Hector Berlioz: A Romantic Tragedy

It is one of the real misfortunes of musical history that Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner never became to each other the kinsmen and spiritual brothers they should have been. Some unhappy flaw in their respective natures always thwarted a consummation which, one feels, fate should have preordained. Or some barrier sprang up between them precisely at the moment they should best have complemented each other. They had, in the larger sense, the same ideals, the same luminous visions, the same majestic aims, the same reluctance to palter and to compromise. They were both tortured by nerves and exacerbated by futile suspicions and jealousies. Yet each had the true measure of the other’s importance, whether admitted or not. Prejudices and preconceptions, sometimes artificially fostered, if not fed by envy or rankling disappointment had a way of cropping up to blind them as soon as they gave promise of seeing eye to eye. Wagner was the stronger of the two, not only as to creative power but in toughness of fibre. But if they were not equally matched, the differences and asperities of the one fitted perfectly into the natural flaws and crudities of the other, as Wagner himself once took occasion to point out.

Berlioz appears to have recognized in Wagner, much as he may have resented it, a force of the future which sooner or later must challenge him. All the same, it is wrong to imagine that Wagner underrated his French rival, however he discerned the weaknesses of his work. His appreciation of the artist Berlioz was broader and more fundamental than the appreciation of Berlioz for him, which was so often soured by jealousy and blinded by bias. Wagner was incontestably sincere when he wrote: “We must honor Berlioz as the true renewer of modern music”. Too few people are familiar with that extraordinary episode at Bayreuth, long after the Frenchman’s death when the ageing Wagner flew into a towering rage on hearing the still youthful Felix Mottl criticise some detail of a Berlioz work. “When a master like Berlioz writes something you are too shallow to grasp your duty is to accept it without question or murmur!” he had screamed at his astonished disciple.

Only once did the pair draw close enough to justify the belief that they might have developed, under more hospitable circumstances, a lasting friendship. This was in 1855, when the two men, in the depths of discouragement, met in London whither Wagner had come to conduct the Old Philharmonic. The improved relations were only temporary. The creator of “Tristan” appreciated that the jealous Marie Recio stood in the way of any lasting rapprochement. And he confided to Liszt that “a malicious wife can ruin a brilliant man ... and bring out the worst aspects of his character; indeed, I have sometimes to wonder if God would not have done better to have left women out of the scheme of creation”. In 1861, at the “Tannhäuser” fiasco at the Paris Opéra, Berlioz played a part that reflects eternal discredit on his memory, even if the shabby treatment he so often endured at the hands of his countrymen could account for his spitefulness.

* * *

The domestic situation of Berlioz had hopelessly deteriorated. Harriet, lame, coarse, shrewish had lost the last vestiges of her once admired beauty and talent. She was in due course to suffer paralytic strokes and then to become bedridden. Her son, Louis, having grown to young manhood, became an “aspirant-marinier” at Le Havre and decided to follow the sea, inheriting an early but unfulfilled ambition of his father. A true sailor he had a wife in every port and Hector, who was aware of the wanderer’s inclinations, sometimes longed to meet those grandchildren of his he knew lived scattered through the hemispheres. Now and then Louis would return briefly to Paris and look in on his wretched mother at her little house on the hill of Montmartre. Occasionally he would seek out his father at his domicile near the Place Pigalle—though only when Marie Recio was out! The moment he heard her footsteps in the hall he would flee. He could not pardon his father and he said so unmistakably. So did others! To all reproaches the unhappy composer had only one helpless answer: “What would you? I love her.”

Yet if that far-off adoration of his Ophelia and Juliet had, apparently, long since turned to ashes something like retribution was to overtake him. For years he had been paying her routine visits, understanding her solitude even as she divined his misery. But early in March, 1854, he was called to her bedside and found her dying. At that, he was not even granted the wretched solace of receiving her last breath! Harriet expired a few moments after he had left the house on some trivial errand. The blow was far more terrible than Hector had thought possible. In a flash he recognized that he really loved the wife more than he did the mistress; and in prodigious rebellion he cursed “that stupid God, atrocious in his infinite indifference”. To his son he wrote: “You will never know what your mother and I suffered because of each other and it was these sufferings which brought us so close together. It was as impossible for me to live with her as without her!” He was to see her once again! Ten years later they exhumed her and, in Hector’s presence, placed her ghastly remains in a new coffin and reinterred them in the Montmartre Cemetery.

In October, 1854, Berlioz legalized the situation of Marie Recio by marrying her.

* * *

More wanderings lay ahead of him. He could have gone to New York, had he so chosen, and conducted concerts there. Rightly or wrongly he declined the offer. But in 1855 he harvested rich honors at a Berlioz Festival which his untiring champion, Liszt, staged in Weimar. A work which greatly stirred the audience at the Weimar Court Theatre was the newly composed “L’Enfance du Christ”. This exquisite “legend”, as simple, transparent and unpretentious as most of his other works are huge in scale and demanding, is a delicate little trilogy divided into sections respectively called “Herod’s Dream”, “The Flight to Egypt” and “The Arrival in Sais”. It looked, for a while, like a turn in Hector’s fortunes. Almost wherever the oratorio was performed it met with a favor to which the composer was quite unaccustomed. In Paris there actually were ovations and the press spoke of a “masterpiece”!

