and basses keep up their impotent tremolo; no explosion! a conflagration which goes out without having burst into flame, a ridic- ulous effect instead of the much-expected crash ; ridic- ulus mus !" The cantata as well as the Fantastic Symphony were both given, however, at the Conservatoire a few weeks later. Liszt was present at the concert and was con- spicuous by his vehement applauding. Cherubini, when asked if he intended to go to the concert, said : "I don't need to go to find out how things should not be done." A few days later he sent for Berlioz, and said : " So you are going to Italy ? " "Yes, sir." "Your name will be taken off the Conservatoire books, your studies are over. But it seems to me tha . . . tha . . . that you ought to call on me. Pe . . . pe . . . people don't leave here as they leave a stable." Berlioz did not reply : . " Why not ? since we are treated like horses!" but contented himself with think- ing it. Of Berlioz's stay in Italy little is to be said. His own account of his musical experience there differs from the accounts of Spohr, Mendelssohn and other musi- cians, only by its greater explosiveness of style, and greater pungency of satire. Only the insane spirit of routine which at that time possessed the Paris Academy of Fine Arts, and which subjected all its alumni, whether painters, architects, sculptors, musicians, or engravers, 3* 2^ BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. to' the same course of treatment, could ever have hit upon the notion of a man's receiving valuable musical impressions in Italy, where music had long been in a wholly putrescent condition. One little episode in Ber- lioz's Italian life is valuable to us as an indication of the man's character, as giving us a brief but clear glimpse at the violent and fantastic side of his nature. We will give his own account of the whole affair : "It took me some time to accustoni myself to a life BO new to me (^.e., in Rome at the Academic de France). But a lively anxiety, which took possession of my mind the very day after my arrival, left me no ■power to notice either my surroundings, or the social circle into which I had been so suddenly thrust. I had not found in Rome some letters from Paris that should have arrived several days before me. I waited three weeks with ever-growing anxiety; then, no longer able to combat my desire to learn the cause of this mysteri- ous silence, and in spite of the friendly remonstrances of M. Horace Vernet, who tried to prevent any reck- lessness on my part, assuring me that he should' be ■forced to strike my name off from the books of the ■Academic if I left Italy, I obstinately persisted in going back to France. " In passing through Florence a rather violent attack of quinsy kept me in bed for a week. It was then that I made the acquaintance of the Danish architect, Schlick, a good fellow and an artist whose talent was rated very high by connoisseurs. During my week of illness I employed myself with rescoring the Ball-scene in my Fantastic Symphony and adding the Coda that now ends the movement. I had not finished my work when, the first day I could go out, I went to the post office to ask for letters. The package I got contained an epistle of such extraordinary impudence and so insulting withal to a man of my age and disposition, that it gave me a BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ,k frightful shock. Two tears of rage started from my eyes, and my mind was made up on the spot. I meant to fly to Paris, where I had two guilty women and one -innocent man to kill without mercy.^ As for killing myself afterwards, you can well beligve that that was indispensable. The plan for the expedition was con- ceived in a few minutes. They would fear my return to Paris ; I was known there. ... I resolved to present myself there with great caution, and under a disguise. I ran to see Schlick, who was not ignorant of the sub- ject of the drama in which I played the leading part. Seeing me so pale: "'Good God! what's the matter?' '"Look there,' said I, holding out the letter; 'read!' "'Oh! it's monstrous!' said he, after reading it. 'What are you going to do?' "I determined not to tell him, so that I might act freely. "'What am I going to do? I still insist upon return- ing to France, but I shall go to my father's house in- stead of to Paris.' "'Yes, my friend, you are right; go home; there you can forget your troubles in good time, and get over the fearful state of mind you are in now. Come, have courage.' "'I have courage enough; but I must go at once; I can't answer for myself to-morrow.' "'We can easily get you off this evening; I know lots of people here connected with the police and the post- office; you can have your passport in two hours, and your place in the courier's carriage in five; I will see to all that; go back to your hotel and pack, I will see you again there.' ' The reader will easily gues? that this refers to his "amiable consoler," ■Mademoiselle M***. Her worthy mother, who knew perfectly Avell what cards she held in her hand, accused him of bringing trouble into the family bosom, and announced her daughter's marriage with a M. P*' " 3*** 36 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "Instead of going back to my hotel, I walk on to- wards the quay of the Arno, where a French modiste lived. I go into her shop, and pulling out my watch, I say: '"Madam, it is now twelve o'clock; I shall leave the city by this evening's courier; can you make me a com- plete chamber-maid's toilet, dress, bonnet, green veil, etc., in five hours? I will pay you what you please; money is no consideration.' "The modiste thinks it over a minute and assures me that all will be ready before the hour named. I give her some money as a security, and go back by the other bank of the Arno to the Hotel of the Four Nations, where I was stopping. I call the first waiter: " ' Antoine, I leave here for France at six ; I shall not be able to take my trunk with me, the courier has no room for it; I leave it in your care. Send it to my fa- ther the first safe chance you find; here is the address.' "Then, taking the score of the Ball-scene, the coda of which was not wholly instrumented, I write on it: / have not tiitie to finish this ; if the Socidt^ des Con- certs in Paris should ever take it into its head to per- form this movement in the composer's ABSENCE, / beg Habeneck to double the flute part at the last return of tlie theme, in the lower octave, with the clarinets and horns, and to write out the chords. that follow for full orchestra; that will do to end with. "Then I put the score of my Fantastic Symphony, addressed to Habeneck, and some clothes into a carpet- bag ; I had a pair of double-barreled pistols, so I load them ; I examine and put in my pocket two vials of refreshments, such as laudanum and strychnine ; and having set my conscience at rest as to my arsenal, I go out to await the hour of my departure, walking through the streets with that sick, restless and disquieting look that you see in mad dogs. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ,7 "At five I go back to my modiste's ; my costume is tried on and fits very well. In paying the' sum agreed upon I give twenty francs too much; a young seam- stress who is sitting behind the counter notices it, and tries to call my attention to the fact ; but the mistress of the establishment, throwing my gold-pieces into the till with a quick turn of the hand, pushes her aside with : '"Come, you little fool, leave the gentleman alone! do you suppose he has time to listen to your talk ? ' Then, answering my ironical smile with a curious, but withal graceful inclination: 'A thousand thanks, sir; I am sure of your success ; you will certainly look rav- ishing in your theatricals.' " At last it strikes six ; after saying good-bye to the virtuous Schlick, who saw in me a wounded stray lamb returning to the fold, and carefully packing my feminine attire in one of the pockets of the carriage, I bid fare- well, with a look, to Benvenuto's Perseus, with its famous inscription : Si quis te laeserit, ego tuus ultor ero, and we are off. "Mile after mile goes by, and a profound silence is maintained between myself and the courier. My throat was glued together and my teeth set ; I ate nothing and did not speak. We exchanged a few words only at midnight about my pistols ; the prudent driver took off the caps and hid them under the cushions of the car- riage. He was afraid that we might be attacked, and in such cases, he said, no one must ever show the slight- est signs of standing on the defensive, unless he wishes to be murdered outright. "'Let your mind be easy on that head,' replied I, 'I should be very sorry to get us into trouble, and I have no grudge against the banditti ! ' "Arriving at Genoa, without having swallowed any- thing but the juice of an orange, to the huge astonish- ment of my traveling companion, who could not quite 4 '38 SIOGRArHlCAL SKETCff. make out whether I belonged to this world or the! other, I became aware of a new mishap : my woman's dress was lost. We had changed carriages at a village called Pietra Santa, and I had forgotten all my attire on leav^ ing the one that brought us from Florence. ' Fire and damnation !' cried I, 'it seems as if some accursed good angel were trying to interfere with the execution of my project 1 We'll see about that !' "I immediately call a valet de place speaking both French and Genoese. He takes me to a modiste. It was nearly noon ; the courier was to start at six. I ask for a new dress ; they refuse to undertake to finish it in so short a time. We go to another, to two others, to three other modistes, and receive the same answer. At last one says that she will get several seamstresses to- gether, and try to fit me out before the time of de- parture. " She is as good as her word, and I am again supplied with a costume. But while I was running about among the grisettes, what should happen but that the Sardinian police, after inspecting my passport, must take me for an emissary of the Revolution of July, for a co-carh- naro, for a conspirator, for a liberator, and refuse to put a visa to said passport for Turin, and tell me to go by the way of Nice ! "'Well, good God, put the visa for Nice, then, I don't care. I'll go by the way of hell if you wish, so that I only go !' . . . "Which of us two was the most superbly idiotic? The police, who saw a missionary of the revolution in every Frenchman, or I, who thought it necessary to disguise myself as a woman before setting foot on thfe Paris pavement, as if everybody in recognizing me must read on my forehead what purpose had brought me there ; or as if, hiding in a hotel, I could not have -found fifty dress-makers, instead of one, to dress me up to my heart's content ! BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3g " People in love are really a charming spectacle ; they imagine that the whole world is thinking about their passion, whatever it may be, and they act on that notion with the most edifying good faith. " So I took the road for Nice in undiminished wrath. I even thought over with great care the little comedy I was to enact on arriving in Paris. I was to present myself at the house of my friends at nine o'clock P.M., at the moment the family came together to take tea ; I should be announced as the chamber-maid of the Count- ess M***, charged with an important and pressing mes- sage ; they would show me into the parlor, I would pre- sent the letter and while they were engrossed in reading it, drawing my two double-barreled pistols from my bosom, I would blow out the brains of No. i, then of No. 2, then take No. 3 by the hair, make known to her who I was, and, in spite of her shrieks, address my third compliment to her; after which, before this vocal and instrumental concert had attracted the curiosity of in- terlopers, I would let fly my fourth irresistible argument at my own right temple, and if the pistol missed fire (which has been known to happen), have recourse to my little vials. Oh, what a pretty scene ! It is really a pity that it was suppressed ! "Yet, in spite of my condensed rage, I said to myself at times during the trip : 'Yes, it will be a most agree- able moment ! But the necessity of killing myself aft,- erward is rather . . . troublesome. To thus say farewell to the world, to art; to leave no name behind me but that of a boor who did not know how to live ; not to have finished my first symphony ; to have other . . . greater . . . scores in my head . . . Ah ! . . . it is . . .' Then returning to my blood-thirsty scheme : 'No, no, no, no, no, they must all die, I must exterminate them, I •must smash their skulls ... it must be, and it shall be doixel' , , . And the horses trptted on, bringing me 40 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. nearer and nearer to France. Night came, we were following the Cornici road, cut in the solid rock, over a hundred fathoms above the sea that bathes the foot of the Alps at that place. The love of life and the love of art had been whispering sweet promises to me for an hour, and I let them speak on ; I found even a certain charm in listening to them, when, all at once as the pos- tilion stopped his horses to put the shoe under the wheel of the carriage, an instant of silence let me hear the dull death-rattle of the sea breaking furiously against the rocks at the bottom of the precipice. This noise awoke a terrible echo and made a fresh storm burst forth in my breast. The rattle in my throat was like that of the sea, and, resting my hands upon the seat, I gave a convulsive start as if to rush forward, uttering a Ha! so hoarse and wild that the unlucky conductor, jumping aside, thought that his traveling companion was assur- edly some demon constrained to carry a piece of the true cross. "Nevertheless, there had been an intermittance, I had to admit it; there had been a tussle between life and death. As soon as I was conscious of it I reasoned thus, and, as it seems to me, not too foohshly: 'If I should profit by the good moment (the good moment was when life began to coquet with me; you see, I was giving in), if I should profit by the good moment, and grapple hold of something, get some purchase to resist a return of the bad one, perhaps I should succeed in taking a resolution in the direction of . . . life; let me see.' We were then passing through a little Sardinian village (Vintimiglia, I believe), on a beach level with the sea, which did not roar too loudly. We stop to change horses, and I beg the conductor to let me have time enough to write a letter; I go in to a little caf^, take a scrap of paper and write to the director of the Academy of Rome, M. Horace Vernet, to be kind enough to keep BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. , j my name on the Academy's books, if he had not already struck it out; that I had not yet broken the regulations, and that I gave MY WORD OF honor not to cross the Italian frontier until I received his answer in Nice, ivhere I would await it. "Bound thus by my word, and sure of being able to return to my ferocious scheme at any time, if expelled from the Academy, my pension taken away, I should find myself without hearth, home, penny or rag, I got into the carriage again more quietly; I found all of a sudden that . . . I was hungry, having eaten nothing since I left Florence. O good, commonplace Human Nature! J^ecidedly, I was reclaimed! "I arrived at that most happy town of Nice, still growling a little. I waited some days; then came M. Vernet's answer; a friendly, kind, fatherly answer, that touched me deeply. That great artist, without knowing the cause of my distress, gave me advice that fitted the occasion exactly; he pointed out to me that work and the love of art were the two best antidotes to men- tal torments; he told me that my name still remained on the books of the Academy, that the minister should never learn of my escapade, and that I could come back to Rome, where I should be received with open arms. "'Come now, they are saved,' said I with a deep sigh. 'And supposing I were to live now quietly, happily, musically? What a good joke! . . . Let us try.' " And there I am, breathing in the balmy Nice air to the full extent of my lungs; there are life and joy flying toward me, music kissing me, and the future smiling upon me; and I stop in Nice a whole month, wandering through the orange-groves, diving in the sea, sleeping on the mountain heaths of Villafranca, looking from those radiant heights at the ships coming, passing by and silently vanishing in the distance. I Hve wholly alone, and write the overture to King Lear. I sing. I believe in God. Convalescence has set in. j^2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "It is thus that I passed in Nice the twenty happiest days of my life, O Nizza ! " But the poHce of the king of Sardinia came again to disturb my peaceful happiness and to force me to put an end to it. "I had at last exchanged a few words with two offi- cers of the Piedmontese garrison at the caf^; I even played a game of billiards with them one day; that was enough to inspire the chief of police with grave suspi- cions on my account. "'Evidently this young French musician has not come to Nice to be present at the performances of Ma- tilda di Sabran (the only work that was to be heard there then), for he never goes to the theatre. He spends whole days on the rocks of Villafranca ... he is expect- ing a signal from some revolutionary vessel ... he does not dine, at least, not at the table d'hote ... so as to avoid insidious conversations with secret agents. We see him secretly leaguing himself with the heads of our regiments ... he is going to enter upon negotiations with them in the name of Young Italy ; it is clear as day, a most flagrant case of conspiracy ! ' "O great man! profound poHtician ! Go, to, thou art raving mad ! "I am summoned to the police office and put through a formal investigation : "'What are you doing here, sir?' '"I am getting over the effects of a cruel illness; I compose, dream, thank God for having made so beau- tiful a sun, such a sightly sea, such green mountains.' "'You are not a painter?' "'No, sir.' '"But you are to be seen everywhere with an album in your hand, drawing a great deal ; perhaps you are making plans ?' "'Yes, I am making plans for an overture to King BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. >, 43 Lear ; that is to say, I have already drawn the plan, for the design and instrumentation are finished; I even think that the opening will be formidable.' '"How the opening? Who is this King Lear?' " ' Alas, sir ! He is a good old fellow who was king of England.' "'England!' '"Who lived, according to Shakspere, some eighteen hundred years ago, and was weak enough to divide his kingdom between two rascally daughters, who turned him out of doors when he had no more left to give them. You see, there are few kings who . . .' "'We are not talking of kings! . . . What do you understand by the word instrumentation ? ' "'It's a musical term.' "'Always the same pretext! I know very well, sir, that people don't go about composing music so, without a piano-forte, only with an album and a pencil, walking up and down the beach ! So please to tell me where you intend going, and your passport will be delivered to you ; you must not stay in Nice any longer.' "'Then I will go back to Rome, and continue com- posing without a piano-forte, with your permission.' "So it was done. I left Nice the next day, very much against my will it is true, but with a light heart and full of allegria, thoroughly alive, and thoroughly cured. And thus it happened that for one time more the world has seen pistols loaded without going off. "But I think that my little comedy had a certain in- terest all the same, and that it is really a pity that it never came to a performance." During his "exile" in Rome, Berlioz wrote an over- ture to Rob Roy, which was played a year later in Paris, and very badly received by the public ; ^ the Scene in ' Berlioz burned the score immediately after the concert. 44 BIOGRAPUJCAL SKETCH. the Fields of his Fantastic Symphony ; the Song of Happiness in Lelio, and his melody, La Captive. The first thing he did on returning to Paris was to call on Cherubini, whom he found very much aged since he last saw him. He took a room in the house No. I rue neuve Saint -Marc, the very room Miss Smithson had formerly occupied. The actress herself was then in Paris with an English company; Berlioz got up a concert at which his Fantastic Symphony and the monodrama of Lelio were given entire ; M. Schut- ter, one of the editors of GalignanV s Messenger, and a friend of Berlioz, took Miss Smithson to the concert. Her theatrical enterprise had turned out a complete and disastrous failure, and she was then deeply in debt. At the concert she saw Berlioz for the second time. The first time was in 1829 when she was at the zenith of her Parisian fame. Berlioz had written her several letters "which rather frightened than touched her," and she had told her chamber-maid to receive no more com- munications from him. Their meeting was at the re- hearsal of a performance at the Opera-Comique for the benefit of Huet, the actor. Miss Smithson was to act ( in two acts from Romeo and Juliet, and Berlioz was to conduct an overture of his own. Berlioz catne into the ! theatre just as the English company were finishing their ' rehearsal. "Romeo was carrying Juliet away in his arrns. My glance fell involuntarily upon that Shaksperean group. I gave a shriek and ran away wringing my hands. Ju- liet had seen and heard me. ... I frightened her. She pointed me out to the people on the stage, asking them to look after that gentleman whose eyes boded no goody But now, in 1832, Miss Smithson found herself neg- lected by the fickle Paris public, and even on the verge of bankruptcy. The story of Lelio is no other than the story of Berlioz's own love. When Bocage, who recited BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. .^ the part of Lelio, came to the passage : " Oh that I could find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia that my heart calls to. That I could drink in the intoxication of that mingled joy and sadness that only true love knows I Could I but rest in her arms one autumn evening, rocked by the nortk wind on some witd heath, and sleep my last, sad sleep ! 7 Miss Smithson began to suspect that she herself was the heroine of the drama. Next day Berlioz was introduced to her. Soon afterwards she met with a sad accident. She slipped on the pavement in getting out of her carriage, and broke a leg. The news of this ac- cident was not believed in England, where it was thought to be a ruse to soften the hearts of her creditors ; but her fellow -artists in Paris showed much sympathy, Mademoiselle Mars coming forward in the most gener- ous way, and putting her purse at the invalid's disposal. Berlioz took upon himself the management of a benefit performance, which brought her a few hundred francs. This sum was applied to paying her most pressing debts. At last, in the summer of 1833, he married her, in .spite of the most violent opposition from her family and his own. "On the day of our wedding she had nothing in the world but debts, and the fear of never again being able to appear to advantage on the stage because of her ac- cident; I, for my part, had three hundred francs that my friend Gounet had lent me, and had quarreled again with my parents. . . . "But she wJis mine, I bade defiance to everything." But all hope was not quite lost. Berlioz still had a year of his laureate's pension to look to; besides, he was beginning to find admirers in Paris. At a benefit entertainment which he got up at the Theatre-Italien (the 4)rogram consisting of Dumas's play of Antony, acted by Firmin and Madame Dorval, the fourth act of Hamlet with his wife as OpJielia, his own Fantastic A* ^6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Symphony, Sardanapale and overture to the Francs- Juges, a chorus of Weber, and the Conzert-stiick play- ed by Liszt), it was found that his wife, whose leg had so far recovered that she could walk with ease, had yet lost that absolute command over her movements which is indispensable to acting^ She never appeared on the stage again. The entertainment was otherwise unfortu- nate. According to the regulations of the Theatre- ItaHen, the musicians in the orchestra were only re- quired to stay until midnight. As the program was very long, midnight struck before the Symphony could begin, so the greater part of the orchestna, a bit of private spite prompting, left Berlioz in the lurch, and the concert had to end there. Berlioz's enemies were not slow in turning the affair to ridicule, saying that his music /2^^ musicians to flight I But he soon organized another concert, paying the orchestra from his own pocket, and getting Girard to conduct, as his own inexperience as an orchestral con- ductor had caused some unlucky mistakes on the previ- ous occasion. It was a complete success, the musicians and public were equally delighted, and "to cap the climax of my happiness, a man, after the audience had left the hall, a long-haired man with piercing eye and passion-furrowed face, one possessed by genius, a colos sus among giants whom I had never seen and whose appearance moved me profoundly, was waiting for me, and stopped me on my way out to take me by the hand ; he overwhelmed me with burning praise that set my head and heart on fire; it was Paganini! !' (December i22, 1833.) Some weeks later Paganini wrote to. Berlioz, asking him to compose a. concerco tor viola, as he had a very fine instrument which he was desirous of playing on, but knew no viola music in that form. This request of ihc great violinist led Berlioz to write his symphony of BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. .j Harold en Italie, in which there is a leading part for viola obbligata. But even before the work was com- pleted, Paganini found that it did not suit his purpose, as the orchestra was not sufficiently subordinated to the solo part, and he never played it. The symphony was brought out, however, at the Conservatoire, under the direction of Girard, November 23, 1834. In 1836 M. de Gasparin, Minister of the Interior, ordered a Requiem of Berlioz. After much trouble in securing his pay from the ministry, Berlioz brought out the Requiem in the Church of the Invalides at the funeral ceremony in honor of General Danremont and the French soldiers killed at the siege of Constantina. Habeneck conducted, much against the composer's wish, but he had conducted the orchestra at all great musical solemnities in Paris, and Berlioz was prevailed upon to cede the baton, to him. The following narrow escape from absolute musical anarchy was the result, "My performers," says Berlioz, "were divided into several groups, quite a distance apart, this being neces- sary for the four groups of brass instruments which I have employed in the Tuba mirum, the groups occupy- ing the four corners of the great central body of voices and instruments. At the moment of their entry at the beginning of the Tuba mirum, which follows the Dies ircg without a pause, the tempo suddenly becomes twice as slow as before ; all the brass instruments burst forth at once in the new tempo, then call to and answer each other from a distance, each successive call being a third higher than the previous one. It is accordingly of the. highest importance that the four beats to a measure of the slower tempo should be plainly indicated at the outset. . . . From my habitual distrustfulness I had placed my- self behind Habeneck, with my back to him, where I could oversee the group of kettledrums, which he could not see, as the time was approaching for them to take part in the general melee. There are, perhaps, a thou- 48 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. sand measures in my Requiem. Exactly at the bar I have mentioned, the bar where the tempo is changed; where all the brass launches forth its terrible fanfare, at the only bar, in a word, where the conductor's activity is absolutely indispensable, Habeneck drops his baton, qui- etly pulls out his snuff-box, and begins to take a pinch of snuff. I had kept my eye on him ; I immediately turn on my heel, rush in front of him, stretch out my arm, and give the four slow beats of the new tempo. The orchestras follow me, all goes on in order, I conduct the movement to its close, and the effect I had dreamed of is produced. When, at the last words of the chorus, Ha- beneck saw the Tuba mirum saved : 'What a cold sweat came over me,' said he to me ; 'we should have been lost but for you !' 'Yes, I know it,' said I, looking him fix- edly in the eye. I did not add another word . . . Did he do it on purpose ? . . . Can it be possible that the man, in league with M. ***, who abhorred me, and the friends of Cherubini, should have dared to imagine and try to carry out such a piece of low rascality ? . . . I don't wish to think it. . . . But I don't doubt it. God forgive me if I do him wrong." After the performance Berlioz had renewed difficulty in getting some arrears of pay from the Ministry of War (the ceremony being a military one, it now came within the province of that department). M. *** tried every way to put him off, offering him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, to which proposal he characteristically answer- ed : "Your cross be d d!' Give me my money!" At last M. *** rushed out to find the Minister, Berlioz shouting after him : "Tell him that I should be ashamed to treat my boot-maker as he treats me, and that his conduct to me will soon acquire a rare notoriety," Upon which the Minister, not having a taste for scandal: when it took a personal shape, paid the money (3000 ' Je me f . . . de votre croix ! BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. .g francs). Whereupon some of the newspapers that were unfriendly to Berlioz made quite a noise about his be- ing a favorite of power, a silk-worm living upon the leaves of the budget, and, adding a gratuitous zero, in- dulged in much righteous indignation at his receiving thirty thousand francs for the Requiem. Soon after this Berlioz tried to get the position of Pro- fessor of Harmony at the Conservatoire. Cherubini op- posed him with all his might, ostensibly on the ground that "he could not play the piano-forte," and persuaded him to withdraw his application. But one day M. Ar- mahd Bertin met BerHoz and assured him that he had spoken to the Minister of the Interior, and that there was no doubt of his getting the place, together with forty-five hundred francs per annum. The next day M. *•»•, head of the division of Fine Arts, met him be- hind the scenes at the Opera, and gave him the same assurance. Of this Berlioz writes (a phrase that con- tinually recurs in his Autobiography) : "This PROMISE, MADE SPONTANEOUSLY TO A MAN WHO HAD ASKED FOR NOTHING, WAS NO BETTER KEPT THAN SO MANY OTHERS, AND FROM THAT MOMENT I HEARD NO MORE ABOUT IT." He soon, however, got the position of li- brarian to the Conservatoire. In 1836 his first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, was brought out at the Opera, though without much success. It was by no means well given. Paganini said, after hearing a performance of it: "If I were manager of the Opera, I would engage that young man to-day to write me three more scores ; I would pay him in advance, and make a golden bargain at that." In 1838 Paganini was present at a concert given by Berlioz at which both the Fantastic and Harold sym- phonies were played. After the concert the gn-at vir- tuoso presented himself at the door of the orchestra greenroom, gesticulating violently after the Italian fash- ion. The affection of the larynx, which was fatal to him JO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. a few years later, had already become so serious that he could not speak above a scarcely audible whisper. His little boy, Achille Paganini, was the only person able to understand him in the noisy green-room ; so, whisper- ■ ing in his ear, Paganini told the boy to tell Berlioz that "he had never experienced such an impression at a con- cert : that the music had so overwhelmed him that he could hardly refrain from thanking the composer on his knees." Berlioz expressing some astonishment, Paga- nini dragged him back upon the stage, fell upon his knees in the midst of all the musicians and kissed his hand. Berlioz, who was already suffering from a severe attack of bronchitis, caught cold after the concert, and was confined to his bed. The next day the little Achille came into his sick-room and handed him a letter, say- ing: "My father will be very sorry to hear that you are ill ; if he were not very unwell himself, he would have come to see you in person. Here is a note which he gave me to give to you. There is no answer ; my fa- ther said you were to read it when you were alone." The boy then left the room. Supposing it to be a mere letter of congratulation, Berlioz opened it and read : "Mio caro amico : ''Beethoven spento, no cera die Berlioz che potesse farlo rivivere ; ed io che ho gustato le vostre divine compos- izioni, degne d'un genio qual siete, credo mio doven di pregarvi a voter accettarc, in segno del mio omaggto, venti mila franchi, i quali vi saranno rimessi dal signer baron de Rothschild doppo die gli avrete presentato I'ac- clusa. Credetemi sempre "il vostro affezionatissimo amico, "NicoLo Paganini. "Parigi, i8 dicembre, iSj8."^ I " My Dear Friend ; "Now that Beethoven is dead, Berlioz is the only man to bring liim to life again J and I, who have listened to your godlike compositions) BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. - j The inclosed note, addressed to Baron Rothschild, ran : "Monsieur le baron : " ye vous prie de vouloir Men remettre a M. Berlioz les vingt mille francs quefai ddpos^s chez vous hier. "Recevez, etc., "Paganini."' This sum more than sufficed to pay off his debts. Finding himself in a position of comparative ease, Ber- lioz gave up for the time his place as critic, and devoted himself entirely to musical composition. The result of seven months' labor was his great dramatic choral sym- phony, Romdo et Juliette. He never saw Paganini again, his ever-faihng health keeping him in Nice, but he sent him the score, and in one of the violinist's let- ters about it we find the phrase: "Now all is done, envy has nothing left but silence." Berlioz was extremely care- ful about this score (according to some authorities his greatest), and it was only after several years that he finally left it in the form in which it now stands. In 1840 he wrote his great Symphonic funebre et tri- , ompkale, which was performed on the place de la Bas- tille at the inaugural ceremonies of the Column of July. He took good care that Habeneck, whom he calls "the incomparable snuff-taker," should not have his finger in the pie this time, but conducted in person. The cir- worthy of a genius like yourself, think it my duty to beg you to accept, as a mark of my homage, twenty thousand francs, which will be paid you by M. le Baron de Rothschild, on presentation of the inclosed. Believe me ever Your most loving friend, "Paris, December 18, 1838. NicoLO Paganini." ' "Monsieur le Baron : " I beg you to be so kind as to pay to M. Berlioz the twenty thou- sand francs which I deposited with you yesterday. "Accept, etc., Paganini." 52 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. cumstance of the work being performed in the open air, added to the noise of the National Guard fiUng off from the ground during the ApoMose, greatly marred the ef- fect; but the work was heard in its full splendor at some subsequent concerts in the Salle Vivienne, even Haben- eck growling out: " D^cid^ment ce b la a de grandes ide'es" (That — unprintable individual — certainly has some great ideas). The symphony was originally writ- ten for wind instruments, but Berlioz afterwards added parts for chorus and string orchestra ad libitum. The next year Berlioz set out on his first concert tour through Germany, which we will not describe here, his letters being sufficiently graphic. The trip was a nota- ble success in every way. In 1846 he made a second, no less successful, tour through Austria, Hungary, Bo- hemia and Silesia, giving concerts in Vienna, Pesth, Prag and Breslau. The night before leaving Vienna for Pesth, he wrote his famous version of the Rdkoczy March. The appearance of this piece on the pro- gram of his first concert in Pesth gave rise to the fol- lowing conversation between him and M. Horwath, the editor of a Hungarian newspaper. "I have seen your score of the Rdkocsy-indnlo." "Well?" "Well! I am afraid." "How so?" "You have begun our theme piano, and we are ac-' customed to hear it played fortissimo." "Yes, by your Zingari. But is that all? Be re-as- sured; you will have 2. forte, the like of which you have never heard in your life. You did not read it carefully. You must look to the etid in all things." Of the effect of this piece at the concert he writes in a letter to Humbert Ferrand: "The day of the concert a certain anxiety brought my heart up into my mouth, notwithstanding, as the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. c, time drew nigh for bringing out this devil of a piece. After a fanfare of trumpets in the rhythm of the first measures of the air, the theme appears, as you will re- member, played /«««(? by the flutes and clarinets, accom- panied hya^ssjfajo on the strings. The audience re- mained c'alrnand. silent at this unexpected opening; but when, in a long crescendo, fugued fragments of the theme kept re-appearing, interrupted by dull beats on the big-drum, like distant cannon-shots, the hall began to ferment with an indescribable noise; and when the orchestra, let loose at last, launched forth its long- re- strained fortissimo midst a furious imMe, shouts and un- heard-of stampings sho"ok the hall; the concentrated fury of all those boiling souls exploded in accents that caused a shudder of terror in me; I seemed to feel my hair bristling on my head, and from that fatal measure I had to bid farewell to the peroration of my piece, the tempest in the orchestra not being able to vie with the eruption of that volcano whose violence nothing could check. You can imagine that we had to begin over again; even the second time the audience was hard put to it to contain itself for two or three seconds longer than at first, to hear a few measures of the coda. M. Horwath raved in his box like one possessed; I could not help laughing as I threw him a glance, which meant : 'Well! are you afraid now? Are you satisfied with yo\ir forte f It was well that I had placed the Rdkoczy- itidulo (that is the title of the piece in the Hungarian tongue) at the end of the program, for all that I should have tried to make people listen to after it would have been lost. "I was violently agitated, as may be believed, after such a thunder-storm, and was mopping my face with my handkerchief in a little parlor behind the stage, when I received a singular rebound from the emotion in the hall. It was in this wise: I see a wretchedly dressed CA BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. man, his face glowing with a strange fire, rush suddenly into my retreat. Seeing me, he throws himself upon me, kissing me furiously, his eyes brimming over with tears, and sobs out, hardly able to speak: "'Ah, sir! Me Hungarian . . . poor devil ... not speak French . . . un poco Vitaliano . . . Pardon . . . my ecstasy . . . Ah 1 understood your cannon . . . Yes, yes . . . the great battle . . . Germans, dogs!' Then striking great blows with his fist upon his breast: 'In my heart I ... I carry you . . . Ah! Frenchman . . . revolutionist . . . know how to write music for revolu- tions.' " I will not try to depict the terrible exaltation of the man, his tears, and the way he gnashed his teeth; it was almost terrific; it was sublime." This trip among the impetuous Czechs and Magyars, with their hot Tatar blood, was even more exciting to Berlioz than his previous visit to North Germany. It would take too long to describe it in detail; how the artists and amateurs of Vienna gave him a superb sup- per, at which he was presented with a conductor's baton, brilliant with vermilion and gold laurel leaves; how the music-lovers of Prag followed suit with a silver cup and another supper, at which Liszt made an inimitable speech and got so gloriously be-champagned that Bel- loni (his business agent) and Berlioz had all they could do in the street at two in the morning to prevent his com- ing to pistols with a Bohemian who had had the inso- lence to drink more than he, and then played at a con- cert at twelve o'clock the next day "assuredly as he had never played before." During this trip Berlioz wrote his Damnation de Faust, which was brought out on his return to Paris. In February, 1847, he set out for Russia, and made the most lucrative tour of his life, giving concerts in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Riga, and, on his way home, in BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ci- Berlin, where he produced his Faust among other things. In Moscow the following amusing incident happened as he was trying to engage the hall for his concerts : "Wishing to have the hall put at my disposal, I go to the house of the Grand Marshal of the Palace of the Assembly, a respectable octogenarian, and announce to him the object of my visit. " ' What instrument do you play ? ' said he at once. " 'I don't play on any instrument' "'Then how are you going to give a concert?' "'I have my compositions played, and conduct the orchestra.' '"Ah ! hah ! that's a new idea; I never heard of that sort of a concert. I shall be happy to lend you our great hall ; but 5'ou, no doubt, know that every artist whom we allow to -use it, must let himself be heard after his concert at one of the private parties of the nobility.' '"I suppose then that the nobility have an orchestra at their parties which they will put at my disposal ? ' '"Not a bit of it.' "'But how shall I make music for them ? They will, doubtless, not ask me to spend three thousand francs to pay the musicians necessary for a performance of one of my symphonies at the private soiree of the assembly ? That would be rather a heavy rent for the hall.' "'Then I am very sorry, sir, to refuse you; I cannot do otherwise.' "So I am obliged to return with this strange answer. . . . At a second visit, I get a second refusal ; the ex- planations of a fellow-countryman of mine are futile ; the Grand Marshal wags his white pate, and remains inexorable. But, fearing that his French may not be up to the mark, and that some terms of my proposal may have escaped him, he calls in his wife. Madame la mardchale, whose age is nearly as venerable as her husband's, but whose features express much less benevo- 56 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. lence, comes into the room, looks at me, listens to me, and cuts the discussion short by telling me in very flu- ent, very clear, and very exact French, that : '"We neither can, nor will do anything contrary to the regulation. If we lend you the hall, you will play an instrumental solo at our next party. If you don't wish to play, you won't get the hall.' "'Good Lord, madame la mardchale, I