Part 1

THE LIFE OF BERLIOZ

_All rights reserved._

THE LIFE OF

HECTOR BERLIOZ

AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

IN HIS

LETTERS AND MEMOIRS

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

KATHARINE F BOULT

LONDON J. M. DENT & CO. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1903

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ 1

II. ESTELLE 5

III. MUSIC AND ANATOMY 10

IV. PARIS 16

V. CHERUBINI 22

VI. MY FATHER’S DECISION 27

VII. PRIVATION 31

VIII. FAILURE 37

IX. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 42

X. WEBER 46

XI. HENRIETTE 50

XII. MY FIRST CONCERT 56

XIII. AN ACADEMY EXAMINATION 64

XIV. FAUST--CLEOPATRA 71

XV. A NEW LOVE 80

XVI. LISZT 91

XVII. A WILD INTERLUDE 96

XVIII. ITALIAN MUSIC 108

XIX. IN THE MOUNTAINS 113

XX. NAPLES--HOME 120

XXI. MARRIAGE 128

XXII. NEWSPAPER BONDAGE 135

XXIII. THE REQUIEM 143

XXIV. FRIENDS IN NEED 152

XXV. BRUSSELS--PARIS OPERA CONCERT 159

XXVI. HECHINGEN--WEIMAR 167

XXVII. MENDELSSOHN--WAGNER 177

XXVIII. A COLOSSAL CONCERT 187

XXIX. THE RAKOCZY MARCH 193

XXX. PARIS--RUSSIA--LONDON 200

XXXI. MY FATHER’S DEATH--MEYLAN 211

XXXII. POOR OPHELIA 216

XXXIII. DEAD SEA FRUIT 222

XXXIV. GATHERING TWILIGHT 230

XXXV. THE TROJANS 241

XXXVI. ESTELLE ONCE MORE 251

XXXVII. THE AFTERGLOW 272

XXXVIII. DARKNESS AND LIGHT 289

ILLUSTRATIONS

BERLIOZ _Frontispiece_

THE VILLA MEDICI[A] _to face page_ 112

MONTMARTRE CEMETERY[A] ” ” 216

GRENOBLE[A] ” ” 257

INTRODUCTION

Autobiography is open to the charge of egoism; somewhat unjustly since, in writing of oneself, the personal note must predominate and, in the case of a genius--sure of his goal and of his power to reach it--faith in himself amounts to what, in a smaller man, would be mere conceit.

This must be condoned and discounted for the sake of the priceless gift of insight into a personality of exceptional interest.

Berlioz’ Memoir, graphic as it is, cannot be called satisfactory as a character-study. He says plainly that he is not writing confessions, but is simply giving a correct account of his life to silence the many false versions current at the time. Therefore, while describing almost too minutely some of his difficulties and most of his conflicts--whereby he gives the impression of living in uncomfortably hot water--his very real heroism comes out only in his Letters, and then quite unconsciously.

The Memoir and Letters combined, however, make up an interesting and fascinating picture of the heights, depths, limitations and curious inconsistencies of this weird and restless human being.

The music-ridden, brutal, undisciplined creature of the Autobiography--more a blind, unreasoning force of Nature than an ordinary being, subject to the restrictions of common humanity--could not possibly be the man who was rich in the unswerving affection of such widely different characters as Heine, Liszt, Ernst, Alexandre, Heller, Hiller, Jules Janin, Dumas and Bertin; there must be something unchronicled to account for their loyalty and patience. This something is revealed in the Letters.

There stands the real Berlioz--musician and poet; eager to drain life to the dregs, be they sweet or bitter, to taste the fulness of being. There we find a faithful record of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and a reflection of every passing mood. With one notable exception: even to Ferrand he never admitted that the poor reception of _The Trojans_ (for it met with but a _succès d’estime_) broke his heart.

