Hector Berlioz

THAT M. Adolphe Jullien should have followed up his Life of Wagner with a similar Life of Berlioz¹ is one of the things which, as he himself more than half admits, may fairly be called fated. As a French Wagnerian who had written the first really worthy Life of the Bayreuth master, his position with his compatriots would hardly have been a comfortable one had he not seen fit to pay an equal tribute to the great French composer, whose memory all artistic France chose to agree in honoring, if only to show the world that Germany was not alone in possessing a great musical innovator. Just in how far the Berlioz cult in France was the result of national jealousy — sharpened by the political events of 1870 — on the one hand, or of a normal settling and coming to its bearings of French musical opinion on the other, is not easy to determine. Undoubtedly it was, in some measure, due to both influences ; and it would be as untrue to say that Berlioz’s present popularity in France is wholly owing to the French political animosity toward Wagner as to say that Berlioz would have occupied as prominent a place in French musical life and thought as he actually does if Wagner had never existed. It is undeniable that Wagner’s dreary farce, Fine Kapitulation, published shortly after the Franco-Prussian war, made the author so personally offensive to the French as to render the active Wagner propaganda in Paris — begun by Pasdeloup about 1862, and carried on by him and others since then — doubly obnoxious to all Frenchmen who had not clear enough heads to distinguish between the artist and the Gallophobe in Wagner. It seems also pretty evident that French musicians must have seen whither all this Wagner cult was tending; that, unless some counter-influence were set at work, Wagner would not long he confined to the Cirque d’Hiver, but would in time make his way to the hoards of the Théâtre-Lyrique or even of the Opéa itself. And the prospect of having to cope with so formidable a rival in the very field in which French musical genius was most anxious to shine was by no means encouraging. France was plainly in sore need of a champion, and who so well equipped for the post as Berlioz ? To set up Berlioz as the culminating expression of French genius, in opposition to the Wagner influence, would right everything. In the first place, Berlioz was the only very prominent composer in all Europe who had been, like Wagner, a notable musical innovator, and at the same time a determined anti-Wagnerian. Then France owed Berlioz some reparation for past neglect, and to enable him thus posthumously to carry on the old fight against Wagner would go far towards wiping out old scores of indebtedness. Again, Berlioz was the great man of all others whom living French composers had least to dread as a rival in the field of opera. None of Berlioz’s operas had ever been successful in France ; and although it was mainly their novelty of style which militated against their success when they were first produced, they had lain on the shelf so long that any one with a discerning eye could see that they would strike the public as already antiquated and behind the times, if they should happen to be revived. So Berlioz was not only a powerful piece of ordnance to aim at the Wagnerian camp, but one that was tolerably safe not to go off through the breach and singe the gunners. But if all these extra-musical considerations had undoubted weight in inducing France to push Berlioz forward into the position of national musical champion, it seems, to the present writer, at least, that it was the man’s intrinsic strength and fitness for the position that enabled him loyally and zealously to be upheld therein. What was at one time contemptuously called the “ Berlioz flurry ” in Paris, with its festival at the Trocadéro, its forty-seven performances of the Damnation de Faust at the Chatelet and elsewhere, and its statue on the Place Vintimille, was really no mere flurry at all. It was the beginning of a public recognition of the man’s greatness, which shows every sign of being durable. Berlioz’s name to-day heads the list of French composers. It can thus be seen how indispensable it was to M. Jullien’s peace of mind, after outstripping Germany herself in doing justice to Wagner, to restore the equilibrium of his favor in the eyes of his compatriots by issuing this companion Life of Berlioz. Poor Berlioz! He is mercifully beyond the reach of this last stroke of the irony of Fate. Through his life it was an irritation to him to hear people speak of " Wagner and Berlioz.” " Why is it never ‘ Berlioz and Wagner ’ ? ” cried he. Even his biographer attends to Wagner first.