once had quite a pretty talent for the flageolet, the flute and the guitar; choose which of these three instruments I shall play upon. But, as I have touched none of them for about twenty-five years, I must forewarn you that I shall play very badly. But look you, if you will graciously con- tent yourself with a solo on the snare-drum, I shall probably do better.' "Luckily a superior officer had come into the room during this scene ; he was soon informed of the diffi- culty, and took me aside to say : "'Do not persist. Monsieur Berlioz; the discussion might become a little unpleasant for our worthy Marshal. Just be good enough to send me your application in writing to-morrow, and everything shall be arranged. I will answer for it.'" So the affair was carried through without any contin- gent flute or drum playing. On his return to France, Berlioz went to the Cote- Saint-Andre to pass a fortnight with his family, with whom his success as a composer had had a reconciling influence, and to present to them his son, Louis. His relations with his wife had long been unhappy. God knows whose the fault was ; perhaps of both. Perhaps a man of his character could never have walked through life smoothly with any one ; and it is easily conceivable to what unsociable vinegar the strong wine of an art- ist's nature like Henriette Smithson's may have turned, when she found herself inexorably debarred from the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 57 exercise of her art. Long before his first journey to Germany she had tormented him with a jealousy for which he had never given her cause. How long he re- mained innocent we cannot tell ; in the preface to his posthumous Autobiography he says : "... Neither have I the least desire to present my- self before God with my book in my hand, declaring that I am the best of men, nor to write confessions , I shall only tell what I please ; and if the reader refuses me ab- solution, his severity will be most unorthodox, for I shall only confess venial sins." He made all his journeys accompanied by a "traveling companion " (sex merely hinted at, presumably femi- nine), and he himself admits that "by dint of being ac- cused, tortured in a thousand ways, and always unjustly, finding neither peace nor quiet at my own fireside, chance assisting me, I at last decided to enjoy the priv- ileges of a position, the burdens of which I had long borne, and my life was completely altered. In fine, to cut short the recital of this part of my life, and not to enter upon very sad details, I will only say that from that day forward, and after an anguish as terrible as it was protracted, a friendly separation (separation a l' ami- able) took place between my wife and myself I often see her, my affection for her is in nowise changed, and the sad state of her health only endears her to me the more." O Love ! Through what dark labyrinths wilt thou not glide, what twistings out of shape and torturings wilt thou not endure in French hearts, and yet painfully struggle on to preserve thy identity, that the world may still know thee by name ! Henriette Constance Berlioz-Smithson died at Mont- martre on the 3d of March, 1854, after being paralyzed for four years. "I had left her for two hours; . . . one of the women 5* 58 BIOGRAPHrCAL SKETCH. who waited on her runs to fetch me, and brings me back. . . . All was over . . . her last sigh had died away. She was already covered with the fatal cloth, which I had to draw aside to kiss her pale brow for the last time. Her portrait, which I had given her the year before, that portrait, painted in the time of her glory, showed her to me dazzling with beauty and genius, beside that death-bed where she lay disfigured by disease. " I will not try to give an idea of the agony I suffered at having her thus torn from my heart.. It was com- bined with a feeling which, although it had never before attained such a pitch of violence, has always been the most difficult for me to bear — the feeling of pity" And was it only pity, Hector? "In the midst of my sorrow over this extinguished love, I felt like to melt away in the immense, horrible, incommensurable, infi- nite pity with which the remembrance of my poor Hen- riette's misfortunes overwhelmed me; her ruin before our marriage ; her accident ; the deception brought about by her last dramatic attempt in Paris ; her volun- tary, but always regretted, renouncement of an art she warmly loved ; her eclipsed glory ; the poor imitators, whose fortune and fame she had seen increase ; our quarrels ; her unquenchable jealousy, at last too well founded ; our separation ; the death of all her relations ; the forced separation from her son ; my frequent long journeys ; her proud grief at being dependent upon me, and at being the cause of expenses on my part under which she well knew I almost succumbed ; the mistaken notion she had that her love for France had alienated her from the affection of the English public ; her broken heart ; her vanished beauty ; her ruined health ; her ever growing physical sufferings ; the loss of motion and speech ; the impos.sibility of making herself under- stood in any way ; the distant prospect of death and oblivion. . . . BlOGHAPinCAL SK^TClf. jg "Destruction, hell-fire and all the cataclysnas of nat- ture, blood and tears, my brain congeals in my skull at the thought of these horrors ! . . . "Shakspere ! Shakspere ! Where is he ? Where art thou ? It seems to me that he alone among intelli- gent beings can understand me, and must have under- - stood us both ; he alone can have pity upon us, poor artists, loving and lacerating one another. Shaks- pere 1 Shakspere ! If thou dost still exist, it must be that thou dost bid all the wretched welcome ! Thou ■ art our father, thou who art in heaven, if there be a heaven. "God is stupid and cruel in his infinite indifference ; thou alone art the God who is kind to artist's souls; fold us to thy bosom, father, kiss us ! De profundis ad te clamo. "Death, annihilation — what is that? TThe ijn0iortalitv^ of genius! . . . What? . ,_ . fool ! fool! "I had to take the sorrowful duties all on myself. . . . The Protestant clergyman necessary for the ceremony, and whose parish comprised the banlieue of Paris, lived at the opposite end of the town in the rue de M. le Prince. I went to notify him at eight in the evening. One of the streets being blocked up by the paviors, the cabriolet that took me there had to go by a roundabout way, and pass in front of the Odeon. It was lighted up, a piece in vogue was playing there. It was there that I first saw Hamlet twenty-six years ago ; it was there that the poor departed suddenly burst forth in her glory, one evening, like a shining meteor ; it was there that I saw the crowd weep with anguish at the sight of Ophelia's grief, her poetic and heart-rending madness ; there she was recalled after the last act of Hamlet by a chosen public, and all the kings of thought then reign- ing in France ; there I saw Henriette Smithson come 6o BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. before the curtain, almost terrified at the immensity of her success, and bow down all trembling before her ad- mirers. There I saw Juliet for the first and last time. How often have I tried to walk off my feverish anxiety under those arcades on winter nights ! Here is the door by which I once saw her go in to a rehearsal of Othello. She did not know of my existence then ; and if they had then pointed out to her that pale and haggard young stranger, who, leaning against one of the pillars of the Odeon, followed her with his wild gaze, and had said to her: 'There is your future husband,' she would have assuredly called that prophet of ill luck an insolent idiot. "And yet ... it is he who now makes ready thy last journey, poor Ophelia ! It is he who, like Laertes, will say to a priest, ' What ceremonies else .^ ' . . . he who has so tortured thee; he who has endured so much from thee, after enduring so much for thee;- he who, despite his wrongs, can say like Hamlet : ■ " ' Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love Make up my sum.' "Shaksperel Shakspere ! I feel the deluge return- ing, I am wrecked in sorrow, and I seek thee still. . . . ^■~N. ' ' Father ! father ! where are yoti f " Ah Berlioz ! If the story of thy life is, as some one has said, a "tragedy, written in tears of blood," was the blood entirely thine own ? Berlioz married again — whom, he does not tell us — and lived most unhappily with his second wife for eight 'years, when she died suddenly of heart-disease. She was buried in the great cemetery of Mohtmartre in a small lot, the best Berlioz could afford. Some time ^after the burial, Edouard Alexandre, the noted organ-| builder, bought the freehold of a large loty which he pre- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 61 sented to Berlioz, and the remains of his wife were transferred to this new tomb. Berlioz was officially no- tified a little later of the intended demolition of the little cemetery of Montmartre, where his first wife was bur- ied, so that her remains also had to be exhumed and carried to the tomb in the larger cemetery. " I gave the necessary orders at both cemeteries, and one dull, cloudy morning I walked alone to the fune- real spot. A municipal officer who had to be present at the disinterment awaited me there. A workman had alreaidy opened the grave. As I came up he leaped into it. The coffin, buried for ten years, was still whole, only the cover was damaged by moisture. Then the workman, instead of lifting it out of the earth, tore away the rotten planks, which cracked with a hideous noise, showing the contents of the coffin. The grave-digger bent down, took in both his hands the head, already' separa:ted from the trunk, the head all uncrowned, hair^ less and, alas ! fleshless, of the poor Ophelia, and placed it in a new coffin, which stood beside the grave, pre- pared ad hoc. Then, bending down a second time, he with great difficulty hfted up the trunk without arms or limbs, holding it in his arms; it was but a blackened mass to which the shroud clung tightly, more like a block of pitch enclosed in a wet bag than a human body . . . with a dull sound . . . and a smell. . . . The mu- nicipal officer looked on at this gloomy picture a few steps off. . . . Seeing me leaning against the- trunk of a cypress tree, he cried out: 'Don't stay there, Monsieur Berlioz; come here, come here.' And, as if the gro- tesque must also have its share in this horrible scene, he added, getting a word wrong: 'Ah! poor inhuman- ity!' .. . A few minutes later, following the car that bore the sad remains, we came down the hill and ar- rived at the great Montmartre cemetery where the new tomb already gaped to receive our burden. The re - 6 62 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. mains of Henriette were placed in it. The two departed rest there in peace to this hour, awaiting the time when I shall bring my own portion of rottenness to that char- nel-house. "I am now in my sixty-first year; I have neither hopes nor illusions nor great thoughts; my son is almost always away ; I am alone ; my contempt for the imbe- cility and improbity of men, my hatred of their cruel ferocity are at their height; at all times I cry to death : 'When thou wilt !' "Why does he delay?" O Berlioz, Berlioz ! Meseems thy loudly shrieking soul has at last found wherewith to glut its greed of anguish. If paroxysmal grief and aesthetic typhomania do verily exhaust the capacity for sorrow God has im- planted in the human breast, then hast thou indeed sounded .all the depths of woe. Or is there still a deeper deep, the entrance whereunto was denied thy sorrow-seeking heart? A very poignant, bitter grief, not to be loudly shrieked over, that the horror-struck world may expend its superfluous sympathy upon it, but to be very sacredly kept in the innermost sanctuary of thine own heart, and most jealously guarded against the peering eyes of mankind ; a holy, chastening sorr row, which, when kind Time has at last dulled its keen edge, still abides with thee as a very tender memory, more, dear to thy heart than all loud-trumpeting, world- astonishing joys whatever ; a sorrow thou canst really call thine own. Such a sorrow, it would seem, thou couldst in no wise taste; but of shriek-compelling tor-, ments thou hast surely had thy fill, and hast made the eternal welkin ring with the most heart-rending echoes. Berlioz's old age was indeed of the saddest. Despite his upright love and veneration for art for its own sake, he of all mortals most depended upon the sympathy of his fellow-men. The intense and almost frantic ad- miration of his friends could not compensate him for BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 63 the cold misappreciation or active hatred of his by far more numerous enemies. He could not live without violent emotions, and absolute triumph being refused him, he often preferred despair to stoical indifference. The popular failure of his great opera, Les Troyens a Carthage, made a wound in his sensitive heart which the worthy appreciation of the select few could not heal. His physical sufferings were frightful. He had long been a martyr to acute neuralgia, and toward the end of his life a local disease in the abdomen tortured him almost without intermission. His fiery spirit was broken. The cynical invulnerability he tried hard to assume could deceive no one but himself, and the sharp bursts of sarcasm and ironical fire that his surroundings occa- .sionally drew from him, only served to make the mel- ancholy gloom in his soul more visible. His Auto- biography ends thus : "I have done. ... I thank from the bottom of my neart holy Germany, where the Religion of Art is kept unsullied; and thee, generous England, and thee, Rus- sia, who saved me ; and you^ my good friends in France ; and you, noble hearts and spirits of all countries whom I have known. To know you has been my joy ; I will keep faithfully the dear remembrance of our friendship. As for you, maniacs, stupid bull-dogs and bulls, as for you, my Guildensterns, my Rosencranzes, my lagos, my little Osrics, serpents and insects of all kinds, farewell my . . . friends ; I despise you, and hope not to die be- fore forgetting you." The most marked circumstance of his old age was the return of his love for Estelle — the Stella montis of his boyhood — the girl with the black eyes and pink boots. The revival of this old, dead love was the one bright point in the long, gloomy years before his death. He had never seen Estelle since he first left the Cote- Saint-Andre to go to Paris and begin his studies. In 64 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 1 848 he had visited Meylan, and found out that she was married to a M. F***. In 1864 he went to Meylan again, and found that she was living in Lyons. He writes : " I arrived in Lyons that very evening. It was a singular night I passed without sleep, thinking of the visit I was to make on the morrow. I was to go and see Madame F***. I determined to call upon her at noon. While waiting for the hour to come, and think- ing it highly possible she would not receive me at first, I wrote the following letter, that she might read it be- fore knowing the name of her visitor : "'Madam: '"I have come again from Meylan. This second pilgrimage to the spot inhabited by the dreams of my childhood has been more painful than the former one, which I made sixteen years ago, and after which I had the hardihood to write to you in Vif, where you then lived. I dare more tO-x3ay, I ask you to receive me. I shall be able to restrain myself; do not fear the un- governed impulses of a heart restrained against its will by a pitiless reality. Grant me a few moments, let me see you again, I conjure you. " ' Hector Berlioz. "'September 2j, 186^.' " I could not wait until noon. At half-past eleven I rang at her door, and gave her chamber-maid the letter with my card. She was at home. I ought to have merely delivered the letter, but I did not know what I was doing. Nevertheless, seeing my name, Madame F*** gave immediate orders to have me shown in, and rose to meet me at the threshold. I recognized her walk, and her goddess-Hke carriage . . . God ! how changed her face was ! her color was a little bronzed and BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, 65 her hail* tinged with gray. Yet, on seeing her, my heart had not a moment's indecision, and my whole soul flew to meet its idol, as if she had been still dazzling in her beauty. She led me into the parlor, holding my letter in her hand. My breath stopped ; I could not speak. She, with a sweet dignity of manner, said : "'We are quite old acquaintances. Monsieur Berlioz !' ... (Silence.) 'We were both children 1' .. . (Silence.) "The dying man finds a little voice. "'Be good enough to read my note, madam, it will . . . explain my visit.' " She opens it, reads it and then lays it down on the mantel-piece. "'You have just come from Meylan ! But you doubtless went there on business ? You did not make the journey purposely to see me ?' "'Oh ! madam, can you think so ? Did I need busi- ness to call me to ... ? No, no, I have for a long time wished to return there.' (Silence.) "'You have led a very troubled life. Monsieur Ber- lioz.' "'How do you know it, madam ?' "'I have read your biography.' '"Which one?' "'A volume by Mery, I think. I bought it some years ago.' " ' Oh ! Do not attribute to Mery, who is my friend, and a man of sense, that compilation, that hodge-podge of fables and absurdities, the author of which I can now guess. I shall one day have a true biography, which I have written myself " ' Oh, no doubt, you write so well.' " ' I do not mean the worth of my style, but the ex- actness and sincerity of my recital. As for my senti- ments towards yourself, I have told all without restric- tion, but without giving your name.' (Silence.) 56 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. " 'I have also heard much about you from a friend of yours, who married a niece of my husband's.' '"I indeed begged him to find out the fate of the letter I took the liberty of writing to you sixteen years ago. I wished to know at least whether you got it or not. But I never saw him again, he is dead now, and I learned nothing.' (Silence.) "Madame F***. — 'As for my own life, it has been very simple and sad ; I have lost several of my chil- dren, I have brought up others, my husband died when they were quite young ... I have done my best to per- form my duty as a mother.' (Silence.) 'I am much touched, and very grateful. Monsieur Berlioz, for the feelings toward myself you have kept alive so long.' "At these kind words I began to tremble more vio- lently. I looked at her with greedy eyes, reconstruct- ing in my imagination her beauty and her eclipsed youth ; at last I said to her : " ' Give me your hand, madam.' "She held it out to me. I raised it to my lips and seemed to feel my heart melt away, and all my bones shudder. . . . " ' May I hope,' added I, after a fresh silence, 'that you will permit me to write to you sometimes, and to pay you a visit from time to time?' "'Oh, certainly; but I am to stop only for a short time in Lyons. One of my sons is to be married short- ly, and soon after his wedding I shall go to live in Ge- neva with him.' " Not daring to prolong my visit further, I rose. She accompanied me to the door, where she said to me again : "'Good-bye, Monsieur Berlioz, good-bye. I am pro- foundly grateful for the sentiments you have preserved for me.'" But the poor man cannot make up his mind to leave BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 67 her so. After leaving her house he chances to meet M. Strakosch, Adelina Patti's brother-in-law, who offers him a box at the theatre to hear the diva in the Barber on the following evening. Struck by a happy thought, Berlioz accepts thte' box, and runs back to Madame F***'s house on the avenue de Noailles, He finds her out, but tells tHe chamber-maid to ask her from him to accept a box at the opera for the next evening. But before long his lover's feet bring him mechanically back to her door. Going up the staircase he meets her with two German ladies. "'Good heavens. Monsieur Berlioz, you have come for your answer?' "'Yes, madam.' "'I had written to you, and I was just going with these ladies to take the letter to the Grand Hotel. I cannot, unfortunately, accept your kind invitation for to-morrow. I am expected in the country rather far from here, and I leave town at noon. A thousand par- dons for letting you know so late, but I came home and heard of your offer only a few minutes ago.' "As she made a motion to put the letter in her pocket: " ' Please give it to me,' cried I. '"Oh! it is not worth while ..." "'I beg you; you intended it for me.' '"Well, take it' "She gave me the letter, and I saw her handwriting for the first time. "'So I shall not see you again,' I said, in the street. "'You leave Lyons this evening?' "'Yes, madam; good-bye.' "'Good-bye; I wish you a pleasant journey.' "I press her hand, and see her turn the corner with the two German ladies. Then, can it be believed, I be- came almost joyful; I had seen her a second time; I 68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. had spoken to her again ; I had pressed her hand once more; I had a letter from her, a letter which ends with assuring me of her affectionate sentiments. It was an unhoped-for treasure; and I walked back to the Grand Hotel, hoping to dine almost quietly with Mademoiselle Patti." How much reaUty there was in this newly-revived love of Berlioz may, perhaps, be questioned ; but that it was very real and inspiring to him is unquestionable. That the world must know of it was a matter of course, and in the "Postface" to his posthumous Auto- biography he prints the correspondence that ensued be- tween himself and Estelle (did he keep press-copies of his own letters, then?). His letters are full of violent love, tempered by a deep respect for the unavoidably distant relations that must exist between them, ever trying to outargue common sense on that head, but humbly and lovingly submitting to her every wish. Her answers are full of gentle, womanly dignity and kind feeling, always hesitating to impose an irksome re- straint upon her lover, but still quietly insisting upon the impossibility of anything more than ordinary friend- ship existing between persons of their age, whose lives had been so widely apart, and all whose associations had been so unlike. She appears eminently a superior woman, of large sympathies and a warm heart; a wom- an of sterling character. If they had but met earlier in life, how different might the story of both have been! Berlioz might have found the true complement to his own wild, passionate nature, and, walking through life by the side of such a helpmate, might have become a very different and more complete man. But it was not to be. Even their limited intercourse in old age had a refining, chastening influence upon Berlioz ; she always succeeded in calling the better, purer, really exalted part of his nature to the surface, and it is pleasant to notice BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. eg how much deeper was the love expressed in his calm, uncomplaining resignation to the inevitable, than the more frantic, loudly-vocal passions of his younger days. As one of his letters throws some light upon his do- ings at that period of his life, I will copy it. It is also a fair example of the spirit in which all of them are written : "Paris, Monday, December ig, i86^. "Madam : "In passing through Grenoble last September, I went to pay a visit to one of my cousins who was then at Saint- Georges, a hamlet almost lost amid the craggy mountains on the left bank of the Drac, inhabited by a most wretched population. My cousin's sister-in-law has devoted herself to alleviating so much distress, she is the gracious providence of the country. On the day of my arrival in Saint- Georges, she heard that a little hut at some distance from her house had been without bread for three weeks. She immediately went there, and, addressing the mother of the family, said : "'How is this, Jeanne? you are in want and don't send for me. You must know that we have the good- will to help you to the best of our means.' "'Oh, mademoiselle, we are not in want. We still have some potatoes and a few cabbages. It is the chil- dren who are not satisfied. They cry and howl and ask for bread. You know children are unreasonable.' " Well, madam ! Dear madam, you also have done a good deed in writing to me. I had imposed the most absolute reserve upon myself, not to annoy you with my letters, and kept waiting for your daughter-in-law's return to hear some news of you. She did not come, and I was stifling like a man whose head is under water, and who is yet unwilling to draw it out. . . . You know, beings like myself are unreasonable. 6* 70 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "And yet, I know the truth only too well; believe me, I reason only too much, and I had no need of the les- sons that have just been taught me with sharp knife- strokes into my heart. . . . No, I wish above all things not to trouble you, not to give you the slightest annoy- ance ; I will write as seldom as possible ; you will an- swer me, or you will not. I shall come to see you once a year, but only as one comes to pay an agreeable visit. You are not ignorant of what I feel, and you will thank me for all that I shall be able to conceal from you. . . . "It seems to me that you are sad, and this causes a redoubled ... "But I will to-day begin by forbidding myself a cer- tain language. I will talk of indifferent matters. "You perhaps know that the performance of an act of my Troyens at the Conservatoire did not take place. The committee, by plaguing me in various ways, asking, first that one number, and then that another should be cut out, drove me nearly mad, as well as the singers, whose chance of shining was thus diminished, and I withdrew the whole. "I thank you very much for your kindness in being with me in thought in the concert-hall at half-past two o'clock, and for your good wishes to the Troyens} "At the very moment I was being thus tormented in Paris, my birthday (December ii) was celebrating in Vienna, where a portion of my work. La Damnation de Faust was given ; and two hours afterwards the Kapell- meister sent me the following telegram : A thousand good wishes for your birthday. Chorus of soldiers and students given at the concert of the Mdnnergesangverein. Immense applause. Repeated. "The cordiality of those German artists touched me much more than the success of the thine. And I am • This refers to a previous letter, in which he asks her to tliink of him at that hour. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7 1 sure you will comprehend this. Kindness is a cardinal virtue ! "Two days later, a perfect stranger to me in Paris wrote me a very beautiful letter about my score of the Troyens, which he spoke of in a way I dare not repeat to you. "My son has just arrived in Saint-Nazaire after a troublesome voyage to Brazil, on which he had a chance of distinguishing himself He is now first mate on board the great ship La Loiiisiane. He tells me that he is soon to sail again, which will make it impossible for him to come to Paris. So I shall go to kiss him in Saint-Nazaire. He is a good boy, and has the mis- fortune to resemble me in all points ; he cannot make up his mind to take his share of the platitudes and horrors of this world. We love each other like twins. "This is all the present news of my exterior. My old mother-in-law (whom I have promised never to abandon) ^ takes the very best care of me, and never (fuestions me about the cause of my fits of melancholy. 1 read, or rather, reread Shakspere, Virgil, Homer, Paul a7id Virginia, books of travel ; I am much bored, I suffer horrible tortures from_neuralgia, which has held me in its grip for nine years^ and in fighting against' which all the doctors have come out at the small end of ^ the horn. In the evening, when the distress of heart, body and mind is unbearable, I take three drops of laudanum and fall asleep as well as may be. If I am not so ill, and the society of a few friends is all I need, I make a call at a household in the neighborhood, that of M. Damcke, a German composer of unusual merit, a learned professor, whose wife is good as an angel ; two hearts of gold. According to the humor they see me ' A friend of Berlioz's once said: "The poor man was riddled with mothers-in-law (crible de belle-meres)," mostly, we fear, of the left-handed sort. 72 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. in, we have some music, or talk ; or else they roll a big sofa up to the fire, and I spend the whole evening lying on it, thinking my own bitter thoughts in si- lence. . . . That is all, madam. I no longer write, as I believe I have told you, and no longer compose. The musical world of Paris has far other haunts, the manner in which the arts are cultivated, artists are patronized, masterpieces are honored, makes me either sick or wild with fury. This would seem to prove that I am not yet dead. . . . "I hope day after to-morrow to have the honor of taking Madame Charles F*** (charming as she is ... in spite of her knife-strokes) and a Russian lady of her ac- quaintance to the Theatre-Italien. We are to hear, to the end, if possible, the second performance of Don- izetti's Poliuto. Madame Charton (Paolina), is to let me have a box. "Good-bye, madam; may you only have sweet thoughts, repose of mind, and enjoy the happiness that the certainty of being loved by your sons must give you. But also think sometimes of the poor unreason- able children. "Your devoted, "Hector Berlioz. "P.S. It was very generous of you to ask the newly- married couple to come and see me. I was struck with the likeness of Monsieur Charles F*** to Mademoiselle Estelle, and forgot myself so far as to tell him so, though it is hardly within the bounds of propriety to pay such compliments to a man." Madame F***'s answer to this letter contains the fol- lowing passage : " Believe me, I am not devoid of pity for unreasonable children. I have always found that the best way to bring them back to quiet and reason was to amuse BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7, them, and show them pictures. I take the liberty of sending you one, which will remind you of the reality in the present, and dispel the illusions of the past." She had inclosed her portrait. The "Postface" to the Autobiography ends thus: " I stop here. I believe that I can now live on more calmly. I shall write to her sometimes; she will an- swer me ; I shall go to see her ; I know where she is ; I shall never be left in ignorance of any changes that may occur in her life ; her son has given me his word and agreed to inform me of them. Little by little, in spite of her dread of new friendships, she will, perhaps, find her sentiments of affection for me increasing. I can already realize the improvement in my existence. My heaven is no longer empty. I gaze with loving eyes upon my star, which seems to smile sweetly upon me. She does not love me, it is true, but she might never have known me, and she now knows that I wor- ship her. " I must be consoled for having been known by her too late, as I am consoled for not having known Virgil, whom I should have loved so well, or Gluck, or Beetho- ven ... or Shakspere . . . who, perhaps, might have loved me. (It is true that I am not consoled). "Which of the two powers can raise man to the most sublime heights : /Love or Music ? . . . It is a great^i problem. Yet, meseems, we should say this : Love can' ' give no idea of Music ; Music can give an idea of Love. . . . Why separate the two ? They are the two wings of the soul. " In seeing the way certain persons understand Love, and what they look for in the creations of Art, I al- ways involuntarily think of the swine, who grub up the ground, with their ignoble snouts, amidst the fairest flowers, and at the foot of mighty oaks, in hopes of find- ing the truffles they delight in. 7 74 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "But let US try to think no more of Art. . . . Stella! Stella ! I can now die without bitterness, and without anger. "January i, 1865." The few years of Berlioz's life succeeding this date were uneventful in their sadness. One more great sor- row (perhaps the most frightful shock of his life) he was still to undergo. As he was leaving his house one evening to go to a musical party, given by M. le mar- quis Arconati-Visconti, a great admirer of his, the news was brought him of the sudden death of his beloved son, Louis. The result of this shock was an almost leth- argic state of melancholy, out of which only the greatest excitement could at times arouse him, and which lasted until his death. He went once more to St. Petersburg, on the urgent invitation of the Grand Duchess Helene, but even that most brilliant artistic success of his life, and all the flattering adoration of the Russian Court, made but little impression upon the broken-hearted old man, and he returned to Paris sad as he had left it. His shattered remnant of health was fast declining, and at times his mental forces seemed wholly torpid, not even to be aroused by the hearing of his most adored compositions ; the very names of Beethoven, Gluck or Shakspere — those gods of his artistic religion — failed at such periods to awaken any responsive echo in his trouble-worn soul. He went to Monaco to bathe his wearied spirit in the pleasant sunlight, and gaze upon the bright Mediterranean (the sea always came back to him hke an old friend), but, one day, while standing on the rocks enjoying the entrancing sea- view with what feeble power of enjoyment was still left him, he was seized with giddiness and had a severe fall. He was shortly afterwards taken to Nice, where he had a second, severer attack of vertigo, brought on by a sudden de- termination of blood to the brain, and was found by two BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ^t young men, lying senseless among the boulders on the beach. They carried him back to his hotel, where he was with difficulty restored to consciousness. Some time later, although he only partially recovered from the accident, he returned to Paris. In August, 1868, he was invited to attend a musical solemnity at Greno- ble, which he looked upon almost as his native place, and was made honorary president of the occasion. But it was too late for this mark of esteem to affect him. His habitual lethargy increased month by month until on the 8th of March, 1869, he breathed his last, quietly and without pain, at his rooms. No. 4 rue de Calais, in the presence of his friend, Ernest Reyer, the composer, and an old servant who had lovingly tended him during his long last illness. He was in his sixty-sixth year. What intercourse he had with Madame F*** during the last four years of his life I do not know, but we will hope that this one consolation was not denied him. Of the two great loves of his life, this was indubitably the deeper, and built upon the more durable foundation. I copy from the Journal des Debats of March 12, 1869, the following account of his funeral: "The obsequies of Berlioz were celebrated to-day' at eleven o'clock, at the church of the Trinity, where the many friends and admirers of the great composer met together. "The pall-bearers from the house of the deceased to the church were MM. Guillaume, President of the Acad- emy of Fine Arts; Camille Doucet, member of the French Academy; le baron Taylor; Emile Perrin, di- rector of the Opera. "From the church to the cemetery of Montmartre, MM. Gounod, Ambroise Thomas, members of the Acad- emy of Fine Arts, Nogent Saint- Laurens, member of the Legislative Body, and Perrin. ■March II. ;6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. "The Institute sent a deputation composed of MM. Ambroise Thomas, Dumont, Piis, Martinet, Guillaume, Beule. "It would be impossible to give the names of all the notable persons who crowded the church of the Trinity. We noticed MM. Auber, Vieuxtemps, Bazin, Felicien David, Victor Masse, Reyer, Gevaert, Stephen Heller, Carvalho, Th. Ritter, Elwart, Litolff, Vivier, Baroilhet, Tamburini, Pasdeloup, Arban, Leonard, Jacquard, Massenet, Georges Bizet, Duvivier, Mocker, Battaille, etc.; Madame Charton-Demeur, who played the part of Dido in Berlioz's Les Troyens; MM. Choudens, Brandus and Richault, publishers of Berlioz's works. MM. Legouve, Cuvillier-Fleury, members of the French Academy; Paul de Saint- Victor, Louis Ratisbonne, Edmond Villetard, Xavier Raymond, Louis Ulbach, Emmanuel Gonzales, Oscar Commettant, M. Domergue, counsellor of the Prefecture of the Seine; MM. Damcke and Edouard Alexandre, the executors of the will. "During the funeral services several pieces were per- formed by the orchestra and chorus of the Opera, con- ducted by M. Georges Hainl, and the children of the order of the Trinity, under the direction of M. Grisi. M. Chauvet was at the organ. "Here is the list of pieces: "The Introit from Cherubini's Requiem; Mozart's Lachrymosa, the Hostias and Preces from Berlioz's Re- quiem, sung by a double quartet of artists from the Opera; the March from Glack's A keste/ Litolff's funer- al march with Sax instruments. "The ceremony closed with the march from Berli- oz's Harold, played on the organ by M. Chauvet. " The procession then went to the cemetery of Mont- martre, accompanied by a considerable crowd. A band of the National Guard played funeral music during the march. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 77 "The body of Berlioz was placed in the family vault. "MM. Guillaume, in the name of the Academy of Fine Arts ; Frederic Thomas, in the name of the Society of Men of Letters; Elevart and Gounod pronounced dis- courses at the grave." FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY 1841-1842 TEN LETTERS FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 1841-1842. TO MONSIEUR A. MOREL. FIRST LETTER. BRUSSELS, MAYENCE, FRANKFORT. YES, my dear Morel, here I am again, back from my long trip through Germany, during which I have given fifteen concerts, and superintended about fifty re- hearsals. You can imagine how much I must need leisure and rest after such fatigues, and you are right there ; but you can hardly imagine how strange this leisure and rest seem to me ! Often in the morning I spring up half awake, dress in a hurry, under the im- pression that I am behind time and keeping the orches- tra waiting ; . . . then, after a moment's reflection, coming to a sense of my real situation, I say to myself: What orchestra? I am in Paris where the orchestra on the contrary usually keeps you waiting ! Besides, I am not giving a concert, I have no choruses to drill, no sym- phony to conduct; I am to see this morning neither Meyerbeer, nor Mendelssohn, nor Lipinski, nor Marsch- 7* 81 82 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. ner, nor A. Bohrer, nor Schlosser, nor Mangold, nor the brothers Miiller, nor any of those excellent German artists who gave me such a gracious reception, and showed me such marks of deference and devotion ! . . . We do not hear much music in France at present, and you, my friends, whom I am rejoiced to see again, have one and all such a downcast, discouraged air, when I ask you what has been done in Paris during my absence, that I feel a chill at my heart and a strong desire to go back to Germany, where there is still left some enthusi- asm. And yet what immense resources we have here in this vortex of Paris, after which all the ambition of Europe is restlessly grasping ! What fine results might be obtained by uniting all the means at the disposal of the Conservatoire, the Gymnase musical, our three lyric theatres, the churches and the singing-schools ! With intelligent winnowing of these dispersed elements there might be formed, if not an irreproachable chorus (the voices are not drilled enough), at least a matchless or- chestra ! Only two things are wanting to let Parisians hear such a superb union of eight or nine hundred mu- sicians : a place to put them in, and a little love of art to collect them there. We have not a single large concert- room ! The Grand Opera might take the place of one, if the daily working of the machinery and scenes and all the business necessitated by the requirements of the repertoire did not make the necessary preparations for such a solemnity well nigh impossible, by taking up the stage almost every day. Then, could we find the collective sympathies, the unity of feehng and action, the devotion and patience without which nothing grand nor beautiful of this sort can ever be done ? We must hope so, but we can only hope it. The exceptional order established at the re- hearsals of the'Societe du Conservatoire, the enthusiasm of the members of that famous society are universally FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 83 admired. But we only esteem great rarities ; . . . almost everywhere in Germany, on the contrary, I found order and attention together with true respect for the master or masters. For there are several in fact ; first the composer, who almost always conducts the rehearsals and performance of his work himself, at which the self-love of the regular conductor is never in the least hurt ; the Kapellmeister, who is generally a clever composer and conducts the operas of the grand repertoire, and all musical produc- tions of which the authors are either dead or absent ; then the Conzertmeister who, besides conducting smaller operas and ballets, plays the first violin part when he is not conducting, in which case he conveys the Kapell- meister's orders and remarks to the extreme points of the orchestra, superintends the technical details and exercises, sees that nothing is amiss in the instruments or music, and sometimes indicates the bowing and phrasing of melodies and phrases, an impossible task for the Kapellmeister, for he always conducts with a baton. There must undoubtedly exist in all these agglomer- ations of musicians of unequal merit in Germany many obscure vanities, unsubjected and ill restrained; but (with a single exception) I do not remember seeing them appear on the surface in open speech; perhaps because I do not understand German. As for the conductors of choruses, I have found very few skillful ones; they are for the most part poor pianists; I have even met with one who did not play the piano- forte at all, and who gave the pitch by striking the keys with only two fingers of the right hand. Besides, they have kept up the custom in Germany, as with us, of bringing together all the parts of a chorus in the same room and under the same conductor, instead of having three rooms for practice and three leaders for prelimi- nary rehearsals, and separating for some days the so- 84 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. prani and contralti, the basses and tenors ; a proceeding which economizes time and brings about excellent re- sults in teaching the various parts of a chorus. Ger- man chorus singers in general, especially the tenors, have fresher voices, and of a more distinguished quality than those which we hear at our theatres; but I should hesitate in allowing them to be superior to ours, and you will soon see, if you will follow me to the different cities I have visited, that all the theatre choruses, with the possible exception of those at Berlin, Frankfort, and Dresden, are bad or of very mediocre excellence. The singing academies, on the contrary, must be regarded as one of the musical glories of Germany; we will try further on to find out the reason of this difference. My journey began under annoying auspices; mishaps and mischances of every sort succeeded each other in a perplexing manner, and I assure you, my dear friend, that it required an almost insane perseverance to pursue it and bring it to a happy end. I had left Paris think- ing that three concerts were assured to me at the out- set: the first was to have been given in Brussels, where I was engaged by the Societe de la Grande Harmonic; the other two were already announced in Frankfort by the director of the theatre, who seemed to attach much importance to the matter, and to be extremely zealous in insuring its being put into execution. And what was the result of all these fine promises, of all this ar- dor? Absolutely nothing! It happened in this wise: Madame Nathan-Treillet had had the kindness to prom- ise to come from Paris expressly to sing at the Brussels concert. At the moment of beginning the rehearsals, and after the pompous announcements of this soiree- musicale, we learn that the cantatrice has just fallen quite seriously ill, and that her leaving Paris is conse- quently impossible. Madame Nathan-Treillet had left behind her in Brussels such recollections of the time FISST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. gj when she was prima-donna at the theatre there, that it may be said without exaggeration that she is wor- shiped ;_ she is fanatically adored, and all the sym- phonies in the world would not counterbalance in the eyes of the Belgians a song of Loisa Puget sung by Madame Treillet. At the announcement of this catas- trophe the entire Grande Harmonie fell into syncope, the tap-room connected with the concert-hall was de- serted, all the pipes went out as if their supply of air had been suddenly cut off, the Grand Harmonists dis- persed amid groans. It was of no use my telling them as a consolation: "But the concert will not take place; be calm, you will not have the vexation of hearing my music; that is a sufficient compensation for such a mis- fortune, it seems to me 1 " Nothing would do. Their eyes distilled tears of beer, et nolebant consolari, because Madame Treillet was not coming. So there is the concert gone to all the devils; the conductor of the orchestra of this so grandly harmonic society, a man of true merit, full of devotion to art in his quality of eminent artist, although little disposed to become a prey to despair, even when Mademoiselle Puget's songs failed him, Snel, who had invited me to come to Brussels, ashamed and confused, "Jurait, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne I'y prendrait plus."' What was to be done? Apply to the rival society. La Philharmonic, conducted by Bender, the leader of the admirable band of the Guides; make up a brilliant or- chestra, by joining that of the theatre to the pupils of the Conservatoire? The thing would have been easy, thanks to the good will of MM. Henssens, Mertz, Wery, who had all hastened to exert in my favor their influence with their pupils and friends on a previous occasion! ' Swore, but a little late, that he would not be caught again. 