Hector Berlioz; A Romantic Tragedy — Part 2

* * * Everyone who has interested himself even slightly in Berlioz is doubtless familiar with the lurid fiction the composer invented to form the “plot” of the “Fantastic Symphony”.

In this “Episode in the Life of an Artist” a high-strung youth is represented as seeking release from the torments of disappointed love by means of an overdose of opium.

Instead of killing him the drug afflicts him with a succession of perturbing, not to say terrifying, grotesque or macabre visions.

Through each of them there moves the image of the Beloved, musically-represented by a recurrent string of notes—a sort of representative theme, or “idée fixe”.

The youth is a plaything of passions, reveries, jealousies, frenzies at the outset; then he sees his idol, apparently indifferent to him, the central figure at a brilliant ball; amorous thoughts mingle in his mind with dark presentiments as he wanders over the countryside, rendered more melancholy by the pipings on rustic instruments of two love-sick shepherds, till thunderclaps interrupt their mournful dialogue.

Then he dreams he has murdered his beloved and is marched to the scaffold; after which his disembodied spirit becomes the sport of a noisome rout of demons, witches, succubi and other infernal things, among whom the cherished one, now a devilish harridan, pursues him, while the Dies Irae resounds blasphemously in his ears.

Doubtless much of the astounding score incorporates musical ideas originally conceived for other projected works.

One way or another, the “Fantastique” is a formidable, if overdimensioned monument of its period, and a landmark of history.

With all its flamboyant and parodistic monstrosities this fresco of psychopathic experience remains the first great and influential specimen of program music created in France; and it is no less amazing to reflect that the epochal score came into being when its composer was but 27 and only at the time he was adjudged worthy of the Prix de Rome.

Berlioz subsequently sent tickets for a performance of the symphony to Henrietta Smithson.

She appears to have been about the only person in the hall unaware at that time that she was the heroine of the piece.

More or less vaguely she had been hearing of the infatuation of her harassed admirer.

Her reaction, lightly expressed, had been “There could be nothing more impossible!

” It was not in Hector’s nature to accept such a rejection as final.

Still, she had unwittingly wounded him!

For a while he decided that, with all her beauty and her gifts, she was no different from the average run of females.

If she could think of repudiating his love the “Fantastique” was _his_ derisive answer!

This musical caricature of the actress, he intended as a gesture of vengeance.

The new symphony, however, helped gain him a friend and defender, who was to remain one of his most valiant supporters for life—Franz Liszt.

Liszt had met Hector shortly before and, transported by the symphony, he made a piano arrangement of it, which propagandized the work as, at the time, nothing else could have done.

* * * Scarcely liberated (as he thought) from Henrietta, Berlioz succumbed to another woman.

This young person, decidedly no better than she should have been, was a friend of Ferdinand Hiller and a piano pupil of Kalkbrenner and Herz.

Camille Moke set her nets for Hector and captured him without the slightest trouble.

She came into his life at the worst possible moment!

With the consent of her mother, briefly blinded by the young man’s success in winning the Roman Prize, Camille became engaged to her admirer, who was just about to set out for that sojourn in Rome which was the chief reward of a lucky contestant.

He seems not to have foreseen trouble, though his sister, Nanci, was beset by premonitions;

and Ferdinand Hiller sent to Berlioz, in Rome, the ironic message that his betrothed “was bearing the separation with fortitude”.

Shocked but still only half convinced, Hector took to bed and waited vainly for Camille’s expected letters to Italy.

Time passed and nothing came.

Whatever interest he might have found in the Eternal City, where he had been warmly received by his fellow students at the Villa Medici and by its director, Horace Vernet, he was unable to pay any attention to his work or his agreeable surroundings.

Little really mattered—neither the monuments of Rome, the French Academy, his meeting with the well-graced youth, Felix Mendelssohn, his future prospects.

Vernet, noticing Hector’s worry, began to entertain serious misgivings.

Summoning the newcomer he warned him against any rash step.

Finally, on Good Friday the tormented lover impulsively left Rome, resolved to return to Paris and find out for himself what lay behind Camille’s silence.

In roundabout ways he got as far as Nice.

On the journey he bought a pistol and some poison determined to learn the truth and if worst came to worst to shoot Camille and then make an end of himself.

He was not obliged to go to these spectacular extremes.

For at long last he received a letter—not, indeed, from his presumable fiancée, but from her mother.

That lady informed Hector that her daughter was on the point of marrying Mr. Pleyel, the famous piano manufacturer; and she requested her “son-in-law” not to kill himself!

Of course he would kill himself—and the Mokes as well!

But as he looked at the lovely Côte d’Azur landscape unrolled before him from the heights of the Grande Corniche he suddenly experienced a revulsion of feeling.