Berlioz was aware that Wagner, slowly but surely, was elaborating his gigantic “Nibelungen” project and he, too, became gradually filled with a scheme for a mythological opera. His old love for Virgil’s gods and heroes, dating back to the days of his boyhood and his Latin readings in his father’s library, reasserted itself. He dreamed of a vast fresco in which the siege of Troy, Aeneas, Hector, Priam, Cassandra, Dido and the rest of the splendid personages of the Mediterranean world should be combined in the action of a great lyric tragedy carried out “in the Shakespearian manner.” But though the idea fired him it also terrified him as he thought of the giant efforts it involved and the disappointments it was sure to entail. He confided his ambitions and his fears to Liszt’s friend, the Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein. It was she who spurred him to the task and overrode his doubts and scruples.

“You must create this opera, this lyric poem or whatever you choose to call it”, the Princess insisted, and as he continued to plead the troubles it meant, she silenced him with a pretended severity: “Listen! If you shun the sufferings which this labor may and, indeed, ought to cause you—if you are so weak as to be afraid of it, if you refuse to dare everything for the sake of Dido and Cassandra, then stay away from me, I never want to see you again!”

It was a liberating word and Berlioz returned to Paris for the heart-breaking business of writing poem and music. He had foreseen its pains and obstacles only too clearly, but he wrestled furiously with them and kept the oath he had given. Sombre and lonely he composed, revised, expanded, cut down, suppressed and altered in a thousand different ways. The epic seemed to be taking all sorts of impractical forms and the composer realized that even all the conventional devices of dramaturgy might not avail to fit it for the theatre. Two years of intensive work brought the end of the score in 1858. Meanwhile Berlioz had terminated his Memoirs, which he kept at the Conservatoire out of fear that his second wife, in the course of her often indiscreet searchings, might light upon some secrets he preferred to hide. In the end he confided the manuscript to Liszt, to thwart Marie’s curiosity if he were to die. For Hector had been much haunted by thoughts of death as the time went by. Years of disappointment were more and more taking toll of his nervous system. He was tortured by what the doctors called “intestinal neuralgia”, against which medicine appeared to be unavailing.

“Les Troyens” was, in many ways, the supreme blow of his life and more than anything else his child of sorrow. In the year of its completion he tried in vain to have it sung at the Opéra. Three years later that institution accepted it but did not give it. Finally, Léon Carvalho, manager of the Théâtre Lyrique, mounted it on November 4, 1863. The composer had found it necessary to divide his six and a half hour opera into two parts—“La Prise de Troie” and “Les Troyens à Carthage”—to make a performance possible at all. At that there were cuts, changes, revisions without end, and to this day versions and “editions” have been found indispensable if the work is to be made a practical stage piece. The first presentation did not include the “Prise de Troie” half, and this portion of the work, of which Cassandra, the composer’s beloved “heroic virgin” is the central figure, Berlioz was never to witness. In spite of innumerable difficulties and the unfinished state of the representation the piece was moderately successful at first, the reviews in the main favorable, the box office fair and Hector himself delighted with as much of his creation as he heard. But the worries and tribulations the opera involved (for any change he wanted Hector had to pay out of his own pocket) brought a nervous breakdown and he managed to attend no more than four performances. As soon as his back was turned the management cut and slashed the score without compunction. By the end of a month audiences had fallen off to such an extent that, before Christmas, “Les Troyens” disappeared from the repertoire. This new blow promised to break the unhappy composer’s spirit altogether. “My career is finished” he told someone who hoped for an early resumption of the work. “I have neither hopes, illusions nor great ideas left”, he reflected bitterly; “my contempt for the stupidity and dishonesty of people has reached its peak....” And when he was told that audiences were beginning to flock to hear some work of his he would reply: “Yes, they are coming; but I am going!”

On June 14, 1862, Marie Recio died suddenly of a heart attack. The blow struck Hector much less violently than did the passing of his first wife. Possibly the circumstance that he was engaged on a new work at the time somewhat blunted the edge of his grief. This latest creation—his last, as it proved—was the two act opera comique, “Béatrice et Bénédict”, a lyric version of “Much Ado About Nothing”—given for the first time at the newly built casino in Baden-Baden. “Béatrice et Bénédict” proved to be a repetition of the “Enfance du Christ” surprise—a brilliant success from the first. Berlioz was happy, but also cynical. “People are now discovering that I have melody, that I can be jubilant and even humorous!” he wrote. Another triumph of the new work at Weimar, in 1863, further demonstrated that the piece had been born under a lucky star. Like Verdi, thirty years later, Berlioz was disposed to conclude his creative career with a comedy inspired by his idolized Shakespeare. “I have written the final note with which I shall ever soil a scrap of music paper. No more of that! Othello’s occupation’s gone; I should like to have nothing more to do—nothing, absolutely nothing!” Actually, he had much more to do—conducting, writing, traveling, suffering. Yet so far as making music was concerned he was finished.