86 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. But I should have had to begin all over again, with fresh expenses, and I was pressed for tinme, supposing myself to be expected in Frankfort for the two concerts I have mentioned. There was nothing for it but to go, to go full of anxiety about the results that the frightful disap- pointment of the Belgian dilettanti might have, reproach- ing myself with being the innocent and humiliated cause. Luckily that remorse is not of the kind that is liable to last, any more than a cloud of steam, and I had hardly been an hour on the Rhine boat, when I thought no more of it. The Rhine! ah! it is beautiful! it is very beautiful! You think, perhaps, my dear Morel, that I am going to seize the opportunity to make some poetic amplifications on that head? God preserve me from it! I know too well that my amplifications would only be prosaic diminutions, and besides, I hope for your honor that you have read and reread Victor Hugo's delightful book. As soon as I arrived at Mayence I inquired about the Austrian military band which was stationed there the year before, and which, Strauss said (the Paris Strauss), had performed several of my overtures with prodigious verve, power and effect. The regiment was gone ; no possibility of any music for wind instruments (this would have been really a Grand Harmony'), or any concert whatever ! (1 had thought it possible to play this prac- tical joke upon the inhabitants of Mayence in passing through). The thing must be tried however ! I go and see Schott, the patriarch of music publishers. This worthy man has the appearance of having been asleep for a hundred years, like the Sleeping Beauty in the wood, and he answers all my questions slowly, interlard- ing his words with long rests : "I do not think . . . you can not . . . give a concert . . . here . . . there is no . . . ' The pun is untranslatable. Harmonic means in French both Har- mony, and Music for wind instruments. — Trans. FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. gjr orchestra . . . there is no . . . public ... we have no money ! . . ." As I have no enormous amount of . . . patience, I rush as quickly as may be to the railway and start for Frankfort. Just as if anything were wanting to com- plete my irritation ! . . . This railway, it too, is a.l asleep ; it bestirs itself slowly, it does not go ahead, it loafs, and, that day especially, it made interminable holds at every station. But every adagio must have an end at last, and I arrived at Frankfort before night-fall. There is a charming and wide-awake city ! Everything has the appearance of activity and opulence ; the city is also well built, white and glistening like a new five-franc piece, and the boulevards, planted with shrubbery and flowers in the English garden style, form a green and fragrant girdle around it. Although it was in the month of December, and the green leaves and flowers had long since disappeared, the sun played in pretty good humor between the arms of the saddened vegetation; and, either from the contrast between these avenues so full of air and light with the dark Mayence streets, or from the hope I had of at last beginning my concerts in Frankfort, or from some other cause which analysis cannot reach, all the voices of joy and happiness chanted in chorus within me, and I took a walk for two delicious hours. Let business wait for to-morrow ! I said to myself as I went to my hotel. The next day I accordingly went in good spirits to the theatre, thinking to find everything ready for my rehearsals. While crossing the square on which it is built, seeing some young men carrying wind instru- ments, I begged them, since they no doubt belonged to the orchestra, to give my card to the Kapellmeister and director, Guhr. After reading my name these good artists changed at once from indifference to a respectful attention that pleased me very much. One of them, who spoke French, was spokesman for the rest. 88 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. "We are very happy to see you at last. M. Guhr has for some time told us of your expected arrival. We have played your overture to King Lear twice. You will not find your orchestra of the Conservatoire here ; but you will perhaps not be dissatisfied, nevertheless !" Then comes Guhr. He is a little man with a rather malicious face and bright, piercing eyes; his gestures are rapid, his speech curt and incisive ; one sees that he does not sin on the side of over-indulgence when at the head of his orchestra ; everything about him be.speaks musical inteUigence and good will ; he is a leader. He speaks French, but not rapidly enough to keep pace with his impatience, and he mixes up every sentence with great oaths, pronounced with a German accent, with the drollest effect. I will only indicate them by initials. On seeing me : "Oh ! S. N. T. T.' . . . is it you, my dear sir? You did not get my letter then ?" "What letter?" "I wrote to you in Brussels to tell you . . . S. N. T. T. . . . wait a bit ... I can't speak well ... a misfortune ... it is a great misfortune ! . . . Ah ! here is our man- ager to interpret for me." And still speaking in French : "Tell M. Berlioz how much I am vexed ; that I wrote him not to come yet; that the little MilanoUo sisters fill the theatre every evening ; that we have never seen such a furore in the public, S. N. T. T., and that we must take some other time for great music and grand concerts." The Manager. — "M. Guhr wishes me to say, sir, that ..." I. — "Pon't take the trouble to repeat it; I under- stood it very well, only too well, as he did not say it in German." ' The Teutonic pronunciation of i' — » — d^- D — 1 — Trans. FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 89 Guhr.— "Ah! ah! ah! I spoke French, S. N. T. T., without knowing it I " I- — "You know very well, and I know too, that I must either go back again, or else pursue my journey in all recklessness at the risk of finding elsewhere some other infant prodigies to checkmate me again." Guhr. — "What is to be done, my dear sir? the chil- dren make money, S. N. T. T., French songs make money, French vaudevilles draw the crowd ; ask your- self, S. N. T. T., I am director, I can't refuse money; but stop at least till to-morrow and I will take you to hear Fidelia with Pischek and Mademoiselle Capitaine, and, S. N. T. T., you shall give me your opinion of our artists." I. — "I believe them to be excellent, especially under your leadership ; but, my dear Guhr, what is the use of swearing so much, do you think it consoles me ? " "Ah! ah! S. N. T. T., that's allowed en famille" (meaning familiarly). Thereupon I fall into an insane fit of laughing, my ill humor vanishes, and taking him by the hand : "Come on then, since we are en famille, come and drink some Rhine wine. I forgive your little Milanollos, and will stop to hear Fidelia and Mademoiselle Capi- taine, whose lieutenant you have every appearance of wishing to be." We agreed that I should set out for Stuttgard in two days, to try my luck with Lindpaintner and the King of Wurtemberg, although I was not expected there. It was also well to give the Frankforters time to regain their coolness and to forget the delirious emotions caused by the violin of the two charming sisters, whom I had been the first to applaud in Paris, but who were just then strangely in my way in Frankfort. I heard Fidelia the next day. This performance was one of the finest that I heard in Germany; Guhr was go FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. right in proposing it as a compensation for my disap- pointment; I have rarely had a more complete musical enjoyment. Mademoiselle Capitaine, in the part of Fidelia (Leo- nore) seemed to me to possess all the musical and dra- matic ability required by Beethoven's beautiful creation. Her quality of voice is of a peculiar character which makes it wholly fit to express sentiments, which, al- though deep and contained, are always on the verge of an explosion, like those which fill the heart of Flores- tan's heroic wife. She sings simply, very true, and her acting never lacks naturalness. In the famous pistol scene she does not move the audience violently, as Madame Schroeder-Devrient used to with her convul- sive, nervous laugh, when we saw her in Paris seventeen years ago; she fetters the attention, and knows how to move by other means. Mademoiselle Capitaine is not a great singer in the brilliant sense of the term ; but of all the women I have heard in Germany, she is certain- ly the one I prefer in genre opera; and I had never heard of her before. I had heard some others men- tioned beforehand as superior talents,- but I found them thoroughly detestable. I do not remember, unfortunately, the name of the tenor who filled the part of Florestan. He has certain- ly great excellences, although his voice is by no means very remarkable. He sang the difficult air in the pris- on, not, indeed, so as to make one forget Haitzinger, who soars to a prodigious height in it, but well enough to merit the applause of a public less cold than that of Frankfort. As for Pischek, whom I could better appre- ciate some months afterward in Spohr's Faust, he really showed me the full importance of the part of the Govern- or, which we never could understand in Paris; I owe him genuine gratitude for that alone. Pischek is an art- ist; he has no doubt studied hard, but nature has fa- FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. qi vored him much. He has a magnificent baritone voice, incisive, supple, true, and of sufficient range; his face is noble, his stature tall, he is young and full of fire ! What a pity that he only speaks German ! The chorus singers of the Frankfort theatre seemed good, their exe- cution is careful, their voices fresh, they rarely sing false; I only wish there were a few more of them. There is always a certain tartness in these choruses of forty voices, tiiat is not found in large choral masses. Not having seen them studying a new work, I cannot say whether the Frankfort chorus singers are good readers and musicians or not ; but I must acknowledge that they rendered very satisfactorily the first prisoners' chorus, a piece which must be absolutely sung, and even better the great finale where enthusiasm and energy gain the upper hand. As for the orchestra, I declare it to be excellent ; considering it as a simple theatre or- chestra, admirable at every point; no bit of delicate shading escapes it, the various qualities of tone blend in a harmonious whole entirely free from all harshness; it never wavers, every note strikes with certainty; it sounds like a single instrument. Guhr's great skill as a conductor and his severity at rehearsals contribute much, no doubt, to this precious result. Here is its composition: 8 first violins — 8 second — 4 violas — 5 violoncelli — 4 bjisses — 2 flutes — 2 oboes — 2 clarinets — 2 bassoons — 4 horns — 2 trumpets — 3 trombones — i drummer. This force of forty-seven musicians is to be found, with some very slight variations, in almost every German city of the second rank; the same is true of its arrangement, which is this: The violins, violas and celli occupy the right side of the orchestra; the basses are placed in a straight line in the middle close to the rail; the flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets are drawn up on the left side; this group faces the strings; the drums and trombones are placed alone g2 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. at the extreme right. As I had no opportunity of put- ting this orchestra to the severe test of symphonic studies, I can say nothing of their rapidity of concep- tion, their aptitude in the capricious or humoristic style, their rhythmic security, etc., etc., but Guhr assured me that they were equally good in the concert-room and the theatre. I must believe him, Guhr not being one of those fathers who are too prone to admire their own children. The violins belong to an excellent school; the baSses have a great deal of tone ; I don't know how good the violas are, their part being very unprominent in the operas I heard performed in Frankfort. The wind instruments are exquisite in their ensemble; I would only mention a fault the horns have of often giv- ing out a too brassy tone, especially in forcing the high notes, a fault very common in Germany. This mode of producing the tone disfigures the quality of the horn; it may, to be sure, have a good effect at certain times, but it ought not to be admitted into the school of the instrument, to my thinking. At the close of this excellent performance of Fidelia ten or twelve of the audience condescended to applaud a little in going away . . . and that was all. I was in-, dignant at such coldness, and as some one was trying to persuade me that, if the audience did not applaud, they none the less admired and felt the beauties of the work: "No," said Guhr, "they understand nothing; nothing whatever, S. N. T. T." He was right ; it is a public of botcrgeois! I had seen in a box that evening my old friend Ferdinand Hiller, who lived for a long time in Paris, where connoisseurs still often mention his high musical capacity. We quickly renewed our acquaintance and took up our old tone of good-fellowship. Hiller is at work on an opera for the Frankfort theatre. He wrote FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 03 an oratorio two years ago, The Fait of Jerusalem, which was given several times with great success. He fre- quently gives concerts at which are performed, besides fragments of this noteworthy work, various instrumental compositions which he has written lately, and which are very highly spoken of Unfortunately, whenever I have been in Frankfort, it has invariably happened that Mil- ler's concerts came the day after I had to go, so that I can only quote the opinions of other people about him, which will wholly clear me of the charge of too enthusi- astic friendship. At his last concert he gave as novel- ties an overture, which was warmly received, and several pieces for four male voices and one soprano, the effect of which is said to be sparklingly original. Frankfort has one musical institution which has been frequently spoken of to me in terms of the highest praise; it is the Singing Academy of St. Cecilia. It passes for being as well composed as it is large ; never- theless, as I was not admitted to examine it, I must maintain an absolute reserve on the subject. Although the bourgeois element is predominant among the mass of the public in Frankfort, yet it seems to me impossible, considering the large number of per- sons of the higher classes who attend seriously to music, that an intelligent audience, capable of appreciating great works of art cannot be brought together. At any rate, I did not have the time to make the experi- ment. I must now, my dear Morel, scrape together my rec- ollections of Lindpaintner and the Stuttgard orchestra. I shall find in them a subject for a second letter, but it will not be addressed to you ; ought not I to answer also those of our friends who have shown themselves so eager to know the details of my German exploration ? Good-bye. P.S. Have you published any new songs? I hear 8* 94 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. nothing talked about but the success of your last melo- dies. I heard yesterday the parlando rondeau. Page et mari, which you wrote to words by the son of Alexan- dre Dumas. I declare that it is fine, coquettish, piquant and charming. You have never written anything so good in this style. This rondeau will have an unbeara- ble popularity, you will be put into the pillory of all the hand- organs, and will have richly deserved it TO M. GIRARD SECOND LETTER. STUTTGARD, HECHINGEN. THE first thing I did before quitting Frankfort to seek adventures in the kingdom of Wiirtemberg was to get information about the means of execution to be found in Stuttgard, to draw up a program in accord- ance with them, and to take with me only such music as was absolutely indispensable to carry it out. You must know, my dear Girard, that one of the greatest difficulties of my journey through Germany, and one which was the least easy to foresee, was the enormous expense of carrying about my music. You will easily understand it, when I tell you that this mass of orches- tral and choral parts, either in manuscript or lithograph- ed or engraved, was enormously heavy, and that I was forced to have it follow me almost everywhere in the post-vans.' Only this time, uncertain whether to go to Munich after my visit to Stuttgard, or to come back to Frankfert, and go thence northward, I took with me two symphonies, an overture and some vocal pieces, leaving all the rest with the unhappy Guhr, who, it seems, was fated to be troubled with my music in one way or an- other. ' The multitude of railways which furrow up Germany in every direc- tion nowadays, did not exist then. gQ FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. The road from Frankfort to Stuttgard offers no point of interest, neither did the trip leave any impression upon me worth telling you ; not a single romantic site to describe, not a dark forest, not a convent, not a soli- tary chapel, not a water-fall, no great nocturnal noise, not even that of Don Quixote's wind-mills ; neither hunters, nor milk-maids, nor weeping young maiden, nor lost heifer, nor abandoned child, nor distracted mother, nor shepherd, nor thief, nor beggar, nor brig- and ; upon the whole, only moonlight, the noise of the horses and the snoring of our conductor fast asleep. Now and then some ugly peasants, with wide, three-cor- nered hats, and dressed in immense frocks of ex-white cloth, of which the skirts, of inordinate length, kept getting entangled between their muddy legs ; a costume which made them look like village cures in intense neg- lige. That was all ! The first person I had to see on arriving in Stuttgard, the only one, indeed, whom dis- tant business relations, carried on through the mediation of a common friend, gave me any reason to suppose well disposed toward me, was Dr. Schilling, author of a great number of theoretical and critical works on the art of music. This title of Doctor, which almost every- body bears in Germany, had led me to augur not par- ticularly well of him. I had imagined some old pedant, with spectacles and a red wig, an immense snuff-box, always astride of his hobby of fugue and counterpoint, speaking of nobody but Bach and Marpurg, externally polite perhaps, but at bottom .full of hatred of modern music in general, and horror of mine in particular ; a sort of musical skinflint in fact. But see how we can mistake ; M. Schilling is not old, he does not wear spec- tacles, he has very handsome black hair, he is full of vivacity, speaks quickly and loud, like pistol-shots ; he smokes and does not take snuff; he received me very well, showed me, to start with, what I must do to give a FIRST yOURNE Y TO GERMANY. g- Goncert, never spoke a word about fugue or canon, manifested no contempt either for Les Huguenots or Guillaume Tell, and did not show any aversion to my music before hearing it. Moreover, our conversation was anything but easy when we had no interpreter, M. Schilling speaking French about as well as I speak German. Impatient at not making himself understood : "Do you speak English ?" he asked me one day. " I know a few words ; and you ? " "I .... no 1 But Italian, do you speak Italian ?" "Si, un poco. Come si chiama il direttore del tea- trof" "Ah! the devil! me no speak Italian either! . . ." I believe, God, forgive me, that if I had declared that I understood neither English nor Italian, the ebullient doctor had an idea of playing with me in those lan- guages the scene in the Medecin malgre lui : Arcithu- ram, catalamus, nomiftativo, singulariter ; est ne oratio latinas f We got to trying Latin, in which we understood each other quite decently, not without some arcithuram, cat- alamus. But it is conceivable that our conversation was rather lame and did not run precisely on Herder's Ideas nor Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. At last M. Schilling made out to tell me that I could give my con- cert either in the theatre or in a hall intended for mu- sical solemnities of that nature, called the hall of the Redoute. In the former case,' beside the advantage of the presence of the king and court, which he thought I would surely obtain, an enormous advantage in a city like Stuttgard, I should get my executants gratis, with- out the trouble of attending to tickets, advertisements, or any other material details of the evening. In the lat- ter I should have to pay my orchestra, take all the burden upon my own shoulders, and the king would not come ; 9 q8 first journey to GERMANY. he never went to the concert- room. I followed, accord- ingly, the doctor's advice, and rushed to present my petition to M. le baron Topenheim, grand marshal of the court and intendant of the theatre. He received me with charming politeness, assuring me that he would speak to the king that very evening about my petition, and that he thought it would be granted. "But I beg you to observe that the hall of the Re- doute is the only good one, and the only one well adapted for concerts ; that the theatre, on the contrary, has such bad acoustic properties, that the idea of giving any instrumental composition of importance there has been given up long ago." I hardly knew what to answer, nor what to decide upon. Let us go and see Lindpaintner, I said to my- self; he is, and ought to be, the sovereign judge. I can hardly tell you, my dear Girard, how much good my first interview with that excellent artist did me. After ten minutes we seemed to have been friends for ten years. Lindpaintner soon explained my position to me. "To begin with," said he, "you must undeceive your- self as to the musical importance of our city ; it is a royal residence, to be sure, but has neither money nor a musical public." (Wa ! Wa ! I thought of Mayence and father Schott). "Nevertheless, since you are here, it shall not be said that we have let you go without per- forming some of your compositions, which we are very curious to become -acquainted with. Here is what is to be done. The theatre is worthless, absolutely worthless for musical purposes. The question of the king's pres- ence is of no importance ; as he never goes to a concert, he will not come to yours wherever you give it. There- fore take the hall of the Redoute, of which the acoustics are excellent, and where the orchestra can have its full effect. As for the musicians, you will only have to pay the small sum of 80 francs to their pension fund, and FIJiST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. gg they all will consider it a duty and an honor, not only to perform, but to rehearse your works several times under your direction. Come this evening and hear the Freyschiltz ; I will present you to the orchestra in one of the entr'actes, and you will see whether I am wrong in answering for their good will." I took good care not to miss the appointment. Lind- paintner presented me to the artists, and after he had translated a little speech I thought myself called upon to make them, my doubts and anxieties disappeared; I had an orchestra. I had an orchestra composed very much like that in Frankfort, young and full of fire and vigor. I saw this by the way in which all the instrumental part of We- ber's masterpiece was executed. The chorus seemed to me ordinary enough, neither numerous nor very careful in rendering the well-known effects of light and shade in that admirable score. They sang always mezzo-forte and seemed quite sufficiently bored by their task. The actors were all of decent mediocrity. I do not remember the names of any of them. The prima- donna {Agatke) has a sonorous voice, but hard and wanting flexibility : the seconda (Aennchen) vocalizes more easily, but often sings false ; the baritone {Caspar") is, to my thinking, the Stuttgard theatre's best card. I afterward heard this troupe sing La Muette de Portici without changing my opinion of them. Lindpaintner astonished me in conducting these two operas by the rapid tempo he took in certain numbers. I have since then seen many German Kapellmeisters who have the same way of thinking on this point ; such are, among others, Mendelssohn, Krebs and Guhr. As to the tempi in the FreyschUtz, I have nothing to say, for they have undoubtedly the true traditions much bet- ter than I ; but as for La Muette, La Vestale, Mo'ise and the Huguenots, which have been put upon the stage in lOO FISST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. Paris under the very eyes of the composers, and in which the tempi have been preserved as they were given at the first performances, I affirm that the rapidity with which I have heard certain parts of those scores per- formed in Stuttgard, Leipzig, Hamburg and Franl " Far from that rock we fly in silence, the star of day leaves the skies.'* 13 146 FIX ST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. Vienna. He is the Liszt of the harp ! One cannot im- agine all the graceful and energetic effects, original fig- ures, unheard of sonorities he has succeeded in drawing from his instrument, which is so limited in resources in certain respects. His fantasia on Mo'ise, the form ol which has been imitated and so happily applied to the piano-forte by Thalberg, his variations in harmonics on the chorus of Naiads in Oberon, and twenty other pieces of the same sort, gave me a delight I shall not try to de- scribe. The advantage the new harps have of tuning two strings in unison by means of a double movement of the pedals, has given him the idea of combinations which, when we see them written, seem absolutely un- playable. Yet all their difficulty consists in an ingenious use of the pedals, producing those double notes called syn- onyines. Thus he plays with lightning rapidity passages in four parts moving by skips of minor thirds, because by means of synonymes, the strings of his harp, instead of giving, as is usual, the diatonic scale of C-flat, gives the descending series : C-Jtatural C-nahiral, A-natural, G-flat, G-flat, E-flat, E-Jlat. Parish- Alvars has form- ed some good pupils during his stay in Vienna. He has just been playing in Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, and many other cities, where his extraordinary talent invari- bly excited enthusiasm. What is he waiting for to come to Paris ? . . . In the Dresden orchestra is to be found, beside the eminent artists I have named, the excellent Professor Dotzauer ; he is at the head of the violoncelli, and has to take upon himself the whole responsibility of the entry of the first desk of the basses, for the double-bass player who reads with him is too old to play some notes of his part, and has just strength enough to bear the FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 147 weight of his instrument. I have often met in Germany with examples of this mistaken respect for old men, which leads orchestra conductors to retain them in office long after the performance of its duties has become beyond their physical strength, and unfortunately to leave them in it until death takes them away. I have more than once had to arm myself with all my insensi- bility, and ask for substitutes for these poor invalids with cruel persistency. There is a very good English- horn in Dresden. The first oboe has a fine tone, but an old style, and a mania for trills and mordants which, I admit, deeply outraged me. He indulged in especially frightful ones in the solo at the beginning of the Scene in the Fields. I gave very lively expression, at the sec- ond rehearsal, to my horror of these melodic ameni- ties ; he maliciously abstained at the succeeding re- hearsals ; but it was only a trap, and on the day of the concert, the perfidious oboe, well aware that I could not stop the orchestra and call him up in person before the court and public, began his little scurvy tricks again, giving me a bantering look which all but upset me with indignation and fury. Among the horns is to be remarked M. Levy, a vir- tuoso who has a fine reputation in Saxony. He, as well as the other players in the orchestra, plays on the horn with cylinders, which the Leipzig orchestra, almost alone in this respect in North Germany, has not yet admitted. The trumpets in Dresden are also with cylinders, and can advantageously take the place of our cornets-a-pistons, which are unknown there. The military band is very good, even the drummers are musicians; but the reed instruments that I heard did not strike me as irreproachable ; they are not quite true, and the band-master of these regiments ought to get some cliarinets from our incomparable maker, Adolphe Sax. 148 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. There are no ophicleides ; the bass part is taken by Russian-bassoons, serpents and tubas. I often thought of Weber while conducting that or- chestra in Dresden, which he led for some years, and which was larger then than now. Weber had so drilled it that sometimes in the allegro of the overture to the Freyschutz he only gave the tempo of the first four measures, leaving the orchestra to go on by itself as far as the holds near the end. Musi- cians must be proud who see their leader thus fold his arms at such a time. Will you believe me, my dear Ernst, that in the weeks I passed in this musical city, nobody took the trouble to speak to me of Weber's family, nor to tell me that they were in Dresden? I should have been so happy to make their acquaintance and to express in some degree my respectful admiration for the great composer who made the name illustrious! ... I learned too late that I had let this precious opportunity slip, and I must at least here beg Madame Weber and her chil- dren not to doubt the regrets I felt. They showed me in Dresden some scores of the cele- brated Hasse, called il Sassone, who was once for a long time arbiter of the destinies of this orchestra. I admit that I found nothing very remarkkble in them; only a Te Deiim, composed expressly for a glorious commem- oration of the Court of Saxony, struck me as pompous and brilliant, like a ringing of great bells, pealing out with all their might. This Te Deicm must seem fine to those who are content with great sonority in such cases ; as for me, this quality does not strike me as sufficient of itself. What I should most like to know, but know through a good performance, are some of the numerous operas Hasse wrote for the theatres of Italy, Germany, and England, and to which he owed his immense repu- tation. Why do they not try to revive at least one in Dresden? It would be a curious experiment to make; FIUST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. j .„ it might perhaps be a resurrection. Hasse's life must have been full of incident; I have tried in vain to find an account of it. I have only found vulgar biographies which repeated what I already knew, and did not tell me a word of what I wished to learn. He traveled so much, lived so much in the torrid zone and at the poles, that is to say, in Italy and England ! There must have been a curious romance in his relations with the Vene- tian, Marcello, in his love-passages with La Faustina, whom he married, and who sang the leading parts of his operas; in their conjugal quarrels, battles of composer with singer, where the master is the slave, where the right is ever in the wrong. Perhaps there was really nothing of all this; who knows? Faustina may have lived a very human diva, a modest singer, a virtuous wife, a good musician, faithful to her husband, faithful to her parts, telling her beads and knitting socks when she had nothing to do. Hasse wrote, Faustina sang; they both made a good deal of money which they did not spend. That sort of thing has been seen before, and is still seen at times; if you get married, I wish as much for you. When I left Dresden to return to Leipzig, Lipinski, learning that Mendelssohn was getting up my finale to Romeo et Juliette for the concert for the benefit of the poor, announced his intention of coming to hear it, if the ijiteiidant would give him two or three days' leave of absence. I took this promise for a very amiable compliment; but judge of my dismay when, on the day of the concert, the finale could not be given owing to the incident I related in my last letter. I saw Lipinski arrive. . . . He had come thirty-five leagues to hear that movement! . . . There is a musician who loves music! . . . But you, my dear Ernst, will not be astonished at that trait; you would do as much, I am sure; you are an artist! Good-bye, good-bye. TO HENRI HEINE. ; SIXTH LETTER. BRUNSWICK, HAMBURG. I HAD every sort of good luck in this excellent city of Brunswick ; in fact I had an idea at first of regaling one of my intimate enemies with this account of it ; it would have pleased him ! . . . whereas the picture of all this harmonic festival may give you pain, my dear Heine. Immoralists pretend that in whatever good fortune we enjoy, there is something disagreeable to our best friends ; but I do not believe a bit of it ! It is an infamous calumny, and I can swear that unexpected good luck has come in the most brilliant guise to some of my friends, without having any effect upon me what- ever ! Enough ! let us not enter upon the thorny field of irony, where bloom the absinthe and the euphorbia in the shade of branching nettles, where vipers and toads hiss and croak, where the water bubbles up in the ponds, where the earth quakes, where the evening breeze burns, where the western clouds dart forth silent lightnings ! For what is the good of biting our lip, hiding greenish pupils under ill-closed eyelids, softly grinding our teeth, handing our companion a chair armed with a hidden barb or covered with a coating of ISO FJHSr yOURXEY TO GERMANY. ISI glue, when far from having anything bitter in our souls, laughing remembrances crowd the mind, when we feel the heart full of gratitude and artless joy, when we would call on a hundred Fames with immense trumpets to proclaim to all that is dear to us : I have been happy for a day. It was a little movement of vanity that made me begin in this way ; I was unconsciously trying to imitate you, you, the inimitable master of irony. It will not happen again. I have too often regretted, in our conversations, not being able to compel you to seriousness, nor to stop the convulsive movement of your claws, even at times when you thought you were showing your best velvet paw, tiger-cat that you are, leo quaerens quern devoret. And yet what sensibility, what an imagination without gall show themselves throughout your works ! How you sing, when you please, in the major mode ! How your enthusiasm rushes and flows with fiill banks when admiration seizes upon you suddenly, and you forget yourself! What infinite tenderness breathes in one of the secret folds of your heart for that country you have so railed at, for that soil, fertile in poets, for the great fatherland of dreamy geniuses, for that Germany you call your old grandam, and which loves you so much in spite of all ! I saw it well in the sadly tender tone in which she spoke of you to me during my journey ; yes, she loves you ! She has centred all her affections in you. Her elder sons are dead, her great sons, her great men ; yo i are all that is left to her, you, whom she smilingly calls her naughty child. It was she, it was those low, ro- mantic songs with which she rocked your first years, that inspired you with a pure and elevated sentiment for music; and when you left her, it was by running about in the world, it was after having suffered, that you grew pitiless and began to rail. It would be easy for you, I know, to make an enor- 152 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. mous caricature of the recital I am about to undertake of my stay in Brunswick, and yet, see what confidence I have in your friendship, or perhaps how my fear of irony is diminishing, for it is precisely to you that I address it. . . . Just as I was leaving Leipzig I got a letter from Meyerbeer, teUing me that they could not do anything about my concerts for a month. The great master ad- vised me earnestly to turn this delay to account by go- ing to Brunswick, where I should find, as he said, an or- chestra of honor. I followed this advice, but without suspecting that I should be so glad of having done so. I knew nobody in Brunswick; I was in total darkness as to the disposition of the artists toward me, and the state of the public taste. But the thought that the brothers Miiller were at the head of the orchestra would have been enough to inspire me with all confidence, inde- pendently of Meyerbeer's very encouraging opinion. I had heard them during their last trip to Paris, and I looked upon the playing of Beethoven's quartets by these four virtuosi as one of the most extraordinary prodigies of modern art. In fact the Miiller family gives us the ideal of the Beethoven quartet, as the Bohrer family does of the trio. Never in any place in the world have perfection of ensemble, unity of sentiment, depth of expression, purity of style, grandeur, power, verve and passion been carried to such a pitch of perfection. Such a rendering of those sublime works gives us, I fancy, the most ex- act idea of what Beethoven thought and felt while writ- ing them. It is the echo of the creative inspiration ! It is the recoil of genius! This musical family of the Miillers is more numerous than I had supposed; I counted seven artists of the name, brothers, sons and nephews, in the Brunswick or- chestra. George Miiller is Kapellmeister ; his elder FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. jq, brother, Charles, is only first Conzcrtmeister, but one can see by the deference with which every one listens to all his remarks, that he is respected as the leader of the famous quartet. The second Conzertrneister is M. Freudenthal, a violinist and composer of merit. I had notified Charles Miiller of my arrival; on getting out of my carriage at Brunswick I was met by a very kind young man, M. Zinkeisen, one of the first violins of the orchestra, who spoke French like you and me, and who had waited at the post station to conduct me to the Ka- pellmeister forthwith. This attention and politeness seemed a good omen. M. Zinkeisen had seen me sometimes in Paris, and rec- ognized me in spite of the piteous state I was in from the cold; for I had passed the night in a coup^, pretty well open to the wind so as to avoid the smell and smoke of six horrible pipes which were untiringly at work in its interior. I admire the police regulations es- tablished in Germany: smoking is forbidden under pen- alty of a fine in the streets and on the public squares, where that amiable exercise can inconvenience nobody ; but if you go into a cafd, they smoke there; to a table d'hote, they smoke there; in a post conveyance, they smoke there; the infernal pipe pursues you everywhere. — You are a German, my dear Heine, and you do not smoke! That is not the least of your virtues, believe me, and posterity will not reward you for it, but many of your contemporaries, especially all the women, will thank you. Charles Miiller received me with that serious, calm manner that has frightened me at times in Germany, thinking it an indication of indifference and coldness ; but it is not so much to be mistrusted as our French demonstrations, so full of smiles and fine words, with which we greet a stranger, who slips from our memory five minutes after. Far from that : the Conzertrneister, 13* 154 F^RST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. after asking me how I wished to compose my orchestra, went immediately to agree with his brother upon the means of collecting the mass of stringed instruments I had thought necessary, and to make an appeal to such amateurs and artists as, not belonging to the Ducal or- chestra, were worthy of being joined