Hector Berlioz

“ First he went to Berlioz, who had flatly refused to make the slightest concession to Adam’s prejudices.
“Come,” said he, “do at least be amiable to Adam; you cannot deny that he is a musician, at any rate.”
“I don’t say he is not; but, being a great musician, how can he lower himself to comic-opera? If he chose he could write such music as I do.”
Undismayed, Alexandre went to Adam.
“You will give your vote to Berlioz, will you not, dear friend? Although you cannot appreciate each other, you will own that he is a thorough musician.” ”

“ I seem to see Beethoven looking down on me with calm severity; Spontini—safely cured of woes like mine—with his pitying indulgent smile; Weber from the Elysian Fields, whispers consoling words into my ear....
“Mad, mad, mad! is this sense for a student of the Institute; a domino-player of the Café de la Régence?
“Nay, I will live—live for music—the highest thing in life except true love! Both make me utterly miserable but at least I shall have lived! Lived, it is true, by suffering, by passion, by lamentation and by tears—yet I shall have lived! ”

“ Even in a quartet, it is seldom that the individual feeling of the players can be left entirely free to follow its own dictates. In a symphony, that of the conductor must rule. The art of comprehending it, and fulfilling it with unanimity, constitutes the perfection of execution; and individual wills—which can never agree one with another—should never be permitted to manifest themselves. ”

“ Months passed in this state of numb despair, my only lucid moments being dreams of Shakespeare and of Miss Smithson—now the darling of Paris—and dreary comparisons between her brilliant triumphs and my sad obscurity.
As I gradually awoke to life again, a plan began to take shape in my mind. She should hear of me; she should know that I also was an artist; I would do what, so far, no French artist had ever done—give a concert entirely of my own works. For this three things were needed—copies, hall, and performers. ”

“ In an artist’s life sometimes wild tempests succeed each other with bewildering rapidity, and so it was with me about this time.
Hardly had I recovered from the successive shocks of Weber and Shakespeare, when above my horizon burst the sun of glorious Beethoven to melt for me that misty inmost veil of the holiest shrine in music, as Shakespeare had lifted that of poetry.
To Habeneck, with all his shortcomings, is due the credit of introducing the master he adored to Paris. ”

“ The only exception possible to this rule is that of a first-rate orchestra, composed of performers who are well acquainted with each other, are accustomed to play together, and know almost by heart the work they are executing. Even then, the inattention of a single player may occasion an accident. Why incur its possibility? I know that certain artists feel their self-love hurt when thus kept in leading-strings (like children, they say) ; but with a conductor who has no other view than the excellence of the ultimate result, this consideration can have no weight. ”

“ One might, in fact, thus easily conduct chorus-singers who turn their back towards the chief conductor; but attentive and intelligent sub-conductors are always preferable to a machine. They have not only to beat the time, like the metronomic staff, but they have also to speak to the groups around them, to call their attention to nice shades of execution, and, after bar-rests, to remind them when the moment of their re-entry comes. ”

“ The magnificent setting, the blended harmonies of orchestra and chorus, the sympathetic and beautiful voice of Madame Branchu, the rugged force of Dérivis, Hypermnestra’s air—which so vividly recalled Gluck’s style, made familiar to me by the scraps of Orpheus I had found in my father’s library—all this, intensified by the sad and voluptuous dance-music of Spontini, sent me up to fever-pitch of excitement and enthusiasm. ”

“ Of all the millionaires in Paris none thinks of doing anything for music. Paganini’s example was not followed, and the great artist’s gift to me stands alone.
No; a composer of classical music must be absolutely independent or must resign himself to all the miseries from which I suffered—to incomplete rehearsals, to inconvenient concert halls, to checks of every foreseen and unforeseen kind, and to the rapacity of the hospital tax-gatherers, who seize one-eighth of the gross receipts. ”

“ It is even more difficult to slacken a quick time smoothly, and without checks, so as to transform it little by little into a slow time. Often, from a desire to testify zeal, or from defect of delivery in his musical feeling, a conductor demands from his players an exaggeration of nice gradations. He comprehends neither the character nor the style of the piece. The gradations then become so many blemishes; the accents, yells; the intentions of the poor composer are totally disfigured and perverted ”

“ The other—coming in my manhood with my worship of Shakespeare—took possession of me and overwhelmed me completely. Love of Art and the artist intermingled, each acting upon and intensifying the other.
Those who cannot understand this will still less understand my vague poetic longings at the scent of a lovely rose, the sight of a beautiful harp. Estelle was the rose that bloomed alone, Henriette the harp that shared my music, my joys, my sorrows and of which alas! I snapped so many, many strings!
To Louis Berlioz. ”

