Part 25

After the Empire had been restored in France, Berlioz would have liked to see reëstablished in his own favor the high position which his master Lesueur had occupied under the first Empire; but all that he obtained was the privilege of performing a Te Deum, which he was holding in reserve for the coronation of the new sovereign, and it was Auber who was appointed master of music of the Imperial Chapel. In December, 1854, his sacred trilogy of the _Childhood of Christ_, completed and remodelled, was given with great success, and if it was performed but twice, it was only because Berlioz,—he had taken great care to announce it in advance,—was on the point of departing for Gotha, Weimar, and Brussels, where there was great eagerness to hear this new work. He returned to Paris the following March, and on the evening of April 30, 1855, the day preceding the Universal Exposition, he gave in Saint Eustache church the first performance of his grand _Te Deum_ for three choruses, orchestra and organ. Afterwards when it became a question of engraving it, Berlioz was able to see how greatly he was admired in foreign lands, for the first subscribers were the kings of Hanover, Saxony, Prussia, the emperor of Russia, the king of Belgium and the queen of England. The following year he published a final and much enlarged edition of his excellent _Treatise on Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration_, originally brought out in 1844; he dedicated this work to the king of Prussia. On the 21st of June, 1856, after four _tours de scrutin_, he was nominated member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, replacing Adolphe Adam, who had refused to vote for him two years before and had helped to form the majority in favor of Clapisson. The following years were spent by Berlioz in organizing concerts at Weimar and in England, and above all in the composition of the great work on which he built his supreme hope of success in France, his tragedy of _Les Troyens_. Since 1856 he had been invited every year to Baden by Bénazet, contractor for the gaming tables, to organize grand concerts for the benefit of the visitors. Thus when the king of Baden, as Bénazet was called, concluded to build a new entertainment hall, it occurred to him at once that it would be a fine idea to get Berlioz to write something for its inauguration, and the latter, from the first mention of the subject, felt a reawakening of the desire which had been haunting him for thirty years, to write a comic opera, at once sentimental and gay, on certain scenes arranged by himself after Shakespeare’s comedy _Much Ado About Nothing_. He acquitted himself of this agreeable task by fits and starts; the performance of the work at Baden took place three days sooner than he hoped, and the success was great enough with that cosmopolitan audience, in which the French predominated, to find an immediate echo at Paris. The following year Mesdames Viardot and Vendenheuvel-Duprez sang the delicious nocturne which closes the first act. For an instant Berlioz indulged in the hope that they were going to play his bit of comedy at the Opéra Comique, and in this fond hope he wrote two more things and had them engraved; but he was soon obliged to recognize that it would be impossible with such a director as Emile Perrin, and so thought no more about it. Besides, he was entirely occupied with his dear _Troyens_ and the production of this beloved work absorbed his every thought. In 1857 he was all in the heat of the composition; he talked about his antique tragedy to M. Bennett, to Auguste Morel, to Hans von Bülow; in default of the music he read his poem at the salons, sometimes at M. Edouard Bertin’s house, sometimes at his own, and everywhere he received the warmest congratulations. At a soirée at the Tuileries, the Empress spoke to him at length in regard to it, and immediately he proposed to read his poems to the sovereigns if the Emperor could find an hour to give him, but not until three acts were completed, so that they might order the immediate study of it at the Opéra. Alas, the Emperor, unlearned in matters of music, did not respond favorably to Berlioz’s demands; he took no notice of his poem, and did not give the longed-for order to mount _Les Troyens_ at the _Opéra_. But while Berlioz was chafing with impatience at seeing _La Favorite_ and _Lucie_, translated by Alphonse Royer, played over and over again, and Halévy’s _La Magicienne_ and Félicien David’s _Herculanum_ pass him by, the Emperor, through the solicitations of the princess Metternich, opened the doors of the _Opéra_ to Richard Wagner, and decreed that his _Tannhäuser_ should be given with great pomp and magnificence.

The blow was a cruel one, and Berlioz, beside himself with rage and disappointment, attacked this unexpected rival and his opera with a fury that knew no bounds. He did not understand, unhappy man, that his cause was closely allied to that of Richard Wagner; the public, influenced by such critics as Scudo, Jouvin, Lasalle, Azevedo and Chadeuil, was equally hard on both of them and classed them together as a couple of dangerous madmen; no distinction was made between the two. The fall of _Tannhäuser_, towards which Berlioz had worked with all his energies, resulted in closing to him the stage of the Opéra, and it also assured in advance the unpopularity of _les Troyens_ with the public ready to extol or condemn the two innovators without discrimination. Moreover he saw Gounod, Gevaert and many others gain access to the Opéra in preference to himself. At last quite worn out with disappointment, Berlioz decided to accept the offers of M. Carvalho. This manager had just reopened the _Théâtre-Lyrique_ and wished to make a great hit in order to obtain from the government a subsidy of a hundred thousand francs.