with it. The next day they had formed a fine orchestra for me, a little larger than that of the Opera in Paris, and composed of musicians who were not only very clever, but also animated by an incomparable zeal and ardor. The question of the harp, ophicleide and English-horn came up afresh, as it had come up in Weimar, Leipzig, and Dresden. (I mention these details to get up a reputa- tion for you as a musician). One of the orchestra, M. Leibrock, an excellent artist, well versed in musical lit- erature, had applied himself to the study of the harp for about. a year, and very much dreaded in consequence the test my second symphony was to put him to. Be- sides he only had an old harp, of which the pedals with single action did not admit of executing all that is written for the instrument nowadays. Luckily the harp part in Harold is extremely easy, and M. Leibrock worked at it so for five or six days, that he came, to his honor, to . . . the last rehearsal. But on the evening of the concert, a panic terror seizing him at the important moment, he stopped short in the introduction and left Charles Miiller, who played the leading viola part, play- ing alone. This was the only accident we had to regret, an acci- dent, by the way, that the public did not perceive, and on the strength of which M. Leibrock loaded himself with bitter reproaches some days afterwards, in spite of my efforts to make him forget it. As for the ophicleide, there was no sort of one in Brunswick : I was success- ively presented in its stead with a bass-tuba (a superb brass instrument of which I shall have something to say FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. j ,- 1 in speaking of the military bands in Berlin) ; but the young man who played it did not seem to have much command over its mechanism, he was even ignorant of its true compass; then with a Russian-bassoon, which the player called a double-bassoon (contra- fagotto). I had much trouble in setting right his idea of the nature and name of his instrument, which gives out the notes as they are written, and is played with a mouth-piece like the ophicleide ; while the double-bassoon, a trans- posing reed instrument, is nothing more than a large bassoon which gives almost the entire scale of the bas- soon an octave lower. Be it as it might, the Russian- bassoon was adopted to take the place of the ophicleide as well as might be. There was no English-horn, so we arranged the solos for an oboe, and began the or- chestra rehearsals, while the chorus was at work in an- other hall. I must say here that never up to this day, neither in France, Belgium nor Germany, have I seen a collection of eminent artists so passionately devoted and attentive to the task they had undertaken. After the first rehearsal, at which they were able to form an idea of the principal difficulties of my symphonies, the word of command was given for the succeeding rehearsals ; they agreed to deceive me about the hour at which they were supposed to begin, and every morning (I only learned it afterwards) the orchestra came together an hour before I came, for the sake of studying the most dangerous passages and rhythms. As for myself, I went from one astonishment to another in seeing what rapid transformations the execution underwent every day, and the impetuous assurance with which the entire body rushed upon difficulties which my Paris orchestra, that young guard of the Grand Army, had approached for a long time only with certain precautions. Only one piece troubled Charles Miiller very much ; it was the scherzo of Romeo et Juliette (Queen Mab). Giving way 1 56 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. to the solicitations of M. Zinkeisen, who had heard this scherzo in Paris, I had dared, for the first time since my arrival in Germany, to place it on a concert program. "We shall work so," said he, "that we shall succeed!" He did not presume too much upon the strength of the orchestra, as it turned out, and Qiieen Mab, in her mi- croscopic chariot, drawn by the buzzing insect of sum- mer nights, rushing along at the full speed of her atomic horses, could show her lively frolics and the thousand caprices of her flight to the Brunswick public. But you understand my anxiety about it, you, the poet of all fairies and elves, you, the natural brother of those graceful and impish little creatures; you know too well of what delicate thread the gauze of their veil is woven, and how calm the sky must be for their many-hued hosts to play at will in the pale rays of the moon. Well! In spite of our fears, the orchestra identified itself completely with Shakspere's ravishing fancy, and grew so little, so agile, so cunning and soft, that never, I think, did the invisible Queen flit more gaily through more silent harmonies. In the finale of Harold, on the other hand, that fero- cious orgy, in which the intoxications of wine, blood, joy, and rage vie with each other, where the rhythm seems now to reel, now to run all in fury, where brazen mouths seem to belch forth imprecations and answer suppliant voices with blasphemy, where there is laugh- ter, drinking, blows, destfuction, murder, rape, in a word, a jolly time; in this scene of brigands, the or- chestra became a very pandemonium; there was some- thing supernatural and terrific in the frenzy of its excite- ment; everything sang, leaped, roared in diabolical or- der and harmony, violins, basses, trombones, drums, and cymbals; while the viola solo, Harold, the dreamer, fly- ing in terror, sounded in the distance some few, trem^- bling notes of his evening hymn. Ah ! what a drum- FIUST yOURNE Y TO GERMANY. j r 7 roll in the heart! what wild shudders I felt in leading that astounding orchestra, in which I thought to recog- nize all my young Paris hons, more fiery than ever!!! You know of nothing like it, you poets, you are never whirled along on such tornadoes of life ! I could have kissed the whole orchestra at once, and could not help crying out, in French, it is true, but my intonation must have made me understood: "Sublime! prodigious! I thank you, gentlemen, and I admire you! You are perfect brigands!" The same violent qualities were noticeable in their playing of the overture to Benve7tuto, and yet, in the opposite style, the introduction to Harold, the March of the Pilgrims, and the Serenade, were never rendered with more calm grandeur and religious serenity. As for the movement from Romeo (the Festival at the house of Capulet), its character tends rather towards the turbulent; it also was accordingly, to use a Parisian ex- pression, really run away with. You should have seen, in the pauses at rehearsals, the inflamed look of all those faces. . . . One of the players, Schmidt (the thundering double-bass), had torn off a bit of skin from the forefinger of his right hand at the be- ginning of ^s. pizzicato passage in the orgy; but with- out thinking of stopping for .such a trifle, and in spite of the blood that flowed, he kept on, just changing his fin- ger. That is what is called standing fire, in military language. While we were giving ourselves up to these amuse- ments, the chorus, for its part, was studying, and with great pains too, but with different results, the numbers from my Requiem-. The Offertory and the Quaerens me went well enough at last ; but an insurmountable ob- stacle stood in the way of the Sanctus, in which the solo was to have been sung by Schmetzer, the first tenor of the theatre,. and an excellent musician. The andante 14 1 5 8 F/Rsr yo urne v to Germany. of this piece, written for three female voices, presents some enharmonic modulations which the Dresden cho- rus had understood very well, but which, it seems, were beyond the musical inteUigence of those in Brunswick. Consequently, after trying in vain for three days to catch the meaning and intonation, the poor people, in despair, sent a deputation to conjure me not to expose them to public insult, and get the terrible Sanctus taken off the posters. I had to consent, but unwillingly, es- pecially on Schmetzer's account, whose very high tenor suits the seraphic hymn to perfection, and who also took great pleasure in singing it. Now all is in readiness, and despite the terrors of Ch. Miiller about the scherzo, which he wanted to re- hearse again, we go to the concert to study the impres- sions this music is to call up. I must first tell you that, by advice of the Kapellmeister, I had invited some twenty persons who stood at the head of the legion of amateurs in Brunswick to come to the rehearsals. Thus I had every day a living advertisement, which, spread- ing over the city, wrought up the public curiosity to the highest pitch ; hence the singular interest the gen- eral public took in the preparations for the concert, and the questions they addressed to the players and privi- leged listeners : " What happened at the rehearsal this morning ? . . . Is he satisfied ? . . . He is a Frenchman, then ? . . . But the French only write comic operas ! . . . The chorus find him awfully wicked ! . . . He said that the women sang Hke dancers ! . . . He knew, then, that the soprani belong to the corps de ballet? ... Is it true that he bowed to the trombones in the middle of a piece ? . . . The orchestra boy vows that at yesterday's rehearsal he drank two decanters of water, a bottle of white wine and three glasses of brandy ! . . . What does he keep saying : Cesar ! Cesar ! (c'est fa, c'est fa ! that's it, that's it !) to the Conzertmeister for ? " etc. F/HSr JOURNEY TO GERMANY. j eg So much SO, that long before the fixed time the the- atre was filled to the roof with an impatient crowd, already prejudiced in my favor. Now, my dear Heine, draw in your claws completely, for here is where you might feel tempted to make me feel them. When the time comes, the orchestra being seated, I step upon the stage ; and passing through the ranks of violins, I come to the conductor's desk. Imagine my horror at seeing it wound round from top to bottom with a great garland of leaves. " It is the musicians," said I to myself, "who have probably compromised me. What impru- dence ! Counting one's eggs in this way before they are hatched ! and if the public does not agree with them, here I am in a pretty fix ! This manifestation would be enough to ruin an artist in Paris twenty times over." Yet grand acclamations greet the overture ; the March of the Pilgrims has to be repeated ; the Orgy throws the whole house into a fever ; the Offertory, with its chorus on two notes, and the Quaerens me seem to touch many religious souls; Ch, Miiller gets applauded in the Romanza for violin ; Quee^i Mab causes extreme surprise ; a Lied with orchestra is encored, and the Fes- tival at the house of Capulet winds up the evening in the most glowing manner. Hardly had the last chord been struck, when a terrific noise shook the whole thea- tre ; the audience rose like one man and yelled, in the pit, in the boxes, everywhere ; the trumpets, horns and trombones of the orchestra sounded discordant calls, one in one key and another in another, accompanied by all the din the violins and basses could make by being struck on the back with the back of the bow, and all the instruments of percussion. There is a word in the German language to designate this singular fashion of applauding. Hearing it unex- pectedly, my first impression was one of rage and hor- ror; the musical effects I had just been experiencing l60 MUST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. were thus spoiled, and I had half a grudge against the artists for testifying their satisfaction by such a row. But how could I help being deeply moved by their homage, when the Kapellmeister, George Miiller, came up loaded with flowers, and said to me in French : "Allow me, sir, to offer you these wreaths in the name of the Ducal orchestra, and suffer me to place them upon your scores !" At these words the audience redoubled its yells, the orchestra set off again with its n'oise - . . the baton fell from my hands, and I no longer knew what I was about. Laugh away, come, don't be bashful. It will do you good, and cannot hurt me ; besides I have not done yet, and it would cost you too much self-denial to hear my dithyramb to the end without scratching me. . . . Well, you are not too cross to-day ; I will go on. On coming out of the theatre, perspiring and steam- ing as if I had been dipped in the Styx, dazed and en- chanted, not knowing whom to Hsten to in the midst of all those congratulators, I am notified that a supper of a hundred and fifty covers, ordered at my hotel, is offer- ed me by a society of amateurs and artists. Of course I had to go. New applause, new acclamations at my arrival ; toasts and speeches in French and German succeed each other; I make the best reply I can to those I can understand, and at each health given, hun- dred and fifty voices answer with a hurrah in chorus with the most superb effect. The basses begin on D, the tenors on A, and then the ladies sing F-sharp, giving the chord of D-major, soon followed by four chords, of the sub-dominant, tonic, dominant and tonic, which succes- sion gives a plagal cadence followed by an authentic cadence. This salvo of harmony, in its broad move- ment, bursts out with pomp and majesty; it is very fine ; this at least is truly worthy of a musical people. What shall I say, my dear Heine ? Even if you were FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. I6l to find me innocent and primitive to a superlative de- gree, I must own that these manifestations of good will made me extremely happy. Such happiness undoubt- edly does not approach, in the composer's mind, that of conducting a superb orchestra playing with inspiration his beloved works ; but the two go well together, and after such a concert, such a night spoils nothing. I owe much, as you see, to the artists and amateurs of Brunswick ; I also owe much to her first musical critic, M. Robert Griepenkerl, who launched out into a vehe- ment discussion with a Leipzig paper, in a learned pamphlet that he wrote about me, and gave, I think, a good idea of the strength and direction of the musical current which carries me alongf. Give me your hand, then, and let us sing a grand hurrah for Brunswick, on her favorite chords : Moderaio. HK / Ha! ha! ha! lia! -^— '—IS ^ G> Ha! ha! ba! La! ha! m. mm^ m^M ig=r-_z 1— ha! ha! ha!, ha! Ha! Long live artistic cities ! I am sorry for it, my dear poet, but here you are, compromised as a musician. Now for the trip to your native city, Hamburg, that desolate city like unto old Pompeii, but who rises strong again from her ashes, and bravely binds up her wounds ! . . . Surely, I can only be glad of that, too. Ham- burg has great musical resources; singing societies, phil- harmonic societies, military bands, etc. The theatre or- l62 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. chestra has been reduced, for the sake of economy, to ultra-niggardly proportions, it is true ; but I had made my arrangements beforehand with the director of the theatre, and they presented me with an orchestra, thoroughly fine both as to numbers and the talent of the players, thanks to a rich supplement of stringed in- struments and the leave of absence I obtained for two or three almost centenarian invalids to whom the thea- tre is attached. Strange to say, there is an excellent harpist in Hamburg, armed with a very good instru- ment ! I had begun to despair of seeing either the one or the other in Germany. I also found a vigorous ophicleide, but I had to do without the English-horn. The first flute (Cantal), and the first violin (Linde- nau), are both virtuosi of the first rank. The Kapell- meister (Krebs) fills his place with talent, and a severity that I like to see in orchestra conductors. He helped me very kindly in my long rehearsals. The singing troop at the theatre was well enough composed at the time of my trip ; it comprised three artists of merit ; a tenor gifted, if not with an exceptional voice, at least with taste and method ; an agile soprano. Mademoiselle . . . Mademoiselle . . . faith, I have forgotten her name, (this young divinity would have done me the honor to sing at my concert if I had been better known.— ^Ho- sanna in excelsis !) and finally Reichel, the formidable bass, who, with a voice of enormous volume and superb quality, has a compass of two octaves and a half! Reichel is, over and above, a superb fellow ; he pla} s such parts as Sarastro, Moses and Bertram wonderfully well. Madame Cornet, wife of the director, a finished musician, and whose soprano of great range must have had no common brilliancy, was not engaged ; she only figured in some performances where her presence was necessary. I applauded her in the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute, a diflScult part, written in a very high register, which very few singers possess. jF/J!S T yo URNE Y TO GERMANY. j g , The chorus, though small and rather weak, got through what they had to sing well enough. The Hamburg opera-house is very large; I felt nervous about its dimensions, having found it empty three times running at the performances of the Magic Flute, Mo'ise and Linda di Chamounix. I was very agreeably surprised to see it filled the day I presented myself before the Hamburg public. An excellent performance, and a large, intelligent and very warm audience made the concert one of the best that I had given in Germany. Harold and the cantata of the Fifth of May, sung with profound senti- ment by Reichel, carried off the honors. After this piece two musicians near my desk, spoke to me in a low voice, in French, in these simple words which touched me deeply : "Ah 1 sir ! our respect ! our respect ! . . ." They did not know how to say any more. Upon the whole, the Hamburg orchestra has remained very good friends with me, of which I am not moderately proud, I swear it to you. Only Krebs gave his suffrage with peculiar reti- cence : "My dear sir," said he, "in a few years your music will get all over Germany ; it will become popu- lar, and that will be a great misfortune ! What imita- tions it will give rise to 1 What a style ! What mad- nesses ! It were better for art that you had never been born!" Let us hope, however, that those poor symphonies are not as contagious as he has the kindness to say, and that neither yellow fever, nor cholera-morbus will ever come from them. Now, Heine, Henri Heine, famous banker of Ideas, nephew of M. Solomon Heine, author of so many pre- cious poems in bullion, I have nothing more to tell you, and I . . . salute you. TO MADEMOISELLE LOUISE BERTIN. SEVENTH LETTER. BERLIN. 1MUST first implore your indulgence, mademoiselle, for the letter I am about to write ; I have too much reason to distrust the state of mind that I am in. An attack of black philosophy has seized hold of me for some days, and God knows to what sombre ideas, to what absurd judgments, to what strange fancies it will infallibly lead ... if it holds on. Perhaps you do not yet quite know what black philosophy is ? . . . It is the opposite of white magic, no more nor less. By white magic we are able to divine that Victor Hugo is a great poet; that Beethoven was a great mu- sician ; that you are at once a musician and a poet ; that Janin is a clever man ; that, if a fine opera, well performed, fails, the public has understood nothing of it ; that if it succeeds, the public has understood it no better ; that the beautiful is rare ; that the rare is not always beautiful ; that the strongest reason is the best ; that Abd-el-Kader is wrong, O'Connell too ; that Arabs are decidedly not Frenchmen ; that pacific agitation is all tomfoolery; and other propositions just as com- plicated. B" black philosophy we come to doubt, to be aston- 164 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. jgg ished at everything; to see graceful images upside down, and hideous objects in their true light ; we grum- ble incessantly, blaspheme life, and curse death ; we are indignant, like Hamlet, that Imperious Caesar, dead, and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away ; we should be much more indignant if the ashes of poor wretches were the only ones fit for that ignoble use ; we pity poor Yorick's not being even able to laugh that stupid grin he did after passing fifteen years under- ground, and we throw away his skull with horror and disgust ; or perhaps we carry it away with us, saw it open, make a cup of it, and poor Yorick, who can drink no longer, serves to quench the thirst of mocking lovers of Rhine wine. Thus, in your rocky solitude, where you give your- self up in peace to the current of your thoughts, I should only feel mortal discontent and ennui in this hour of black philosophy.' If you should try to make me admire a beautiful sunset, I should, very likely, pre- fer the gaslight in the avenue des Champs- Elysees ; if you were to show me one of your swans on the pond, and point out its elegant shape, I should tell you that the swan is a silly animal, that only thinks of paddling about and eating, and whose song is nothing but a stu- pid and frightful squawk ; if you were to seat yourself at the piano-forte and play me some pages of your fa- vorite composers, Mozart and Cimarosa,'' I should per- ' Yesterday, mademoiselle, suffering from an attack of this philosophy, I happened to be in a house where the mania for autographs rages. The queen of the drawing-room did not fail to ask me to write something in her album. "But, I beg you," added she, "no flippancies." This ad- vice irritated me, and I wrote at once : " Capital punishment is a very bad thing, for, if it did not exist, T should probably have killed a good many people by this time, and we should not have now so many of those blackguardly idiots, the scourge of art and artists. " My aphorism was a good deal laughed at, as they thought that I did not believe a word of it. " Mademoiselle Bertin has lately assured me that I slandered her in counting Cimarosa among her favorite composers. So I must acknowl- 1 66 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. haps interrupt you in a huff, opining that it was high time to come to the end of all this admiration for Mo- zart, whose operas are all alike, and whose fine com- posure is tiresome and exasperating ! . . . As for Cim- arosa, I should send him to all the devils with his eternal and only Matrimonio segreto, which is almost as tiresome as the Nozze di Figaro, without being nearly so musical ; I should prove to you that the comic element in that work lies solely in the pasquinades of the actors ; that its melodic invention is quite limited ; that the perfect cadence alone, returning every instant, forms nearly two-thirds of the score ; in a word, that it is an opera fit for the carnival and market days. If you should choose an example of the opposite style, and fall back upon some work of Sebastian Bach, I should probably betake myself to flight from before his fugues, and leave you alone with his Passion. See the consequences of this terrible disease! . . . When the fit is upon us, we have neither poHteness, nor tact, nor prudence, nor poHcy, nor worldly wisdom, nor common sense; we propound all sorts of enormities; , and, what is worse, we mean what we say, we compro- mise ourselves, we lose head. A fig for black philosophy! the fit is over; I am cool-headed enough now to talk reasonably; and here, mademoiselle, is what I heard in Berlin: I will tell fur- ther on, what I gave them to hear there. I begin with the lyric theatre; all honor to whom honor is due! The late German opera-house, so quickly destroyed hardly three months ago by fire, was dark and dirty enough, but very sonorous and well calculated for mu- sical effect. The orchestra did not occupy a position so far advanced into the rows of stalls as in Paris; it was edge my fhistake, regretting having made it. At all events it is not a very grave calumny, I fancy, nor one for which consolation is impossible. FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 167 spread out much more to the right and left, and the vio- lent instruments, such as the trombones, trumpets, drums and big-drum, being under the eaves of the first boxes, lost something of their excessive resonance. The body of instruments, one of the best that I have heard, is composed as follows, on the days of grand perform- ances: 14 first, and 14 second violins — 8 violas — 10 violoncelli — 8 double basses — 4 flutes — 4 oboes — 4 clar- inets — 4 bassoons — 4 horns — 4 trumpets — 4 trom- bones — I drummer — i big-drum — i pair of cymbals, and 2 harps. The strings are almost all excellent; at their head are to be mentioned especially the brothers Ganz (first vio- lin and first violoncello of great merit), and the clever violinist Ries. The wooden wind instruments are, as you see, twice as many as we have at the Opera in Paris. This combination has great advantages; it al- lows two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, and two bas- soons to come in ripieni in "Cos. fortissimo, and singularly softens the harshness of the brass, which is otherwise always too prominent. The horns are capital, and are all with cylinders, to the great sorrow of Meyerbeer, who still holds the opinion I used to but a little while ago about the new mechanism. Several composers are hostile to the horn with cylinders, because they think that its quality of tone is no longer the same as that of the plain horn. I made the experiment several times, listening alternately to the open notes of a plain horn and a chromatic horn (with cylinders); I confess that it was impossible for me to detect the sHghtest difference of tone between them, either in quality or quantity. Another objection to the new horn has been advanced, apparently well founded, but which is easily met. Since the introduction into orchestras of this (as I think, perfected) instrument, certain horn-players, using the cylinders to play parts written for the common horn, 1 68 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. find it more convenient to produce in open tones by means of this meciianism, the stopped tones intentionally- written by the composer. This is in fact a very grave abuse, but it must be imputed to the players, and not to the instrument. Far from this, the horn with cylin- ders, in the hands of a clever artist, can give not only all the stopped notes of the common horn, but can give the entire scale without a single open note. We must only conclude from all this that horn-players ought to know how to use their hand in the bell, as if the mech- anism of cylinders did not exist, and that composers must in future indicate in their scores, by some sign, what notes of the horn-parts are to be stopped, the play- er only playing open notes when no indication to the contrary is given. The same prejudice has for some time fought against the trumpets with cylinders, in general use in Germany to-day, though with less strength than it brought to bear upon opposing the new horns. The question of stopped notes, which no composer has used with the trumpet, was naturally laid aside. They confined themselves to saying that the trumpet lost much of its brilliancy through the mechanism of cylinders, which is not so ; at least as far as my ear can tell. So, if it takes a more delicate ear than mine to detect a differ- ence between the two instruments, you will admit, I hope, that the disadvantage the trumpet with cylinders suffers, from this difference bears no proportion to the advantage this mechanism gives it of being able to pass through, without difficulty or the slightest inequality of tone, a chromatic scale of two octaves and a half I can only applaud the Germans for having almost com- pletely abandoned the plain trumpet, as they have. We have hardly any chromatic trumpets (with cyHnders) in France as yet; the inconceivable popularity of the cornet-a-pistons competes victoriously with them as yet, FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. jgg and wrongly as I think ; the tone of the cornet being far from having the nobility and brilliancy of that of the trumpet. In any case the instruments are not wanting; Adolphe Sax makes now trumpets with cylinders, both large and small, in every possible key, common or not, of which the excellent sonority and perfection are in- contestable. Will you believe it that this young and ingenious artist has a thousand troubles in getting an opening and making a living in Paris ? Persecutions worthy of the Middle Ages are renewed against him, exactly resembling the machinations of the enemies of Benvenuto, the Florentine carver. His workmen are enticed away, his plans stolen, he is accused of insanity, beset with lawsuits ; only a little more daring is wanting to have him assassinated. Such is the hatred inventors always excite among those of their rivals who invent nothing. Luckily the protection and friendship with which General de Rumigny has constantly honored the clever maker have helped him so far to sustain this wretched struggle ; but will they suffice long ? . . . It is for the Minister of War to place a man so useful, and with so rare a specialty, in a position of which he is worthy, by his talent, his perseverance and his efforts. Our military bands have as yet neither trumpets with cylinders nor bass-tubas (the most powerful of bass in- struments). The manufacture of these instruments will become inevitable, if the French military bands are to be on a level with those in Prussia and Austria ; an or- der for three hundred trumpets and a hundred bass- tubas, given to Adolphe Sax by the Minister, would save him. Berlin is the only German city (that I have visited) where the great bass-trombone (in E-fllat) is to be found. We have not got any as yet in Paris, the play- ers refusing to practice an instrument which is so hard upon the chest. It seems that Prussian lungs are more IS 1^0 FIJiST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. robust than ours. The orchestra of the Berlin opera has two of these instruments, of which the sonority is such as to overwhelm, and completely cause to vanish, the tone of the two other trombones, the alto and tenor, which play the upper parts. The rough and prominent tone of one bass-trombone would be enough to upset the equilibrium and destroy the harmony of the three trombone parts which composers write everywhere to- day. There is no ophicleide at the Berlin opera, and instead of replacing it by a bass-tuba in operas that come from France, and which almost invariably contain a part for the ophicleide, they have hit upon the plan of having the part played by a second bass-trombone. The result is that the ophicleide part, often written so as to double that of the third trombone in the lower oc- tave, being played in this fashion, the union of these two terrible instruments produces a disastrous effect. Only the low notes of the brass instruments are heard ; it is as much as ever that the voice of the trumpets can come to the surface. In my concerts, even where I only used (for my symphonies) one bass-trombone, I was obliged, seeing that it was the only one I could hear, to make the player sit down so that the bell of his instrument was turned against his desk, which acted to some extent as a mute, while the alto and tenor trom- bones played standing, their bells thus passing over the desk. It was only then that the three parts were audi- ble. These repeated experiments, made in Berlin, have led me to think that the best way of grouping the trom- bones in theatres is, after all, that which is adopted at the Opera in Paris, and which consists in employing three tenor trombones. The tone of the small trom- bone (the alto) is shrill, and its high notes are of little value. I should vote also for its exclusion from theatres, and should only desire the presence of a bass-trombone when four parts are written, and with three tenors capa- ble of resisting it. FIUST JO URNE Y TO GERMANY. 1 7 j If I do not speak of gold, I have at least said a good deal about brass; yet I am sure, mademoiselle, that these details of instrumentation will interest you much more than my misanthropic tirades, or my stories of death's-heads. You are a melodist and a harmonist, and very little versed, as far as I know, in osteology. So I will go on with my examination of the musical forces of the Berlin opera. The kettle-drummer is a good musician, but has not much agility in his wrists ; his rolls are not close enough. Besides, his drums are too small. They have not much tone, and he only knows of one kind of sticks, of a me- diocre effect, about half-way between our leather-headed sticks and those with sponge heads. In this respect they are far behind France, throughout Germany. As for the execution itself, with the exception of Wiprecht, the head of the military bands in Berlin, who plays the drums like a Jupiter tonans, I have not found an artist who can compare with Poussard, the excellent drummer of the Opera, for precision, closeness of rolling and del- icacy of shading. Must I speak of the cymbals ? Yes, and only to tell you that a pair of intact cymbals, that is to say, such as are neither cracked nor notched, such as are whole in short, are a great rarity, that I have found neither in Weimar, nor Leipzig, nor Dresden, nor Ham- burg, nor Berlin. It was always a source of great wrath to me, and I have sometimes kept the orchestra waiting half an hour, being unwilling to begin a rehearsal before they brought me a pair of really new cymbals, really quivering, really Turkish, as I wished them to be, to show the Kapellmeister whether I was wrong or not in finding the bits of broken dishes presented to me under that name ridiculous and detestable. In general, we must acknowledge the shocking inferiority of certain parts of the orchestra in Germany up to the present day. They do not seem to suspect the effects that can 172 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. be drawn from them, and which really are drawn from them elsewhere. The instruments are worthless, and the players are far from knowing all their resources. Such are the kettle-drums, the cymbals, even the big-drum ; still more so the English-horn, the ophicleide and the harp. But this fault is evidently to be laid to the charge of the composers' way of writing, as they, not having ever demanded anything important from these instru- ments, are the cause of their successors', who write in another manner, not being able to obtain anything from them. But, on the other hand, how far the Germans are our superiors in brass instruments in general, and the trump- ets in particular ! We have no idea of it. Their clar- inets too are better than ours ; such is not the case with the oboes ; I think that in this point the two schools are of equal merit ; as for the flutes, we surpass them ; the flute is played nowhere as it is in Paris. Their double- basses are stronger than the French ; their violoncelli, violas and violins have great excellences ; yet they cannot be, without injustice, placed on an equality with our young school of stringed instruments. The violins, violas and violoncelli of the orchestra of the Conserva- toire in Paris have no rivals. I have given more than abundant proof, I think, of the scarcity of good harps in Germany ; those in Berlin are no exceptions to the general rule, and they have great need in that capital of some pupils of Parish-Alvars. This superb orchestra, whose excellent precision, ensemble, strength and deli- cacy are pre-eminent, is placed under the direction of Meyerbeer, general director of music to the King of Prussia. It is . . . Meyerbeer (I think you know him ! ! ! . . .) ; of Henning (first Kapellmeister), a clever man, whose talent is greatly esteemed by the artists ; and of Taubert (second Kapellmeister), a brilliant pianist and composer. I heard (played by himself and the brothers FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. j 7, Ganz) a piano-forte trio of his composition, of excellent workmanship, in a new style, and full of vigor. Tau- bert has just written and had successfully performed, choruses to the Greek tragedy of Medea, recently put upon the stage in Berlin. MM. Ganz and Ries divide between them the title and duties of Conzertmeister. Let us now go upon the stage. The chorus, on days of ordinary performances, is composed of only sixty voices; but when grand operas are given in presence of the king, the choral force is doubled, and sixty other singers from outside are added to those of the theatre. All these voices are excellent, fresh, and vibrating. The greater part of the chorus- singers, men, women, and children, are musicians, less skillful readers, it is true, than those of the Opera in Paris, but much more trained than they in the art of singing, more attentive and careful, and better paid. It is the finest theatre chorus that I have yet met with. Their director is Elssler, brother of the famous dancer. This intelligent and patient artist might spare himself much trouble, and advance the choral studies more rap- idly, if, instead of drilling the hundred and eighty voices all at the same time and in the same hall, he would at first divide them into three groups (the soprani and confralti, the tenors, and the basses), studying sep- arately, in three separate rooms, under the direction of three sub-leaders, chosen and superintended by himself. This analytic method, which has been steadfastly refused admission to theatres, from wretched reasons of econo- my and mere routine, is still the only one that can allow of each choral part being thoroughly studied, and ob- tain a careful and well-shaded rendering of it; I have said this elsewhere, and shall not get tired of repeating it. The acting singers of the Berlin theatre do not occu- py so exalted a rank in the hierarchy of virtuosi as 174 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. that which the chorus and orchestra have attained, each in its own specialty, among the musical bodies of Eu- rope. Yet this troupe comprises some notable talents, among whom I must mention : Mademoiselle Marx, an expressive and very sympa- thetic soprano, whose extreme chords, in the upper and lower registers, unluckily begin to show signs of wear; Mademoiselle Tutchek, flexible soprano, of quite pure quality and fair agility ; Mademoiselle Hahnel, contralto, of good character; Boeticher, excellent bass, of great compass and fine quahty; skillful singer, fine actor, musician, and con- summate reader; Zische, basso-cantante, of real talent, whose voice and method seem to shine more in concert than on the stage ; Mantius, first tenor ; his voice is a little wanting in flexibility, and has not much range. Madame Schroder- Devrient, engaged only a few months ago ; a sopra?io worn out in the upper part, not very flexible, but explosive and dramatic. Madame Devrient sings flat now whenever she cannot force a note. Her ornaments are in bad taste, and she inter- lards her singing with spoken phrases and interjections, with execrable effect, after the manner of our vaudeville actors in their songs. This school of singing is the most antimusical and the most trivial that can be pointed <.>ut to beginners to avoid' imitating. ]*ischek, the excellent baritone of whom I have si)oken in Frankfort, has just been engaged, so they tell me, by M. Meyerbeer. He is a precious acquisition that the direction of the Berlin theatre is to be congrat- ulated upon. There, mademoiselle, is all that I know about the resources dramatic music can look to in the capital of Prussia. I did not hear a single performance at the Italian theatre, so I shall not speak about it. FIRST JO URNE Y TO GERM A NY. j - g In another letter I shall have to scrape together my recollections of a performance of the Huguenots and of Armide at which I was present, of the Singing Acad- emy and the military bands, two institutions of essen- tially opposite character, but of immense value, and whose splendor, compared with anything we have of the same sort, must profoundly humiliate our national pride. TO MONSIEUR HABENECK.» EIGHTH LETTER. BERLIN. I LATELY made an enumeration of the vocal and in- strumental riches of the Grand Opera of Berlin for Mademoiselle Louise Bertin, whose musical knowledge and serious love for art you know. I shall now have to speak of the Singing Academy and the corps of military bands ; but as you wish to know above all things what I think of the performances at which I was present, I will invert the order of my account, to tell you how I saw the Prussian artists conduct themselves in the operas of Meyerbeer, Gluck, Mozart and Weber. There are, unfortunately, in Berlin, as in Paris, as everywhere, certain days on which it seems as if, by tacit agreement between the artists and the public, the performances were more or less neglected. Many empty seats are visible in the house, and many unoccu- pied desks in the orchestra. The leaders dine out, and give balls on those evenings ; they are off hunting, etc. The musicians doze while playing the notes of their parts ; some do not even play at all ; they take naps, they read, they draw caricatures, they play tricks on 1 Conductor of the orchestra at the Paris Op6ra. — TRANS. 