* * * * *

As a record of events the Autobiography is deficient, and after 1848 becomes a mere sketch. Thus, while writing pages of description of orchestral players and musical institutions in German and Austrian cities--quite suitable to his newspaper articles, but wearisome in their iteration, and throwing no light upon himself--he is almost entirely silent on his later trips to London. And the visits to Baden--brightest days of his later years--are dismissed in a footnote.

He lingers pathetically over young days, and hurries through the dreary time close at hand. So, for a record of the daily conflict with physical pain; of the overshadowed domestic life--none the easier to bear in that it was partly his own fault; of the grinding, ever-present shortness of money; of his wild and beautiful dreams; and of the large place that Ferrand, Morel, Massart, Damcke and Lwoff (many of whom are not named in the memoir) held in his heart--we turn to the Letters.

The fearless, unbroken affection for his Jonathan--Humbert Ferrand; the passionate love for his only son, mingled with impatience at Louis’ youthful instability; the whole-hearted ungrudging appreciation he extended to young and honest musicians--particularly to Camille Saint-Saëns--are a grateful contrast to the gloomy defiance, tornado-like fury, and eternal jeremiads over the hypocrisy and hollowness of Paris that mar the Memoir.

* * * * *

Of his ill-starred first marriage he says but little, either in Memoir or Letters.

He and Miss Smithson were far too highly-strung for peaceful life to be possible, even without the added friction of ill-health, want of money (which, however, he says never daunted her), and the probable misunderstandings so likely to arise from their different nationalities.

It may be due to his special form of artistic temperament--that well-worn apology for everything _déréglé_--that he could find room in his heart, or head, for more than one love at a time, and could even analyse and classify each.

Within a month he bounds from the nethermost despair over the uncertainties of his English divinity to the highest rapture over his Camille, his Ariel, as he calls Marie Pleyel.

Later on, when Marie is safely disposed of and Henriette is again in the ascendant, while she vacillates between family and lover, he seriously contemplates running off to Berlin with a poor girl whom he has befriended, and whom, when Henriette finally relents, he calmly hands over to Jules Janin to provide for.

Of his second wife we hear but little, except that even affection did not blind him to the defects in her musical gifts. For, on his first German tour, he wrote to Morel:

“Pity me! Marie wished to sing at Stuttgart, Mannheim and Hechingen. The two first were bearable, but the last!... Yet she would not hear of my engaging another singer.”

Then he incidentally and whimsically mentions an innocent embryo love-affair in Russia, and, in 1863, makes such tragic and mysterious reference to an impossible love, that Ferrand, seriously alarmed, thinks that Louis must have become more than usually troublesome.

The influence of Estelle Fournier, which pervaded his whole life, comes under a different category. He was without religion; she supplied its place. She was his dream-lady, the Beatrice to his Dante, that necessary worship which no great soul can forego. The proof of this is that, when he met her again--old, sweet, dignified and still beautiful to him--his allegiance never wavered; she was still the Mountain Star of his childhood’s days.

If his capacity for love was unlimited, it was not so with his sense of humour, which was curiously circumscribed. Occasionally he rivals Heine in power of seeing the odd side of his own divagations; his account of his headlong flight from Rome to murder the whole erring Moke family is inimitable. Yet he never discovers--as a man with a true sense of humour would have done--that, in sharpening his rapier on Wagner and the Music of the Future, he is meting out to a struggling composer precisely the same measure that the Parisians had meted out to himself. It speaks volumes for the strength of his friendship with Liszt that even Wagnerism could not divide them.

* * * * *

La Côte Saint-André is a large village some thirty odd miles from Grenoble; here, in a handsome house in the Rue de la République, Louis Hector Berlioz was born. His home education and seclusion from healthy school-life and the society of other children of his age ill-fitted him for the battle of life, which began with his medical student career in Paris.