But if M. Jullien could not in decency escape writing a Life of Berlioz, he also had the additional inducement of seeing the field clear before him. No worthy biography of the great French composer existed. To be sure, there were the Mémoires — Berlioz’s own autobiography — and M. Edmond Hippeau’s equally voluminous Berlioz Intime. But the Mémoires, that “ tragedy written in tears of blood,” as Bülow called them, although one of the most fascinating and withal brilliant books ever written, have been found to be so royally inaccurate in regard to facts as to be little more than a biographical romance. M. Hippeau’s work, on the other hand, is the result of the most arduous and careful research; but it is in the end nothing but a setting right of the Mémoires, and the only way to read it is with it in one hand, and the Mémoires in the other. It is not, properly speaking, a book, but a collection of marginal notes. M. Jullien’s work is as much the first Life of Berlioz as its predecessor was the first Life of Wagner.

The book shines by the same excellent qualities as the earlier work, — careful and extended research, clearness of statement, a certain well-balanced common sense, and great dispassionateness in argument. Its literary value is considerable, the arrangement of material in every way excellent, and the style lucid, dignified, and readable. M. Jullien has a Gallic clearness of vision which, if it do not always pierce quite to the core of things, reaches pretty well below the surface; everything he sees is photographed upon his mental retina with perfect definition, as through a lens unwarped by prejudice, upon a smooth surface unruffled by passion. Not that he is lacking in warmth and enthusiasm, but that he has his enthusiasm well under control, and his warmth is just sufficient to make what we have called his mental retina duly sensitive to the image projected upon it. One cannot escape the conviction that he sees Berlioz exactly as he was, — perhaps with even greater distinctness, and certainly more completely, than he saw Wagner. For if he have the virtue of most men who are in the habit of seeing things clearly, of not caring to speculate blindly about things which lie beyond his optic range, be has also the corresponding failing of being too prone to consider what he does not see, or only half sees, as non-extant, and to leave it out of the question. Most readers of his Life of Wagner must have felt that his eye never reached below the surface of certain traits in that great man’s character, and that his portrayal of the character was, to that extent, distorted. Indeed, he often treated Wagner with what may be called the very impudence of common sense. Berlioz he sees more clearly, perhaps because more sympathetically. Berlioz’s frenetic, nervous irritability, those emotional coups de foudre to which he was subject, and which, more than anything else served to wreck his life, are more comprehensible to him; he can see through them better, and view them in their proper relation to the other elements in his character, than he could Wagner’s seeming arrogance in sacrificing everything and everybody to his own artistic ends, or his apparent coolness in making his own material support the business of whatever heavensent raven might happen to come his way. As an eminently “ positive ” and practical Frenchman, M. Jullien could descry in this side of Wagner nothing but sheer unscrupulousness and a deprecable transcendentalism in the art of begging; just as a German might have seen in Berlioz’s coups de foudre nothing but the delirium of an irresponsible maniac, wanting both in reason and in true Gemüth. But M. Jullien sees these things in their true relation to the rest of Berlioz’s character, and to his artistic productiveness ; he sees them as functional elements in an organic whole, without which that whole had been utterly different in all its manifestations, whereas he views Wagner’s ethical shortcomings merely as the unlovely reverse of a medal, which might well have been changed to advantage without thereby affecting the fair and sightly obverse side. Thus, although it is not hard to sec that Wagner stands decidedly higher in his esteem as an artist, he is really more just, in the end, to Berlioz, both as artist and man.

Many of the incidents in Berlioz’s life are, in this book, shown in quite a different light from the semi-theatrical glow in which they appear in the Mémoires, and the true account of them will doubtless be read here for the first time by many; for the number of readers who have taken the trouble to plod through M. Hippeau’s hook must be small in comparison with the thousands who will find this work of M, Jullien’s easy reading. The story of Berlioz’s love for Harriet Smithson, with its deplorable interludes of infatuation for Camille Moke, here assumes a wholly new aspect. We find that it was not mere forgetfulness of Miss Smithson that left his heart free for Camille’s fascinations to work upon, but something far more positive. Calumny had been at work: the Irish actress’s character had been besmirched by some wanton meddlers, and Berlioz, in his then desperate state of mind, found the accusations all too probable, and believed them. This explains one point in the Fantastic Symphony, which, as is well known, was meant as a tone-picture of the composer’s love for Harriet Smithson. One item in the programme of the last movement of this symphony has always been deemed too horrible for belief. It was inconceivable how any man, even with Berlioz’s fondness for the frenetic, should have first identified a certain melody with the pure object of his love, and then, in cold blood, as it were, and merely for the sake of a dramatic antithesis, have brought it into contact with such degrading associations as he did in the Walpurgis Night’s Dream in his symphony. “ The noble melody is here degraded to a vulgar dance-tune; it is a mere common courtesan who now comes to join in the mad revels of the witches’ Sabbath.” Too horrible by half, if the symphony were really in honor of Harriet Smithson ! But the truth is that Berlioz had broken with Miss Smithson before he had got more than half through the symphony, and was already cau mieux with Camille Moke. The whole Walpurgis Night’s Dream movement was a piece of bitter revenge upon “ la fille Smithson ” (as he called her in a letter to Humbert Ferrand), after calumny had shown her to him as she was not. Some years later, after Camille had left him in the lurch, and was married to Pleyel, when his love for Miss Smithson had revived, and the symphony was to be given in a concert at which he knew she was to be present, Berlioz had the grace to expunge this passage from the programme.