176 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 177 their neighbors, they chatter quite loudly ; I need not tell you all that goes on in the orchestra in such cases. . . . As for the actors, they are in too prominent a posi- tion to take such liberties (which, however, sometimes happens), but the chorus give themselves up to them to their hearts' content. They come upon the stage one after the other, in incomplete groups; several of them, coming late to the theatre, are not yet dressed ; some, having sung in a fatiguing service at church during the day, come all tired out, with the fixed intent of not singing a note. Every one is at his ease ; high notes are transposed an octave lower, or else they are given as well as may be in a timid wiezza voce ; there is no longer any light and shade ; the mezzo forte is adopted for the whole evening, nobody looks at the conductor's baton, and three or four wrong entries and as many dis- located phrases are the result ; but what matter ! Does any one suppose that the public notices all that ? The director does not know anything about it, and if the composer complains, they laugh in his face and call him a mischief-maker. The opera girls especially have charming amusements. There is no end to their smiles and telegraphic communications either with the musi- cians or the habitues of the balcony. They have been in the morning to the christening of Mademoiselle ***'s, one of their comrade's, baby ; they have brought away sugar-plums which they eat on the stage, laughing at the queer face of the godfather, the coquetry of the godmother, the well-fed countenance of the cur^. While keeping up this chit-chat, they distribute a few slaps among the chorus boys who begin to be unruly : "Come, stop that, you little rascal, or I'll call the leader of the chorus." " Just look, my dear, see what a lovely rose M. *** has got in his button-hole ! Florence gave it him." IS* lyg FIRST yOURNEY TO GERMANY. " So she is as spooney as ever on her exchange broker ?"i "Yes, but it's a secret; everybody can't have a lav/- yer." "Oh! get out! By the way, are you going to the court-concert?" "No, I've something to do that day." "What's that?" " Get married." "My! what an idea!" " Look out, here's the curtain." So the act comes to an end, the pubhc is mystified and the work spoiled. But, what ! People must have some time to rest a bit ; one cannot be always sublime, and these performances in shirt-sleeves only serve to give prominence to those that are gotten up with care, zeal, attention and talent. I agree to it ; but yet you will admit that there is something sad in seeing master- works treated with this extreme familiarity. I can un- derstand not wishing to burn incense night and day before the statues of great men ; but would you not be angry to see the bust of Gluck or of Beethoven used as a wig-block in a hair-dresser's window ? . . . Do not clothe yourself in philosophy; I am sure it would make you indignant. I do not mean to conclude from all this that they give themselves up to having a good time to this extent at certain performances in the Berlin opera-house ; no, they go at it with more moderation ; on this head, as on some others, the superiority remains with us. If by chance we happen to see in Paris a masterpiece given in its skirt-sleeves, as I have just said, they never allow them- selves in Prussia to give it in more than half undress. I have seen Figaro and the FreyschUtz given so. It was ' There is a pun in the original on argent (money) and agent (broker) which baffles attempt at translation. — Trans. FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. j^q not bad, without being wholly good. There was a cer- tain rather relaxed ensemble, a little undecided precision, a moderate verve, a tepid warmth ; one could only de- sire the color and animation which are the true symp- toms of life, and that luxury, which for good music is really a necessary; and then something else that is rather essential . . . inspiration. But when Armide or the Huguenots come upon the boards, you can see a complete transformation. I thought myself at one of those first performances in Paris where you come early, to have time to look over your people a bit and give your last advice, where every one is at his post before his time, where every one's mind is on the stretch, where serious faces express a fixed and intelligent attention, where one sees, in fact, that an important musical event is to take place. The grand orchestra with its twenty-eight violins and its doubled wind instruments, the great chorus with its hundred and twenty voices were present, and Meyer- beer ruled at the conductor's desk. I had a lively de- sire to see him conduct, especially conduct his own work. He performs this task as if he had been at it for twenty years ; the orchestra is in his hand, he does with it what he wishes. As for the tempi he takes in the Huguenots, they are the same as your own, with the exception of the entry of the monks in the fourth act, and the march which closes the third ; these are a little slower. This difference made the former number seem a little cold to me ; I should have preferred a little less breadth, while I found it wholly to the advantage of the latter, played upon the stage by the military band ; it gains by it in every respect. I cannot analyze, scene by scene, the playing of the orchestra in Meyerbeer's masterpiece ; I will only say that it struck me as magnificently fine froin the begin- ning to the end of the performance, perfectly shaded, l8o FJRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. incomparably precise and clear, even in the most in- tricate passages. Thus the finale of the second act, with its phrases rolling upon series of chords of the di- minished seventh and its enharmonic modulations, was given, even in the most obscure parts, with irreproach- able nicety and purity of intonation. I must say as much of the chorus. The running passages, the con- trasted double choruses, the entries in imitation, the sudden changes from forte to piano, the intermediate shades, were all given clearly and vigorously, with rare warmth and a still more rare sentiment for true expres- sion. The stretta of the benediction of poniards struck me like a thunder-bolt, and I was a long time in getting over the incredible confusion it threw me into. The great ensemble piece in the Pre aux clercs, the quarrel of the women, the litanies to the Virgin, the song of the Huguenot soldiers presented to the ear a musical tissue of astounding richness, but of which the listener could easily follow the web, without the complex thought of the composer being for an instant veiled. This marvel of dramatized counterpoint has also remained in my mind as the marvel of choral execution. Meyerbeer, I think, can hope for nothing better in any part of Eu- rope. I must add that the mise-en-schie is arranged in an eminently ingenious manner. In the singing of the rataplan, the chorus imitate a sort of drummer's march, with certain movements forward and back, which ani- mate the scene and assimilate very well with the musical effect. The military band, instead of being placed, as in Paris, at the back of the stage, from whence, separated from the orchestra by the crowd which encumbers the stage, it cannot see the movements of the conductor, and can consequently not follow the measure exactly, here begins playing behind the side-scenes at the right of the spec- tator; it then marches across the stage near the foot- F/UST yoURXEY TO GERMANY. igj lights, passing across the groups of the chorus. In this way the players are very near the conductor until al- most the end of their piece ; they keep strictly the same time as the orchestra below, and there is never the slightest rhythmical discordance between the two bodies. Boeticher makes an excellent Saint-Bris ; Zsische fills the part of Marcel with talent, yet without the qualities of dramatic humor that make our own Levasseur such an originally true Marcel. Mademoiselle Marx shows sensibility and a certain modest dignity, essential quali- ties in the character of Valentine. Yet I must reproach her with two or three spoken monosyllables which she was wrong in borrowing from the school of Madame Devrient. I saw this latter actress in the same part a few days afterwards, and if, by pronouncing myself openly against her rendering of it, I astonished and even shocked several persons of excellent understand- ing, who admire the famous artist without restriction, no doubt from habit, I must say here why I differ so widely from their opinion. I had no fixed opinion, no pre- possession either for or against Madame Devrient. I only remembered that she struck me as admirable in Paris many years ago in Beethoven's Fidelia, and that quite recently in Dresden, on the other hand, I had noticed very bad habits in her singing, and a scenic action often blemished by exaggeration and affectation. These faults struck me afterwards in the Huguenots all the more forcibly that the situations of the drama are more enchaining, and the music bears a plainer stamp of grandeur and truth. Thus I severely blamed the singer and actress, and here is the reason : In the scene of the conspirators where Saint-Bris lays his plan for massacring the Huguenots before Nevers and his friends, Valentine listens shuddering to her father's bloody scheme, but she has a care not to show the horror with which it inspires her ; Saint-Bris, indeed, is not the man i6 1 82 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. to endure such opinions in his daughter. Valcntine^s involuntary start towards her husband at the moment when he breaks his sword and refuses to join in the plot is the more beautiful, that the timid woman has suffered so long in silence, and that her agitation has been so painfully contained. Well ! instead of hiding her agitation and remaining almost passive, as most tragedians of good sense do in this scene, Madame Dev- rient goes and takes hold of Nevers, forces him to follow her to the back of the stage, and there, striding along by his side, she seems to be tracing out his plan of con- duct for him, and dictating his answer to Saint-Bris. Whence it comes that when Valentine's husband cries out: " Parmi mes illustres aieux, Je compte des soldats, mais pas un assassin ! " (Among my illustrious ancestors I count soldiers, but not one assassin!) he loses all the merit of his opposi- tion ; his movement has no longer any spontaneity, and he seems simply a submissive husband who is re- peating the lesson his wife has taught him. When Saint-Bris begins the famous theme : A cette cause sainte, Madame Devrient forgets herself so far as, willy- nilly, to throw herself into the arms of her father, who is yet supposed to be ignorant of Valentine's senti- ments ; she implores him, she supplicates him, she pesters him, in a word, with such vehement panto- mime, that Boeticher, who was not prepared the first time for these tempestuous demonstrations, did not know what to do to preserve his freedom of action and respiration, and seemed to say by the shaking of his head and right arm, " For God's sake, madam, let me alone, and allow me to sing my part to the end ! " Madame Devrient shows by this to what a degree she is po.ssessed by the demon of personality. She would think herself lost if in every scene, whether right or FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. jgs wrong, and by no matter what scenic manoeuvres, she did not draw the attention of the audience upon her- self. She plainly considers herself as the pivot of the drama, as the only person worthy of interesting the spectators. " You are listening to that actor ! you are admiring the composer ! this chorus interests you ! Fools that you are 1 only look this way, look at me ; for I am the poem, I am poetry, I am the music, I am all in all ; there is no other interesting object beside me, and you must have come to the theatre for my sake alone ! " In the prodigious duet which follows this im- mortal scene, while Raoul is giving himself up to all the storm of his despair, Madame Devrient, with her hand resting upon a lounge, bends her head gracefully so as to let the lovely curls of her blonde hair hang down disheveled at her left side ; she says a few words, and, during Raoul's cue, throwing herself into another pose, she offers the soft reflections in her hair for admiration on her right side. I do not think, however, that these minute details of a puerile coquetry are precisely those which ought to fill the soul of Valentine at such a mo- ment. As for Madame Devrient's singing, I have already said that it is often wanting in trueness and taste. The cadenzas and the numerous changes she now introduces into her parts are in bad style, and clumsily brought in. But I know of nothing that can be compared to her spoken ejaculations. Madame Devrient never sings the words : God ! O God ! yes ! no ! is it true ! can it be ! etc. All this is spoken and shrieked at the top of her voice. I cannot tell the aversion I feel for this sort of antimusical declamation. To my mind it is a hun- dred times worse to speak in opera than to sing in tragedy. The notes designated in certain scores by the words : Canto parlato, are not intended to be thrown out in 1 84 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. that way ; in the serious style, the quality of voice they demand ought always to adhere to the tonality ; this does not overstep the bounds of music. Who does not remember how Mademoiselle Falcon used to know how to give, in canto parlato, the words at the end of this duo: " Raoul ! its te tueront!" (Raoul ! they will kill thee !) Surely that was at once natural and musical, and made an immense effect. Far from that, when answering to the supplications of Raoul, Madame Devrient cries out three times with a crescendo of strength, nein ! nein ! nein ! I fancy that I am hearing Madame Dorval or Mademoiselle Georges in a melodrama, and ask of myself why the orchestra keeps on playing, since the opera is over. I did not hear the fifth act, so furious was I at seeing the masterpiece of the fourth disfigured in this fashion. Would it be calumniating you to say that you would have done as much, my dear Habeneck ? I hardly think so. I know your way of thinking in music; when the performance of a fine work is wholly bad, you bravely make up your mind to it ; and then, the more detestable it is, the more courageous you are ! But on the other hand, when all goes satisfactorily with a single exception, oh ! then that exception irritates you, grates on your nerves, exasperates you ; you get into one of those passions of indignation that would make you look upon the extermination of the discordant individual with composure, and even with joy, and while the good bour- geois are amazed at your wrath, all true artists share it with you, and you and I gnash all our teeth in unison. Madame Devrient certainly has eminent good quali- ties ; such as warmth and power over her audience ; but even if these qualtities were sufficient in themselves, they did not seem to me to be always kept within the bounds of nature or the character of certain parts. Valentine, for instance, even putting aside what I have FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. jge said above, Valentine, the young bride of a day, with a heart strong but timid, the noble wife of Nevers, the chaste and reserved lover, who only avows her love for 'Raoul to snatch him from the jaws of death, lends her- self more readily to modest passion, decent action and expressive song than to all the three-decker broadsides of Madame Devrient with her devilish personalism. Some days after the Huguenots I saw Armide. The revival of this celebrated work was conducted with all the care and respect due to it ; the mise-en-scene was magnificent, dazzling, and the public showed itself worthy of the favor granted it. Of all the old com- posers, Gluck is the one who seems to me to have the least to fear from the incessant revolutions in art. He never sacrificed anything either to the caprices of sing- ers, nor to the requirements of fashion, nor to the invet- erate habits he had to combat with on coming to France, still tired out by the struggle he had kept up against those of the Italian theatres. No doubt this war with the dilettanti of Milan, Naples and Parma, instead of weakening him, had redoubled his strength by revealing its extent ; for in spite of the fanaticism which then per- vaded all our French customs in art matters, it was al- most in making light of them that he crushed and tram- pled under foot the wretched schemes that opposed him. The shrill shrieking of critics succeeded once in betraying him into a movement of impatience ; but this fit of wrath, which led him to commit the imprudence of answering them, was the only one with which he had to reproach himself; and after that, as before, he walked on in silence, straight to his goal. You know what the goal was he wished to attain, and whether or not it was ever granted to a man to reach it more surely than he. With less conviction, or less firmness of purpose, it is probable that, in spite of the genius with which nature had gifted him, his corrupted works would not have l86 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. long outlived those of his mediocre rivals, so completely forgotten to-day. But truth of expression, which brings with itself purity of style and grandeur of forms, is of every age ; the beautiful pages of Gluck will remain' always beautiful. Victor Hugo is right : Le coeur n'a pas de rides (The heart has no wrinkles). Mademoiselle Marx, as Armide, struck me as noble and impassioned, although a thought crushed by her epic burden. In fact it is not enough to possess a real talent to represent Gluck's women ; as with Shakspere's wo- men, there must be such high qualities of soul, heart, voice, physiognomy and bearing, that it is no exaggera- tion to say that these roles also demand beauty and . . . genius. What a happy evening I passed at this performance of Armide, conducted by Meyerbeer! The orchestra and chorus, inspired at once by two illustrious masters, the composer and the conductor, showed themselves worthy of both. The famous finale: Poursuivons jiis- qu'au Mpas (Let us pursue unto death), produced a ver- itable explosion. The act of Hatred, with the admirable pantomimes composed, if I mistake not, by Paul Tagli- oni, master of the ballet at the Grand Theatre in Berlin, struck me as no less remarkable in its apparently di.sor- dered verve, of which every outbreak was yet full of an infernal harmony. They cut the dance air in -f time in A-inajor, which we give here, and gave instead the great chaconne in B-flat, which we never hear in Paris. This very fully developed number is full of fire and brilliancy. What a conception this act of Hatred is! I had never so fully comprehended and admired it. I shuddered at the passage in the evocation: "Sauvez moi de I'amour, Rien n'est si redoutable ! " (Save me from love, nothing is so terrible). FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. j 37 At the first hemistich, the two oboes give out a cruel dissonance of a major seventh, a woman's cry which shows us terror and the most acute anguish. But at the following line: " Centre un ennemi trop aimable" (Against too lovable an enemy), how these same two voices sigh tenderly, uniting in thirds! What regrets lie in these few notes ! and how we feel that love so re- gretted will conquer in the end! In fact, Hatred, com- ing with her frightful army, has hardly begun her work, when Armide interrupts her and refuses her aid. Hence the chorus: " Suis I'amour, puisque tu le veux, Infortunfe Armide ; Suis I'amour qui te guide Dans un abime affreux ! " (Follow love, since you so wish it, unhappy Armida; follow love, which leads you to a frightful chasm!) In Quinault's text the act ends there; Armide \fent out with the chorus without saying anything. This catastrophe seeming vulgar and unnatural to Gluck, he wished to have the sorceress remain alone for an in- stant, and then go out, thinking of what she has just heard, and one day, after a rehearsal, he improvised at the opera-house the words and music of this scene, of which the following are the verses: "O ciel ! quelle horrible menace ! Je fr^mis ! tout mon sang se glace ! Amour, puissant amour, viens calmer mon effroi, Et prends piti6 d'un coeur qui s'abandonne a toi ! " (Oh heavens! What a fearful threat ! I tremble! all my blood curdles ! Love, powerful love, come and calm my terror, and take pity on a heart which gives itself up to thee !) The music of it is beautiful in melody, harmony, vague anxiety, tender languor, and all that can be finest 1 88 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. in dramatic and musical inspiration. Between each of tlie exclamations of the first verse, under a sort of inter- mittent tremolo of the second violins, the basses unfold a long chromatic phrase that growls and threatens up to the first word of the third verse: "Amour" (Love), when the sweetest melody, expanding as in a dream, dissipates by its soft light the half obscurity of the fore- going measures. Then all is extinguished. . . Armide retires with downcast eyes, while the second violins, abandoned by the rest of the orchestra, still murmur their solitary tremolo. Immense, immense is the genius that can create such a scene !!!... Egad! I am really Arcadian in my admiring analy-. sis! Do not I look like a man to initiate you, you Habeneck, into the beauties of Gluck's score? But you know it is involuntary ! I talk to you here as we some- times do on the Boulevards, coming out of a Conserva- toire concert, when our enthusiasm must positively air itself a little. I will make an observation upon the mise-en-scene of this piece in Berlin: The machinist lets the curtain fall too soon; he ought to wait until the last measure of the closing ritournelle has been heard; otherwise Armide cannot be seen leav- ing the back of the stage with slow steps, during the ever feebler and feebler palpitations and sighs of the orchestra. This effect was very beautiful at the Opera in Paris, where, at the time of the performances of Ar- mide, the curtain never fell. To make up for it, although I am not, as you know, an advocate of any modifica- tions made by the conductor of an orchestra in a score which is not his own, and of which he ought only to seek a good execution, I will compliment Meyerbeer upon a happy idea he has had concerning the intermit- tent tremolo I have just mentioned. This passage for the second vioUns being on low D, Meyerbeer, to give FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. jgg it more prominence, had it played upon two strings in unison (the open D and the D on the fourth string). It naturally sounds as if the number of second violins were suddenly doubled, and a peculiar resonance results from these two strings which produces the happiest ef- fect. So long as only corrections like this are made in Gluck, we may be allowed to applaud them.' It is like your idea of playing the famous continued tremolo of the oracle in Alceste near the bridge and scraping the string. Gluck did not indicate it, to be sure, but he ought to have. In respect to exquisite sentiment and expression I found the execution of the scenes in the Garden . of Pleasures even superior to all the rest. It was a sort of, voluptuous languor, of morbid fascination, which trans- ported me to that palace of love, dreamed of by two poets (Gluck and Tasso), and seemed to give it to me for my enchanted dwelling place. I shut my eyes, and while hearing that divine gavotte with its caressing mel- ody, and the sweetly monotonous murmur of its har- mony, and that chorus : Jamais dans ces beaux lieux- (Never in this beautiful place), whence happiness over- flows with so much grace, I saw charming arms entwined about me, adorable feet cross each other, perfumed locks of hair roll down, diamond eyes sparkle, and a thousand intoxicating smiles glisten. The flower of pleasure opened, softly shaken by the melodious breeze, and from • No, it shall not be allowed. I was in the wrong to write that. Gluck knew the effect of two strings in unison as well as Meyerbeer, and if he did not wish to employ it, no one has the mission to introduce it into his work. Besides, Meyerbeer has added other effects to Armide, such as trombones in the duet " Esprits de haine et de rage" (Spirits of Hatred and Rage), which cannot be enough censured. Spontini once quoted them to me and reproached me with not having called attention to them. And yet he too added wind instruments to the orchestra in Iphigenie en Tauride. . . . Forgetting that he had had this weakness, he cried out another time: " It is frightful! So I suppose I too shall be instrumented when I am dead ? . . . " 1 6* I go FIJRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. its ravishing corolla escaped a concert of sounds, colors and perfumes. And it is Gluck, the terrible musician, who has sung all woes, who has made Tartarus roar, who has painted the desolate shores of Tauris and the savage customs of its people ; it is he who knew how thus to reproduce in music this strange ideal of dreamy voluptuousness, and peace in love ! . . . Why not ? Had he not already opened the Elysian Fields before ? . . . Is it not he who found that immortal chorus of happy shades : "Torna, o bella, al tuo consorte Che non vuol che piii diviso Sia di te pietoso il del ! " And is it not commonly, as our great modern poet has said, the strong who are the gentlest ? But. I see that the pleasure of talking to you about all these beautiful things leads me on too far, and that I cannot talk to-day about the non-dramatic musical in- stitutions which flourish in BerHn. So they must be the subject of another letter, and will give me an excuse for plaguing somebody else with my indefatigable verbiage. You are not too cross at this one, are you ? At any rate, good-bye ! TO M. DESMAREST.» NINTH LETTER. BERLIN. I SHOULD never get through with this royal city of Berlin, were I to study all its musical riches in detail. There are few capitals, if any, that can pride themselves upon treasures of harmony comparable to hers. Music is in the air, you breathe it, it penetrates you. You find it at the theatre, at church, in the concert-room, in the street, in the public gardens, everywhere; ever grand and proud, strong and agile, radiant in youth and splendid trappings, of noble and serious mien, a beau- tiful-armed angel who sometimes deigns to walk, but whose quivering wings are ever ready to carry her again on her heavenward flight. It is because music in Beriin is honored by all. Rich and poor, clergy and army, artists and amateurs, peo- ple and king have an equal veneration for it. The king especially brings the same real fervor to bear upon this adoration that he does upon the cultivation of the sci- ences and the other arts, which is saying much. He follows with a curious eye the progressive movements, I might even say the summersaults, of new art, without neglecting the preservation of masterpieces of the old ' First violoncello of the Conservatoire orchestra. — Trans. 191 IQ2 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. school. He has a prodigious memory, embarrassing even to his librarians and Kapellmeisters, when he asks them all at once for the performance of certain selections from some old masters whom nobody any longer knows. Nothing escapes him, neither in the domain of the pres- ent nor of the past ; he wishes to hear and examine everything. Hence the lively attraction great artists feel towards Berlin ; hence the extraordinary popularity of musical sentiment in Prussia ; hence the instrumental and choral institutions its capital possesses, and which seemed to me so worthy of admiration. The Singing Academy is one of these. Like that in Leipzig, like all other similar academies in Germany, it is almost wholly composed of amateurs ; but several artists, male and female, attached to the theatres, also belong to it ; and ladies of the upper ten-thousand do not think it beneath them to sing an oratorio of Bach by the side of Boeticher or Mantius or Mademoiselle Hahnel. — The greater part of the singers of the Berlin Academy are musicians, and they almost all have fresh and sonorous voices ; the soprani and basses struck me as especially excellent. The rehearsals are made dili- gently and at great length under the skillful direction of M. Rugenhagen ; and the results obtained, when a great work is submitted to the public, are magnificent and beyond all comparison with anything of the sort that we can hear in Paris. The day on which I went to the Singing Academy, by the director's invitation, they performed Sebastian Bach's Passion. This famous score, which you have, no doubt, read, is written for two choruses and two orches- tras. The singers, to the number of at least three hun- dred, were seated on the steps of a large amphitheatre, exactly like the one we have in the chemistry lecture- room in the Jardin des Plantes ; a space of only three or four feet separates the two choruses. The tv\^o or- FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 153 chestras, rather small ones, accompanied the voices from the upper steps, behind the choruses, and were thus pret- ty far from the Kapellmeister, who stood down in front beside the piano-forte. I should not have said piano- forte, but harpsichord ; for it had almost the tone of the wretched instruments of that name which were in use in Bach's time. I do not know whether they made such a choice designedly, but I noticed in the singing schools, in the green-rooms of the theatres, everywhere where voices were to be accompanied, that the piano-forte in- tended for that purpose was invariably the most detest- able that could be found. The one Mendelssohn used in Leipzig in the hall of the Gewand-Haus forms the sole exception. ■ You will ask me what the harpsichord-piano can have to do during the performance of a work in which the composer has not used this instrument ! ' It accompanies, together with the flutes, oboes, violins and basses, and probably serves to keep the first rows of the chorus up to pitch, as they are supposed not to hear, in the tutti, the orchestra, which is too far off. At any rate it is the custom. The continual tinkling of chords struck on this bad piano produces the most tiresome effect, and spreads over the ensemble a superfluous coating of monotony ; but that is, no doubt, another reason for not giving it up. An old custom is so sacred, when it is a bad one ! The singers all remain seated during the pauses, and rise at the moment of singing. There is, I think, a real advantage in respect to a good emission of the voice in singing standing ; it is only unfortunate that the chorus, giving up too easily to the fatigue of this posture, sit down as soon as their phrase is over ; for in a work like Bach's, where the two answering choruses are often in- terrupted by solo recitative, it happens that there is • Berlioz shows here, as elsewhere, his utter ignorance of Bach's scores. — ^Trans. 17 IQ4 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. always some group getting up or some other sitting down, and in the long run this succession of movements up and down gets to be rather laughable; besides it takes away all the surprise from certain entries of the chorus, the eye notifying the ear beforehand from what part of the vocal body the sound is to come. I should rather have the chorus keep seated unless they can keep standing. But this impossibility is one of those that disappear immediately if the director knows how to say : / wish it or I do not wish it. Be it as it may, the execution of those vocal masses was something imposing to me ; the first tutti of the two choruses, took away my breath ; I was far from sus- pecting the power of that great harmonic blast. Yet we must recognize the fact that one gets tired of this beautiful sonority more quickly than of that of the or- chestra, the qualities of the voices being less varied than those of the instruments. This is conceivable ; there are hardly four voices of different natures, while the number of instruments of different kinds amounts to over thirty. You do not expect of me, I fancy, my dear Desma- rest, an analysis of Bach's great work ; that would be wholly overstepping the limits I have had to impose upon myself Besides, the selection they played at the Conservatoire three years ago may be considered as the type of the composer's style and manner in this work. The Germans profess an unlimited admiration for his rec- itatives, and their pre-eminent quality is precisely the one to have escaped me, as I do not understand the language in which they are written, and could not con- sequently appreciate the merit of their expression. When one comes from Paris and knows our musical customs, one must witness the respect, the attention, the piety with which a German audience listens to such a composition, to believe it. Every one. follows the FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. {qk words of the text with his eyes '; not a movement in the house, not a murmur of approbation or blame, not the least applause ; they are listening to a sermon, hearing. the Gospel sung; they are attending in silence, not a concert, but divine service. And it is really thus that this music ought to be listened to. They adore Bach, and believe in him, without supposing for an instant that his divinity can ever be questioned ; a heretic would horrify them ; it is even forbidden to speak on the sub- ject. Bach is Bach, as God is God. Some days after the performance of this masterpiece of Bach, the Singing Academy announced Graun's Death of Jesus. There is another consecrated score, a sacred book, but one whose adorers are specially in Ber- hn, while the religion of S. Bach is professed through- out North Germany. You can imagine the interest this second evening offered me, especially after the impres- sion I had received from the first, and the eagerness with which I should have listened to the favorite work of the great Frederick's Kapellmeister ! See my misfort- une ! I fall ill precisely on that day ; the physician (great lover of music as he was, the learned and amiable Doctor Gaspard) forbids me to leave my room; they again invite me in vain to hear a famous organist; the the doctor is inflexible; and it is only after holy week, when there are neither oratorios, nor fugues, nor chorals to be heard, that the good God gives me back my health. That is why I am forced to keep silence about the mu- sical service in the Berlin churches, which is said to be so remarkable. If ever I return to Prussia, ill or not, I must hear Graun's music, and I will hear it, be calm on that head, though I die of it. But in that case, I should not be able to tell you about it. . . . Thus, it is evident that you will never know anything of it from me; so, make the journey, and then you can tell me about it. As for the military bands, one must take great pains ipS FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. to the contrary, if one does not hear at least some of them, as they go through the streets of Berlin, on foot or on horseback, at all hours of the day. These little troops, however, can give no idea of the majesty of the great combinations which the director and instructor of the military bands of Berlin and Potsdam (Wiprecht) can form when he pleases. Imagine him with a force of six hundred musicians and more under his orders, all good readers, well up in the mechanism of their instruments, playing true, and favored by nature with indefatigable lungs and lips of leather." Hence the extreme ease with which the trumpets, horns and cornets give out the high notes which our players cannot reach. They are regi- ments of musicians, and not musicians of regiments. The Prince of Prussia, anticipating my desire to hear and study at leisure his musical troops, had the gracious kindness to invite me to a matinee got up for my bene- fit at his house, and to give the necessary orders to Wi- precht. The audience was very small; we were twelve or fif- teen at the most. I was astonished to see no orchestra, not a sound betrayed its presence, when a slow phrase in F-minor, well known to you and me, made me turn my head towards the largest hall in the palace, which was concealed from view by a large curtain. H. R. H. had had the courtesy to let them begin the concert with the overture to the Francs-juges, which I had never heard thus arranged for wind instruments. Three hun- dred men were there, conducted by Wiprecht, and they played this difficult piece with marvelous precision and that furious verve that you show for it, you of the Con- servatoire, on great days of enthusiasm and vim. The solo for brass instruments, in the introduction, was especially startling, played by fifteen great bass- trombones, eighteen or twenty alto and tenor trombones, twelve bass-tubas and a perfect ant-hill of trumpets. FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. igy The bass-tuba, which I have already mentioned sev- eral times in my former letters, has completely de- throned the ophicleide in Prussia, if, indeed, it ever reigned there, which I doubt. It is a brass instrument, derived from the bombardon, and provided with a mechanism of five cylinders, which gives it an immense- ly low range. The extreme low notes of its scale are a little vague, it is true; but when doubled in the upper octave by another bass-tuba part, they acquire an incredible round- ness and force of vibration. The tone of the medium and upper registers of the instrument is very noble, it it is not dead like that of the ophicleide, but vibrating and very sympathetic to that of the trombones and trumpets, of which it is the real double-bass, and with which it combines as well as possible. Wiprecht intro- duced it in Prussia. A. Sax makes admirable ones now in Paris. The clarinets struck me as as good as the brass in- struments; they especially showed their prowess in a grand battle-symphony composed for two orchestras by the English Ambassador, the Earl of Westmoreland. Next came a brilliant and chivalric piece for brass in- struments only, written for the court fetes by Meyer- beer, under the title of Fackeltanz (Torchlight dance), in which there is a long trill on D, which eighteen trum- pets sustained, trilling £is rapidly as any clarinet, for six- teen bars. The concert ended with a funeral-march, very well written and of fine character, composed by Wiprecht There had been only one rehearsal ! ! ! In the intervals left between the pieces by this terri- ble orchestra, I had the honor to talk a few moments with the Princess of Prussia, whose exquisite taste and knowledge of composition render her good opinion so precious. Besides, H. R. H. speaks our language with igS FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. a purity and elegance that much intimidated tlie indi- vidual she was talking with. I wish I cpuld draw a Shaksperian portrait of the Princess, or at least give a glimpse at a veiled sketch of her soft beauty ; I should, perhaps, dare to . . . were I a great poet. I was present at one of the 'court concerts. Meyer- beer was at the piano-forte ; there was no orchestra, and the singers were no others than those of the theatre, whom I have already mentioned. Towards the end of the evening, Meyerbeer, great pianist though he be, perhaps on that very account, found himself fatigued by his duties as accompanyist, and gave up his place; to whom ? I leave you to guess ... to the first chamberlain of the king, M. le comte de Roedern, who accompanied Madame Devrient in Schubert's Erl-Konig like a pian- ist and a musician! What do you say to that? There is something to give you a proof of an astonishing diffu- sion of musical knowledge. M. de Roedern also pos- sesses a talent of another nature, of which he gave brilliant proofs in organizing the famous masked ball, which threw all Berlin into agitation last winter, under the name of A fete at the Court of Ferrara, and for which Meyerbeer wrote a host of pieces. These etiquette concerts always seem cold; but they are found agreeable when they are over, because they usually bring together some listeners with whom one is proud and happy to have a moment's conversation. Thus I met M. Alexander v. Humboldt at the Prince'?, that shining hero of literary science, that great anato- mist of the terrestrial globe. Several times during the evening, the King, Queen and Princess of Prussia came to talk with me about the concert I had just given at the Grand Theatre, to ask my opinion of the principal Prussian artists, to ask me questions about my manner of orchestration, etc., etc. The king said that I had played the devil with the mur . ■FIRST JO URATE Y TO GERMA NY. j gg sician^ in Jiis orchestra. After supper His Majesty was getting ready to retire to his apartments, but coming up to me of a sudden, and, as if altering his mind : "By the way, Monsieur Berlioz, what are you going to give us at your next concert?" • "Sire, I shall repeat half of the last program, and add to it five movements of my Romeo et JiiUette sym- phony." "Of Romeo et Juliette! and I shall be out of town! But we must hear that! I will come back." In fact, the evening of my second concert, five min- utes before the advertised time, the king stepped from his carriage and entered his box. Now shall I tell you about these two concerts? They gave me a good deal of trouble I assure you. And yet the artists are clever, they were most kindly disposed, and Meyerbeer seemed to multiply himself to come to my aid. But the daily service of a great theatre like the Berlin opera has requirements that are always very awk- ward, and incompatible with the preparations for a con- cert ; and, to turn aside and conquer the difficulties that arose every instant, Meyerbeer had to use more strength and skill, I am sure, than he did when the Huguenots was first put upon the stage. I had wished to give in Berlin the great numbers of the Requiem, those of the Prose (Dies irae, Lacrymosa, etc.^, which I had not yet attempted in the other cities of Germany; and you know what a vocal and instrumental apparatus they require. I had luckily notified Meyerbeer of my intention, and he had already been hunting up the means of execution I needed before my arrival. As for the four small or- chestras of brass instruments, they were easily found ; we might have had thirty if we had needed them; but the kettle-drums and the drummers gave us much trouble. At last, with the assistance of the excellent Wiprecht, we contrived to get them together. 200 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. They put us for the first rehearsals in a splendid con- cert-hall belonging to the second theatre, of which the sonority is unfortunately so great that on coming into it I immediately saw that we should have trouble. The sound being unduly prolonged, caused an insupportable confusion, and made our orchestral studies excessively difficult. There was even one piece (the scherzo of Ro- meo et Juliette') that we had to give up, not having suc- ceeded, after an hour's work, in getting through more than half of it. Yet the orchestra, I repeat, was as well composed as possible. We had not time enough, and were forced to postpone the scherzo to the second con- cert. At last I began to get accustomed to the row we made, and to detect in that chaos of sounds what was well or ill done by the players; we pursued our studies without taking into account the, very luckily, quite dif- ferent effect we obtained afterwards in the opera-house. The overture to Benvennto, Harold, Weber's Invitation a la valse, and the numbers from the Requiem were thus learned by the orchestra alone, the chorus working separately in another hall. At the special rehearsal I had asked for, for the four orchestras of brass instru- ments in the Dies Ires and Lacrymosa, I observed for the third time a fact which I am not yet able to explain, and which is this: In the middle of the Tuba ntirum there is a call for the four groups of trombones on the four notes of the chord of G-major successively. The tempo is very broad; the first group ought to give G on the first beat; the second, B on the second; the third, D on the third, and the fourth, octave G on the fourth. Well! when this Requiem was performed for the first time in the church of the Invalides in Paris, it was impossible to ob- tain an execution of this passage. When I afterwards gave selections from it at the Opera, after having re- hearsed this solitary measure to no purpose for a quar- ■PJRSr JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 2OI ter of an hour, I had to give it up; there were always one or two groups that did not strike in; it was invari- ably that on B, or that on D, or both. In casting my eyes upon this place in the score in Berlin, I immedi- ately thought of the restive trombones in Paris: "Ah, let us see," said I to myself, "whether the Prussian artists will succeed in forcing this open door ! " Alas no ! vain efforts ! Nor rage, nor patience do any good ! impossible to obtain the entry either of the sec- ond or the third groups; even the fourth, not hearing its cue, which ought to have been given by the others, does not go off any better. I take them separately, I ask No. 2 to give me its B. It does it very well. Turning to No. 3, I ask for its D. It gives it without difficulty. Now let us have the four notes one after the other, in the order in which they are written! . . . Impossible! wholly impossible! and we must give it up! . . . Can you understand that ? and is it not enough to make a man butt his head against the wall? . . . And when I asked the trombone-players in Paris and Berlin why they did not play in that fatal measure, they could only answer that they did not know why them- selves; those two notes fascinated them.