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The dominant qualities of my music are passionate expression, internal fire, rhythmic animation, and unexpected changes." Heinrich Heine, the German poet, who was Berlioz's friend, called him a "colossal nightingale, a lark of eagle-size, such as they tell us existed in the primeval world."
It is also pleasant to find how cordially Mendelssohn received Berlioz there, as told in the "Memoirs" of the latter, spending ungrudgingly long days in aiding in rehearsals for his "Romeo et Juliette," though Mendelssohn never sympathized much with Berlioz's eccentric muse.
At the end of the performance Berlioz was wiping the perspiration from his face in the little room off the stage, when the door burst open, and a shabbily dressed man, his face glowing with a strange fire, rushed in, throwing himself at Berlioz's feet, his eyes brimming with tears. He kissed the composer over and over again, and sobbed out brokenly: "Ah, sir!
In Berlioz's music, at last, it found a worthy rival. For the musician, too, had within him some of the graciousness and highness and sweetness of spirit the poet manifested so sovereignly.
The next scene seems to have been devised only to give an environment to Berlioz's paraphrase of Goethe's immortal song at the spinning-wheel. From the distance is heard the fading song of the students and the last echo of drums and trumpets sounding the retreat. Marguerite rushes to the window, and, overcome, rather unaccountably, with remorse and grief, falls in a swoon. The last scene.
A variety of contretemps occurred before he got to Paris, and by that time his rage had so cooled, his sense of the absurdity of the whole thing grown so keen, that he was rather willing to send Mile. M his blessing than his curse. About the time of Berlioz's arrival, Miss Smithson also returned to Paris after a long absence, with the intent of undertaking the management of an English theatre.
Ambros, who was a very discerning and unbiassed critic, said: "Berlioz feels with inward delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable aptness.
Some of Berlioz's musical qualities are so striking that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them here. The instruments appear to be arranged in defiance of all common sense; and it would seem, to use professional slang, that cela ne dut pas sonner, but cela sonne wonderfully. Think of the effect that such works must have produced at that period.
Unfortunately for the cause of the superiority of antiquity, whenever you go to hear Berlioz's Funeral March, the least that can happen to you will be to confess that this music is rather better than what they used to give us in Sparta, when we served under Lycurgus; you will think that Apollo, displeased to see us sacrificing to Pallas exclusively, has played us a trick in giving lessons to that Babylonian, so that by the exercise of a magnetic and disastrous power over us, he may lead our spirits astray.
There is no necessity to class this brilliant success as a failure, because Robert Schumann, who knew nothing about the stage, denied its worth. It is surprising that Berlioz's judgment has not been set against Schumann's. Berlioz showed his enthusiasm for Les Huguenots in his famous treatise on instrumentation.
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