For the time being he would go on living!

He dispatched a letter to Horace Vernet saying he was returning to Rome and pledging his honor to remain in Italy.

Then he settled down for three weeks in Nice and wrote his “King Lear” Overture.

* * * Hector became more or less resigned to Rome, now that the Moke affair was definitely at an end; but was never completely at home there.

He enjoyed the company of Mendelssohn, for the two were well matched, intellectually, if not well balanced by temperament.

However, Felix adored Gluck as much as Hector and the two youths delighted in singing and playing “Armide” together.

They agreed whole-heartedly in their worship of Mozart, Beethoven and Weber but disagreed on Bach, whom the German idolized but to whom Berlioz remained cold.

When the pair went over Hector’s prize-crowned “Sardanapale” and the Frenchman frankly expressed his dislike for a certain number in it, Mendelssohn told his friend he was happy to see that he really displayed such good taste!

Hector made the usual excursions, saw the regulation sights, visited the mountains of the Abruzzi, wandered about the Campagna, renewed his Virgilian recollections, sang, strummed his guitar, heard the operas and the generally trivial and ill performed church music and mingled with the painters at the Café Greco.

In short, he went more or less through the customary tourist routine.

Also, he composed.

He made changes in the score of the “Fantastique” adding, for one thing, a coda to the Ball Scene; he wrote overtures to “The Corsair”, based on Byron, and “Rob Roy” based on Scott, not to mention an ambitious pendant to the “Fantastique”, “Le Retour à la Vie”, to which he subsequently gave the alternative title of “Lélio”.

But by 1832 he decided he had endured as much of Rome as he could stomach.

After a compromise with Horace Vernet he cut short his stay at the Villa Medici by six months promising to spend a year in Germany—an ambition he had always cherished.

In November, 1832, Berlioz was back in Paris, and in that very house where Henrietta Smithson had lodged on her first visit.

In fact, she had moved out only a day earlier and settled in an apartment on the Rue de Rivoli.

Small wonder that Hector discerned the working of destiny once more!

This time Henrietta had come to Paris with her own theatrical company.

Incredible as it may seem, she and Hector had not yet actually met.

The Irish actress divined his passion fully when, at a performance under the conductor Habeneck (at which not only the “Fantastique” but also the monodrama, “Lélio”, were performed) she heard from the actor who spoke the text the words: “Ah, could I but find this Juliet, this Ophelia, whom my heart is ever seeking....

Could I but sleep my last sad sleep in her beloved arms”!

Instead of going to Germany at New Year’s, 1833, Berlioz determined to remain, for the moment, in Paris.

His love for Henrietta had been newly awakened; and she was now willing to be formally introduced to him.

“From that day I had not a moment’s rest.

Terrible fears were succeeded by delirious hopes.

What I went through ...

cannot be described.

Her mother and sister formally opposed our union.

My own parents would not hear of it.

Discontent and anger on the part of both families, and all the scenes to which such opposition gives birth in these cases”.

Portents of trouble followed thick and fast.

Henrietta Smithson’s theatrical venture failed disastrously.

Financially she was utterly ruined, the more so as she had contracted immense debts.

Next, she fell and broke her leg.

She was bed-ridden and she remained an invalid.

Hector organized a benefit concert for her.

Among the first to offer their services were Liszt and Chopin.

Enough was realized to settle “Harriet’s” most pressing obligations.

And then, despite his parents’ objections and the venomous hostility of Henrietta’s hunchbacked sister, Hector married her in the autumn of 1833—first, how ever, staging a spectacular suicide act to frighten her into wedlock.

She was, he assured his friend Humbert Ferrand, “aussi vierge qu’il soit possible de l’être”.

To keep the domestic pot boiling he found it advisable about this period to take up musical journalism.

Although Berlioz had been contributing on and off to certain publications his present connection with L’Europe littéraire is, to all intents, the official beginning of that critical activity of his which was to span almost the remainder of his life.

As subsequent music reviewer on the influential Journal des Débats he spent no end of time and effort in commenting on compositions and performances, good, bad and indifferent, which he might infinitely better have dedicated to creative work.

The labor revolted him but he found himself as helpless as a galley slave.

Enforced attendance at innumerable concerts and operas he came to loathe to such an extent that, late in his career when he was finally able to shake off the journalistic fetters, he enjoyed walking up and down in front of a theatre or concert hall just for the pleasure of reflecting that he did _not_ have to go in!

And yet, of all celebrated composers, Berlioz was by all odds the most brilliantly gifted litterateur, whose writings even today preserve most of their individuality, polished style, barbed irony and scintillant humor.

Aside from his countless feuilletons and other articles, his Memoirs, Soirées de l’Orchestre, A Travers Chants and much else are literary masterpieces of their kind, which even today retain their freshness and sparkle.