* I must write to H. Romberg, who brought out this work in St. Petersburg, to know whether the Russian trombones were able to break the spell. For the rest of the program the orchestra understood and rendered my intentions in a superior manner. Soon we were able to have a general rehearsal in the opefa-house, on an amphitheatre of seats built on *the stage, as for the concert. Symphony, overture, cantata, all went satisfactorily ; but when the turn came for the ' At the last two performances of the Requiem in the Church of Saint- - Eustache in Paris, this passage was at last given without a mistake. • 17* 202 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. numbers from the Requiem, general panic; the choruses, which I had not been able to drill myself, had rehearsed in tempi different from mine, and when they suddenly found themselves mixed up with the orchestra with the true tempi, they no longer knew what they were about; they came in wrong or without assurance; and in the Lacrymosa the tenors did not sing at ail; I did not know what saint to call upon. Meyerbeer, who was not at all well that day, had not been able to leave his bed; the director of the chorus, Elssler, was also ill; the or- chestra was becoming demoralized at the sight of the chorus all topsy-turvey. . . I sat down for an instant, broken down, annihilated, asking myself whether I had not better throw up everything and leave Berlin that very evening. And I thought of you in that evil mo- ment, saying to myself: "To persist is madness! Oh! if Desmarest were here, he who is never satisfied with our rehearsals at the Con- servatoire, and if he saw me decided to have the concert announced for to-morrow, I know what he would do; he would lock me up in my room, put the key in his pocket, and bravely go and announce to the intendant of the theatre that the concert cannot come off." You would not have failed to do so, would you? Well! you would have been in the wrong. Here is the proof After the first shock was over, the first cold sweat wiped away, I took my decision, and said: "This must go." Ries and Ganz, the two Conzertmeisters, were be- side me, not quite knowing what to say to wind me up again; I say to them sharply: "Are you sure of the orchestra?" "Yes! you have nothing to fear on that score, we are very tired; but we have understood your music, and you will be satisfied to-morrow." "Then there is only one thing to be done: the cho- FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 203 Tus must be called together for to-morrow morning ; I must have a good accompanyist, as Elssler is ill, and ■ you, Ganz, or else you, Ries, will come with your vio- lin, and we will rehearse the singing for three hours, if need be." "That is it; we will be there, the orders shall be given." So next morning there we are at our work. Ries, the accompanyist and I ; we take in turn the boys, the women, the first soprani, the second soprani, the first tenors, the second tenors, the first and second basses ; we have them sing by groups of ten, then by twenties, after which we combine two parts, three, four, and at last all the voices. And like Phaeton in the fable I at last cry out : Qti'est-ce ceci ? Mon char marclie a souhait ! (What is this ? My chariot goes as I wish !) I make a little speech to the chorus, which Ries trans- lates for them, sentence by sentence, into German ; and there are all my people revived, full of courage, and de- lighted not to have lost this great battle, where their self-love and mine were at stake. It is needless to say that, in the evening, the overture, the symphony and the cantata of the Fifth of May were royally performed. With such an orchestra, and a singer like Boeticher, it could not have been otherwise. But when the Requiem came, every one being very attentive, very devoted and desirous of seconding me, the orchestras and the chorus being in perfect order, every one at his post, nothing wanting, we began the Dies irce. Not a mistake, no wavering; the chorus sustained the instrumental assault without winking; the four- fold fanfare burst from the four corners of the stage, which trembled under the rolls of the ten drummers, under the tremolo of fifty un- chained bows ; the hundred and twenty voices, in the midst of this cataclysm of sinister harmonies, of noises 204 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. from the other world, launched forth their terrible pre- diction : "Judex ergo cum sedebit Quidquid latet apparebit! " The audience covered the entry of the Liber scriptus for a moment with their applause, and we reached the last chords sotto voce of the Mors stupebit, trembling, but victorious. And what joy among the performers, what glances exchanged from one end of the stage to the other! As for me, I had the beating of a bell in my breast, a mill-wheel in my head, my knees knocked to- gether, I dug my nails into the wood of my desk, and if, at the last measure, I had not forced myself to laugh, and talk very loud and very fast to Ries, who held me up, I am sure that, for the first time in my life, I should have, as the soldiers say, shown the whites of my eyes in a very ridiculous way. Having once stood fire, the rest was but child's-play, and the Lacrymosa ended, entirely to the satisfaction of the composer, this apocalyptic evening. At the end of the concert many people spoke to me, congratulated me, and shook me by the hand; but I stood there without understanding . . . without feeling anything . . . the brain and nervous system had made too great an effort ; I idiotized myself, so as to rest. It was only Wiprecht, with his cuirassier's squeeze, who had the talent to bring me to myself He really made my ribs crack, the worthy man, mixing up his ejacula^ tions with Teutonic oaths, by the side of which those of Guhr were but as many Ave Marias. He who had then thrown a sounding line into my throbbing joy, would surely nd^ have touched bottom. So you will admit that it is sometimes wise to do a piece of folly; for without my extravagant daring the concert would not have taken place, the work at the theatre be-^ ing laid out for a long time .so a.s to prevent my recom- mencing the study of the Requiem. FIXST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 305 For the second concert I announced, as I have al- ready said, five movements from Romeo et Juliette, the Queen Mab being of the number. During the fifteen days which separated the second concert from the first, Ganz and Taubert had studied attentively the score of this sclurzo, and when they saw me bent upon giving it, it was their turn to be afraid: "We shall not succeed," said they to me ; "you know that we can only have two rehearsals, and we ought to have five or six; nothing is more difficult nor more dan- gerous ; it is a musical spider's web, and without extra- ordinary delicacy of touch, we shall tear it to shreds." "Bah ! I bet that we shall come out with it yet; we have only two rehearsals, it is true, but there are only five new pieces to be learned, of which four do not pre- sent any great difficulties. Besides, the orchestra al- ready has some idea of this scherzo from the first par- tial trial that we made, and Meyerbeer has spoken about it to the king who wishes to hear it, and I also wish the artists to know what it is, and it will go." And it did go almost as well as in Brunswick. Much can be dared with such musicians, with musicians indeed who, before being conducted by Meyerbeer, had for a long time been under the sceptre of Spontini. This second concert had the same result as the first. The selections from Romeo were very well done. The Queen Mab puzzled the audience not a little, even some listeners who were learned in music, as the Princess of Prussia, who positively wished to know how I had pro- duced the effect in the accompaniment of the allegretto, and did not suspect that it was done by harmonics on the violins and harps in several parts. The king preferred the Festival at the House of Capulet, and sent to ask me for a copy; but I thmk the sympathies of the orchestra were rather for the love scene (the adagio). The musi- cians of Berlin have, in that case, the same way of feel- 18 206 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. ing as those in Paris. Mademoiselle Hahnel had siing the verses for contralto in the prologue very simply at •the rehearsals; but at the concert she thought that she must embellish the hold at the end of these two lines: ■' Oil se consume Le rossignol en longs soupirs ! " (Where the nightingale pines away in long-drawn sighs !) with a long trill to imitate the nightingale. Oh! made- moiselle! ! ! what treason! and you look so good and innocent! Well! to the Dies tree, the Tuba mirum, the Lacry- ■mosa, the Offertory of the Requiem, to the overtures to Benvenuto and King Lear, to Harold, his Serenade, his Pilgrims and his Brigands, to Romeo et Juliette, to Capulet's concert and ball, to the witcheries of Queen Mab, to every thing that was given in Berlin, there are some people who simply prefer the Fifth of May ! . . . Impressions are as various as physiognomies, I know; but when they told me that, I must have made a singu- lar face. Happily I quote here wholly exceptional opinions. Good-bye, my dear Desmarest; you know that we have an anthem to sing to the public in a few days at the Conservatoire; bring me back your sixteen violon- celli ; the great singers, I shall be very happy to hear them again, and to see you at their head. It is so long since we have sung together! And, to give them a warm reception, tell them that I will conduct them with Mendelssohn's baton. Ever yours. TO M. G. OSBORNE. TENTH LETTER. HANOVER, DARMSTADT. ALAS ! alas ! my dear Osborne, here my journey draws to a close! I am leaving Prussia, full of gratitude for the welcome it has given me, for the warm sympathy of its artists, for the indulgence of critics and public ; but tired, used up, broken down by the fatigue of this life of exorbitant activity, by these continual rehearsals with new orchestras. So much so that I have given up go- ing to Breslau, Vienna and Munich. I am returning to France; and already, from a certain vague agitation, from a sort of fever that disturbs my blood, from an anxiety without an object, of which my head and heart are full, I feel that I am in communication with the elec- tric current of Paris. Paris ! Paris ! as our great mod- ern poet, A. Barbier, has too faithfully painted it : " Cette infernale cuve. Cette fosse de pierre aux immenses contours, Qu'une eau jaune et terreuse enferme 4 triples tours; Cast un volcan fumeux et toujours en haleine Qui remue i long flot de la mati^re humaine. La personne ne dort, la toujours le cerveau Travaille, et, comme Tare, tend son rude cordeau." (That infernal caldron. That stone ditch of immense 207 2o8 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. outlines, which a yellow and earthy water shuts in with a thrice-turned key; a smoky volcano always in full blast, which stirs up human lava in long waves There no one sleeps, there the brain works without stopping, and, like the bow, stretches its tough string.) It is there that our art now dully sleeps and now boils up; it is there that it is at once sublime and medi- ocre, proud and crawling, beggar and king; it is there that it is exalted and despised, adored and insulted; it is in Paris that it has faithful, enthusiastic, intelligent and devoted followers, it is in Paris that it too often speaks to the deaf, to idiots and savages. Here it walks onward and moves in liberty; there its sinewy limbs, im- prisoned in the clinging bands of routine, that toothless old hag, hardly allow it a slow and ungraceful crawl. It is in Paris that it is crowned and worshiped like a god, provided that only lean victims are to be sacrificed on its altars. It is in Paris also that its temples are flooded with splendid gifts, on condition that the god shall become a man, and at times a merry-andrew. In Paris the scrofulous and adulterine brother of art, trade, covered with tinsel, parades its plebeian insolence before all eyes, and art itself, the Pythian Apollo, in his divine nudity, hardly deigns, it is true, to interrupt his lofty contemplations, and let fall on trade a disdainful glance and smile. But sometimes, oh shame! the bastard im- portunes his brother to the point of obtaining from him incredible favors; it is then that we see him glide into the car of light, grasp the reins and try to make the im- mortal quadriga back; until, astounded at so much stupid audacity, the true driver tears him from his seat, huris him headlong, and forgets him. . '-. It is montey, then, that brings about this transitory and horrible alliance; it is the love of sudden and immediate lucre that sometimes thus poisons chosen souls: FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. gOO "L'argent, I'argent fatal, dernier dieu des humains, Les prend par les cheveux, les secoiie i. deux mains, Les pousse dans le mal, et pour un vil salaire Leur mettrait les deux pieds sur le corps de leur p^re." (Money, fatal money, last god of the human race, takes them by the hair, shakes them in both hands, thrusts them into evil, and for a vile wages, would put both their feet upon the body of their father.) And those noble souls usually fall only from having misunderstood these sad but incontestable truths: that with our present morals, and our form of government, the more of an artist an artist is, the more he must suf- fer; the newer and greater his productions are, the more severely must he be punished by the consequences his work brings with it; the more lofty and swift the flight of his thought, the farther will it be beyond the reach of the weak eyes of the crowd. The Medicis are dead. Our deputies are not the men to take their place. You know the profound saying of that provincial Lycurgus, who, when he heard one of our great poets read some verses, the one who wrote la Chute d'un Ange, said, while opening his snuff-box with a paternal air: "Yes, I've got a nephew who writes little c . . . . nades^ like that!" Now go and ask encouragement for art from that colleague of the poet. You virtuosi who do not sway musical masses, who only write for the orchestra of your own two hands, who do without large halls and numerous choruses, you have less to fear from the contact with bourgeois cus- toms; and yet, you too feel their effects. Scribble some brilliant futility, publishers will cover it with gold and fight over it among themselves ; but if you have the misfortune to develop a serious idea in a large form, then you are sure of your bargain, your work remains on your hands, or at the very least, if it is published, nobody buys it. ' In Italian coglionerie. 210 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. It is true, and be it said for the justification of' Paris and constitutionalism, that it is the same thing every- where. In Vienna, as here, they pay lOOO francs for a song or waltz by a fashionable maker, and Beethoven was forced to let them have his Symphony in C-minor for less than lOO crowns. You have published in London trios and divers com- positions for the piano-forte of a very broad make, in a style full of elevation ; and even without going to your grand repertory, your songs for a single voice, such as: The beating of my ozvii heart, My lonely home, or yet Such things were, which your sister, Mrs. Hampton,' sings so poetically, are charming things. Nothing ex- cites the imagination more vividily, I own, in making it fly to the green hills of Ireland, than these virginal mel- odies of so naif Z.VI.A original a cut that they seem to have been wafted by the evening breeze over the rippling waves of the lakes of Killarney, than these hymns of re- signed love, to which we listen, touched we know not why, dreaming of solitude, of great nature, of beloved beings who are no more, of heroes of by- gone ages, of our suffering country, of death even, death, dreamy and calm as night, in the words of your national poet, Th. Moore. Well ! place all these inspirations, all this po- etry with a melancholy smile, in the scales with some turbulent caprice without wit or heart, such as music dealers often order of you on more or less vulgar themes from new operas, in which notes skip about, pursue each other, roll over each other like a handful of bells shaken up in a bag, and you will see on which side the pecun- iary success will be. No, we must make up our minds to it ; except in cer- tain circumstances brought about by chance, except in certain associations with the inferior arts which always lower it, our art is not productive in the commercial sense of the term ; it appeals too exclusively to excep- FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 2\ I tional individuals in intelligent communities, it requires too many preparations, too many means for its external manifestation. So there must be a sort of honorable os- tracism for the minds that cultivate it without being pre- occupied with interests that are foreign to it. Even the greatest peoples are, in their relation to pure artists, like the deputy I spoke of just now : they always number, by the side of the colossuses of human genius, some nephews who also write, etc. We find in the archives of one of the theatres in Lon- don a letter addressed to Queen Elizabeth by a troupe of actors, and signed by twenty obscure names, among which is found that of William Shakspere, with this col- lective designation : Your poor players. Shakspere was one of those poor players. . . . Yet dramatic art was more appreciable by the masses in Shakspere's day than musical art is in our own time in countries where they pretend to have some sentiment for it. Music is essen- tially aristocratic ; it is a daughter of the blood, whom only princes can endow to-day, and who should live poor and a virgin rather than make a mesalliance. You have, no doubt, often made these very reflections yourself, and will thank me, I fancy, to stop them, and come to the account of the last two concerts that I gave in Ger- many after leaving Berlin. This account will have, I fear, little interest for you, as far as it concerns myself; I shall still have to mention works of which I have already, perhaps, said too much in my former letters ; always the eternal Fifth of May, Harold, the selections from Romeo et Juliette, etc. Al- ways the same difficulty in finding certain instruments, the same excellence in the other parts of the orchestra, which constitute what I shall call the old orchestra, the orchestra of Mozart ; and always the same faults invari- ably coming up again and again at the first trial, at the same places, in the same pieces, to disappear afterwards after some attentive studies. 212 PIRSr JOURNEY TO GERMANY. I did not stop at Magdeburg, where, however, a rath- er original success awaited me. I was nearly insulted for having the audacity to call myself by my own name; and that too by one of the employes of the post, who, while registering my luggage and examining the inscrip- tion the various pieces bore, asked me with a suspicious look: " Berlioz ? Componist ? " "Ja!" Thereupon, immense rage of the worthy fellow, caused by my impudence in trying to pass myself off as Berlioz the composer. He had, without doubt, imagined that that amazing musician only traveled on a hippogryph, in the midst of fiery flames, or surrounded by sumptuous paraphernalia and a respectable retinue of servants. So that when he saw a man come, made and unmade like any other man who has been at once frozen and smoked in a railway carriage, a man who had his own trunk weighed, who walked himself, who spoke French him- self, and who only knew how to say Ja in German, he at once concluded that I was an imposter. As you can well imagine, his grumblings and shoulder-shruggings enchanted me ; the more disdainful his pantomime and his accents became, the higher I carried my head ; if he had beaten me, I should have kissed him without a shadow of a doubt. Another employe, who spoke my language very well, showed himself more disposed to allow me the right to be myself; but the polite things he said to me flattered me infinitely less than the incre- dulity of his simple comrade and his good bad humor. Yet see, a half a million would have deprived me of that success ! I shall take good care in the future not to car- ry one about with me, but to always travel in the same way. This is not, after all, the opinion of our witty and jovial dramatic critic, Perpignan, who, on hearing of the man whose life was saved in a duel by a five-franc piece FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. . 213 in his waistcoat-pocket stopping his adversary's ball, cried out: "Those rich folk are the only lucky ones! Now I should have been killed on the spot ! " I arrive in Hanover ; A. Bohrer expected me there. The intendant, M. de Meding, had had the kindness to place the orchestra and theatre at my disposal, and I was going to begin my rehearsals, when the death of the Duke of Sussex, a relation of the King, threw the Court into mourning, so that the concert had to be put off for a week. So I had a little more time to make the acquaintance of the principal artists, who were soon to suffer from the bad character of my compositions. I could not get much acquainted with the Kapellmeis-, ter, Marschner ; the difficulty he experienced in express- ing himself in French made our conversations rather la-> borious ; besides, he is very busy. He is at present one of the first composers in Germany, and you appreciate, as we all do, the eminent merit of his scores of the Vampyr and the Templer. As for A. Bohrer, I knew him already; Beethoven's trios and quartettes had drawn us together in Paris, and the enthusiasm with which we then burned had not grown cold since then. A. Bohrer is one of the men who seem to me to have best understood and felt those of Beethoven's works which are reputed unintelligible and eccentric. I still see him at the quartette rehearsals, in which his brother Max (the famous violoncellist, now in America), Claudel, the second violin, and Urhan, the viola, seconded him so well. In listening to and studying this transcendent mu- sic. Max used to smile with pride and joy; he seemed to be in his native atmosphere and breathe it with ecstasy. Urhan adored in silence, and cast down his eyes, as be- fore the sun ; he seemed to say : " God has willed that there should be a man as great as Beethoven, and that we should be allowed to contemplate him; God has willed it ! ! ! " Claudel admired above all else these pror 18* 214 PTRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. found admirations. As for Anton Bohrer, the first violin, he was passion at its apogee, he was ecstatic love.^ One evening, in one of these superhuman adagios, in which Beethoven's genius soars immense and solitary, like the colossal bird of the snowy peaks of Chimborazo, Bohrer's violin, singing the sublime melody, seemed an- imated by the epic afflatus ; its voice redoubled its ex- pressive power, burst forth in accents unknown to itself; inspiration radiated from the countenance of the virtu- oso ; we held our breath, our hearts swelled, when K.- Bohrer, stopping all of a sudden, put down his burning bow and fled into the next room. Madame Bohrer anxiously followed him, and Max, still smiling, said : "It is nothing; he could not contain himself; let him calm himself a little and we will begin again. You must pardon him ! " Pardon him .... dear artist ! Anton Bohrer fills the place of Conzertmeister in Hanover ; he composes but little now ; his favorite oc- cupation consists in directing the musical education of his daughter, a charming child of twelve, whose prodig- ious organization inspires all about her with alarms that are easily conceivable. Her talent as a pianist is very extraordinary, to begin with ; then her memory is such that at the concerts which she gave last year in Vienna, her father, instead of a program, presented the audience with a list of seventy-two pieces, sonatas, concertos, fan- tasias, fugues, variations, studies, by Beethoven, Weber, Cramer, Bach, Handel, Liszt, Thalberg, Chopin, Doh- ler, etc., which the little Sophie knows by heart; and which she could, without hesitation, play from memory as the audience asked for them. It is enough for her to play a piece, of no matter what length or compHcat- ed structure, three or four times to retain it and not for- get it again. That so many different combinations should be engraved on that young brain ! Is it not FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. ^It. something monstrous, calculated as much to inspire fright as admiration ? It is to be hoped that the httle Sophie, when she be- comes Mademoiselle Bohrer, will come back to us in a few years, and that the Parisian public can then acquaint itself with that phenomenal talent, of which it has as yet a very feeble idea. The Hanover orchestra is good, but too poor in stringed instruments. It has in all only seven first vio- lions, seven second, three violas, four violoncelli, and three double-basses. There are some infirm violins; the violoncelli are skillful ; the violas and basses good. Only praises are to be given to the wind instruments, especially to the first flute and first oboe (Edouard Rose), who plays a superb pianissimo, and the first clar- inet, whose tone is exquisite. The two bassoons (there are but two) play true, which is cruelly rare. The horns are not first-rate, but they will do ; the trombones are firm, the plain trumpets good enough ; there is a superlatively excellent trumpet with cylinders ; the name of the artist who plays this instrument is, like that of his rival in Weimar, Sachse ; I do not know to which of them to give the palm. The first oboe plays the En- glish-horn, but his instrument is very false. There is no ophicleide ; the bass-tubas of the military band can be turned to good account. The kettle-drummer is middling ; the musician who plays the big drum is no musician; the man who plays the cymbals is not sure, and the cymbals themselves are so broken that there is not more than a third of either of them left. There is a harp, pretty well played by one of the la- dies of the chorus. She is no virtuoso, but has a good command over her instrument, and forms, with the harpists of Stuttgard, Berlin, and Hamburg, the only exceptions that I met with in Germany, where the harp- ists as a general rule do not know how to play on the 2i6 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. harp. Unfortunately she is very timid and not much of a musician ; but when you give her some days tq study her part, you can trust her exactness. She forms the harmonics very well; her harp is with double-ac- tion, and a very good one. The chorus is small ; it is a little group of forty voices, but which has some value nevertheless ; they all sing true ; the tenors are also precious from their quality of voice. The singing troupe is mediocre ; with the excep- tion of the bass, Steinmiiller, an excellent musician with a fine voice, which he uses skillfully, forcing it a little at times, I heard nothing that struck me as worthy of mention. We could only have two rehearsals; even that was found extraordinary, and some of the members of the orchestra grumbled aloud. It was the only time that this sort of thing happened to me in Germany, where the artists constantly welcomed me like a brother, with- out ever complaining of the time or the trouble that the rehearsals for my concerts required of them. A. Boh- rer was in despair ; he wished to have four rehearsals, or at least three ; but it could not be brought about. The performance was passable, however, but cold and without power. Just imagine, three double-basses ! and on each side six violins and a half! ! ! The public was polite, that was all ; I fancy that it is still asking itself what that devil of a concert meant. Doctor Griepenkerl had come from Brunswick on pur- pose to be present at it ; he must have found a notable difference in the artistic spirit of the two cities. We amused ourselves, he, some military Brunswickers and I, by tormenting poor Bohrer, telling him about the xaw- sicdil fete they had given me in Brunswick three months before; these details cut him to the heart. Then M. Griepenkerl made me a present of the work he had written about me and asked in return for the baton with FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. ^17 which I had just conducted the performance of the Fifth of May. Let us hope that ^ese batons, thus planted in France and Gernaany, will take root and grow to be trees, which will some day give me a little shade The Prince Royal of Hanover was present at the con- cert. I had the honor to talk with him a few moments before my departure, and I think myself fortunate to have known his gracious affability of manner, and dis- tinction of mind, of which a frightful misfortune (loss of sight) has not disturbed the serenity. Let us now be off for Darmstadt. I pass through Cassel at seven in the morning. Spohr is asleep,' it will not do to wake him. Let us go on. I come to Frankfort for the fourth time. I find Parish-Alvars there, who magnetizes me by playing his fantasia in harmonics on the Chorus of Naiads in Oberon. Decidedly that man is a magician ; his harp is a siren with beautiful arched neck, long di- sheveled hair, who exhales fascinating sounds of another world, in the passionate embrace of his strong arms. Here is Guhr, much disturbed by the workmen who are restoring his theatre. Ah ! faith, pardon me for leaving you, Osborne, to say a few words to that redoubtable Kapellmeister, whose name comes again under my pen ; I shall be back again in a moment. "My Dear Guhr: "Do you know that several persons have made me fear that you had taken in ill part the fun I allowed my- self about you, in telling of our first interview ? I doubted it strongly, knowing your wit, and yet the doubt troubled me. Bravo ! I learn that, far from be- ing angry at the dissonances I lent to the harmony of your conversation, you were the first to laugh at them, ' Spohr is Kapellmeister in Cassel. 19 2i8 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. and that you had printed in one of the Frankfort papers the German translation of the letter which contained them. That is right ! you can take a joke, and besides, a man is not lost for swearing a little. Vivat ! terqiie quaterqiie vivat I S. N. T. T. Count me really and truly among your best friends ; and accept a thousand new compliments upon your orchestra in Frankfort ; it is worthy of being conducted by an artist like yourself. "Good-bye, good-bye, S. N. T. T." Here I am again ! Ah ! but come now ! let me see ; we were talking about Darmstadt. We shall find some friends there, among others L. Schlosser, the Conzertmeister, who once studied with me under Lesueur during his stay in Paris. I had brought, moreover, letters from M. de Rothschild, of Frankfort, to the Prince Emile, who gave me the most charming welcome, and obtained from the Grand-Duke for my concert more than I had dared to hope for. In most of the German cities that I had given concerts in up to that time, my arrangements with the inteftdants of theatres had been almost always the same : the administration payed almost all the expenses, and I received half of the gross receipts. (The theatre in Weimar, alone, had the courtesy to leave me the whole receipts. I have already said that Weimar is an artistic city, and that the ducal family know how to honor the arts). Well ! in Darmstadt the Grand-Duke not only grant- ed me the same favor, but wished to exempt me from every sort of expense. One may be sure that this gen- erous sovereign has no nephews who also write little, etc., etc. The concert was promptly organized, and the orches- tra, far from having to be asked to rehearse, would have liked to give another week to study. We had five re- FIUST yOURNE Y TO GERMANY. 2 1 Q hearsals. All went well, with the exception, however, of the double chorus of Young Capulet's coming out from the Festival in the beginning of the love-scene in Romeo et Juliette. The execution of this piece was a veritable vocal rout; the tenors of the second chorus flatted nearly half a tone, and those of the first chorus missed their entry at the return of the theme. The chorus- leader was in a state of fury, which was all the more conceivable that he had taken infinite pains to teach the chorus during eight days. The Darmstadt orchestra is a little larger than that in Hanover ; it has an excellent ophicleide, which is an ex- ception. The harp part is given to a painter, who, in spite of the most well-meant efforts, is never sure of giv- ing much color to his execution. The rest of the instru- mental body is well composed and spirited. There is one remarkable virtuoso in it. His name is Miiller, but he does not belong to the celebrated Miiller family of Brunswick. His stature is almost colossal, which allows him to play the true double-bass with four strings with extraordinary ease. Without trying, as he might do, to execute scales and arpeggi of useless difficulty and grotesque effect, he sings gravely and nobly on the enormous instrument, and can draw from it sounds of great beauty, which he shades with a great deal of art and sentiment. I heard him sing a very beautiful adagio, composed by the younger Mangold, brother of the Kapellmeister, in a way to profoundly move a se- vere audience. It was at an evening party given by Doctor Huth, the first music lover in Darmstadt, who, in his sphere, does for art what M. Alsager does in Lon- don in his, and whose influence upon the public music- al spirit is consequently great. Miiller is a conquest to tempt many composers and orchestra conductors ; but the Grand-Duke will very certainly keep him with all his might. 220 FIRST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. The Kapellmeister, Mangold, clever and excellent man, got a great part of his musical education in Paris, where he was accounted one of the best pupils of Reicha. So he was a school-mate of mine, and he treated me like one. As for Schlosser, the Conzertmeister already men- tioned, he showed himself to be such a capital fellow, he seconded me with such ardor, that it is really impos- sible for rae to speak as I ought of such of his composi- tions as he allowed me to read ; I should seem to be ac- knowledging his hospitality, when I should only be do- ing him justice. A new proof of the truth of the anti- proverb : A good deed is always lost ! There is a military band in Darmstadt of thirty musi- cians ; I really envied the Grand-Duke. They all play true, have style, and a feeling for rhythm that makes even the drum-parts interesting. Reichel (the immense bass voice that was of such use to me in Hamburg) had been for some time in Darmstadt when I arrived, and had had a positive tri- umph in the part of Marcel in the Huguenots. He again had the kindness to sing in the Fifth of May, but with a talent and sensibility far beyond the qualities he had shown in singing it the first time. He was espe- cially admirable in the last verse, the most difficult of all to give with the proper light and shade : " Wie ? Slerben er ? o Ruhm, wie verwaist bist Du ! " " Quoi ? lui mourir ? 6 gloire, quel veuvage ! " i (What ? He die ? Oh glory, what a widowhood ! Then the air from Mozart's Figaro, " Nan piii andrai," which we had added to the program, showed the versa- tility of his talent, and made it shine in another phase. It got him an encore from the whole house, and a very advantageous engagement at the Darmstadt theatre next day. I shall dispense with telling you .... the rest. If you go to those parts they will only tell you F/MST JOURNEY TO GERMANY. 221 that I had the artless vanity to find both public and art- ists very intelligent. So here we are, my dear Osborne, at the end of this pilgrimage, perhaps the most difficult a musician ever undertook, and the recollection of which, I feel, will hover over the rest of my life. Like the religious men of ancient Greece, I have just consulted the Oracle of Delphi. Have I understood the meaning of its answer aright ? May I believe what there is in it favorable to my wishes ? . . . Are there not deceptive oracles ? . . . The future, the future alone can decide. Be it as it may, I must return to France and at last bid farewell to Ger- many, that noble second mother to all sons of harmony. But where shall I find expressions to equal my grati- tude, my admiration and my regrets ? . . . What hymn can I sing that shall be worthy of the greatness of her glory ? . . . I can only bow down with respect, on leav- ing her, and say to her in a voice full of emotion : Vale, Germania, alma parens ! SELECTIONS FROM EVENINGS IN THE ORCHESTRA TO MY GOOD FRIENDS THE ARTISTS OF THE ORCHESTRA IN X***** A CIVILIZED CITY EVENINGS IN THE ORCHESTRA. PROLOGUE. THERE is a lyric theatre in the north of Europe in which it is the custom for the musicians of the or- chestra, of whom many are men of wit, to indulge in reading and even in chit-chat of more or less musical nature during the performance of mediocre operas. That is to say, that a good deal of reading and talking goes on. A book of some sort' or another is conse- quently to be found on the desks by the side of the sheets of music; so that the musician who seems the most absorbed in the contemplation of his part, the most taken up with counting his rests, or in following his cue, is often deep in the marvelous scenes of Balzac, the charming pictures of life of Dickens, or even the study of some science. I know one who, during the first fifteen performances of a famous opera, read, reread, meditated upon and understood the three volumes of Humboldt's Cosmos ; another who, during the protract- ed success of a silly work, very obscure to-day, suc- ceeded in learning English ; and still another who, gift- ed with an exceptional memory, repeated to his neigh- bors over ten volumes of tales, stories, anecdotes and jokes. 19* 22s 226 EVENINGS IN THE ORCHESTRA. One solitary individual in this orchestra does not al- low himself to indulge in any amusement. Engrossed in his business, active, indefatigable, his eyes riveted upon the notes, his arm always in motion, he would think himself dishonored if he omitted a single crotchet, or earned a reproach for his quality of tone. At the end of each act, red, perspiring, tired out, he hardly breathes ; and yet he dare not profit by the few min- utes the cessation of musical hostilities allows him, to go and drink a glass of beer at the neighboring cafe. The fear of missing the first measures of the next act by being late is enough to nail him to his post. Touched by his zeal, the director of the theatre at which he is engaged sent him one day six bottles of wine as an en- couragetnent. The artist, strong in the consciousness of his worth, far from accepting this present gratefully, sent it proudly back to the director, with these words : "I have no need of encouragement!" You have guessed that I mean the man who performs on the big- drum. His comrades, on the contrary, hardly ever pause in ,their reading, story-telling, discussions or chit-chat, ex- cept in favor of great masterpieces, or when, in common 'operas, the composer has given them a leading and prominent part, in which case their voluntary distrac- tion would be too easily noticed and would compromise them. But even then, as the whole orchestra is never put in a prominent position at once, it results that, if the conversation and literary studies languish in one part, they revive in another, and that the good talkers take the floor on the left when the others take up their in- strunients on the right. My assiduity in frequenting this club as an amateur, during my yearly stay in the town in which it is formed, allowed me to hear quite a number of anecdotes and short stories ; I even admit that I have often returned EVENINGS IN THE ORCHESTRA. 227 the politeness of the story-tellers by telling or reading aloud something in my turn. The orchestra player is a gossip by nature, and when he has interested his hearers, or made them laugh by some pun or story, were it even on the 2Sth of December, you may be very sure that he will not wait for the end of the year before trying for new success by the same means. So that by dint of listening to these pretty things, I found at last that they bored me almost as much as the flat scores to which they were made to serve as an accompaniment ; and I made up my mind to write them down, and even to publish them, diversified by the episodic dialogue of the hearers and narrators, so as to give a copy to each of them, and have done with it. It is agreed that the performer on the big-drum alone will come in for no part of my bibliographic bounty : so laborious and strong a man disdains the exercise of wit. SEVENTH EVENING. AN HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY DB VIRIS ILLUSTRIBUS URBIS RoMjE. — A RoMAN WOMAN. — VOCABU- LARY OF THE Language of the Romans. AVERY flat modern Italian opera is played. An habitue of the parquet-stalls, who seemed deeply interested in the readings and stories of the mu- sicians on previous evenings, leans over into the orches- tra and addresses me : rSir, you commonly live in Paris, do you not?" "Yes, sir, I even live there uncommon- ly, and often more than I could wish.'j r In that case you must be familiar with the singular dialect.spcken there, and which your papers also use sometimes.] Will you please explain to me what they mean when, in de- scribing certain occurrences that seem to be pretty fre- quent at dramatic performances, they talk about the Romans ?" "Yes," .say several musicians at once, "what is meant by that word in France ?" "Why, gentlemen, you ask me for no less than a course of Roman history." "Well, why not?" "I fear that I have not the talent of being brief" "Oh, if that is all, the opera is in four acts, and we are with you up to eleven o'clock." So, to bring myself at once into relations with the great men of this history, I will not go back to the sons of Mars, nor to Numa Pompilius ; I will jump with my 228 EVENINGS IN THE QliCHESTRA. 329 feet well under me over the kings, the iwlietators, and the consuls; and yet I must entitlefthe first chapter of my history : DE VIRIS ILLUSTRIBUS URBIS ROM^. "Nero — (you see that I pass without transition to the time of the emperors), Nero having formed a corpora- tion of men whose duty it was to applaud him^yhen he sang in public, the name of Romatts is given in France to-day to professional applauders, vulgarly called cla- queurs, or bouquet-throwers, and in general to all un- dertakers of success and enthusiasm. There are several kinds. "The mother who courageously calls everybody's at- tention to the wit and beauty of her daughter, who is moderately beautiful and very silly ; that mother who, in spite of her extreme love for her child, will make up her mind at the soonest possible moment to a cruel sep- aration and place her in the arms of a husband, is a Ro- man. "The author who, foreseeing the need he will be in next year of the praise of a critic whom he detests, ve- hemently sings the praises of that same critic on every occasion, is a Roman. "The critic who is Httle enough of a Spartan to be caught in that clumsy trap becomes a Roman in his turn. "The husband of the cantatrice who ..." "We un- derstand." M'But the vulgar Romans, the crowd, the Roman people, in a word, is especially composed of those men whom Nero was the first to enlist.