Musicians of To-Day Part 4

"It is quite easy for others to convince themselves that, without even limiting me to take a very short melody as the theme of a composition--as the greatest musicians have often done--I have always endeavoured to put a wealth of melody into my compositions.

One may, of course, dispute the worth of these melodies, their distinction, originality, or charm--it is not for me to judge them--but to deny their existence is either unfair or foolish. They are often on a large scale; and an immature or short-sighted musical vision may not clearly distinguish their form; or, again, they may be accompanied by secondary melodies which, to a limited vision, may veil the form of the princ.i.p.al ones. Or, lastly, shallow musicians may find these melodies so unlike the funny little things that they call melodies, that they cannot bring themselves to give the same name to both."[75]

And what a splendid variety there is in these melodies: there is the song in Gluck's style (Ca.s.sandre's airs), the pure German _lied_ (Marguerite's song, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"), the Italian melody, after Bellini, in its most limpid and happy form (arietta of Arlequin in _Benvenuto_), the broad Wagnerian phrase (finale of _Romeo_), the folk-song (chorus of shepherds in _L'Enfance du Christ_), and the freest and most modern recitative (the monologues of Faust), which was Berlioz's own invention, with its full development, its pliant outline, and its intricate nuances.[76]

[Footnote 75: _Memoires_, II, 361.]

[Footnote 76: M. Jean Marnold has remarked this genius for monody in Berlioz in his article on _Hector Berlioz, musicien (Mercure de France_, 15 January, and 1 February, 1905).]

I have said that Berlioz had a matchless gift for expressing tragic melancholy, weariness of life, and the pangs of death. In a general way, one may say that he was a great elegist in music. Ambros, who was a very discerning and unbia.s.sed 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. For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and tender heart; he has nothing of the heroism of Beethoven, or Handel, or Gluck, or even Schubert. He has all the charm of an Umbrian painter, as is shown in _L'Enfance du Christ_, as well as sweetness and inward sadness, the gift of tears, and an elegiac pa.s.sion.

Now I come to Berlioz's great originality, an originality which is rarely spoken of, though it makes him more than a great musician, more than the successor of Beethoven, or, as some call him, the forerunner of Wagner. It is an originality that ent.i.tles him to be known, even more fitly than Wagner himself, as the creator of "an art of the future," the apostle of a new music, which even to-day has hardly made itself felt.

Berlioz is original in a double sense. By the extraordinary complexity of his genius he touched the two opposite poles of his art, and showed us two entirely different aspects of music--that of a great popular art, and that of music made free.

We are all enslaved by the musical tradition of the past. For generations we have been so accustomed to carry this yoke that we scarcely notice it. And in consequence of Germany's monopoly of music since the end of the eighteenth century, musical traditions--which had been chiefly Italian in the two preceding centuries--now became almost entirely German. We think in German forms: the plan of phrases, their development, their balance, and all the rhetoric of music and the grammar of composition comes to us from foreign thought, slowly elaborated by German masters. That domination has never been more complete or more heavy since Wagner's victory. Then reigned over the world this great German period--a scaly monster with a thousand arms, whose grasp was so extensive that it included pages, scenes, acts, and whole dramas in its embrace. We cannot say that French writers have ever tried to write in the style of Goethe or Schiller; but French composers have tried and are still trying to write music after the manner of German musicians.

Why be astonished at it? Let us face the matter plainly. In music we have not, so to speak, any masters of French style. All our greatest composers are foreigners. The founder of the first school of French opera, Lulli, was Florentine; the founder of the second school, Gluck, was German; the two founders of the third school were Rossini, an Italian, and Meyerbeer, a German; the creators of _opera-comique_ were Duni, an Italian, and Gretry, a Belgian; Franck, who revolutionised our modern school of opera, was also Belgian. These men brought with them a style peculiar to their race; or else they tried to found, as Gluck did, an "international" style,[77] by which they effaced the more individual characteristics of the French spirit. The most French of all these styles is the _opera-comique_, the work of two foreigners, but owing much more to the _opera-bouffe_ than is generally admitted, and, in any case, representing France very insufficiently.

[Footnote 77: Gluck himself said this in a letter to the _Mercure de France_, February, 1773.]

Some more rational minds have tried to rid themselves of this Italian and German influence, but have mostly arrived at creating an intermediate Germano-Italian style, of which the operas of Auber and Ambroise Thomas are a type.

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.[78]

By force of circ.u.mstance, therefore, French music found itself moulded in foreign musical forms. And in the same way that Germany in the eighteenth century tried to imitate French architecture and literature, so France in the nineteenth century acquired the habit of speaking German in music. As most men speak more than they think, even thought itself became Germanised; and it was difficult then to discover, through this traditional insincerity, the true and spontaneous form of French musical thought.