But it was no longer a question of playing the whole of _les Troyens_ at the _Théâtre-Lyrique_; they would content themselves now with playing the first three acts, subdivided into five, under the title of _les Troyens à Carthage_. The first part of the work Berlioz had published as _la Prise de Troie_, but he never heard it performed. _Les Troyens à Carthage_ was given at the _Théâtre-Lyrique_ Nov. 4, 1863, and scored a failure, although nothing particularly hostile or unpleasant occurred on the opening night; the poor author even entertained faint hopes of future success. It was the cumulative effect of the scornful articles in nearly all the large newspapers, the ridicule of the smaller press and of the theatrical parodies, above all the absolute indifference of the public, leaving his cherished work to drag itself miserably through a score of performances, that disheartened Berlioz and killed him. His whole life, indeed, had hung upon this last hope of success, and with the conviction of genius, at the close of the general rehearsal he had exclaimed with tears coursing freely down his cheeks, “It is beautiful, it is sublime!” He retired to his house and lived there, taciturn, desolate, seeing only a few chosen friends who tried to console him, and cared for like a child by his mother-in-law; he had buried his second wife (June, 1862) by the side of the first, in Montmartre cemetery.

Thanks to the income from his compositions he was able to give up his post of musical critic of the _Débats_, which had become insupportable to him, and was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. He had been a chevalier for twenty-four years, having been appointed by M. de Gasparin in 1839, six months before the performance of _Romeo and Juliet_. At Paris he found some consolation in listening to selections from the _Childhood of Christ_ at the concerts of the _Conservatoire_, and in seeing people give serious attention to his compositions and sometimes applaud them heartily, at the Popular Concerts recently founded by Pasdeloup. Only two or three times did he consent to go out of France; once to direct the _Damnation of Faust_ at Vienna, whither he was invited by Herbeck, court capellmeister; once to conduct the _Harold_ Symphony at Cologne by the invitation of Ferdinand Hiller; finally to St. Petersburg at the very urgent solicitations of the grand duchess Helen, an enthusiastic admirer of his works. But on the eve of his departure he learned of the death of his son Louis in a distant country. It was a terrible blow to Berlioz, who was devotedly attached to this son, a frail, dissipated youth, always discontented with his lot, and little more than a source of anxiety to his father. He set out for St. Petersburg with a broken heart, and though overwhelmed with successes and triumphs, entertained and received like a friend by his young admirer, the grand duchess, he felt his health failing and his strength leaving him day by day. On his return he went south, thinking that the Mediterranean might have a beneficial effect upon his health and spirits; but twice while walking on the beach, once at Monaco, afterwards at Nice, he was attacked with vertigo, and fell fainting to the ground. He returned to Paris, and at the end of two months believed himself cured of these fainting spells, but the nervous trouble increased daily. He still had desire and strength enough left to drag himself to Grenoble in August, 1868, to attend a musical solemnity at which he was made honorary president by his colleagues, who were proud of him at last. This was the end; on Monday morning the 8th of March, 1869, Hector Berlioz quietly and painlessly breathed his last.

[Illustration:

HECTOR BERLIOZ.

Reproduced from a Russian photograph, selected by von Bulow as being the best likeness of Berlioz in his later years. ]

Just a year later the conversion of the public to Berlioz music was accomplished by means of a grand festival at the _Opéra_ in honor of the master, organized by his disciple Ernest Reyer. Even up to this time it was possible to hear Berlioz’s music only at the Popular Concerts, and then often in the midst of confusion and protestations. The announcement of this concert gave rise to many pleasantries, and people agreed, with nods and chuckles, that the best way to pay honor to such a man was to play music as unlike his as possible. However, the festival took place on the day appointed, with a program made up entirely of the master’s works, and some of the pieces, such as the _Waltz of the Sylphs_, and the _Hungarian March_, caused the liveliest surprise. They had come to laugh and they listened; they even applauded, and better than with the tips of their fingers. This was the signal for a reaction, and from that day the sudden change of opinion was only intensified as the musical public, who had hitherto tolerated only a few selections, familiarized themselves with the superb creations of this master and insisted on hearing successively all his complete works.

His wonderful _La Damnation de Faust_ in particular, so little appreciated at first, finally had an amazing success and an irresistible attraction for the crowd, perhaps because the result was assisted by two or three concert performances. But there is nothing half-way about a French audience, it has no lukewarm sentiments, and it praises as immoderately as it condemns. Having once taken the stand, it accepted and applauded everything from Berlioz’s pen, and when it had exhausted mere bravos, it easily persuaded itself to erect a monument to his memory. First it was a question of a simple bust to be placed upon his tomb in Montmartre Cemetery, then it was proposed to erect a statue to him in his native city; but Paris did not wish to do less than Côte-Saint-André, and so it happened that Alfred Lénoir’s statue of the composer was erected in Vintimille square near the rue de Calais, the quarter where he spent a long period of his life and where he died. An exact duplicate of the statue was erected at Côte-Saint-André in 1890, and surely two statues are not too many to honor the great artist of whom Auber said with a little spice of wickedness,—“Yes, this Berlioz is certainly worth something, but what a pity that his education began so late.”