He describes the quarrels with his parents and stoppage of his allowance in 1826, but passes lightly over the privations and semi-starvation that undoubtedly laid the foundations of that internal disease which embittered his latter years. His graphic account of those early Parisian days is one of the most interesting parts of the Memoir. He declared that his time in Italy, after gaining the Prix de Rome, was musically barren. Yet this must be a mistake, since, to the memory of his mountain wanderings he owed the inspiration of _Harold_. And even if he apparently gained nothing in music, the experience of what to avoid and the influence of beautiful scenery--to which he was always peculiarly sensitive--counted for much in his general development.

With his return to Paris his character took form, and he began his life-long warfare against shams and empiricism. Newspaper work, hated as it was, had a great share in moulding him. Each year he grew more autocratic, and each year more hated for his uncompromising sledge-hammer speech. But Ferrand was correct in saying that he could write. His style is clear, incisive, perfect and even elegant French, although, naturally, owing to the exigencies of its production, it is often unequal. The first years of his marriage were ideal in spite of their penury. The young couple had a côterie of choice friends, amongst whom Liszt took a foremost place, but gradually the clouds gathered, the rift within the lute widened, until a separation became inevitable; even then Berlioz does not attempt--as so many men of his impatient spirit might have done--to shirk responsibility and throw upon others the burden of his hostage to fortune--an unsympathetic invalid--but works the harder at his literary tread-mill to provide her indispensable comforts. Poor Henriette’s side of the story is untold, and one can but say:

“The pity of it!”

His troubles in Paris and the triumphs abroad that were their antidote made up the rest of his stormy, restless pilgrimage; yet even in ungrateful Paris he was not entirely neglected.

He received the Legion of Honour, and although professing to despise it, he always wore the ribbon. He was also chosen one of the Immortals, apropos of which M. Alexandre tells a funny story.

Alexandre was canvassing for him and found great difficulty in managing Adolph Adam, who was from Berlioz as the poles asunder.

First he went to Berlioz, who had flatly refused to make the slightest concession to Adam’s prejudices.

“Come,” said he, “do at least be amiable to Adam; you cannot deny that he is a musician, at any rate.”

“I don’t say he is not; but, being a great musician, how can he lower himself to comic-opera? If he chose he could _write such music as I do_.”

Undismayed, Alexandre went to Adam.

“You will give your vote to Berlioz, will you not, dear friend? Although you cannot appreciate each other, you will own that he is a thorough musician.”

“Certainly, he is a great musician, a really great one, but his music is awfully tiresome. Why!”--and little Adam straightened his spectacles--“why, if he chose he could compose ... as well as I do. But, seriously, he is a man of some importance, and I promise that, after Clapisson, who already has our votes, Berlioz shall have the next vacancy.”

By a strange coincidence, the next _fauteuil_ was Adam’s own, to which Berlioz was elected by nineteen votes.

In his weak state of health, Berlioz was quite unfit to face the innumerable worries incidental to the production of _The Trojans_. For seven years it had been his chief object in life, and if, as he said, he could have had everything requisite at his command, with unlimited capital to draw upon--as Wagner had with Louis of Bavaria--all might have been well. But to fight, contrive, temporise and propitiate all at once was more than his enfeebled frame and irascible spirit could stand.

Hence his great injustice to Carvalho, who, for Art’s sake, sacrificed money, time and reputation to an extent that crippled him for many years.

Embittered by the failure of his opera, which ran for about twenty-five nights, he shut himself up in his rooms with Madame Recio, his devoted mother-in-law, and an old servant, and from that time visited only a few intimate friends.

One last shock Fate held in store. Louis died of fever abroad, and for his lonely father life had no more savour--he simply existed, with, however, two last flashes of the old bright flame. One when, at Herbeck’s desire, he went to Vienna to conduct the _Damnation de Faust_, and the other when the Grand Duchess Helen prevailed on him to visit St Petersburg again.

That was the real end.

On leaving Russia he wandered drearily to Nice--a ghost revisiting its old-time haunts--then made one last appearance at Grenoble, and so the flame went out. He who had never peace in life was at rest at last.