^ They go in the evening to the theatres, and even elSewhere, to applaud, under the direction of a leader and his lieuten- ants, the artists and works that that leader has pledged himself to uphold. "There are many ways of applauding. 20 230 EVENINGS IN THE ORCHESTRA. "The first, as you all know, consists in making as much noise as possible by striking one hand against the other. And in this first way there are varieties and dif- ferent shades : the tip of the right hand struck against the palm of the left produces a sharp, reverberating sound that most artists prefer; both hands struck to- gether, on the contrary, have a dull and vulgar sonori- ty ; it is only pupil claqueurs in their first year, or bar- bers' apprentices that applaud so. "The gloved claqueur, dressed like a dandy, stretches his arms affectedly out of his box and claps slowly, al- most without noise, and for the eye merely ; he thus says to the whole house : ' See ! I condescend to ap- plaud.' "The enthusiastic claqueur (for there are such) claps quick, loud, and long ; his head turns to the right and left during this applause ; then, these demonstrations not being enough, he stamps, he cries: 'Bravo! bravo!' (note well the circumflex accent over the be, that there ^re unicorns in various parts of the Him- alayas. We all know the adventure of Mr. Kingsdoom. The famous English traveler, astonished at meeting one of these animals, which he believed to be fabulous (there you see what it is to believe !), and looking at it with an attention that hurt the feelings of the elegant quadruped, the infuriated unicorn rushed upon him, nailed him to a tree, and left a long piece of horn in his chest as a proof of its existence. The unhappy Englishman could never get over it. Now I must tell you why I am sure of believing for a day or two that I do not believe in the absolutely beautiful. A revolution must have taken place, and re- ally has taken place in philosophy since the marvelous discovery of tipping tables (of pine- wood), and then of mediums, and then of the invocation of spirits, and then of spiritual conversations. Music could not remain outside of the influence of such a considerable fact, and keep itself isolated from the world of spirits, it, the sci- ence of the impalpable, of the imponderable, of the in- discernible. So, many musicians have put themselves in relations with the world of spirits (they ought to have done so long ago). By means of a pine table of very moderate cost, upon which you place your hands, and which, after a few minutes of reflection (reflection of the table), sets to work to lift up one or two of Jts legs, in a way, unfortunately, to shock the modesty of English ladies, you can succeed not only in invoking the spirit of a great composer, but in entering into regular con- versation with him, and forcing him to answer all sorts of questions. Nay more, if you set to work rightly, you can make the spirit of the great master dictate a new work, an entire composition coming all burning from his brain. As in the case of the letters of the ; "A TRAVERS CHANTS." 373 alphabet, so it has been agreed that the table, raising its legs and letting them fall again upon the floor, shall give so many raps for a C, so many for a D, so many for an F, so many for an eighth-note, so many for a six- teenth-note, so many for a quarter-rest, so many for an eighth-rest, etc., etc. I know that you will answer me : "It has been agreed," you will say; "agreed with whom?" evidently with the spirits. "Now, before this agreement was made, how did the first medium go to work to find out that the Spirits agreed to it ?" I cannot tell ; what is certain is, that it is certain ; and then, in these great questions, you must positively allow yourself to be guided by your interior sense, and above all things not hunt for fleas. So then, now, already (as the Russians say) they lately invoked the spirit of Beethoven who lives in Saturn. As Mozart lives in Jupiter, all the world knows that, it does seem as if the composer of Fidelia ought to have chosen the same planet for his new abode; but Beethoven, as we all know, is rather wild and capricious, perhaps also he has some unconfessed- an- tipaf^y to Mozart. At any rate he lives in Saturn, or at least in his ring. And here we see, last Monday, a medium who is very familiar with the great man, with- out any fear of putting him out of temper by making him take such a long journey for nothing, place his hands upon a pine table to send Beethoven, in Saturn's ring, an order to come down and talk with him a min- ute. So the table immediately makes indecent move- ments, lifts up its legs and shows . . . that the spirit is near. These poor spirits are very obedient, you will admit. During his terrestrial existence Beethoven would not have put himself out to go only from the Carinthian gate to the imperial palace, if the Emperor of Austria had begged him to come and see him, and he now leaves Saturn's ring and interrupts his lofty con- 32 274 "A TRAVERS chants:' templations to obey the order (mark that), the order of the first man that happens to come along with a pine table. That is what death is! how it changes your disposi- tion! How right Marmontel was when he said in his opera of Zdmire et Azor: "Les esprits, dont on nous fait peur, Sent les meilleures gens du monde." (The spirits people frighten us about are the best sort of folk in the world.) So it is. I have already told you that in these ques- tions you must not hunt for fleas. Beethoven arrives, and says through the legs of the table: "Here I am!" The delighted medium hits him a tap on the stomach. . . . "Come now," you will say, "here you are again at your absurdities!" How is that? "Why yes! you spoke of a brain just now in connection with spirits ; spirits are not bodies." No ... no, but you know very well that they are. . . semi- bodies. That has been thoroughly explained. Dp not interrupt me any more by such futile observations. I continue my sad tale. As I was saying, the medium, who is himself a semi-spirit, hits Beethoven a semi-tap on the semi-stomach, and without further ado, begs the semi-god to dictate him a new sonata. Beethoven does not wait to be told twice, and the table immediately begins to stride about. . . . They write under its dic- tation. When the sonata is written, Beethoven sets out again for Saturn; the medium, surrounded by a dozen stupefied spectators, goes to the piano-forte, performs the sonata, and the stupefied spectators become con- founded listeners as they recognize that the sonata is by no means a semi-platitude but a full-grown plati- tude, sheer nonsensical stupidity. How shall we believe in the absolutely beautiful now ? "A TRAVERS CHANTS." ,75 Surely Beethoven, going to live in a higher sphere, cannot but have perfected himself, his genius must have become grander and more elevated, and in dictating a new sonata he must have wished to give the dwellers upon earth an idea of the new style he has adopted in his new abode, an idea of his fourth manner, an idea of the music that is played upon the Erards of Saturn's ring. And here we find that this new style is pre- cisely what we base musicians of a base and sub- saturnian world call flat, silly and unendurable, and far from ravishing us up to the fifty-eighth heaven, it irritates us and makes us sick at the stomach. . . .Oh! it is fit to make us lose our reason, if that were possible. So we must believe that, as the beautiful and the ugly are not absolute and universal, many productions of the human intellect that are admired on earth will be de- spised in the world of spirits, and I think that I am authorized to conclude (for the matter of that, I have suspected it for some time) that some operas, given and applauded daily, even at theatres which modesty for- bids me to name, would be hissed in Saturn, in Jupiter, in Mars, in Venus, in Pallas, in Sirius, in Neptune, in the Great and Little Bear, in the constellation of Biga, and are after all but infinite platitudes for an infinite universe. This conviction is not calculated to encourage great producers. Many among them, overcome by the bale- ful discovery, have fallen ill, and may, so they tell us, pass away into the state of spirits. Luckily that will take sometime. in. THE PRESENT CONDITION' OF THE ART OF SINGING IN THE LYRIC THEATRES OF FRANCE AND ITALY, AND THE CA USES THA T HA VE BROUGHT IT ABOUT. LARGE HALLS.— CLAQUEURS, INSTRUMENTS OF PERCUSSION. IT seems to vulgar common sense as if we ought to have singers for operas in our so-called lyric establish- ments ; but just the contrary is the fact : we have- operas for singers. We must always adjust, cut up, piece out, lengthen.'yshorten a score more or less to put it into a condition (and what a condition !) to be sung by the artists to whom it is confided. One finds his part too high, another finds his too low; this one has too many pieces, that one has not enough; the tenor wants i's at every point, the baritone wants a's; here one finds an accompaniment that embarrasses him, there his rival complains of a chord that he does not like; this is too slow for the prima-donna, that is too lively for the tenor. In a word, the hapless composer who should take it into his head to write a scale in C in the medium register, and in a slow tempo, and without ac- companiment, could not be sure of finding singers to sing it well and without changes ; most of them would even say that the scale was not in their voice, because it was not written for them. At the present day, in Europe, with the system of 376 'A TRAVERS CHANTS." 377 singing that is in vigor (that is the right word for it), irt every ten individuals who call themselves singers it would be possible to find two, or three at the very most capable of singing a simple song well, I mean thoroughlj. well, correctly, true, with expression, in a good style and with a pure and sympathetic voice. Suppose tha : you take one of them at random, and say to him : "Here is a very simple old air, very touching, the sweet melody of which does not modulate and keeps within the the compass of one octave ; sing it now ; " it is very possible that your singer, who is perhaps an illustrious personage, will exterminate the poor little musical blossom, and that in listening to him you will regret some good village girl you used to hear hum the old air. No nuisical thought, no melodic forjii, no expressive accent can hold its own against the frightful mode of interpretation that is becoming more and more widely^ spread every day. If that were only all! but we have to-daynunie^rous varieties of antimelodic singing. First there is the innocently silly style, then the pretentiously silly style, the style ornamented with all the stupidities\ the singer takes it into his head to introduce; this one is already very culpable. Next comes the vicious style, which corrupts the public and drags it into bad musical paths, by the attractiveness of a certain capricious, brilliant execution, but false expression which is alike revolting to good taste and good sense ; at last we have the criminal style, the rascally style, which adds to ras- cality an inexhaustible wealth of silliness, and only pro- ceeds by great yells, and delights " Aux bruyantes mfelfes, Aux longs roulements des tambours," (In noisy mellys, and long rolls of the drum), in sombre dramas, in stranglings, in poisonings, in maledictions, in anathemas, in all dramatic horrors, in a word, which furnish most opportunities for giving voice. It is this 378 "A TRAVERS chants:' last style that reigns despotically in Italy at the present day, so they tell us. But the cause, the cause? you will ask. The cause, or causes, I answer, are easily found out; the remedy is what is harder to find, or rather the remedy will never be applied, to speak frankly, even when it is found, and its efficacy has been thoroughly demonstrated. The causes are at once moral and physical, all depending upon one another; and if theatrical enterprises had not always and almost everywhere been given into the hands of people who are covetous of money above ail things, and ignorant of the requirements of art, these causes would not exist. They are: the disproportionate size of most lyric 1 theatres ; . The system of applause, either salaried or otherwise ; The preponderance that has grown up of the execu- tion over the composition, of the larynx over the brain, of matter over mind, and, at last, too often the cowardly, submission of genius to nonsense. j Lyric theatres are too large. It has been proved and is certain that sound, to act musically upon the human organism, must not proceed from a point too far distant from the listener. People are always ready to answer, when we speak of the sonority of an opera- house or a concert- room : Everything can be very well heard tJiere. But I also hear the cannon very well from my study when it is fired from the esplanade of the Invalides, and yet that noise, which, by the way, is outside of all musical conditions, does not strike me, does not move me, does not in any way make my nerv- ous system vibrate. Well, it is just this blow, this emo tion, this shock that sound positively must give th(i organ of hearing to move it musically, and which we d( not receive from even the most powerful groups of voices and instruments when we listen to them from toe great a distance. Some scientists think that the electric " A TRA VERS CHANTS." ,70 fluid cannot traverse a space greater than a certain number of millions of leagues ; I do not know that this is so, but I am sure that the musical fluid (1 beg leave to thus designate the unknown cause of musical emo- tion) is without force, warmth or vitality at a certain distance from its point of departure. We hear, but we do not vibrate. Now, we must vibrate ourselves with the instruments and voices, and be made to vibrate by them in order to have true musical sensations. Nothing is easier to demonstrate. Place a few persons, well or- 'ganized and with some knowledge of music, in a room of moderate size, unfurnished and uncarpeted ; play well before them some real masterpiece, by a real com- poser, really inspired, a work free from those unendur- able conventional beauties which pedagogues and ready-made enthusiasts admire, a simple trio for piano- forte, violin and 'cello, Beethoven's trio in B-Jlat, for instance; what will happen? The listeners will feel themselves seized little by little with an unwonted agi- tation, they will experience an intense and profound sense of enjoyment, which will now move them keenly, now plunge them into a delicious calm, into a true ecstasy. In the midst of the andante, at the third or fourth return of that sublime and so passionately relig- ious theme, it may happen that one of them cannot restrain his tears, and if he lets them run for a moment, he will perhaps end (I have witnessed this phenomenon) by weeping violently, furiously, explosively. Now there is a musical effect ! there is a listener thoroughly under the influence of, and intoxicated by, the art of tones, a being raised to a height immeasurably above the common regions of life ! That man adores music, he cannot express what he feels, his admiration is ineffa- ble, and his gratitude to the great poet-composer who has thus enchanted him equals his admiration. Now suppose that in the middle of the same piece, ^gQ "A TR AVERS CHANTS." played by the same artists, the room in which it is played should gradually grow larger, and that the audience should be carried little by little to a greater distance from the players in consequence of this progressive in- crease in size. Well, here we have our room as large as an ordinary theatre ; our listener, who but a moment ago felt his emotions rising, begins to regain his com- posure ; he still hears, but he no longer vibrates ; he admires the work, but by a process of reasoning, and no longer from sentiment or in response to an irresistible impulse. The room grows still larger, and the listener is farther and farther removed from the musical focus.' He is as far off as he would be if the three players were grouped together on the stage of the Opera, and he were sitting in the balcony in one of the first row of boxes directly opposite. He still hears, not a sound escapes him, but he is no longer under the influence of the musical fluid, which cannot reach him ; his agitation ceases, and he becomes cold again, he even feels a sort of disagreeable anxiety which is all the more distressing that he makes greater efforts to attend and not lose the thread of the musical discourse. But his efforts are in vain, insensibility paralyzes them, he begins to be bored, the great master tires him, importunes him, the master- piece is no longer anything more than a little ridiculous noise, the giant is a dwarf, art a deception ; he grows impatient and stops listening. Another test ! ^Follow a military band playing a brilliant march, in the rue Royale, we will suppose ; you listen to it with pleasure, you walk briskly after it, its rhythm carries you away, its warlike trumpet-calls animate you, and you already think of glory and battles. The band comes to the place de la Concorde, you still hear it, but as the reflectors of sound are no longer there, you stop vibrating, and you leave it to go its way, thinking no more of it than of the music made by a company of jugglers. •A TRAVERS CHANTS." 381 Now to come back to the heart of our subject, how often has it not happened, in the times when they still had the grace to give Gluck's works at the Opera, and not too badly either, how often has it not happened, I say, that I remained cold, but angry at my own cold- ness, while hearing the first act of Orphee ! Yet I knew, I was sure that it was a marvel of expression and poetic melody; the performance was wanting in no essential good quality. But the stage represented a sacred grove, and was open on all sides, the sound was lost at the back, at the right and left of the stage, there were no reflectors, and consequently no effect; Orpheus really seemed to be singing on a plain in Thrace : Gluck was wrong. When this same part of Orpheus was sung again by A. Nourrit, some days later, the same choruses sung by the same singers, and the same pantomime music played by the same orchestra, but in. the hall of the Conservatoire, they regained all their magical influence ; we were all in ecstasies, we were impregnated with antique poetry : Gluck was right. Beethoven's symphonies, which are overwhelming in the hall of the Conservatoire, have been played several times at the Opera, where they had no effect whatever : Beethoven was wrong. Mozart's Don Giovanni, ardent, impassioned and passion-inspiring as it is at the Theatre- Italien, when the performance is good, is perfectly icy at the Opera, as every one admits. The Nozze di Figaro would seem still colder there. So at the Opera Mozart is wrong ! . . . The masterpieces of Rossini's first manner, the Bar- ber, and the Cenerentola, and many others lose their piquant and witty physiognomy at the Op6ra ; we still enjoy them, but coldly and from a distance, as we should enjoy a garden looking at it through a telescope. So that Rossini is wrong ! . . . ..And see how the Freyschiitz, that so lively musical 32* 382 "A TRAVERS CHANTS." drama, so full of wild energy, drags out its weary length at the Opera ! Can Weber be wrong ? . . . I could easily multiply examples. What is a theatre in which Gluck, Mozart, Weber, Beethoven and Rossini are wrong, but a theatre built upon bad musical princi- ples ? Yet it is not wanting in sonority. No, but like all other theatres of the same dimensions, the Opera is too large. Sound fills it easily, but not so the musical fluid that is liberated by the ordinary means of execu- tion. People will, no doubt, object to this, that several fine works produce some effect there notwithstanding, and that a skillful singer, who has the power of enchain- ing the attention of an audience, and concentrating it upon himself, can successfully attempt the softer effects of singing there. But I reply that the precious singerQ would impre.ss his audience far more keenly in a smaller/ mail, and that the same would be true of those fine works \that are specially written for the Opera ; nay, more, thj t pf twenty beautiful ideas contained in exceptional scon s (scores written in our own times for the Opera), theis are hardly four or five that come to the surface ; the rest are lost. And even those beauties only appear veiled and lessened by distance, never under all their as- pects, never in all their vividness and brilliancy. Hence the so much laughed-at, but yet very real, necessity of hearing a fine opera very often to appre- ciate it and discover its merits. At its first performance all seems confused, vague, colorless, without form, nerve- less; it is but a half-effaced picture, the drawing of which we must follow line by line. Hear the judgments of the lobby between the acts of first performances : the new work, according to the critics, is invariably tiresome or detestable. Here are twenty- five years that I have listened to them in such cases, without ever, even in a single instance, hearing a more favorable opinion ex- pressed. It is much worse at dress-rehearsals, when "A TRAVERS CHANTS." 383 the house is half empty; then nothing comes to the surface, everything vanishes ; neither melodic grace, nor harmonic science, nor instrumental coloring, nor love, nor hate, can have any effect ; it is a vague and more or less fatiguing noise that irritates and plagues you to death, and you leave the house cursing both work and composer. I shall never forget the dress-rehearsal of the Hugue- nots. Meeting Meyerbeer on the stage after the fourth act, all that I could say to him was this : " There is a chorus in the last scene but one which, it seems to me, must produce some effect." I meant the chorus of monks in the scene of the benediction of poniards, one of the most overwhelming inspirations of art in all ages. It seemed to me that it must produce some effect. I had not been otherwise impressed by it. (Dramatic musical composition is a double art; it re- sults from the association and intimate union of poetry J .and music. Melodic accents can, no doubt, have a' special interest, a charm that is peculiar to themselves, and which results from music alone ; but their force is doubled when we, see them combine to express a noble passion, or a beautiful sentiment suggested by a poem worthy of the name ; each art is re-inforced by the lOther.y Now this union is in a great measure destroyed py too large halls, where the listener, in spite of all his fittention, hardly understands one line in twenty, where !ie does not distinctly see the actor's features, and where t is consequently impossible for him to catch the more flelicate shades of melody, harmony, or instrumentation, he reason for these shades, or their relation to the dra- natic element determined by the words, since it is just he words that he cannot hear. Music, I repeat, must be heard near to ; its principal charm disappears with distance; it is, at the very leasts 384 "A TRAVERS CHANTS." singularly modified and weakened. What pleasure could we take in the conversation of the wittiest people in the world, if we were obliged to carry it on at a distance of thirty paces? Sound beyond a certain dis- tance, although we may still hear it, is like a flame that we see, but the warmth of which we do not feel. — This advantage of small halls over large ones is evi- dent, and it was because he had noticed it, that a direct- or of the opera said one day with humorous artlessness and a touch of irritation: "Oh! in your hall at the Conservatoire everything makes an effect." Yes? Well, just try, and play there the vulgarities, the brutal platitudes, the nonsense, the absurdities, the discordances, the cacophonies that are endured as well as may be in ^your opera, and you will see what sort of effect they will make. . . Now let us examine another side of the question, that which affects the art of singing and the art of the com- poser; we shall very soon find the proof of what I be- gan by saying, and see that if the art of singing has be- come the art of screaming, as it is to-day, the too great size of theatres is the cause of it ; we shall also find that other excesses which dishonor music to-day proceed from the same cause. The theatre of la Scala, in Milan, is immense; that of la Cannobiana is also very large ; the theatre of San- Carlo in Naples, and many others that I could name, are of equally enormous dimensions. Now where did , the school of singing that is so openly and justly con- demned to-day come from? From the great musical centres of Italy. As the Italian public has also^e habit of talking during performances as loudly as we talk at the Bourse, the singers have been led little by little, as well as the composers, to seek after every means of con- centrating upon themselves the attention of that public which pretends to like its music. They consequently "•A TRAVERS CHANTSy 38s aim at sonority above everything; to obtain it, they have suppressed the use of delicate shades, of the voix mixte, of the head voice, of the lower notes of the scale in all voices ; they no longer admit any but the high notes, called chest tones, for the tenors; as the basses no longer sing except on the high degrees of their scale, they have been transformed into baritones; the male voices, not really gaining in the upper register what they have lost in the lower, have been deprived of a third of their com- pass ; composers, writing for these singers, have had to shut themselves up within the limits of an octave, and confining themselves to the use of eight notes at the very most, they only produce monotonous and desperately vulgar melodies; the highest and most piercing female voices have obtained a marked preference over all others. Those soprani, those tenors, those baritones that shout out at random are the only ones that are ap- plauded; composers have seconded them to the best of their abiUty by writing in the same direction as their stentorian exertions ; duets, trios, quartets and cho- ruses in unison have sprung up ; as this style of composition is moreover easier and more expeditious for the maestri and more convenient for the executants, it has prevailed ; and when the big-drum came to its aid, the system of dramatic music that we now enjoy found itself established in a great part of Europ*. I make this restriction, for it does not really exist in Germany. There are no cavernous halls there. Even the Grand Opera in Berlin is not disproportionately large. They say that the Germans sing badly ; that may seem true in general. I will not broach the ques- tion here, whether or not their language is the reason of it, and whether Madam Sontag, Pischek, Tichatschek, Mademoiselle Lind, who is almost a German, and many others do not form magnificent exceptions ; but upon the whole, German vocalists sing, and do not howl, the 33 386 '•A TRAVERS CHANTS." screaming school is not theirs; they make music. Whence does this come? It is, no doubt, because they have a finer musical sense than many of their rivals in other countries, but also because the German lyric thea- tres are all of moderate dimensions, and the musical fluid can reach every part of them ; because the public is always silent and attentive, and all ungraceful efforts of voices and instrumentation are consequently useless, and would seem still more odious than with us. So here, you will say, is a libel brought against large theatres ; we can no longer make eleven thousand francs of receipts, nor bring together eighteen hundred people in the Paris Opera, at Covent Garden in London, in la Scala, in the San- Carlo, nor elsewhere, without in- ■^urring the criticisms of musicians. We unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. You have let the cat out of the bag : receipts ! You are speculators, we are artists ; we do not speak of the art of coining money, which is the only one that interests you. True art has its own conditions of power and beauty; speculation, which I take good care not to confound with industry, has its own more or less moral condi- tions of success, and in the final analysis, art and specu- lation mutually execrate each other. Their antagonism is of all places and all times, and will be eternal ; it lies in the very heart of the questions themselves. Talk to the director of a theatrical entertainment, ask him which is the best opera-house ; he will answer, or at least, he will think without daring to say so, that it is the one in which you can make the largest receipts. Talk to a cul- tivated musician, or a learned architect, who is fond of music, and he will tell you : " If you wish the essen- tial qualities of the art of tones to be appreciable in an opera-house, it must be a musical instrument ; and it is not one unless certain physical laws, the nature of which is perfecdy well understood, are not taken into account 'A TR AVERS CHANTS." 387 in its construction. All other considerations are with- out strength or authority in comparison with that. Stretch metaUic strings upon a packing case, and fit a key- board to it, and you will not have a piano- forte for all that. Stretch strings of gut and silk upon a clog, and you will not get a violin by it. The skill of pianists and violinists will be impotent to transform those ridic- ulous machines into musical instruments, even if your packing-case were of rose-wood, and your clog of sandal-wood. You can let hurricanes blow through a stove-pipe, the sound that comes out of it may be ex- tremely energetic, but it will not make your stove-pipe an organ-pipe, nor a trombone, nor a tuba, nor a horn. All imaginable considerations, either of perspective, or of splendor, or of money, will fall to the ground before the laws of acoustics and those of the transmission of the musical fluid, for these laws do exist. This is a fact, and the obstinacy of facts is proverbial." This is what those . . . artists will tell you. But they want to make music, and you want to make money. As for the effect of the orchestra in too large halls, it is defective, incomplete and false, in as much as it is other than that the composer intended while writing his score, even if his score was written expressly for the large hall in which it is heard. As the range of the musical fluid of various projectors of sound is unequal, it necessarily follows that instru- ments of long range will often have a degree of power disproportionate to the importance the composer has given them, while those of short range will disappear | or will forfeit the importance that has been assignediJ them to gain the ends of composition. For the musiofil''- action of voices and instruments to be complete, all the tones must reach the listener simultaneously, and with the same vitality of vibration. In a word, sounds writ- ten in score (musicians will understand me) must reath, the ear tn score. 388 "A TRAVERS CHANTS." Another consequence of the extreme size of lyric theatres, and one which I have hinted at just now, in recaUing the use made to-day of the big-drum, has been the introduction of all the violent auxiliaries of instru- mentation into common orchestras. [And this abuse, which is carried to-day to its utmost limits, not only ruins the power of the orchestra itself, but has contributed not a little to bring about the system of singing of which we deplore the existence, by exciting singers to wrestle violently with the orchestra in the emission of tone.y Here is how the reign of instruments of percussion has been established. ^^ Will readers who love music forgive me for entering upon such long developments ? I hope so. As for the others, I have little fear of boring them ; they will not read me. It was in Gluck's Iphigenie en Aulide, if I mistake not, that the big-drum was first heard at the Paris Opera, but alone, without cymbals, or any other instru- ment of percussion. It figures in the last chorus of the Greeks (a chorus in unison, let us note this by the way), of which the first words are : Partons, volons a la vic- toire I (Let us go, let us fly to victory !) This chorus is in march time with repeats. It accompanies the filing off of the Thessalian army. The big-drum strikes the strong beats of each bar, as in common marches. As this chorus was struck out when the catastrophe of the opera was changed, the big-drum was not heard again until the beginning of the following century. Gluck also introduced the cymbals (and we know with what admirable effect) in the chorus of Scythians in Iphigenie en Tauride, the cymbals alone, without the big-drum, though routine writers of all countries think the two inseparable. In a ballet of the same opera he made the happiest use of the triangle alone. And that was all. 'A TR AVERS CHANTS: 389 In 1808 Spontini used the big-drum and cymbals in the triumphal march and the dance air of the gladiators in the Vestale. Later he used them again in the proces- sion-music in Fernand Cortez. So far there had been, if not a very ingenious, at least a proper and very re- served use of those instruments. But Rossini came and gave his Siege de Corinthe at the Opera. He had noticed, not without grief, the somnolence of the public in our great theatre during the performance of the finest works, a somnolence brought on much more by the physical causes, contrary to musical effect, which I have just mentioned, than by the style of the masterly works of that period ; and Rossini swore that he would not sub- mit to such an affront. "I will find a way to keep you awake," said he. And he put the big-drum in every- where, and the cymbals and triangle, and the trom- bones and ophicleide by bundles of chords, and by banging with all his might in the hurried rhythms, he made such lightnings of sonority flash from the orches- tra, such thunderbolts, that the public rubbed its eyes, and took a Hking to this new sort of emotions, which were more lively if not more musical than any it had experi- enced before. Encouraged by success, he pushed this abuse still farther in Moise, where, in the famous finale of the third act, the big-drum, cymbals and triangle strike in on all four beats of the measure in the fortes, and give out consequently as many notes as the voices, which latter accommodate themselves as can be imagined to such an accompaniment. Nevertheless, the orchestra and chorus of this number are so constructed, the sono- rity of the voices and instruments thus disposed is so overwhelming, that the music still comes to the surface in the midst of all this din, and the musical fluid projected in great waves to all points of the house, in spite of its vast dimensions, seizes upon the audience, shakes it, makes it vibrate, and one of the greatest effects that are to be ,QQ " A TRAVERS CHANTS." signalized at the Opera since its existence, is thus pro- duced. But do the instruments of percussion contribute to it ? Yes, if we consider them as a furious stimulant to the other instruments and to the voices ; not so, if we only talie into account the real part they play in the musical action, for they crush the orchestra and voices, and substitute an insanely violent noise for a finely en- ergetic sonority. Be it as it may, from the time that Rossini came upon the stage at the Opera, the. instrumental revolution in theatre orchestras was accomplished. The great noises were used on every occasion, and in all works, no matter what style the subject demanded. Soon the drums, big-drum, cymbals and triangle were no longer suffi- cient, a snare-drum was added, then two cornets came to aid the trumpets, trombones and ophicleide; the organ stationed itself behind the scenes next the bells, and military bands were seen upon the stage, and at last the great Sax instruments, which are to the other voices of the orchestra as a columbiad to a musket. Finally Halevy added the tam-tam to all these violent means of instrumentation in his Magicienne. The new composers, irritated at the obstacle the immense size of the house put in their path, thought that it must be overthrown at all hazards, to save their works from hav- ing sentence of death passed on them. Now have we generally remained within the conditions of worthy and elevated art, by employing these extreme means to ward off the obstacle by trying to. destroy it ? Surely not ! exceptions are rare. The judicious use of the most vulgar, aad even the coarsest instruments, may be acknowledged by art, and may really serve to increase its riches and power. Not one of the means we have in our power to-day is to be despised ; but the instrumental horrors that we witness only become all the more odious, and I think that I have "A TRAVERS CHANTS." go I shown that they have, for their part, contributed greatly to bringing about the vocal excesses which have led me to make these too long, and, I fear, too useless reflec- tions. Add that these same excesses, gradually introduced through the spirit of imitation upon the stage of the Opera-Comique, are incomparably more revolting there, when we take into consideration the peculiar conditions of that theatre, its orchestra, its singers, and the general tone of its repertoire. I have thought proper to meet this question face to face, for the first time, as the life of theatrical music ev- idently depends upon it ; these truths may displease some 'great artists, and some excellent and powerful minds ; but I think that in their conscience they will recognize that they are truths. I mentioned, in the beginning, the moral causes of the immense disorder, the physical causes of which I have just studied. The influence of applause, and of what dramatic artists especially still have the astounding simplicity to call success, must be considered the fore- most of them. The ridiculous importance given to ex- ecutants, who are, or are thought to be, indispensable, and the authority they have usurped, are not to be for- gotten either. But this is not the place to examine these questions ; we should have to write a whole vol- ume on the subject IV. THE BAD SINGERS, THE GOOD SINGERS.— THE PUB- L/C— THE CLAQUEURS. 1HAVE said already that a singer or a cantatrice able to sing only sixteen measures of good music in a nat- ural, well-poised, and sympathetic voice, and sing them without effort, without drawing and quartering the phrase, without platitudes, without exaggerating the ac- cents to turgidity, without affectation, without tricks, without mistakes in French, without dangerous liaisons, without hiatuses, without insolent modifications of the text, without transposition, without hiccoughing, with- out barking, without baa-ing, without false intonations, without making the rhythm limp, without ridiculous' ornaments, without nauseous appoggiaturas, in a word, so that the period written by the composer may be comprehensible, and remain simply as he wrote it, is a rare, very rare, excessively rare bird. And it will become much rarer if the aberrations of pubhc taste continue to manifest themselves as they do now, with explosiveness, passion and hatred for com- mon sense. If a man has a strong voice, without knowing how to use it the least bit in the world, without having the most elementary notions of the art of singing ; if he only forces a note violendy, he is violently applauded for the sonority of that note. "A TSAVERS CHANTS." ,qi If a woman has for her only possession an exceptional compass of voice ; uf she can give, pertinently or not, a low G or /^moreJiKe a death-rattle than a musical tone, or else a high F that is quite as pleasant to the ear as the squeal of a little dog when you step on his tail,')that is enough to make the whole house resound with accla- mations. Take this woman, who cannot sing the, smallest mel- ody without putting you into a fidgety whose warmth of soul equals that of a block of Canadian ice;jif she-/., only has the gift of instrumental agility, no sooner does she shoot forth her squibs and sky-rockets at the rate of sixteen sixteenth-notes per bar, no sooner does her infernal trill drill into your tympanum with ferocious persistency for a whole minute without stopping to take breath, than you are sure to see " Les claqueurs monstrueux au parterre accroupis," (The monstrous claqueurs cowering in the pit) bound up and yell with delight. If a declaimer has got it through his skull that true or false accentuation is all in all in dramatic music as long as it is only outrageously exaggerated, and that it can take the place of sonority, measure and rhythm, that it is enough to compensate for the loss of singing, form, melody, tempo and tonality ; that he has a right to take the strangest liberties with the most admirable productions, to satisfy the demands of a style which is inflated, bombastic, bloated and bursting with emphasis; when he puts this system in practice before a certain public, the most lively and. sincere enthusiasm, reward? him for having throttled a great master, spoiled a masterpiece, shivered a beautiful melody to atoms, and torn a sublime passion to tatters. These people have one good quality, which would not at any rate suffice to make singers of them, but 33* 254 " A TRAILERS CHANTS." which they have so exaggerated as to change it to a fault and a repulsive vice. It is no longer a beauty- spot, it is a wart, a polypus, a wen spreading itself over a face which is thoroughly insignificant if not absolutely ugly. Such practitioners are the scourge of music ; they demoralize the public, and it is a sin to encour- age them. As for the singers who have a voice, a human voice and sing, who know how to vocaHze and sing, who have some knowledge of music and sing, who know how to accentuate discerningly and sing, and who in singing respect the work and the composer, whose faithful, attentive and intelligent interpreters they are, the pubhc has too often nothing better than proud disdain or lukewarm encouragements for them. Their regular and smooth countenance has no beauty-spot, no wen, not the faintest wart. They wear no spangles, and do not dance upon the phrase. But they are none the less the really useful and charming singers, who, keep- ing within the conditions of art, have earned the suffrages of people of taste in general, and the gradtude of composers in particular. It is through their efforts that art exists, and by the others that it dies. But, you will say, do you dare to insinuate that the public does not applaud, and very warmly too, the great artists who are masters of all the true resources of musical dramatic singing, who are endowed with sensibility, intelligence, virtuosity and that rare faculty that is called inspiration ? No, undoubtedly, the pubHc sometimes applauds them also. At such times the public is Hke those sharks that follow ships and get caught with a line ; it swallows all, the bit of salt-pork with the hook. V. THE FREYSCHUTZ AT THE OP6ra.' 1HAD just got back from my long peregrinations in Germany, wlien M. Fillet, the director of the Opera, formed the project of putting the Freyschiitz upon the stage. But the musical numbers of this work are pre- ceded and followed by prose dialogue, as in our comic operas, and as the customs of the Opera require that everything in the lyric dramas and tragedies of its reper- toire should be sung, the spoken text had to be written out in recitative form. M. Fillet proposed this task to me. "I do not think," I answered him, "that the recita- tives you ask for ought to be added to the Freyschiitz ; nevertheless, as it is the only condition under which it can be given at the Opera, and as, if I did not write them, you would intrust the composition to somebody else less familiar with Weber, perhaps, than I, and cer- tainly less devoted to the glorification of his masterpiece, I accept your offer, on one condition : the Freyschiitz shall be played absolutely as it is, without changing anything either in the libretto or the music." "That is exactly my intention," replied M. Fillet; "do you think I am the man to renew the scandals of Robin des Bois f " ' See "Art life and Theories of Richard Wagnfer," (Amaleur Seriei) page 92.