SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Berlioz’s harmonies
«Berlioz’s harmonies, in spite of the diversity of their effect, obtained from very scanty material, are distinguished by a sort of simplicity, and even by a solidity and conciseness, which one only meets with in Beethoven…. One may find here and there harmonies that are commonplace and trivial, and others that are incorrect–at least according to the old rules. In some places his harmonies have a fine effect, and in others their result is vague and indeterminate, or it sounds badly, or is too elaborate and far-fetched. Yet with Berlioz all this somehow takes on a certain distinction. If one attempted to correct it, or even slightly to modify it–for a skilled musician it would be child’s play–the music would become dull» (Article on the Symphonie fantastique).
But let us leave that «grammatical discussion» as well as what Wagner wrote on «the childish question as to whether it is permitted or not to introduce ‘neologisms’ in matters of harmony and melody» (Wagner to Berlioz, 22 February, 1860). As Schumann has said, «Look out for fifths, and then leave us in peace.»]
As soon as the profound originality of Berlioz’s music has been grasped, one understands why it encountered, and still encounters, so much secret hostility. How many accomplished musicians of distinction and learning, who pay honour to artistic tradition, are incapable of understanding Berlioz because they cannot bear the air of liberty breathed by his music. They are so used to thinking in German, that Berlioz’s speech upsets and shocks them. I can well believe it. It is the first time a French musician has dared to think in French; and that is the reason why I warned you of the danger of accepting too meekly German ideas about Berlioz. Men like Weingartner, Richard Strauss, and Mottl–thoroughbred musicians–are, without doubt, able to appreciate Berlioz’s genius better and more quickly than we French musicians. But I rather mistrust the kind of appreciation they feel for a spirit so opposed to their own. It is for France and French people to learn to read his thoughts; they are intimately theirs, and one day will give them their salvation.
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Berlioz’s other great originality lay in his talent for music that was suited to the spirit of the common people, recently raised to sovereignty, and the young democracy. In spite of his aristocratic disdain, his soul was with the masses. M. Hippeau applies to him Taine’s definition of a romantic artist: «the plebeian of a new race, richly gifted, and filled with aspirations, who, having attained for the first time the world’s heights, noisily displays the ferment of his mind and heart.» Berlioz grew up in the midst of revolutions and stories of Imperial achievement. He wrote his cantata for the Prix de Rome in July, 1830, «to the hard, dull noise of stray bullets, which whizzed above the roofs, and came to flatten themselves against the wall near his window.»[93] When he had finished this cantata, he went, «pistol in hand, to play the blackguard in Paris with the sainte canaille.» He sang the Marseillaise, and made «all who had a voice and heart and blood in their veins»[94] sing it too. On his journey to Italy he travelled from Marseilles to Livourne with Mazzinian conspirators, who were going to take part in the insurrection of Modena and Bologna. Whether he was conscious of it or not, he was the musician of revolutions; his sympathies were with the people.
[Footnote 93: Mémoires, I, 155.]
[Footnote 94: These words are taken from Berlioz’s directions on the score of his arrangement of the Marseillaise for full orchestra and double choir.] Not only did he fill his scenes in the theatre with swarming and riotous crowds, like those of the Roman Carnival in the second act of Benvenuto (anticipating by thirty years the crowds of Die Meistersinger), but he created a music of the masses and a colossal style. His model here was Beethoven; Beethoven of the Eroica, of the C minor, of the A, and, above all, of the Ninth Symphony. He was Beethoven’s follower in this as well as other things, and the apostle who carried on his work.[95] And with his understanding of material effects and sonorous matter, he built edifices, as he says, that were «Babylonian and Ninevitish,»[96] «music after Michelangelo,»[97] «on an immense scale.»[98]
[Footnote 95: «From Beethoven,» says Berlioz, «dates the advent in art of colossal forms» (Mémoires, II, 112). But Berlioz forgot one of Beethoven’s models–Händel. One must also take into account the musicians of the French revolution: Mehul, Gossec, Cherubini, and Lesueur, whose works, though they may not equal their intentions, are not without grandeur, and often disclose the intuition of a new and noble and popular art.]
[Footnote 96: Letter to Morel, 1855. Berlioz thus describes the Tibiomnes and the Judex of his Te Deum. Compare Heine’s judgment: «Berlioz’s music makes me think of gigantic kinds of extinct animals, of fabulous empires…. Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the wonders of Nineveh, the daring buildings of Mizraim.»]
[Footnote 97: Mémoires, I, 17.]
[Footnote 98: Letter to an unknown person, written probably about 1855, in the collection of Siegfried Ochs, and published in the Geschichte der französischen Musik of Alfred Bruneau, 1904. That letter contains a rather curious analytical catalogue of Berlioz’s works, drawn up by himself. He notes there his predilection for compositions of a «colossal nature,» such as the Requiem, the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, and the Te Deum, or those of «an immense style,» such as the Impériale.]
this was: Berlioz’s Harmonies
go to next chapter: for two orchestras and a choir
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