“ As to the employment of noises of any kind whatever, produced by the stick of the conductor upon his desk, or by his foot upon the platform, they call for no other than unreserved reprehension. It is worse than a bad method; it is a barbarism. In a theatre, however, when the stage evolutions prevent the chorus-singers from seeing the conducting-stick, the conductor is compelled—to ensure, after a pause, the taking up a point by the chorus—to indicate this point by marking the beat which precedes it by a slight tap of his stick upon the desk. ”

“ That Paris—the apotheosis of industrialism in Art—that casts a scornful eye upon me, holding me only too honoured in fulfilling my calling of pamphleteer, for which alone, it holds, I came into the world. I know what I could do with dramatic music, but to try it would be both useless and dangerous.
There is no suitable theatre; I must be absolute dictator of a grand orchestra; I must have the eager good-will of all, from prima-donna to scene-shifter; my theatre must be a gigantic musical instrument. ”

“ In ancient works, the double-bass parts were extremely simple; therefore there can be no reason to impoverish them still more: those in modern scores are rather more difficult, it is true; but, with very few exceptions, there is nothing in them impossible of execution; composers, masters of their art, write them with care, and as they ought to be executed. If it is from idleness that the simplifiers pervert them, the energetic orchestral conductor is armed with the necessary authority to compel the fulfilment of their duty. ”

“ The audience did not seem inclined to leave and loudly called for the symphony, one voice in the gallery shouting, “Give us the Marche au Supplice!”
“How can I,” cried I, “perform such a thing with five violins? Is it my fault that the orchestra has disappeared?”
I was crimson with rage and shame.
With disappointed murmurs the people melted away. Of course my enemies announced that my music “drove musicians out of the place.”
That miserable evening brought in seven thousand francs, which went into the gulf of my wife’s debts without, alas! filling it up. ”

“ The natural result of constantly reading Florian’s Estelle was that I ended by setting parts of that mawky pastoral to music.
The faded old-time poetry comes back to me as I write here in London, in the pale spring sunshine. Torn as I am by anxiety, worried by sordid, petty obstacles, by stupid opposition to my plans, it is strange to recall the sickly-sentimental words of a song I wrote in despair at leaving the Meylan woods, which were “lighted by the eyes”—and, may I add, by the little pink slippers of my cruel lady love. ”

“ You need not fear for me with Henriette Smithson. I am no longer in danger in that quarter; I pity and despise her. She is nothing but a commonplace woman with an instinct for expressing the tortures of the soul that she has never felt; she is quite incapable of appreciating the noble, all-devouring love with which I honoured her.
“The rehearsals of my symphony begin in three days; all the parts are copied—there are two thousand three hundred pages. I hope to goodness we shall have good receipts to pay for it all. The concert takes place on the 30th May. And you alone will not be there! ”

“ Add to that the scirocco, the incessant yearning for my beloved art, my sorrowful memories, the misery of being for two years exiled from the musical world, and the utter impossibility of composing in that stagnating atmosphere, and it will hardly be wondered at that I was as savage as a trained bull-dog, and that the well-meant efforts of my friends to divert me only drove me to the verge of madness.
I remember in one of my Campagna rides with Mendelssohn expressing my surprise that no one had ever written a scherzo on Shakespeare’s sparkling little poem Queen Mab. ”

“ Ah, why do not the thrice-gifted ones of this world know of the passionate love and devotion their works inspire! If they could but divine the suppressed admiration of a few faithful hearts! Would they not gladly gather these chosen disciples about them to become a bulwark against the shafts of envy, hatred, malice, and luke-warm tolerance of which a thoughtless world makes them the target!
Weber was justly angry when he found out how Castilblaze—veterinary surgeon of music—had butchered his beautiful work, and he published a complaint before leaving Paris. ”

“ I hurried to the Pergola Theatre.
What a disappointment! No ball, no Mercutio, no babbling nurse, no balcony scene, no Shakespeare!
And Romeo sung by a small thin woman, Juliet by a tall stout one. Why—in the name of all things musical—why?
Do they think that women’s voices sound best together? Then why not do away with men’s entirely?{110}
Why should Juliet’s lover be deprived of all virility? Could a woman or a child have slain Tybalt, having burst the gates of Juliet’s tomb and stretched County Paris a corpse at his feet? ”

“ Ah! that I could have gratified his ardent wish to hear my Requiem, but it was not to be.
I pass over the sorrow of my home-coming, the meeting with my grief-worn sisters, the sight of his empty chair, of his watch—still living, though he was dead!
A strange wish to indulge the luxury of grief crept over me; I must drink this wormwood cup to the dregs; I must revisit Meylan—the early home of my Mountain Star—and live over again my early love and sorrow.
Even now my heart beats faster as I recall my journey. Thirty-three years ago and I, a ghost, come back to my early haunts! ”