— Trans. 396 "A TRAVERS CHANTS." "Very well. In that case I will go to work. How do you intend to cast the parts?" "I shall give the part of Agathe to Madame Stoltz, that of Aenncken to Mademoiselle Dobre, Duprez will sing Max." " I bet he will not," said I, interrupting him. "What makes you think he will not ?" "You will find out soon enough." "Bouche will make an excellent Caspar." "And who have you got for the Hermit?" "Oh ! . . . " answered M. Fillet, embarrassed, "that is a useless part that only drags the affair out ; I intend to cut all of the business in which he has anything to do." "Oh ! that is all? And this is the way you respect the Freyschiltz, and do not imitate M. Castilblaze ! . . ; We are very far from agreeing ; allow me to retire, I cannot have anything to do with this new correction." "Oh Lord ! what a whole loaf man you are ! Well ! We will keep the Hermit, and preserve everything, I give you my word." Emilien Paccini, who was to translate the German libretto, having also given me this assurance, I consent- ed, not without some misgivings, to take the composi- tion of the recitatives upon myself The feeling which led me to exact the preservation of the FreyschUts in its' integrity, a feeling that many people called sheer feti- chism, thus took away every pretext for remodeling or al-' tering the work, and for the suppressions and corrections- that would otherwise have been ardently indulged in. But a serious inconvenience also resulted from my in- flexibility : the spoken dialogue seemed too long when set to music, in spite' of the precaution I had taken to make it as rapid as possible. I could never make the' actors abandon their slow, heavy and emphatic way of- aiid especially in the scenes between "A TRAVERS CHANTS." og^ Max and Caspar, the musical rendering of their essen- tially simple ;,and familiar conversation had all the pomp and solemnity of a scene in lyric tragedy. This hurt the general effect of the Freyscliiitz somewhat, though it obtained a brilliant success. I did not wish to be mentioned as the authorof the recitatives, in which both artists and critics still found some dramatic qualities and one special merit, that of the style, which, they said, harmonized perfectly with that of Weber, and a reserve in instrumentation that even my enemies were forced to acloTowledge. As I had foreseen, Duprez, who had sung Max (Tony) in the pasticcio of Robin des Bois ten years be- fore, with his little light tenor voice, could not adapt his big voice of leading tenor to the same part, which is written rather low in general, it is true. He proposed the most singular transpositions, necessarily intermingled with the most insane modulations and the most gro-. tesque transitions ... I cut short all this folly, declaring to M. Fillet that Duprez could not sing the part, by his own admission, without disfiguring it completely. So it was given to Marie, the second tenor, whose voice is not without character in the lower part, a good musi- cian, but a heavy and uninteresting singer. Neither could Madame Stoltz sing Agathe without transposing her two principal airs ; I had to transpose the first one in E to D, and lower the prayer in A-flat in the third act a minor third, which made it lose three- quarters of its ravishing coloring. But, on the other hand, she was able to keep, the final sextet in B, and sang the soprano part in it with an amount of verve and enthusiasm that made the whole house burst into ap- plause every evening. -■ It is. one-quarter real difficulty, one-quarter ignorance, and a good half caprice, that causes all this unwilling- ness in singers to render their parts as they are written. 34 398 "A TRAVERS CHANTS." They did not fail to try to introduce a ballet, all my efforts to prevent it being in vain. I proposed to compose a choregraphic scene, indicated by Weber him- self in his rondo for piano-forte, the Invitation a la valse, and I instrumented that charming piece. But the ballet-master, instead of following the plan traced out in the music, could only find the usual ballet common- places, and trivial combinations, which must have charm- ed the public very moderately. So to make up for quality by quantity, they asked for the addition of three more figures. And now come some dancers who have got it into their heads that I had some movements in my symphonies that were very suitable for dancing, and would complete the ballet to perfection. They go and speak to M. Fillet; he jumps at the idea, and comes to ask me to introduce into Weber's score the ball-scene from my Symphonie fantastique and the festival from Romeo et Juliette. The German composer, Dessauer, was in Paris at that time, and used to frequently come behind the scenes at the Opera. I only answered the director's proposal by saying : "I cannot consent to introduce into the Freyschiltz anything that is not by Weber, but to prove to you that this is not from any exaggerated and unreasonable re- spect for the great master, there is Dessauer walking about at the back of the stage, let us go and submit your idea to him ; if he approves, I will conform to your wishes; if not, I beg you not to mention it again." At the very first words of the director, Dessauer turned quickly to me and said : "Oh! Berlioz, don't do that." "You hear him," said I to M. Fillet. So there was no more question of that. We took dance airs from Oberon and Preciosa, and the ballet was thus complete with only compositions by Weber. But "A TRAVERS C//ANTS." ,gQ after a few performances the airs from Oberon and Pre- ciosa disappeared ; then they cut and slashed away at the Invitation a la valse, which had yet made a great hit in its orchestral dress. When M. Fillet had left the^ directorship of the Opera while I was in Russia, they.j took up the Freyschiitz again, and cut a part of the finale of the third act; at last they dared to cut the whole first scene of this same third act, in which are the sublime prayer of Agathe, the scene of the young girls, and Aenncken's romantic air with viola solo. And it is thus that the Freyschiitz is given at the Opera to-day. That masterpiece of poetry, originality and passion serves as a make-weight for the most mis- erable ballets, and must consequently be deformed to make room for them. If some new choregraphic work comes up more fully developed than its predecessors, they will again prune away the FreysckUtz without the slightest hesitation. And how they give what is left of it I What singers ! What a conductor ! What cow- ardly drowsiness in the tempi! What discordance in the ensembles / What a flat, stupid and revolting inter- pretation of and by all ! . . . Go now and be an inventor, a torch-bearer, an inspired man, a genius, to be thus tortured, besoiled and vilified ! Unmannerly buyers and sellers ! While waiting for the whip of a new Christ to hunt you out of the temple, be assured that what of Europe has the least feeling for art holds you in the profoundest contempt VI. TO BE, OR NOT TO BE.— PARAPHRASE. "HPO be, or not to be, that is the question :— Whether 1 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the bad operas, ri- diculous concerts, second-rate virtuosos, mad composers, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by op- posing, end them ? — To die, — to sleep, — no more : — and by a sleep, to say we end the ear-ache, the sufferings of heart and reason, and the thousand unnatural shocks our critical faculty is heir to,- — 'tis a consummation devoutly- to be wished. To die; — to sleep; — to sleep! per- chance to have the nightmare; — ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what racking dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, what madcap theories we shall have to examine, hear what discordant scores, praise what fools, see what outrages perpetrated upon masterworks, what vagaries extolled, what windmills taken for giants, must give us pause.. There's the respect that makes newspaper articles so many, and makes the wretches who write them of so long life ; for who would bear the society of a rattle- brained world, the spectacle of its madness, the scorn and blunders of its ignorance, the injustice of its jus- tice, the icy indifference of its governors ? Who would whirl in the gale of ignoble passions, of paltry interest calling itself love of art, stoop to discussing the 400 "A TRA VERS CHANTS." ^qI absurd, be a soldier and teach his general how to drill him, be a traveler and lead his guide who yet loses his way, when he himself might his quietus make with a flask of chloroform, or a steel-pointed slug? Who would be content to see despair born from hope, wea- riness from inaction, rage from patience ; but that the dread of something after death, — the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no critic returns, — puzzles the will. . . — What, I cannot even find a few moments for meditation ; Soft you, now ! The fair cantatricc, Opheha, armed with a score and grimacing with a smile. What would you of me ? Flatteries is it not, always and forever." "No, my lord; I have a score of yours, that I have longed long to redeliver; I pray you, ' now receive it." "No, not I ; I never gave you aught", " My honored lord, you know right well, you did ; and, with it, words of so sweet breath composed, as made the thing more rich. Their perfume lost, take this again ; for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord." "Ha, ha! have you a heart ?" "My lord?" "Are you a singer?" "What means your lordship?" "That if you have a heart and be a singer, your heart should admit of no dis- course to your singing." "Could anging, my lord, have better commerce than with heart? " " Ay, truly ; for the power of a talent like yours will sooner transform heart from what it is to a bawd, than the force of heart can translate singing into its likeness ; this was some- time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof I did admire you opce." "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so." ^' You should not have believed me; I ad- mired you not." "I was the more deceived." "Get thee to a nunnery. What is your ambition ? A great name, much money, the applause of fools, a titled hus- band, the name of duchess. Ay, ay, they all dream of marrying a prince. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of .Q2 " A TRAVERS chants:' idiots?" "O, help him, you sweet heavens!" "If thou dost marry, I will give thee this sad truth for thy dowry : let an artistic woman be as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, she shall not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery ; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for wise men know well enough what torments you have in store for them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell." " Heavenly powers, restore him ! " "I have heard of your vocal coquetries too, well enough. God hath given you one voice, and you make yourselves another. They confide to you a masterwork, you change its very essence, you debase it, you crowd it with wretched ornaments, you make in- solent cuts, you introduce grotesque scales, laughable arpeggios, facetious trills ; you insult the master, people of taste, art and sense. Go to; I'll no more oft; to a nunnery, go ! " (Exti.) The young Ophelia is not wholly in the wrong, Hamlet has rather lost his head. But it will not be noticed in our musical world, where at present every one is completely mad. Besides, he has lucid moments, this poor prince of Denmark; he is but mad north- north-west; when the wind is southerly, he knows a hawk from a hand-saw well enough. APPENDICES, APPENDIX A. FUNERAL DISCOURSE OVER THE BODY OF HECTOR BERLIOZ, DELIVERED BY M. GUILLAUME, PR ESI- DENT OF THE ACADSMIE DES BEAUX-ARTS. GENTLEMEN: — To-day is the first beginning of peace for tlie famous and ever-militant artist, for whom the Academy of Fine Arts now wears mourning, for he was truly of the men who are predestined to find rest in the grave only. His life, passed amidst contradic- tions and struggles, ended amidst sufferings, which sorrow had, perhaps, caused, but which it assuredly aggravated without stint. The circumstances of that life of torment have been often told. Here, where we are met together to look back upon it, I must confine myself to retracing the prime facts of a noble career, and cast, with you, a sorrowful glance at the rare merits which made it illus- trious. An irresistible call drew Berlioz early toward music, and from his first attempts his vigorous nature led him /to repudiate all false conventionality and frivolity in the art.^ He was only at the opening of his career, when the originality of his genius flashed out upon the world ; his first work, the Fantastic Symphony, made him famous. His stay in Italy, where he spent two years as an inmate of the Academy of France, strongly fixed his irrevocable convictions, and, as his individuality ex- 34* 40s 4o6 APPENDICES. panded, he found new and lasting strength in commun- ion with classic masterpieces. His symphony of Harold, and above all, his Romeo and Juliet won him fresh laurels. In all he produced in after years profound science has ever been manifest, acting as handmaiden to a grandeur of sentiment and a pathos that knew how to bring under one sceptre the realms of the Lyric Drama and of the Symphony. Fond of strong emotions, he knew how to draw the most striking (saisissantes) effects from vast combinations. Power and strength were con- genital with him, and sublimity, which suggests struggle, attracted his soul more than serene beauty. Who of us, gentlemen, can forget- the Funeral and Triumphal Symphony ? Who does not remember the Requiem-Mass, in which the poignant vigor of expres- sion engenders a sort of momentary terrorj* But Ber- lioz's genius was not corifined within narrow limits ; he could enter upon the most diverse plan£s_of_feeling, as he has proved in his magnificent oratorio, the Childhood of Christ ; and he went on, ever progressing, up to that noble opera. The Trojans, a work full of dramatic fire, and of a pathns- worthy of antiquity ; a composition broadly melodious, whose triumph its commanding beauties should have assured. But whatever the success of his works may have been> ■Berlioz always seemed to think less of applause than of the triumph of his convictions. Of a valiant nature and firoj^conyictians,- he could not rest content with publish- ing his beliefs through- music alone; he always felt the need of defending with his pen the principles he thought necessary to life and art. In all his critical labors, in the midst of unexpected vivacities of form and the some- times excessive polemic spirit of the day, we find a solid basis of healthy and strengthening doctrines. It is there that we can appreciate his whole mind, in which a restive spirit of independence was yet allied to the largest APPENDICES. 407 classic sentiment; it is there that his artist's conscience stands wholly unveiled. His hatred for easy frivolity, his respect for grand traditions are expressed in vig- orous and passionate terms. Gluck arid_Beethoven are his favorite masters ; a sincere love for their master- pieces animates him to the enthusiastic- pitch, moves him to very tears. Noble intoxication, just pride of a mind that comprehends the beautiful, and keeps itself proudly alcJOf, in the~midst oFa Hebased public taste. " It was for the Academy of Fine Arts to welcome an artist rendered noteworthy by the originality of his works and the decision of his opinions ; it consecrated by a brilliant election a career so well filled and crowned by great fame and legitimate popularity. This mark of high esteem was addressed to the musician, but the man "was no less worthy of it by his inviolable sincerity. Who can contest it ? Berlioz, in all the vehemence of his criticism, only attacked ideas, ideas alone were the object of his generous wrath. He never knew envy; he always was ready to applaud the success of his rivals, to lavish enthusiasm upon works really worthy of admiration, and in which he recognized the principle of progress. ^ Gentlemen, the genius of Berlioz will remain one of the expressions of our century ; few artists are destined to bear like him the marks of the time in which he lived. By the independent loftiness of his inspirations, by his love for the free and pure sources of art, by his religious cherishing of a grand ideal, founded upon truth, he was one oflKe^'niost energetic representatives of the spirit of our time. He was modern both from his conception of the artist and his personal originality. His sensibility took delight in his own sufferings, and was ever Ingen- ious in re-opening his own wounds. The pleasure that some souls take in the misfortunes that are inseparable from life is dangerous. The strong- 4oS APPENDICES. est succumb to it. Berlioz's proud sarcasm seemed for a long while to place him above the reach of unjust at- tacks. At last he fell a victim to that morbid sensibility that thinks to raise itself above all ills by sounding their depths. Melancholy took possession of him. Then when the most cruel griefs were added to this incurable affliction of his mind, when his wife and son were torn from him by a premature death, he bent entirely. His body was not strong enough to endure the deep lacera- tions of his soul ; and after pitiless sufferings he fell. Gentlemen, let us bow down before this long agony. Berlioz, our dear and regretted colleague, deserves, be- yond all other men, the profound peace to which he has gone. May he rest in the bosom of that peace, the dawning of a glory that shall ever grow greater, and with which the Society of Fine Arts associates itself, after honoring itself by supporting him in his trials ; it has come here to-day to bid him a last farewell. APPENDIX B. A COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS OF HECTOR BERLIOZ. Opus I. OUVERTURE DE Waverley, en R^. (Overture to Wa- verley, in D). — Full score and parts. Paris: Richault. Leipzig: Hofmeister. — For piano-forte a 4m. Leipzig: Hofmeister. Brunswick : Leibrock. (First given at the Conservatoire, May 26th, 1828, Habeneck conducting). Opus 2. Irlande : recueil de morceaux de chant avec accom- pagnement de piano sur des paroles traduites de Thomas Moore. (Ireland : a collection of songs with piano-forte accompaniment, to words translated from Thomas Moore). Paris : Richault. Two of these songs have also the original English text; the £Ugie and Adieu, Bessy. La Belle Voyageuse and the Chant sacr^ are also pub- lished in full score, instrumented by the composer. . 35 409 41 o APPENDICES. Opus 3. OuvERTURE DES Francs-Juges. (Overture to the Vehmic-Judges). — Full score and parts. Paris: Richault. Leipzig: Hofmeister. — In parts for military band, arranged by Wieprecht. Paris : Richault. — For piano-forte a 4m. Paris : Richault. Leipzig : Hofmeister. — The same arranged by Karl Czerny. Brunswick : Meyer. — For piano-forte a 2m. arranged by F. Liszt. Mainz : B. Schott's Sohnen. (First given at the Conservatoire, May 26th, 1828, Habeneck conducting). Opus 4. OuvERTURE DU Roi Lear, en Ut. (Overture to King Lear, in C). " — Full score and parts. Paris : Richault. Leipzig: Hofmeister. — For piano-forte a 4m. arranged by J. A. Leib- rock. Paris : Richault. Brunswick: Litolff. — For piano-forte a 2m. arranged by J. A. Leib- rock. Brunswick : Litolff (First given at the Conservatoire, December 9th, 1832, Habeneck conducting). Opus 5. Messe DES Morts, Requiem. (Mass for the dead,. Requiem). APPENDICES. ^jj — Full score. Paris : Schlesinger (out of print). Milan: Ricordi. — Full score and parts. Leipzig: Hofmeister. Berlioz says in his catalogue that Ricordi's edition is the only correct one, as it differs in several essential points from Schlesinger's. He makes no mention of Hofmeister's edition, which is probably a later one. (Written in 1836 for the annual funeral service per- formed in honor of the victims of the Revolution of July, 1830, but first given in the church of the Invalides, December Sth, 1837, at the funeral service of General Danremont and the French soldiers killed at the siege of Constantina, October 12th, 1837. Habeneck con- ducted the performance). Opus 6. Le Cinq Mai : Cantate pour voix de Basse et Chceur. (The Fifth of May: Cantata for a bass voice and chorus). — Full score and parts. — Piano-forte score. [With French and German text]. Paris: Richault. Opus 7. Les Nuits D'Et6: recueil de six morceaux df ckafit avec petit orchestre. (Summer nights : a collection of six songs with small orchestra). — Piano-forte score. Paris: Richault. There is a Swiss edition of this opus under the follow- ing title : Die Sommernachte, eirie Sammlung von sechs Ge- sangstiicken mit kleinem Orchester. . J 2 APPENDICES. 1. Landliches Lied. (Country Song). 2. Der Geist der Rose. (The Rose's Ghost). 3. Auf den Lagunen. (On the Lagoons). 4. Trennung. (Parting). 5. Auf dem Friedhofe. \Mondschein\. (In the Church-yard). 6. Das unbekannte Land. (The Unknown Country). — Full score. — Piano-forte score. [With German and French text]. Winterthur : Rieter-Biedermann. Leipzig : Hofmeister. No. 2 differs slightly from the Paris edition. Opus 8. RfevERiE ET Caprice, Romance pour violon. (Revery and Caprice, Romanza for violin). — Full score and parts. — Piano-forte score. Paris : Richault. Opus 9. Le Carnaval Romain, Ouverture caract&istiqite ; deuxieme ouverture de Benvcnuto Cellini, destinee a etre exdciitee avant le second acte de cet opera. (The Roman Carnival, a characteristic overture; second overture to Benvenuto Cellini, to be played before the second act of the opera). — Full score and parts. — In parts. Berlin : Schlesinger. — For two piano-fortes a 8m. arranged by J. P. Pixis. Paris : Brandus. — For piano-forte a 4m. arranged by J. P. Pixis. Paris: Brandus. Berlin : Schlesinger. APPENDICES. . J ^ Opus lO. TraiTE d'InstruMENTATION, suivi de la Thdorie dn Chef d' Orchestre. (A Treatise on Instrumentation, followed by the Theory of the Orchestral Conductor). \ — In French. Paris: Schonenberger. — In English. London : Ewer and Novello. — In German. Berlin : Schlesinger. — In Italian. Milan : RicordL The second [English and French] edition is the only correct one ; it contains several new chapters, and others have been remodeled. The Milan edition does not con- tain the Theory of the Orchestral Conductor, which the German publisher has published separately. Opus 1 1. Sara la Baigneuse : Ballade a trois choeurs. (^Sara at the Bath : Ballad for three choruses.) — Full score and parts. — Arranged for two voices with piano-forte accom- paniment. Paris: Richault. Opus 12. La Captive, Reverie de Victor Hugo, pour contralto. (The Captive, Revery by Victor Hugo, for a contralto voice). — Full score. — Piano-forte score. Paris: Richault — Piano-forte score with French and German text. Berlin : Schlesinger, Leipzig: Kahnt. Opus 13. Fleurs DES LandeS: Recueil de cinq morceaux de chant avec piano. (Moorland Flowers : a collection ' of five songs with piano-forte accompaniment). .J - A PPEN DICES. — Paris: Richault. The following are published separately with French and German text. Le Matin. (Morning). Le Tr^buchet. (The Trap). Vienna: Mechetti. Le Pdtre breton. (The Breton Shepherd), in full score. Paris: Richault. Opus 14 a. Symphonie Fantastique, premiere partie de V Episode de la vie d'un artiste. (Fantastic Symphony, first part of the Episode in the Life of an Artist). — Full score and parts. Paris: Brandus. — For piano-forte a 2m. arranged by F. Liszt. Paris : Brandus. Vienna: Witzendorf. — 4th movement {Marche au Supplice) arranged for piano-forte a 4m. from Liszt's transcrip- tion, by F. Mockwitz. Berlin: Schlesinger. Opus 14 b. Lelio, OU le Retour a. la Vie : Monodrame lyriqiie, deuxieme partie de V Episode de la vie d'un artiste. (Lelio, or the Return to Life : Lyric monodrama, second part of the Episode in the Life of an Artist). — Full score and parts. Paris: Richault. — Piano-forte score with French and German text. Paris : Richault. Leipzig : Hofmeister. The Dramatic Fantasy on Shakspere's Tempest, with which the work closes, can be performed separately. APPENDTCES. 4,5 (The Fantasy on the Tempest was first given at the Opera in 1829. The Fantastic Symphony was first given at the Conservatoire in 1830. The work was first given entire at the Conservatoire, December 9th, 1832. Habeneck conducted, and Bocage, the actor, re- cited the part of Lelio). Opus 15. Grande Symphonie FUNfesRE et triomphale, potcr grande harmonie militaire, avec un orchestre d' instru- ments a cordes, et un chceur ad libitum.. (Grand Funeral and Triumphal Symphony, for full military band, with string-orchestra~and chorus ad libitum). — Full score and parts. — The Apotheose in parts for Sax instruments. Paris : Brandus. (Written for and performed at the ceremony of the transfer of the remains of the victims of the Revolution of July to the Bastille Column, July 28th, 1840). Opus 16. Harold en Italie: Symphonie en quatre parties avec un alto principal. (Harold in Italy : symphony in four movements, with viola obbligata). — Full score and parts. Paris: Brandus. (First given at the Conservatoire, November 23d, 1 834. Urban played the leading viola part, and Girard conducted). Opus 17. Romeo et Juliette: Symphonie Dramatique avec chceur s, solos de chant et Prologue en recitatif choral, d'apres la Tragedie de Shakspere. (Romeo and Juliet : Dramatic Symphony with chorus, solos and Prologue in choral recitative, after Shakspere's Tragedy). 4i6 APPENDICES. — Full score and parts. Paris : Brandus. — Piano-forte score arranged by Theodor Ritter. [With French and German text]. Winterthur : Rieter-Biedermann. Leipzig: Hofmeister. — Second movement, Fete chez Capulet, for two pianos-fortes a 8m. arranged by R. Pohl. Leipzig: Klemm. — Adagio, Scene d' amour, for piano-forte a 2m. ar- — ranged by Theodor Ritter. Berlin : Schlesinger. The piano-forte score is indispensable for choral re- hearsals of the symphony. (First given in Paris, November 24th, 1839, under Berlioz's own direction). Opus 18. Tristia, recueil de deux chceurs, et d'une marche funebre avec chceurs. (Tristia, a collection of two choruses, and a funeral march with chorus). — Full score and parts. Paris : Richault. No, I. Meditation religieuse, and No. 2, Ballade sur la mart d' Ophelie, are also published in piano-forte score Opus 19. Feuillets D'Album, recueil de trois morceatix de chant, dont un avec chaeur. (Album Leaves, a col- lection of three songs, of which one is with chorus). Paris : Richault. No. I. Zaide [With French and German text]. Vienna: Haslinger. No. I. Zaide and No. 2 Les Champs. Vienna: Pietro Mechetti. A PP EN DICES. . I ~ The following may also be considered as belonging to the Feuillets d'Albtim ; La Pri^RE DU Matin, choeur a deux voix. (The Morning Prayer, two-part chorus). — Piano-forte score. - Paris: Escudier. La belle Isabeau, conte pendant Vorage, avec chcBur (The Fair Isabeau, a tale during the storm, with chorus). — Piano-forte score. Paris: Edmont Mayaud. Le Chasseur Danois, chant pour voix de basse. (The Danish Hunter, song for a bass voice). — Piano- forte score. Paris : Edmont Mayaud. Berlin : Stern und Cie. Opus 20. Vox POPULI, deux grands chaeurs avec orchestre : La Menace des Francs, et I'Hymne a la France. (Vox Populi, two grand choruses with orchestra; The Franks' Threat, and the Hymn to France). — Full score. Paris: Richault Opus 21. OuvERTURE DU CORSAIRE. (Overture to the Cor- sair). — Full score and parts. Paris: Richault — For piano-forte a 4m. arranged by Hans v. Biilow. — For piano-forte a 2m. arranged by Hans v. JBiilow. Winterthur: Rieter-Biedermann. 35* 4i8 APPENDICES. Opus 22. Te Deum, a trois chaeurs, avec orchestre et orgue obligS. (Te„ Deum for three choruses, with orchestra and obbligato organ). — Full score. Paris : Brandus. (Brought out April 30th, 1854, in the church of Saint- Eustache, at the Thanksgiving Service for the safety of the Emperor's life after the attempt at his assassination on the 28th). Opus 23. Benvenuto Cellini, Opera semiseriq en trois acies. (Benvenuto Cellini, Opera semiseria in three acts). — Piano-forte score with French and German text. Brunswick : Meyer und Litolff. — Overture in full score and parts. — Overture a 4m. arranged by Hans von Biilow. — Overture a 2m. arranged by A. FumagaUi. Berlin : Schlesinger. Several numbers have been published separately in piano-forte score by Brandus in Paris. The full score is not published. The MS. copy at the Opera in Paris is in the most complete disorder, and does not contain the alterations made by the composer before bringing out the work in Weimar. There is a correct MS. copy at the Opera House in Weimar. {^Benvenuto Cellini, was brought out at the Opera in Paris, September 3d, 1836, Habeneck conducting. The principal features of the cast were : Benvenuto, Duprez ; TMsa, Madame Gras-Dorus; Ascanio, Madame Stoltz). Opus 24. La Damnation de Faust, Legende en quatre actes. (The Damnation of Faust, Legend in four acts). —Full score and parts. APPENDICES. 410 — Piano- forte score, [With French and German textj. Paris: Richault. Leipzig; Hofmeister. Marche Hongroise, — For piano-forte a 4m. arranged by J. Benedict. — For piano-forte a 2m. arranged by Ed. Wolff. Berlin : Bote und Bock. Hymne de la Fete de Pdques. — For piano-forte a 2ra. arranged by Camille Saint- Saens. Paris: Richault. (Brought out at the Opera-Comiqae, December 6, 1846, under Berlioz's own direction. The principal features of the cast were : Faust, Rc^er ; M^phistophiles, Herman Leon ; Marguerite, Madame Duflot-Maillard). Opus 25. L'Enfance du Christ, Trilogie Sacrde. {Le Songe d'H&ode, La Fuite en £gypte, L'Arrivde a Sa'is). (The Childhood of Christ, a sacred Trilogy. [Herod's Dream/TKe Flight into Egypt, The Arrival in Sai's]). ^FuU score and parts with French and German text Paris: Richault. Leipzig: Hofmeister. — Piano-forte score. With French and German text, Paris : Richault. With French and German text, Leipzig: Hof- meister. With French and English text London : Beale. La Fuite en Egypte. — Full score. — Piano-forte score, [With French and German text]. Leipzig: Kistner. 420 APPENDICES. (The Enfance du Christ was brought out in Paris at the Salle Herz, Sunday, December loth, 1854, under Berlioz's own direction. The cast was : Marie, Madame Meillet; Joseph, Meillet; Herode, Depassio; Pere de famille, Battaille; Polydorus, Noir. The recitatives were sung by Jourdan . Opus 26. L'Imp^RIALE, Cantate a deux chceurs, et a grand orchestre. (The Emperor's Cantata, for two choruses and grand orchestra). — Full score. Paris: Brandus. (Brought out in the Palais de ITndustrie in the Champs-EIysees in 1855. Berlioz conducted the per- formance). The following works have no opus number. Beatrice et Benedict, Op^ra-comique en deux actes. (Beatrice and Benedick, Comic opera in two acts). — Piano-forte score with French and German text. Berlin : Bote und Bock. (Brought out at the new Opera-House in Baden- Baden, August 9th, 1862, under Beriioz's own direc- tion. The principal features of the cast were : BenMict, Montaubry ; Beatrice, Madame Charton-Demeur ; Hero, Mademoiselle Monrose). LES TROYENS. La Prise de Troie, Opera en trots actes. (TheF^l of Troy, Opera in three acts). — Piano-forte score. Berlin : Bote und Bock. Paris: Choudens. (Never performed). APPENDICES. A 2 1 II. Les Troyens a Carthage, Opera en cinq actes. (Th e Troja ns in Carthage, Opera in five acts). — -tiano-forte score. Berlin : Bote und Bock. Paris : Choudens.' (Brought out at the Theatre- Lyrique, November 4th, 1863, Carvalho conducting. The principal features of the cast were : Enee, Monjauze ; Didon, Madame Charton-Demeur ; Hylas, Cabel). The following orchestral transcriptions by Berlioz are published. Rouget de V Isle's La MARSEILLAISE, arranged for chorus and grand orchestra. — Full score. Paris: Brandus. Leopold de Meyer's Marche Marocaine, arranged for grand orchestra. — Full score. Paris : Escudier. Karl Maria von Weber's INVITATION a LA Valse, arranged for grand orchestra. —Full score. Paris : Brandus. A piano-forte score of von Weber's Der Freyschiltz with recitatives by Berlioz is published by Schlesinger in Paris. A collection of airs selected from Berlioz's works, is published by Choudens in Paris. • Very incomplete and otherwise faulty. INDEX OF IMPORTANT NAMES, PLACES AND WORKS MENTIONED IN THIS VOLUME. ACADEMIE ROYAL DE MUSIQUE (see also Op£ra), 276. Adam, 13. Alboni, 248. Alcesie (by Gluck), 189. Alexandre, 60, 315. Alizard, 135. Amussat, i6« 311. Andrieux, 16. Antigone (by Mendelssohn), 131. " Antony (by Dumas), 45. Aristoxenus, 367. Armide (by Gtuck), 179. Artot, 132. Auber, 13, 76, 354. BACH, 96, 126, 166, 195. Balzac, 225, 290. Barbier, 207. Barnum, 255. Beethoven, 5, 24, 27, 73, 100, 164, 2zo, 213, 275* 29^, 300, 371, 407. Benven-uto Cellini (by Berlioz), u, 49. Cavatina from, 140. Overture to, 157, 200. Berlin, 84, 13S, 164, 176, 191. Berlioz, Louis, 56, 71, 74. Bertin, Armand, 49. Bertin, Louise, 164. Berton, 24. Beverley (scene from, by Berlioz), 18, i^ Brgottini, Mlie., 16. Black Forest, 105, Bocage, 44. Boccherini, 292. Bohrer brothers, 82, 152, 2x3. BoTeldieu, 24. Borghi-Mamo, 284. Branchu, 16, 233. Breslau, 52. Brunswick, 7, 150. Brussels, 81. Burgmiiller, 274. CABEL, 324- Calais, rue de, 75. Cannobiana, teatro delta, 3S4. CaptivBy la (by Berlioz), 44. Carlsruhe, 117, 343. Carnaval Romatn, U (1^ Berlioz), 13. Cassel, 217. Castil-Blaze, 319. Catel, 24. Cenerentola, la (by Rossini), sS^i. Charles X, 253. Cha-teatrbriand, 19. Ch^lard, 119, i2X. Cherubini, 5, 24, 29, 354. 423 424 INDEX, Ckeval Arahe, U (by Berlioz), 17. Chopin, 214. Cimarosa, 165. Cinq-Mai, le (by Berlioz), 145, 16^ 203, 206, 211, ZI7, 220. Cleopatra after ike Battle of Actium (by Berlioz), 32. Conservatoire, 23, 31, 49, 82, 172. Coslfan Tutte (by Mozart), 100. Costa, 6, 26. Cdte-Saint-Andr6, la, 3, 20, 56. Covent Garden, 271, 386. DAMCKE, 71. Danatdes, les (by Salieri), 16. Darmstadt, 207, 217. David, Ferdinand, 131. Death of Jesus, tke (by Graun), 195. D^rivis, 16, 18, 233, 243. Desmarest, 191. Dessauer, 398. Dobr6, 396. Dohler, 214, 302. Don Carlos (by Schiller), igg. Don Giovanni (by Mozart), 26, xoo, 276, 381. Doriis-Gras, 247. Dorval, 45, 184. Dotzauer, 146. Dresden, 84, 138. Drury Lane, 273. Due, 345. "Ducr6, Pierre," 12, 346, Duponchel, 245. Duprez, 248, 251, 396. ELLA, 345. Enfance du Christy V (by Berlioz), 9, 345, 406. Erard, 314. Ernst, 138. Estelie, the "Stella montis"; Madame F***, 15, 63, 64, 68, 74. Estelie et Nirnorin (by Florian), 14, 18, ig. FALCON, 184. Fall of yerusalejn, the (by Hiller), 93, 119. Fantastic Symphony (by Berlioz), 15, 45, 49, 103, 108, 121, 132, 139, 141, 405. Faust (by Goethe), 32, iig. • (by Spohr), 90. Faust, la Damnation de (by Berlioz), 7, 54, 70- Ferrand, 20, 52. F^tis, s, 347- Feydeau, 17, see also Op^ra-Comique. Fidelio (by Beethoven), 8g, 181. Figaro, le Nozze di (by Mozart), z6, 100, 178, 220, 381, FingaVs Cave (by Mendelssohn), 127. Firmin, 45. Fliegende Hollander, der (by ■ Wagner), 142. Florence, 34. Florian, 14. Folies-Nouvelles, 319. Fratics-Juges, les (by Berlioz), 20, 46, 103, 121, 132, 196. Frankfort a M., 81, 84, 87. FreischUtz, der (by Weber), 99, 178, 276, 381, 395- GAMBARA (by Balzac), 290. Ganz brothers, 167. Gasparin, de, 47. Gautier, Mme., 15. Gay-Lussac, 16, Genast, 120. Genoa, 37. Georges, Mile., 184. Girard, 6, 47, 95. Gluck, 5, 24, 27, 73, 12^. 181, i38, 233, 407, Goethe, iig. Goldschmidt, 261. Graun, 195. Grenoble, 3, 75. Griepenkerl, 161, 216. Grisi, 248. Guhr, 87, 99, 217. Guido d'Arezzo, 366. Guillaume, 75, 405. Guillau7ne Tell (by Rossini), 97, 251, 284, Gymnase-Dramatique, 237. Gyrowetz, 291. HABENECK, 6, 47, 176. Hahnel, Mile., 174, 206. Hal^vy, 13, 390. Hamburg, 150, 161. Hamlet (by Shakspere), 28, 45, 59- Handel, 319. Hanover, 11, 207, 213. INDEX. 425 Hanover, Prince Royal of, 217. Harold en. Italie (by Berlioz), 47, 49, 104, 108, 1J7, 145, 154, 163, 200, 211, 406. Harpe, rue de la, 23. Hasse, 148. Hasse, Faustina, 149. Haydn, 100. Hechingen, 105. Heine, Henri, 9, 150, 246. Solomon, 163. Heinefetter, Mile., 118. Heller, 76, 133. Herder, 97. Heroic Symphony (by Beethoven), ago. Hiller, 92. Homer, 71. Horwath, 52. Hugo, 164. HngtienoU, les^ (by Meyerbeer), 97, 99, 179, 181, 284, 383. Humboldt, 198. Hummel, 120. IDOniENEO (by Mozart), too. Intpiriale^ V (by Berlioz), 11. Ihvalides, Church of the, 378. jphiginie en Aulide (by Glucfc), 388. en Tauride (by Gluck), 16, 127, 1S9, 388. JANIN, 164. Jean Bart, 143, 341. yetmy Bell (by Scribe), 318. Joseph (by M6hul), 354. Jouy, 236. yinve, la (by Halcvy), 284. KaNT, 97. Krebs, 99, 162, Kreutzer, 26. LABLACHE, 22. Lachner, Vincenz, 118. Lachnith, 25. La Fontaine, 14, 29. Lear, King (by Shakspere), tzt. Ldar, le Rai C^y Beriioz), 11, 41, 88, 108, J26, 132, 139. Leibrock, 154. Leipzig, 125, 128. Lelio (by Berlioz), 44. Leonore, overture to (by Beethoven), 116, Lesueur, 17, 24, 218, 365. Levasseur, 181. Lind, Jenny, 255, 385. Linda di Cfiaviounix (by Donizetti), 163, 273. Lindpainttier, 98. Lipinski, 7, 81, 139, 144, 149. Liszt, 46, 54, no, 248. Lobe, Z19, 121. London, Opera in, 270. Lortzing, 137. Lticia di Lamntermoor (by Donizetti), 285, Lulli, 318. Lyons, 64. MAGDEBURG, 212. Magic Flute, the (by Mozart), 162, 276. Magicienne, la (by Hal6vy), 390. Malbrook s'en va-i-en guerre^ 14. Malibran, Mme., 250, 361. Mangold brothers, 82, 2x9, Manheim, 117. Mantius, 174. Marcello, 149. Mari6, 397. Mario, 248, 27X. Marmontel, 374. Marpurg, 96. Mars, Mile., 45. Marschner. 81, 213. Martin, 9. Matilda di Sabran (by Rossini), 42. Matrimonio Segreio, il (by Cimarosa), 166, Mayence, 81, 86. Mazarin, 264. Medea, (choruses to, by Tauhert), 173. Midecin vtalgri lui, le (by Moliere), 97, Medicis, The, 207. Meillet, M. and Mme., 324. Mendelssohn, 33, 81, 99, 123. Mercadante, 340. Mery, 65. Mettemich, Prince de, 13. Meyerbeer, 81, 138, 167, 179, 188, 197, 199, 266. Meylan, 64. Midsummer Night's Dream, Overture to, (by Mendelssohn), 129. MilanoUo sisters, the, 83. 426 INDEX. Moise en Egy^te (by Rossini), 99, 146, 163, 275, 389- Moli^re, 29, no. Molique, 101. Monaco, 74. Montfort, 125." Moiitmartre, Cemetery of, 60, 75. Moore, 210. Morel, 81. Moscowv 54. Motteville, 334. Mozart, 165, 276, 342. Mnetie de Po?iiciy la (by Auber), 99. Miiller family, the, 82, 152. NAPOLEON I, 145. Nathyn-Treillet, Mme.,- 84. Nero, 229, Neukirchner, 101, Nice, 41, 74. Nina (by Persuis), 16. Nourrit, 38 1. Numa Pompilius, 228. OBERON (by Weber), 146, 398. Od^on, Theatre de l", 28. Olympus, 367. Op6ra, Th64tre de 1', 49, 262, 349, 381. Op6ra-Comiqiie, 44, 236. Orphh (by Giuck), 100, 381. Orpheus tarn to pieces by Bacchants (by Berlioz), \La Mart d'Orpkie^ 24, 30. Osborne', 207. Ours et le Packa^ V (by Scribe), 3/9. PACCINI, 396. Paer, 24. Paganini, 7, 46, 49. Page, 331. Paris, 82, 207, 333. Paris h-Alvars, 145, 217. Passion-Music (by Bach), 166, 192. Pastoral Symphony (by Beethoven), 293. Patti, 68. Paul and Virginia (by Bemardin de Saint- Pierre), 71. Pergolese, 312. P4ri, la (by Burgmiiller), 274. Perpigniin, 212. Perrin, 75, 324. Persian!, 24S. Pesth, 52. Pietra Santa, 38. Pillet, 396. Pischek, 22, 89, 174, 385. Planche, 290. Poliuto (by Donizetti), 72. Pomar^, 331. Pons, de, 19. Poussard, 171. Prado, le, 291. Preciosa (by Weber), 398. Prise de T7'aie, la {by Berlioz), 13. Pro7netkeus (by Beethoven), 100. Prophete, le (by Meyerbeer), 271, 284. Prussia, Prince of, 196. - Princess of, 197. King of, 191, 198, Queen of, 198, Puget, Loisa, 85. QUINAULT, 187. RACHEL, 249. Rdk6czy-indul6 (by Berlioz), 52. Reissiger, 142. Requiem, (by Berlioz), 9, 10, 47, 139, 141, 157. 199. 406- Rhine, the, 86. Rienzi (by Wagner), 142. Ries, 167. Riga, 54. Rob Roy, Overture to, (by Berlioz), 43. Robert le Diable (by Meyerbeer), 273, 284. Robin des Bois (by Weber filtered through Castil-Blaze), 395. Roedern, comte de, 198. Roger, 285. Romberg, 201. Rome, 24, 43. Romeo and JuUet (by Shakspere), 28. Romio et Juliette (by Berlioz), 7, 11, 51, I33j 14S) X55» 199, 205, 211, 218, 406. Roqueplan, 247. Rossini, 13, 275, 301, 389. Rothschild, 218. Rouget de I'lsle, 319, 358. Rousseau, 360. Rubini, 126. SAINT-ANTOINE, 323. Saint-Eustache, Church of, 291. INDEX. 427 Saint-Lazaie, rue, 324. Saint-Lcger, 22. Saint-Marc, rue de, 44. Saint-Roch, Church of, 18, 233, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, 334. Sainte-Chapelle, the, 346. San Carlo, teatro di, 3B4. Sappho, 367. Sardanapale (by Berlioz), 32, 46, 125. Sax, 13, loi, 147, 169, 197. Scala, teatro della, 384. Schiller, xxg. Schilling; 96 Schlosser, 82, 218. Schmetzer, 157. Schott, 86. Schrade, 102. Schroder-Deviient, Mme., 90, 144, 174, 181. Schumann, Clara, 137. Robert, 136. Schutter, 44. Scribe, 318. Semiramide (by Rossini), 34a. Serail, die Enifukrung aus dem, (by Mo- zart), 100. Shakspere, 7, 28, 59, 71, 73, 211. Siege de Corintke^ U (by Rossini), 13, 389. Smithson, Miss, 38, 44, 45, 56, 57. Snel, 85. Spohr, 33, 217. Spontini, 5, 27, 189, 205, 233, 275, 389. St. Petersburg, 54, 74. Stem, 107. Stoltz, 250, 396. Strakosch, 67. Straionice (by M^hul), ift, Strauss, 86. Stuttgard, 96. Sulia (by Jouy), 236. SylpMde, la, 284. SymphoHte funibre et triomphale (by Ber- lioz), iz, 5T, 139, 406. Symphony in C-minor (by Beethoven), 361. TAGLIONI, Paul, 186. Tamburini, 248. Tasso, 189. Taubert, 172, Te Deum (by Berlioz), xo. ■ (by Hasse), 148. Techlisbeck, 107. Telernaco (by Gluck), 125. Temple, faubourg du, 322. Templer und jfudin (by Marschner), 213. Terpander, 367. Thalberg, 143. Th^atre-Italien, le, 45. Th£nard, 16. Tichatschek, 140, 385. Timotheus, 360. Trinity, church of la, 75. Trio in B-flat (by Beethoven), 379. Troyens a Cartkage, les (by Berlioz), 63^ 70, 406. URHAN, 213. « VALENTINO, 18. Vanicoro, 336. VamPyr, der (by Marschner), 120, 213. Vatel, 247. Vemet, 34, 40, 327. Vestale^ la (by Spontini), 99, 275, 361, 389. Veule, 337. Vienna, 13, 52, 54. Vienne, 3. Villafranca, 41. Virgil, 14, 71, 73. Vivier, loz. Voltaire, 28. WAGNER, 142. Wallenstein (by Schiller), 119. Walpurgisnackt^ die (by Mendelssohn), 128. Weber, 5, 13, 24, 100, 148. Weimar, 116, 119, 218. Westmoreland, Earl of, 197. Wiprecht, 171, ig6. ZEMIRE ET AZOR (by Mannontel), 374- THE END.