The Life of Hector Berlioz as Written by Himself in His Letters and Memoirs

Hector Berlioz

The Life of Hector Berlioz as Written by Himself in His Letters and Memoirs

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4066338080752

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY

I LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ

II ESTELLE

III MUSIC AND ANATOMY

IV PARIS

V CHERUBINI

VI MY FATHER’S DECISION

VII PRIVATION

VIII FAILURE

IX A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

X WEBER

XI HENRIETTE

XII MY FIRST CONCERT

XIII AN ACADEMY EXAMINATION

XIV FAUST—CLEOPATRA

XV A NEW LOVE

XVI LISZT

XVII ITALY A Wild Interlude

XVIII ITALIAN MUSIC

XIX IN THE MOUNTAINS

XX NAPLES—HOME

XXI MARRIAGE

XXII NEWSPAPER BONDAGE

XXIII THE REQUIEM

XXIV FRIENDS IN NEED

XXV BRUSSELS—PARIS OPERA CONCERT

XXVI HECHINGEN—WEIMAR

XXVII MENDELSSOHN—WAGNER

XXVIII A COLOSSAL CONCERT

XXIX THE RAKOCZY MARCH

XXX PARIS—RUSSIA—LONDON

XXXI MY FATHER’S DEATH—MEYLAN

XXXII POOR OPHELIA

XXXIII DEAD SEA FRUIT

XXXIV 1863—GATHERING TWILIGHT

XXXV THE TROJANS

XXXVI ESTELLE ONCE MORE

XXXVII THE AFTERGLOW

XXXVIII DARKNESS AND LIGHT

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

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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

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THE LIFE OF BERLIOZ

I

LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ

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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.

Indulgent as my father was over my work, yet, for a long while, he was unable to make me love the classics. It seemed impossible to me to concentrate my thoughts long enough to learn by heart a few lines of Horace and Virgil; impatient of the beaten track my wayward mind flew off to the entrancing unknown world of the atlas, roving gaily through the labyrinth of islands, capes, and straits of the Pacific and the Indian Archipelago. This was the origin of my love for travel and adventure.

My father truly said of me:

He knows every isle of the South Seas, but cannot tell me how many departments there are in France!

Every book of travel in the library was pressed into my service, and I should most certainly have run away to sea if we had lived in a seaport. My son inherits my taste. He chose the navy for his profession long ere he saw the sea. May he do honour to his choice!

However, in the end the love of poetry and appreciation of its beauty awoke in me. The first spark of passion that fired my heart and imagination was kindled by Virgil’s magnificent epic, and I well remember how my voice broke as I tried to construe aloud the fourth book of the Æneid. One day, stumbling along, I came to the passage where Dido—the presents of Æneas heaped around her—gives up her life upon the funeral pyre; the agony of the dying queen, the cries of her sister, her nurse, her women; the horror of that scene that struck pity even to the hearts of the Immortals, all rose so vividly before me that my lips trembled, my words came more and more indistinctly, and at the line—

Quæsivit cœlo lucem ingemuitque reperta,

I stopped dead.

Then my dear father’s delicate tact stepped in. Apparently noticing nothing, he said, gently:

That will do for to-day, my boy; I am tired.

And I tore away to give vent to my Virgilian misery unmolested.

II

ESTELLE

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Will

it be credited that when I was only twelve years old, and even before I fell under the spell of music, I became the victim of that cruel passion so well described by the Mantuan?

My mother’s father, who bore a name immortalised by Scott—Marmion—lived at Meylan, about seven miles from Grenoble. This district, with its scattered hamlets, the valley of the winding Isère, the Dauphiny mountains that here join a spur of the Alps, is one of the most romantic spots I know. Here my mother, my sisters, and I usually passed three weeks towards the end of summer.

Now and then my uncle, Felix Marmion, who followed the fiery track of the great Emperor, would pay a flying visit during our stay, wreathed with cannon smoke and ornamented with a fine sabre cut across the face. He was then only adjutant-major in the Lancers; but young, gallant, ready to lay down his life for one look from his leader, he believed the throne of Napoleon as stable as Mont Blanc. His taste for music made him a great addition to our gay little circle, for he both sang and played the violin well.

High over Meylan, niched in a crevice of the mountain, stands a small white house, half-hidden amidst its vineyards and gardens, behind which rise the woods, the barren hills, a ruined tower, and St Eynard—a frowning mass of rock.

This sweet secluded spot, evidently predestined to romance, was the home of Madame Gautier, who lived there with two nieces, of whom the younger was called Estelle. Her name at once caught my attention from its being that of the heroine of Florian’s pastoral Estelle and Némorin, which I had filched from my father’s library, and read a dozen times in secret.

Estelle was just eighteen—tall, graceful, with large, grave, questioning eyes that yet could smile, hair worthy to ornament the helmet of Achilles, and feet—I will not say Andalusian, but pure Parisian, and on those little feet she wore ... pink slippers!

Never before had I seen pink slippers. Do not smile; I have forgotten the colour of her hair (I fancy it was black), yet, never do I recall Estelle but, in company with the flash of her large eyes, comes the twinkle of her dainty pink shoes. I had been struck by lightning. To say I loved her comprises everything. I hoped for, expected, knew nothing but that I was wretched, dumb, despairing. By night I suffered agonies, by day I wandered alone through the fields of Indian corn, or sought, like a wounded bird, the deepest recesses of my grandfather’s orchard.

Jealousy—dread comrade of love—seized me at the least word spoken by a man to my divinity; even now I shudder at the clank of a spur, remembering the noise of my uncle’s while dancing with her.

Every one in the neighbourhood laughed at the piteously precocious child, torn by his obsession. Perhaps Estelle laughed too, for she soon guessed all.

One evening, I remember, there was a party at Madame Gautier’s, and we played prisoner’s base. The men were bidden choose their partners, and I was purposely told to choose first. But I dared not, my heart-beats choked me; I lowered my eyes unable to speak. They were beginning to tease me when Estelle, smiling down from her beauteous height, caught my hand, saying:

Come! I will begin; I choose Monsieur Hector.

But ah! she laughed!

Does time heal all wounds; do other loves efface the first? Alas, no! With me time is powerless. Nothing wipes out the memory of my first love.

I was thirteen when we parted. I was thirty when, returning from Italy, I passed near St Eynard again. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of the little white house—the ruined tower. I loved her still!

On reaching home I heard that she was married; but even that could not cure me. A few days later my mother said:

"Hector, will you take this letter to the coach-office. It