Undoubtedly his important journalistic affiliations had the effect of involving him in numberless intrigues and difficulties inseparable from posts of influence, besides sapping his energies that should have been employed otherwise.

Yet he knew how to draw profit from the means of publicity and power which his connections placed in his hands and he did not hesitate to promote, as best possible, his personal interests.

* * * When their marriage was solemnized at the British Embassy (with Liszt as best man) Hector had exactly two hundred francs and Harriet—a mountain of debts!

For their honeymoon they could travel no further than the suburb of Vincennes.

The wedding trip, according to the groom, was “a masterpiece of love”.

All the same, he soon had chances to notice that his bride was not in the least musical; likewise, that she harbored a streak of jealousy.

Not even the birth of their son, Louis, on August 15, 1834, at their home on the hill of Montmartre helped smooth this unhappy state of affairs, which was to deepen as time went on.

Harriet grew violently opposed to her husband’s traveling, though Berlioz claims that “a mad and for some time an absolutely groundless jealousy was at the bottom of it”.

Was it “absolutely groundless”?

The composer’s intimate associate, Ernest Legouvé, has let us into many secrets about the rift in the lute in his book “Soixante Ans de Souvenirs”.

The blond Irishwoman, some years older than her husband, was gradually losing her looks, her failures as an actress had for some time increasingly embittered her and she presently took to drink.

The more the sentiments of the formerly so ardent Hector “changed to a correct and calm good fellowship”, says Legouvé, “the more his wife became imperious in her exigencies and indulged in violent recriminations that were unfortunately justified.

Berlioz, whose position as critic and as composer producing his own works made the theatre his real world, found there occasions for lapses that would have proved too much for stronger heads than his; moreover, his reputation as a misunderstood great artist endowed him with a halo that easily tempted his female interpreters to become his consolers.

Madame Berlioz searched his feuilletons for hints of his infidelities.

And not only there: fragments of intercepted letters, drawers indiscreetly opened, brought her revelations just sufficient to make her beside herself without more than half-illuminating her.

Her jealousy was always outdistanced by the facts.

Berlioz’s heart went so fast that she could not keep pace with it; when, after so much research, she lighted upon some object of his passion, _that_ particular passion was no more;

and then, it being easy for him to prove his innocence at the moment, the poor woman was as abashed as a dog which after having followed a track for half an hour, arrives at the lair only to find the quarry already gone”.

Yet the jealous instincts of the once lovely Ophelia and Juliet were, in fact, only too sound and, if her shrewishness increased by leaps and bounds, she had no little cause for it.

[Illustration: Berlioz’s first wife] [Illustration: Berlioz’s second wife] Hector’s friends seemed, perhaps, a little less devoted to him since his marriage, and since his miseries were a trifle less spectacular than they had been during his bachelor days.

But these comrades included not a few personages illustrious in their respective spheres.

Among them were the musical chroniclers Janin and d’Ortigue; the essayists and novelists Legouvé, Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo; among the creative and performing musicians, Liszt of course and Chopin, who though personally the antithesis of Berlioz, never wavered in his faithfulness to the man.

And further, flashing like a comet across the firmament of Hector, there was the “demon fiddler”, Paganini.

In 1834 Berlioz composed the “descriptive” symphony “Harold in Italy”, in which Byron’s Childe Harold, the central figure of the work was represented by a viola solo.

Whether Hector’s account of the genesis of the composition is wholly authentic or not, the tale he relates in his Memoirs runs somewhat as follows: Having heard the “Symphonie Fantastique” one day Paganini came to see the composer and told him that he owned a wonderful Stradivari viola which he would love to play in public, though he had no music for it which he considered suitable.

Would Hector write him such a work?

He had no confidence in anyone else.

The only thing the violinist insisted upon was that “he must be playing the whole time”.

The work should not be an ordinary concerto, but rather something along the lines of the “Fantastique”.

After many doubts and hesitations the composer produced a series of scenes for orchestra, the pictorial background of which was shaped out of Hector’s recollections of his Italian wanderings; while the viola strain, representing Byron’s dreamer, was added to the rest of the orchestral texture “with which it contrasts both in movement and character, without hindering the development”.

Paganini did not hear the symphony till some time after it had been first performed, for he had been south, vainly seeking relief from that cancer of the larynx which had robbed him of his voice and was shortly to prove fatal.

At the close of the work he ordered his son to tell the composer “he had never in his life been so impressed at a concert” and were he to follow his inclination, he would “go down on his knees to thank him”.

And then, in full view of the audience, the great violinist did just that and kissed Hector’s hand!

Next day he received a letter in Paganini’s writing which ran: “Beethoven is dead and Berlioz alone can revive him.

