SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
a wonderful isle
This Roméo 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 classical 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 Scène d’amour (the one of all his compositions that Berlioz himself liked best),[85] La Tristesse de Roméo, or La Fête des Capulet (where a spirit like Wagner’s own unlooses and subdues again tempests of passion and joy), but take less well-known pages, such as the Scherzetto chanté de la reine Mab, or the Réveil 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 passion, 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 Damnation) you will find this nervous precision and sweeping liberty.
[Footnote 85: Mémoires, 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 pass it over» (Georges de Massougnes, Berlioz). This fine study by Georges de Massougnes 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 für 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 class at the Conservatoire (Mémoires, 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 emancipation of rhythm (Mémoires, II, 196). But during the last ten years great progress in music has been made in France.]
this was: A Wonderful Isle
go to next chapter: freedom of melody