But Berlioz's genius found it by instinct. From the first he strove to free French music from the oppression of the foreign tradition that was suffocating it.[79]

[Footnote 78: I am not speaking of the Franco-Flemish masters at the end of the sixteenth century: of Jannequin, Costeley, Claude le Jeune, or Mauduit, recently discovered by M. Henry Expert, who are possessed of so original a flavour, and have yet remained almost entirely unknown from their own time to ours. Religious wars bruised France's musical traditions and denied some of the grandeur of her art.]

[Footnote 79: It is amusing to find Wagner comparing Berlioz with Auber, as the type of a true French musician--Auber and his mixed Italian and German opera. That shows how Wagner, like most Germans, was incapable of grasping the real originality of French music, and how he saw only its externals. The best way to find out the musical characteristics of a nation is to study its folk-songs. If only someone would devote himself to the study of French folk-song (and there is no lack of material), people would realise perhaps how much it differs from German folk-song, and how the temperament of the French race shows itself there as being sweeter and freer, more vigorous and more expressive.]

He was fitted in every way for the part, even by his deficiencies and his ignorance. His cla.s.sical education in music was incomplete. M.

Saint-Saens tells us that "the past did not exist for him; he did not understand the old composers, as his knowledge of them was limited to what he had read about them." He did not know Bach. Happy ignorance! He was able to write oratorios like _L'Enfance du Christ_ without being worried by memories and traditions of the German masters of oratorio.

There are men like Brahms who have been, nearly all their life, but reflections of the past. Berlioz never sought to be anything but himself. It was thus that he created that masterpiece, _La Fuite en egypte_, which sprang from his keen sympathy with the people.

He had one of the most untrammelled spirits that ever breathed. Liberty was for him a desperate necessity. "Liberty of heart, of mind, of soul--of everything.... Real liberty, absolute and immense!"[80] And this pa.s.sionate love of liberty, which was his misfortune in life, since it deprived him of the comfort of any faith, refused him any refuge for his thoughts, robbed him of peace, and even of the soft pillow of scepticism--this "real liberty" formed the unique originality and grandeur of his musical conceptions.

[Footnote 80: _Memoires_, I, 221.]

"Music," wrote Berlioz to C. Lobe, in 1852, "is the most poetic, the most powerful, the most living of all arts. She ought to be the freest, but she is not yet.... Modern music is like the cla.s.sic Andromeda, naked and divinely beautiful. She is chained to a rock on the sh.o.r.es of a vast sea, and awaits the victorious Perseus who shall loose her bonds and break in pieces the chimera called Routine."

The business was to free music from its limited rhythms and from the traditional forms and rules that enclosed it;[81] and, above all, it needed to be free from the domination of speech, and to be released from its humiliating bondage to poetry. Berlioz wrote to the Princess of Wittgenstein, in 1856:--

[Footnote 81: "Music to-day, in the vigour of her youth, is emanc.i.p.ated and free and can do what she pleases. Many old rules have no longer any vogue; they were made by unreflecting minds, or by lovers of routine for other lovers of routine. New needs of the mind, of the heart, and of the sense of hearing, make necessary new endeavours and, in some cases, the breaking of ancient laws. Many forms have become too hackneyed to be still adopted. The same thing may be entirely good or entirely bad, according to the use one makes of it, or the reasons one has for making use of it. Sound and sonority are secondary to thought, and thought is secondary to feeling and pa.s.sion." (These opinions were given with reference to Wagner's concerts in Paris, in 1860, and are taken from _A travers chants_, p. 312.)

Compare Beethoven's words: "There is no rule that one may not break for the advancement of beauty."]

"I am for free music. Yes, I want music to be proudly free, to be victorious, to be supreme. I want her to take all she can, so that there may be no more Alps or Pyrenees for her. But she must achieve her victories by fighting in person, and not rely upon her lieutenants. I should like her to have, if possible, good verse drawn up in order of battle; but, like Napoleon, she must face the fire herself, and, like Alexander, march in the front ranks of the phalanx. She is so powerful that in some cases she would conquer unaided; for she has the right to say with Medea: 'I, myself, am enough.'"

Berlioz protested vigorously against Gluck's impious theory[82] and Wagner's "crime" in making music the slave of speech. Music is the highest poetry and knows no master.[83] It was for Berlioz, therefore, continually to increase the power of expression in pure music.

[Footnote 82: Is it necessary to recall the _epitre dedicatoire_ of _Alceste_ in 1769, and Gluck's declaration that he "sought to bring music to its true function--that of helping poetry to strengthen the expression of the emotions and the interest of a situation ... and to make it what fine colouring and the happy arrangement of light and shade are to a skilful drawing"?]