Deplorable as this whole escapade with Camille Moke was, one can see, with M. Jullien’s help, how well-nigh unavoidable it was to a man of Berlioz’s temperament and in his situation. Camille was really a superior person; as a cultivated musician, she fully appreciated Berlioz’s genius, and this, too, at a time when appreciation was especially dear to him; whereas Miss Smithson knew or cared next to nothing about music. Then Berlioz’s infatuation for Camille was kept aglow by constant appropinquity, while he could hardly be said to know Miss Smithson personally at all. He had met her once or twice, but, as the phrase goes, “ she would have nothing to say to him,” and returned his flaming letters unopened. He had merely adored her, as Juliet or Ophelia, from afar.

The picture M. Jullien draws of Berlioz’s life after he had married Harriet, and of his gradual estrangement from his wife, is not so elaborate in detail as the account in M. Hippeau’s book, but it is as graphic as it is sad. It must be remembered that the two were almost strangers when they married. Berlioz actually took her heart by storm, and while his passion was of the white-hot, frantic sort, she, as Legouve put it, " l’aimait bien,” loved him well enough. As his ardor, in the natural course of things, began to sink to the rational, every-day level of conjugal affection, she grew more and more deeply in love with him. Constant intercourse had revealed to her the finer side of his character and genius; she found how really lovable he was, and that he was by far the most superior man she had ever met; she was thoroughly proud of him, and it filled her with an apprehensive anguish that, just as she had become truly and deeply in love with him, the honeymoon responsiveness of his passion had begun to wane. Her love came too late, and what would have seemed to her a solid, husbandly affection on his part, had the two begun their married life with an equal warmth of love on either side, now offended her as irresponsive coldness. She fell a prey to the most furious jealousy, — she was older than he, — and the ever-increasing force of her passion may be said fairly to have blown out his flame. At last he could stand it no longer, and cut the Gordian knot. What a state of mind the man was in may be imagined from his allowing himself to fall into the toils of so vulgar and apparently uninteresting a woman as Marie Recio, afterwards his second wife. The daily stormy scenes with Harriet could have been as nothing, to a man of his fibre, compared to the slow wear and tear of constant attrition against this coarser clay. Think of Berlioz tied to a dull, ill-tempered, imperious woman, devoured with the ambition to sing his music, and generally singing out of tune !

As for Berlioz’s last love, his unrequited adoration of Madame Fournier, the whilom Stella montis of his early boyhood, M. Jullien sees reason to believe that the narrative in the Mémoires is all too highly colored. He even doubts the authenticity of the letters published in the Postface. That the two did actually meet face to face, and afterwards correspond, seems indubitable. But that Madame Fournier’s account of the matter, could it be had, would be very different from Berlioz’s is more than probable. The love-stricken and physically wrecked old man of sixty had lashed himself up to such a pitch of frenzy that there is no knowing what pictures his fevered imagination may not have painted.

M. Jullien’s appreciation of Berlioz’s works seems admirable in acumen and justness. But to consider this part of his book in detail would necessitate the use of a technical terminology quite out of place here. Suffice it to say that, as a piece of musical criticism, the work is wholly fine. Upon the whole, in spite of its rather terrifying size, it is a book to be read by every one at all interested in the musical history of our time, — for few men have exerted so strong and subtile an influence upon modern music as Berlioz, — and the reading of which is calculated to give as much pleasure as instruction.