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How many accomplished musicians of distinction and learning, who pay honour to artistic tradition, are incapable of understanding Berlioz because they cannot bear the air of liberty breathed by his music. They are so used to thinking in German, that Berlioz's speech upsets and shocks them. I can well believe it.
Happy is he who can follow him there. Among the things we heard at that time and which we never hear now I must note especially Berlioz's Corsaire and King Lear. His name is so much beloved by the present day public that this neglect is both unjust and unjustifiable. The great man himself came to the Société St.
Before Berlioz's time there was really only one master of the first rank who made a great effort to liberate French music: it was Rameau; and, despite his genius, he was conquered by Italian art. By force of circumstance, therefore, French music found itself moulded in foreign musical forms.
Berlioz's "Faust" and "Cellini" will be given before the 16th, and your niece is announced in three roles. As soon as this is over I shall write to tell you when I can come to Zurich, but I am afraid I shall have to wait for the summer. Johanna will sing and act Elizabeth beautifully, and Formes is studying his part most conscientiously.
But how much less rich and complex is Weber's music, in spite of its nervous brilliance and dreaming poetry. Above all, Weber is much more mundane and more of a classicist; he lacks Berlioz's revolutionary passion and plebeian force; he is less expressive and less grand. How did Berlioz come to have this genius for orchestration almost from the very first?
Berlioz's clear, stern voice would often be heard, when liberties were taken with the score, loud above the din of the instruments. "What wretch has dared to tamper with the great Beethoven?" "Who has taken upon him to revise Gluck?" This self-appointed arbiter became the dread of the operatic management, for, as a pupil of the Conservatoire, he had some rights which could not be infringed.
Besides, Seghers would have worked for the development of the French school whom Pasdeloup, with but few exceptions, kept under a bushel until 1870. Among these exceptions were a symphony by Gounod, one by Gouvy and the overture to Berlioz's Frances-Juges.
The festival at Heidelberg was of special interest as it was organized by the General Association of German Musicians which Liszt had founded fifty years before. Each year this society gives in a different city a festival which lasts several days. It admits foreign members and I was once a member as Berlioz's successor on Liszt's own invitation.
Wagner, for his part, showed at his best an elegance and artistry of pen which may be searched for in vain in Berlioz's work. Berlioz opened to the orchestra the doors of a new world. Wagner hurled himself into this unknown country and found numerous lands to till there. But what dissimilarities there are in the styles of the two men!
Berlioz's orchestration, too, is of a more delicate temper, and has a freer life than Wagner's, flowing in an impetuous stream, and sweeping away everything in its course; it is also less united and solid, but more flexible; its nature is undulating and varied, and the thousand imperceptible impulses of the spirit and of action are reflected there. It is a marvel of spontaneity and caprice.
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