* * * * *

Of his music this is not the place to speak. He has fully described his own ideas, others have analysed them, and we are now concerned with the man himself.

To this is due the somewhat disjointed form of the translation--the mixture of Memoir and Letters. It seemed the only possible way of showing Berlioz in all his aspects and of keeping the record chronologically correct.

Yet we could wish that he, who had so much affinity with England and its literature, could meet with due appreciation here.

He has founded no school (in spite of Krebs’ prophecy), unless the “programme music” now so much in vogue can be traced back to him, but, beginning with Wagner, every orchestral composer since his day owes him a debt of gratitude for his discoveries--his daring and original combinations of instruments, and his magnificent grouping and handling of vast bodies of executants.

CHRONOLOGY

1803. Louis Hector Berlioz born.

1822. Medical student in Paris.

1824. Mass failed at Saint-Roch under Masson.

1825. Mass succeeded.

1826. Failed in preliminary examination for Conservatoire competition.

1827. Passed preliminary and entered for competition. His _Orpheus_ declared unplayable.

1828. Third attempt. _Tancred_ obtained second prize. Saw Miss Smithson. Gave first concert.

1829. Fourth attempt. _Cleopatra._ No first prize given.

1830. Gained Prix de Rome with _Sardanapalus_. Marie Pleyel.

1831. Rome. _Symphonie Fantastique_ and _Lélio_.

1832. Concert at which Miss Smithson present on 9th December.

1833. Marriage. In November Henriette’s benefit and failure.

1834. Louis born. _Harold_ performed in November.

1835. _Symphonie Funèbre_ begun.

1836. _Requiem._

1837. _Benvenuto Cellini_ finished.

1838. Paganini’s present.

1839. _Romeo and Juliet._

1840. _Funèbre_ performed. First journey to Brussels.

1841. Festival at Paris Opera House.

1842-3. First tour in Germany.

1844. _Carnaval Romain._ Gigantic concert in the Palais de l’Industrie. Nice.

1845. Cirque des Champs Elysées concert. Marseilles. Lyons. Austria.

1846. Hungary. Bohemia. In December, failure of _Damnation de Faust_.

1847. Russia. Berlin. In November, London, as conductor at Drury Lane.

1848. London. In July, Paris. Death of Dr Berlioz.

1849. _Te Deum_ begun.

1850. _Childhood of Christ_ begun.

1851. Member of Jury at London Exhibition.

1852. _Benvenuto Cellini_ given by Liszt at Weimar. In March, London, _Romeo and Juliet_. May, conducted Beethoven’s _Choral Symphony_. June, _Damnation de Faust_.

1854. March, Henriette died. Dresden. Marriage with Mdlle. Récio.

1855. North German tour. Brussels. _Te Deum._ In June, London. _Imperial Cantata._ On Jury of Paris Exhibition.

1856. _The Trojans_ begun.

1858. Concerts in the Salle Herz brought in some thousands of francs.

1861. Baden.

1862. Marie Berlioz died. _Beatrice and Benedict_ performed at Baden.

1863. Weimar. _Childhood of Christ_ at Strasburg. In November, _The Trojans_.

1864. In August, made officer of Legion of Honour. Dauphiny. Meylan. Estelle Fournier.

1865. Geneva, to see Estelle.

1866. In December to Vienna, to conduct _Damnation de Faust_.

1867. In June Louis died. In November, Russia.

1868. Russia. Paris. Nice. In August, Grenoble.

1869. Died 8th March.

THE LIFE OF BERLIOZ

I

LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ

Decidedly ours is a prosaic century. On no other grounds can my wounded vanity account for the humiliating fact that no auspicious omens, no mighty portents--such as heralded the birth of the great men of the golden age of poetry--gave notice of my coming. It is strange, but true, that I was born, quite unobtrusively, at La Côte Saint-André, between Vienne and Grenoble, on the 11th December 1803.

