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Updated: June 15, 2025
He "played the sedulous ape" to Berlioz and it was natural, with his fanciful imagination and full-blooded temperament, that his themes are clothed in shining orchestration, that his formal sense would work to happier ends within the elastic form of the Liszt symphonic poem. He wrote symphonies and a "symphoniette" on Russian themes, but his genius is best displayed in freer forms.
Historically considered, that is in their relation to other music preceding and following them, the symphonies of Liszt have striking interest. They are in boldest departure from all other symphonies, save possibly those of Berlioz, and they were prophetic in a degree only apparent a half-century later.
I see with dismay that this exceedingly gifted artist is perishing in his egotistic solitude. Can I save him? You do not want to have "Wiland." I believe it to be a beautiful poem, but am no longer able to execute it for myself. Will you offer it to Berlioz? Perhaps Henri Blaze would be the man to treat it in French. How about Raff?
One can fancy the scornful laughter of Berlioz at hearing this verdict. But his Italian life was not altogether purposeless. He revised his "Symphonie Fantastique," and wrote its sequel, "Lelio," a lyrical monologue, in which he aimed to express the memories of his passion for the beautiful Miss Smithson. These two parts comprised what Berlioz named "An Episode in the Life of an Artist."
Berlioz wrote joyfully to Heine: "I came to Germany as the men of ancient Greece went to the oracle at Delphi, and the response has been in the highest degree encouraging." But his Germanic laurels did him no good in France.
For there are some who condemn Berlioz in the name of Wagner's theories; and others who, not liking the sacrifice, seek to make him a forerunner of Wagner, or kind of elder brother, whose mission was to clear a way and prepare a road for a genius greater than his own. Nothing is falser. To understand Berlioz one must shake off the hypnotic influence of Bayreuth.
You are quite right, dearest friend, if you attribute the weakness of Berlioz's mode of working to the poem, and my opinion perfectly coincides with yours on this point; but you have been erroneously led to believe that Berlioz is rewriting his "Cellini."
But without going back as far as that, we find that Paris was a very musical town at the time of the Restoration, at the time of the first performance of Beethoven's symphonies at the Conservatoire, and the first great works of Berlioz, and the Italian Opera.
Berlioz berated all this music. He had seen Gluck's works on the stage in his youth, but he could see nothing in them that was not "superannuated and childish." With all respect to Berlioz's memory, it deserved a kinder judgment than that. When one reaches the depths of this music, although it may be at the price of some effort, he is well repaid for his pains.
Passion, bitterness, caprice, wounded pride these have more influence with him than the serious things of life. He is a man at war with himself. Then contrast Berlioz with Wagner.
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