[Footnote 83: This revolutionary theory was already Mozart's: "Music should reign supreme and make one forget everything else.... In an opera it is absolutely necessary that Poetry should be Music's obedient daughter" (Letter to his father, 13 October, 1781). Despairing probably at being unable to obtain this obedience, Mozart thought seriously of breaking up the form of opera, and of putting in its place, in 1778, a sort of melodrama (of which Rousseau had given an example in 1773), which he called "duodrama," where music and poetry were loosely a.s.sociated, yet not dependent on each other, but went side by side on two parallel roads (Letter of 12 November, 1778).]

And while Wagner, who was more moderate and a closer follower of tradition, sought to establish a compromise (perhaps an impossible one) between music and speech, and to create the new lyric drama, Berlioz, who was more revolutionary, achieved the dramatic symphony, of which the unequalled model to-day is still _Romeo et Juliette_.

The dramatic symphony naturally fell foul of all formal theories. Two arguments were set up against it: one derived from Bayreuth, and by now an act of faith; the other, current opinion, upheld by the crowd that speaks of music without understanding it.

The first argument, maintained by Wagner, is that music cannot really express action without the help of speech and gesture. It is in the name of this opinion that so many people condemn _a priori_ Berlioz's _Romeo_. They think it childish to try and _translate_ action into music. I suppose they think it less childish to _ill.u.s.trate_ an action by music. Do they think that gesture a.s.sociates itself very happily with music? If only they would try to root up this great fiction, which has bothered us for the last three centuries; if only they would open their eyes and see--what great men like Rousseau and Tolstoy saw so clearly--the silliness of opera; if only they would see the anomalies of the Bayreuth show. In the second act of _Tristan_ there is a celebrated pa.s.sage, where Ysolde, burning with desire, is waiting for Tristan; she sees him come at last, and from afar she waves her scarf to the accompaniment of a phrase repeated several times by the orchestra. I cannot express the effect produced on me by that _imitation_ (for it is nothing else) of a series of sounds by a series of gestures; I can never see it without indignation or without laughing. The curious thing is that when one hears this pa.s.sage at a concert, one sees the gesture. At the theatre either one does not "see" it, or it appears childish. The natural action becomes stiff when clad in musical armour, and the absurdity of trying to make the two agree is forced upon one. In the music of _Rheingold_ one pictures the stature and gait of the giants, and one sees the lightning gleam and the rainbow reflected on the clouds. In the theatre it is like a game of marionettes; and one feels the impa.s.sable gulf between music and gesture. Music is a world apart.

When music wishes to depict the drama, it is not real action which is reflected in it, it is the ideal action transfigured by the spirit, and perceptible only to the inner vision. The worst foolishness is to present two visions--one for the eyes and one for the spirit. Nearly always they kill each other.

The other argument urged against the symphony with a programme is the pretended cla.s.sical argument (it is not really cla.s.sical at all).

"Music," they say, "is not meant to express definite subjects; it is only fitted for vague ideas. The more indefinite it is, the greater its power, and the more it suggests." I ask, What is an indefinite art? What is a vague art? Do not the two words contradict each other? Can this strange combination exist at all? Can an artist write anything that he does not clearly conceive? Do people think he composes at random as his genius whispers to him? One must at least say this: A symphony of Beethoven's is a "definite" work down to its innermost folds; and Beethoven had, if not an exact knowledge, at least a clear intuition of what he was about. His last quartets are descriptive symphonies of his soul, and very differently carried out from Berlioz's symphonies. Wagner was able to a.n.a.lyse one of the former under the name of "A Day with Beethoven." Beethoven was always trying to translate into music the depths of his heart, the subtleties of his spirit, which are not to be explained clearly by words, but which are as definite as words--in fact, more definite; for a word, being an abstract thing, sums up many experiences and comprehends many different meanings. Music is a hundred times more expressive and exact than speech; and it is not only her right to express particular emotions and subjects, it is her duty. If that duty is not fulfilled, the result is not music--it is nothing at all.

Berlioz is thus the true inheritor of Beethoven's thought. The difference between a work like _Romeo_ and one of Beethoven's symphonies is that the former, it would seem, endeavours to express objective emotions and subjects in music. I do not see why music should not follow poetry in getting away from introspection and trying to paint the drama of the universe. Shakespeare is as good as Dante. Besides, one may add, it is always Berlioz himself that is discovered in his music: it is his soul starving for love and mocked at by shadows which is revealed through all the scenes of _Romeo_.

I will not prolong a discussion where so many things must be left unsaid. But I would suggest that, once and for all, we get rid of these absurd endeavours to fence in art. Do not let us say: Music can....

Music cannot express such-and-such a thing. Let us say rather, If genius pleases, everything is possible; and if music so wishes, she may be painting and poetry to-morrow. Berlioz has proved it well in his _Romeo_.