I have heard your divine compositions, so worthy of your genius, and beg you to accept, in token of my homage, twenty thousand francs....

” Almost on the heels of this windfall Berlioz had the additional luck of being commissioned by the government to compose a Requiem, for an official ceremony.

The work is one of his most monumental—one might say apocalyptic—even if the quality of its musical inspiration may be open to question.

One thing however, is certain—nothing he ever wrote is so overwhelming in point of sheer sonority as the appalling Tuba Mirum, with its five orchestras, its sixteen kettle drums and its phalanxes of trombones.

At the climax of this fresco of the Last Judgment one of the participating singers succumbed in public to a shrieking frenzy of nervous prostration!

* * * There was talk in governmental circles of “purchasing” the Requiem, of a grand decoration, of a professorship at the Conservatoire, of a generous pension from the Beaux Arts ministry.

Nothing came of all these plans.

As far as the Conservatoire post was concerned Berlioz was rejected as teacher of harmony at that institution on the ground that he could not play piano—which was as true as it was irrelevant.

But a far greater and more fateful disappointment lay ahead.

Early in 1838 his mother—who had cursed him—died at La Côte-Saint-André.

Her curse did not perish with her; in fact, it smote him soon afterwards when his lyric drama, “Benvenuto Cellini”, failed grievously at the Opéra, where after long and torturing efforts he at length managed to have it performed.

Not even today can it be said to have gained anything like a permanent foothold on the stage.

As time went on Hector tried to master his inhospitable fate in the operatic theatre by various compromises and subterfuges.

He sought to create a “dramatic symphony”, based on “Romeo and Juliet”, and neither outright drama nor outright symphony—which accounts for its infrequent performance, despite the extraordinary beauty of some of its music.

He wrote a “concert opera” which is, in effect, a cantata masquerading as an opera and vice-versa.

“La Damnation de Faust”, one of the three most essential capturings in music of Goethe’s “Faust” drama, was at its first hearing in 1846 possibly the most distressful defeats he ever suffered at the hands of his countrymen.

Not until decades after his death did he enjoy a kind of posthumous revenge when Raoul Gunsbourg, in Monte Carlo, fashioned a stage production which is now one of the mainstays of the Paris Opéra.

A destiny in some respects even more deplorable was that of his music drama, “Les Troyens”, which he was never to hear in its completeness.

The one theatre work of Berlioz to enjoy something like an uncontested triumph at its launching was his two-act opera comique, “Béatrice et Bénédict”, for which Shakespeare provided the original incentive.

As for “Roméo et Juliette”, its high points are found in two movements—the rapturous love scene, which includes the most enamoring melodic ideas Berlioz ever conceived, and the unparagoned Queen Mab scherzo, embodying the composer’s instrumental fancy at its most subtle and ravishing—even if Parisian criticism of the time could see no more in it than “a little noise like that of an ill-greased syringe”!

That long scheduled visit to Germany continued to be deferred.

Meantime Berlioz had been appointed assistant librarian at the Paris Conservatoire, a small distinction, to be sure; but offering at any rate a few additional francs.

A more ponderable achievement was the composition for band of a three movement “Symphonie funèbre et triomphale”, planned for performance in the open air in memory of those fallen in the Revolution of 1830. The “Funeral and Triumphal Symphony” was one of the first compositions of Berlioz which Wagner heard when he arrived in Paris in 1840. Wagner was struck by the nobility of the work, ranked it among the loftiest achievements of its composer and retained an undissembled admiration for it all his days.

Berlioz had reason to believe that, after this official labor, he might be called to step into the shoes of Cherubini at the Conservatoire when that worthy went to his reward in 1842. But the choice fell upon Georges Onslow and Hector, realizing that if he was ever to obtain in Paris the distinction to which he felt himself entitled, he would have to enhance his French reputation by properly publicized successes abroad.

So he began by giving several concerts in Brussels, the second of which was destined to be important—less so for musical reasons than because of domestic entanglements it initiated.

Knowing Harriet’s jealousy Hector seems to have been strangely incautious about keeping secret the identity of his “traveling companion”.

It did not take his alternately maudlin and aciduous Irish wife many days to find out from the papers that a certain Marie Recio was the snake in the grass.

The Recio was a second rate singer, whose real name was Marie Genevieve Martin.

Hector had met her in 1841. We are told that she rekindled in his heart those romantic emotions the now slatternly and alcoholic Harriet could no longer feed.

Marie’s mother encouraged the liaison because she realized the power Berlioz had come to be in the journalistic field.

He had been so imprudent as to impose her on one operatic management and the game had turned out badly.

Before long poor Hector found himself as luckless in his second love affair as he had been in his first.