As its name implies, La Côte Saint-André lies on a hillside overlooking a plain--wide, green, and golden--of which the dreamy majesty is accentuated by the mountain belt that bounds it on the southeast, being in turn crowned by the mystic glory of distant Alpine glaciers and snowy peaks.

Needless to say, I was brought up in the Catholic faith. This--of all religions the most charming, since it gave up burning people--was for seven years the joy of my life, and although we have since fallen out, I still retain my tender memories of it.

Indeed, so greatly am I in sympathy with its creed that, had I had the misfortune to be born in the clutches of one of the dreary schisms hatched by Luther and Calvin, I should certainly, at the first awakening of my poetic instinct, have thrown off its benumbing grasp and have flung myself into the arms of the fair Roman.

My sweet remembrance of my first communion is probably due to my having made it with my elder sister at the Ursuline convent, where she was a boarder.

At early morn, accompanied by the almoner, I made my way to that holy house. The soft spring sunlight, the murmuring poplars swaying in the whispering breeze, the dainty fragrance of the morning air, all worked upon my sensitive mind, until, as I knelt among those fair white maidens, and heard their fresh young voices raised in the eucharistic hymn, my whole soul was filled with mystic passion. Heaven opened before me--a heaven of love and pure delight, a thousand times more glorious than tongue has told--and thus I gave myself to God.

Such is the marvellous power of genuine melody, of heart-felt expression! Ten years later I recognised that air--so innocently adapted to a religious ceremony--as “When my beloved shall return,” from d’Aleyrac’s opera _Nina_.

Dear, dead d’Aleyrac! Even your name is forgotten now!

This was my musical awakening.

Thus abruptly I became a saint, and such a desperate saint! Every day I went to mass, every Sunday I took the communion, every week I went to confession in order to say to my director:

“Father, I have done nothing.”

“Well, my son,” would the worthy man reply, “continue.”

I followed his advice strictly for many years.

Louis Berlioz, my father, was a doctor. It is not my place to sing his praises. I need, therefore, only say that he was looked upon as an honoured friend, not only in our little town, but throughout the whole country side. Feeling acutely his responsibility as the steward of a difficult and dangerous profession, every minute he could spare from his sick people was given to arduous study, and never did the thought of gain turn him aside from his disinterested service to the poor and needy.

In 1810, the medical society of Montpellier offered a prize for the best treatise on a new and important point in medicine, which was gained by my father’s monograph on Chronic Diseases. It was printed in Paris, and many of its theories adopted by physicians, who had not the common honesty to acknowledge their source. This somewhat surprised my dear, unsophisticated father, but he only said, “If truth prevails, nothing else matters.”

Now (I write in 1848) he has long since ceased to practise, and spends his time in reading and peaceful thought.

Of the highest type of liberal mind, he is entirely without social, political, or religious prejudices; for instance, having promised my mother to leave my faith undisturbed, I have known him carry his tolerance so far as to hear me my catechism. This is considerably more, I must own, than I could do were my own son in question.

For many years my father has suffered from an incurable disease of the stomach. He scarcely eats at all, and nothing but constant and increasing doses of opium keep him alive. He has told me that, years ago, worn out by the prolonged agony, he took thirty-two grains at once.

“It was not as a cure that I took it,” he said, significantly.

But, strange to say, this terrific dose of poison, instead of killing him, gave him for some time a respite from his sufferings.

When I was ten years old he sent me to a priest’s school in the town to learn Latin, but the result not proving satisfactory he resolved to teach me himself.

And with the most untiring patience, the most intense care, my father became my instructor in history, literature, languages, geography--even in music.

Yet I must own that I do not think a solitary education like mine half as good for a boy as ordinary school life. Children brought up among relations, servants, and specially chosen friends only, do not get accustomed to the rough-and-tumble that best fits them to face the world. Real life is to them a dosed book, their angles are not rubbed off, and I know that, in my own case, at twenty-five I was still nothing but an awkward, ignorant child.