This _Romeo_ is an extraordinary work: "a wonderful isle, where a temple of pure art is set up." For my part, not only do I consider it equal to the most powerful of Wagner's creations, but I believe it to be richer in its teaching and in its resources for art--resources and teaching which contemporary French art has not yet fully turned to account. One knows that for several years the young French school has been making efforts to deliver our music from German models, to create a language of recitative that shall belong to France and that the _leitmotif_ will not overwhelm; a more exact and less heavy language, which in expressing the freedom of modern thought will not have to seek the help of the cla.s.sical or Wagnerian forms. Not long ago, the _Schola Cantorum_ published a manifesto that proclaimed "the liberty of musical declamation ... free speech in free music ... the triumph of natural music with the free movement of speech and the plastic rhythm of the ancient dance"--thus declaring war on the metrical art of the last three centuries.[84]

[Footnote 84: _Tribune de Saint Gervais_, November, 1903.]

Well, here is that music; you will nowhere find a more perfect model. It is true that many who profess the principles of this music repudiate the model, and do not hide their disdain for Berlioz. That makes me doubt a little, I admit, the results of their efforts. If they do not feel the wonderful freedom of Berlioz's music, and do not see that it was the delicate veil of a very living spirit, then I think there will be more of archaism than real life in their pretensions to "free music."

Study, not only the most celebrated pages of his work, such as the _Scene d'amour_ (the one of all his compositions that Berlioz himself liked best),[85] _La Tristesse de Romeo_, or _La Fete des Capulet_ (where a spirit like Wagner's own unlooses and subdues again tempests of pa.s.sion and joy), but take less well-known pages, such as the _Scherzetto chante de la reine Mab_, or the _Reveil de Juliette_, and the music describing the death of the two lovers.[86] In the one what light grace there is, in the other what vibrating pa.s.sion, and in both of them what freedom and apt expression of ideas. The language is magnificent, of wonderful clearness and simplicity; not a word too much, and not a word that does not reveal an unerring pen. In nearly all the big works of Berlioz before 1845 (that is up to the _d.a.m.nation_) you will find this nervous precision and sweeping liberty.

[Footnote 85: _Memoires_, II, 365.]

[Footnote 86: "This composition contains a dose of sublimity much too strong for the ordinary public; and Berlioz, with the splendid insolence of genius, advises the conductor, in a note, to turn the page and pa.s.s it over" (Georges de Ma.s.sougnes, _Berlioz_). This fine study by Georges de Ma.s.sougnes appeared in 1870, and is very much in advance of its time.]

Then there is the freedom of his rhythms. Schumann, who was nearest to Berlioz of all musicians of that time, and, therefore, best able to understand him, had been struck by this since the composition of the _Symphonic fantastique_,[87] He wrote:--

"The present age has certainly not produced a work in which similar times and rhythms combined with dissimilar times and rhythms have been more freely used. The second part of a phrase rarely corresponds with the first, the reply to the question. This anomaly is characteristic of Berlioz, and is natural to his southern temperament."

Far from objecting to this, Schumann sees in it something necessary to musical evolution.

"Apparently music is showing a tendency to go back to its beginnings, to the time when the laws of rhythm did not yet trouble her; it seems that she wishes to free herself, to regain an utterance that is unconstrained, and raise herself to the dignity of a sort of poetic language."

And Schumann quotes these words of Ernest Wagner: "He who shakes off the tyranny of time and delivers us from it will, as far as one can see, give back freedom to music."[88]

[Footnote 87: "Oh, how I love, honour, and reverence Schumann for having written this article alone" (Hugo Wolf, 1884).]

[Footnote 88: _Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik_. See _Hector Berlioz und Robert Schumann_. Berlioz was constantly righting for this freedom of rhythm--for "those harmonies of rhythm," as he said. He wished to form a Rhythm cla.s.s at the Conservatoire (_Memoires_, II, 241), but such a thing was not understood in France. Without being as backward as Italy on this point, France is still resisting the emanc.i.p.ation of rhythm (_Memoires_, II, 196). But during the last ten years great progress in music has been made in France.]

Remark also Berlioz's freedom of melody. His musical phrases pulse and flow like life itself. "Some phrases taken separately," says Schumann, "have such an intensity that they will not bear harmonising--_as in many ancient folk-songs_--and often even an accompaniment spoils their fulness."[89] These melodies so correspond with the emotions, that they reproduce the least thrills of body and mind by their vigorous workings-up and delicate reliefs, by splendid barbarities of modulation and strong and glowing colour, by gentle gradations of light and shade or imperceptible ripples of thought, which flow over the body like a steady tide. It is an art of peculiar sensitiveness, more delicately expressive than that of Wagner; not satisfying itself with the modern tonality, but going back to old modes--a rebel, as M. Saint-Saens remarks, to the polyphony which had governed music since Bach's day, and which is perhaps, after all, "a heresy destined to disappear."[90]