To-day Berlioz is at the topmost height of fame, and this renown he has achieved by one work. To the whole musical world he is the composer of _La Damnation de Faust_, and neither _Romeo et Juliette_, nor _L’Enfance du Christ_, nor the _Requiem_, each a masterpiece in its way, has obtained the widespread success of the first-named work. It is singular that a purely orchestral composition, _La Symphony Fantastique_, should be accorded a second rank in the general judgment. Strictly speaking, this symphony and _La Damnation_ present, outside the music written by him for the stage, the quintessence of Berlioz’s genius. They are the two poles between which his affluent inspiration oscillates. In the former of these scores is to be found all the romantic exuberance of youth; the fury of a latent rebellion against discipline and yet wholly master of itself; a dazzling wealth of instrumentation; a poetic and delightful coloring. In the other, of which the style is more varied, burst forth a passion, an irony, a burning heat, a prodigious intuition of the effects of vast numbers, a fantastic raillery, a power of dramatic expression without equal. It is none the less true that genius radiates from many pages of his other works: the _Pilgrim’s March_ in _Harold_: the _Offertory_ and the _Tuba Mirum_ in the _Requiem_; the _Repose of the Holy Family_ in _L’Enfance du Christ_; the _Night of the Ball_, and the _Love Scene_ from _Roméo et Juliette_; the nocturne-duet from _Béatrice et Bénédict_; the love-duet, the quintet and the septet in _Les Troyens_ are all bright inspirations among creations of the highest worth, that met with great favor, although the works of which they are a part had not the power to win the masses as they were won by _La Symphonie Fantastique_ and _La Damnation de Faust_. These last gratify the public taste (using the term in its broadest acceptation) because they are not merely concert music, but have a close affinity with the stage, in the dramatic stories they illustrate. I believe that the minute descriptive programme which Berlioz has attached to _La Symphonie Fantastique_ has been largely instrumental in assuring the success of this work with a public that mentally follows the imaginary drama, step by step as the orchestra depicts the various episodes; now melodramatic, now rustic, now loving, sanguinary and demoniac. Such is still more the case with _La Damnation de Faust_. Berlioz’s work has certainly benefited by the attention drawn to Goethe’s poem by M. Gounod’s opera; the great mass of the public knew nothing of the original when _La Damnation_ was first heard by them in 1846. Nowadays music lovers everywhere are equally well informed on this point; they understood, from the time that the opera was given, the meaning of what was recited to them by Berlioz’s singers, clad in black dress suits and white neckties; they filled in the gaps in his libretto from what the opera of Faust taught them; they compared number with number; in fact, by reason of placing side by side two works so widely unlike each other, they learned to appreciate the warm, passionate and magnificent power of Berlioz’s older composition. Thus little by little this product of genius has forced itself on general admiration as the model on which Gounod’s Faust was planned.

It is no exaggeration to proclaim _La Damnation de Faust_ a work of genius, and it excites all the more admiration when we know that certain numbers, among others, the scene in which Faust is lulled to sleep by elfins, came from the brain of a composer only twenty-five years old, and appeared almost perfect in the _Huit scènes de Faust_ which Berlioz published in 1829, not being able to have it performed, and which he dedicated to M. de Larochefoucauld. This fine scene, therefore, dates back to 1828, as does the beautiful song _La Fête de Pâques_ and also the joyous rondo sung by the peasants. In fact, not only the grand choruses, but the shorter pieces, the songs of _Le Rat_ and of _La Puce_; the ballad, _Le Roi de Thule_; the romance of Marguerite, joined arbitrarily to the soldiers’ chorus and _La Sérenade du diable_ are all fragments of his youthful work that Berlioz retained in the score of his maturer period and had the skill to combine anew in several scenes of extraordinary poetic beauty and richness of effect. How inspired the pretty rustic scene into which he has inserted, judiciously or otherwise, his admirable _Rakoczy March_, written to gain the good will of the Hungarians; the superb monologue of the doctor, introducing the Easter chorus; the animated scene at the Auerbach tavern with its bizarre songs and the ironical fugue on the word _Amen_; the marvellous scene on the banks of the Elbe with the fine appeal to the demon; the delightful slumber chorus of the spirits and the exquisite ballet of the sylphs; the double chorus of students. Does it not seem that they were all conceived, composed and written down at a white heat and without a pause between them? How fascinating and impressive appears the really devilish serenade of Mephisto, the charming _Ménuet des Follets_ after the ecstatic air of Faust, the archaic ballad of Marguerite, the extremely tender love-duet, and the grand final trio with its chorus of neighbors. The last part is, from beginning to end, absolutely above criticism. It opens with Marguerite’s sad lament interrupted by the chorus of students and leads up to the sublime invocation of nature; to the fantastic path of the abyss; to the lovely song of Seraphim after the furious suggestions of hell. What a splendid culmination!

Surely _La Damnation de Faust_ is a masterpiece; but _Roméo et Juliette_ is another and should have enjoyed as great a success. That it did not is perhaps owing to the fact that in Berlioz’s symphony, vocal music has only a small place, the instruments alone translating the sentiments of the characters, the two not being in juxtaposition as they are in many of the familiar operas of _Romeo and Juliet_ by Gounod and others which ought to have led to an appreciation of Berlioz’s score. The seven movements that form this composition are all of marked worth and are appropriate to the strange plan of the work. In the first place, the prologue, imitated from Shakespeare, and of which M. Gounod, later, adopted Berlioz’s idea, presents a résumé of the work at once complete, grand and delightful, and comprises the fine verses that Berlioz, strangely enough, caused to be sung by a Muse in honor of Shakespeare and Poetry. The opening part includes three incomparable numbers: the poetic and piquantly agitated revery of Romeo wandering in the garden during the ball; the love scene between Juliet and Romeo, a masterpiece of orchestration; the Queen Mab movement, a model of fantastic airiness; also three numbers in the second part, the funeral of Juliet, with its penetrating sadness; the death of Romeo, in which Berlioz has given free rein to his passion for descriptive music, and the oath of reconciliation, preceded by a stirring recitative and the noble prayer of the monk. These are so many magnificent fragments, which, placed side by side according to the composer’s design, form a creation of a wholly superior order.

[Illustration:

HECTOR BERLIOZ.

From an engraving by Auguste Hüssener. ]

After _Faust_ and _Romeo_, comes the _Requiem_,—another triumph; a romantic composition of the first class, written with feverish enthusiasm by a master who rather sought to paint a striking picture to each line of the _Requiem_ than to probe to the literal sense of the Latin text. The _Kyrie_ is the least eccentric and the most expressive number. The _Tuba Mirum_, in particular, produces a tremendous effect with its four orchestras of brass; an idea that Félicien David and Verdi borrowed from this. Berlioz has given to the _Lacrymosa_ a searching pathos. Perhaps the finest movement in the work to which Schumann rendered such ample justice, is the _Offertorium_. The requiem ends with a _Sanctus_ for tenor solo, seraphic in sentiment, followed by a beautiful _Agnus_ and a lovely, unfugued _Amen_. It is fitting to bring together, for comparison, this composition and the _Te Deum_ written about 1850, of which the finest page is the hymn of the seraphim, _Tibi omnes angeli_, that rises to a magnificent crescendo and dies away at the close on a long and distant chord of the organ. The prayer for tenor solo, _Te ergo quæsumus_ is equally perfect, and the final chorus is a majestic number to which Berlioz has attached a brilliant and thrilling triumphal march for the “presentation of flags.” It recalls by the vastness of its proportions and its orchestral massiveness, his _Symphonie funèbre et triumphale_, so much admired by Richard Wagner, and of which the peroration, entitled _Apothéose_, forced a flattering exclamation of praise from even the savage Habeneck.

The _Symphonie Fantastique_, to return to the most applauded work of Berlioz, after _Faust_, is one of the most bizarre eccentricities ever hatched in a composer’s brain; but it is also one of the most impressive. The first movement, _Rêveries-passions_, at once so sad and tender, is, however, excelled by the _Scène aux champs_, which soothes and charms us with its peacefulness. It is the most inspired movement of the symphony. _Le Bal_ and the _Marche au supplice_ are aflame with the extraordinary verve of the composer, who, taking motives that are neither very striking nor very original in themselves, develops them with extraordinary power, and with such fullness that each movement attains an almost incredible expressiveness. Though in the _Songe d’une nuit de Sabbat_, the _Dies Iræ_ is burlesqued and degraded by the mocking accents of the piccolo, the tinkling of bells, the bellowing of ophicleides, yet this last part produces an irresistible effect and drags the hearer along in the train of the hellish turmoil. In _Harold en Italie_ Berlioz pushes this seeking for extremely varied tone-colors, and unexpected contrasts, and curious surprises for the ear so far, that he frequently falls into excess. The fine _Marche des Pélerins_ has eclipsed the other portions of the symphony, but the first movement, _Harold aux montagnes_, is full of poetic melancholy, and the _Serénade d’un montagnard_, breathes a tranquil peace with which the fiery and tumultuous _Orgie de brigands_ forms a powerful, nay, almost exaggerated contrast.