After Marie Recio’s death Hector lived with his mother-in-law, whom he esteemed and who, in turn, loved him. Love of a different kind still lured him on. He met a young girl, by name Amélie and felt a fresh upsurge of romantic passion. But in six months she, too, was dead. Meanwhile Berlioz and his son had drawn much closer together, spiritually. Yet Louis was generally far from France and the pair, though they corresponded, saw but little of each other. One evening a number of Hector’s closest musical friends, angered by the persistent neglect of the composer by his own countrymen, staged a little private glorification in his honor. They waited for the guest of the occasion and when time passed and he did not come a messenger was sent to fetch him. Berlioz lay on the floor of his room, writhing in an agony of grief. He had just received word that Louis was dead in Havana!

He was inspired by a sudden wish to renew one of the ties of his boyhood. And the thoughts of the eternal adolescent turned to Estelle Duboeuf, his “Stella Montis” of long ago. She was now a widowed old lady, patrician and proper, who had had a number of children, all of whom she had carefully reared and some of whom she had lost. She lived in Lyon and to that city Hector presently turned his steps. Estelle Fornier, amazed by the unexpected visit and the importunities of her ageing and weather-beaten guest, received him in kindly fashion, alluded tactfully to his agitated life but, with gentle firmness, discouraged his pleas for a somewhat closer friendship. Nevertheless, Berlioz was carried away by the mere joy of the meeting; and he chose to place an extravagant interpretation on a few commonplace phrases of hers and the words “affectionate sentiments” with which she had concluded a brief message. He continued from afar to worship this mirage and to build it up into elaborate fictions. He corresponded further with the decorous old lady, imagined vain things and confided to the Princess Wittgenstein “this kind of suffering is indispensable to me.”

Meanwhile, he was off again on travels. In 1866 he conducted “La Damnation de Faust” in Vienna and in 1867 led half a dozen concerts in St. Petersburg where he made the acquaintance of Balakireff, Tchaikovsky and other Russian musicians, till, unable to endure the rigors of that climate, he returned to France, longing passionately for the sunshine and warmth of the Riviera. Walking on the beach at Monaco he suffered a bad fall the consequence, it appears, of a slight stroke, which recurred a few days later. He rallied, however, though once back in Paris he found it necessary to spend long and dreary days in bed. He had made his will, leaving his books and scores to the Conservatoire and distributing his meager “fortune” to his nieces, besides settling a sum of 1800 francs on Estelle Fornier (which she is said to have declined) and providing a tiny income for his mother-in-law. Of his various crowns, laurel wreaths and other “trophies” he made superb bonfire! “I feel that I am going to die” he wrote his Russian friend, Vladimir Stassoff. “I believe in nothing any more ... I am exorbitantly bored. Farewell! Writing causes me no end of trouble.”

Gradually his faculties refused to function; little by little his brain became clouded, his tongue thickened, he made no attempt to talk and appeared to want nothing. On March 8, 1869, the long-embattled and sore-tried fighter, who had never attained inner or outer harmony, found peace. A final touch of irony was provided by the fact that his graveside valedictory was spoken, in the name of the Conservatoire, by a certain Elwart, to whom Berlioz had once said: “If you are to make a speech at my funeral I prefer not to die!”

COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
by
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

COLUMBIA RECORDS

Under the Direction of Bruno Walter

Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9

Beethoven—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major (with Joseph Szigeti)—LP

Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf Serkin, piano)—LP

Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21—LP

Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)

Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP

Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP

Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)

Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1

Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G major—LP

Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP

Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor

Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP

Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein, violin)

Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture

Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP

Schubert—Symphony No. 9 in C major

Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP

Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)

Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski

Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts)

Griffes—“The White Peacock”, Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″

Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucassian Sketches (W. Lincer and M. Nazzi, soloists)

Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP

Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP

Wagner—Die Walkure—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III—Scene 3)

Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz

Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″

Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar Levant, piano)—LP

Herold—Zampa—Overture

Kabalevsky—“The Comedians”, Op. 26—LP

Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite Dances—LP

Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP

Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP

Prokofieff—March, Op. 99

Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″

Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″

Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP

Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”

Wieniawski—Concerto No. 2 in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22 (with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP

Under the Direction of Charles Münch

Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor, No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano, Op. 78—LP

Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud

Milhaud—Suite Francaise

Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski

Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)

Bizet—Symphony in C major

Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP

Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP

Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP

Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP

Ibert—“Escales” (Ports of Call)

Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP

Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)

Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP

Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP

Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with Gyorgy Sandor, piano)

Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor

Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus)—LP

Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor

Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP

Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP

Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”)—LP

Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2)—(with Helen Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP

Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano)

Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP

Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)

Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Herbert Janssen, baritone)

Wagner—Die Walkure—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Emery Darcy, tenor)

Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture

Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP

Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)

Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods

Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP

Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet—LP

Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP

Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP

Under the Direction of John Barbirolli

Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)

Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture

Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major

Brahms—Academic Festival Overture

Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP

Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)

Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet

Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)

Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183

Ravel—La Valse

Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol

Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor

Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major

Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture

Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)—LP

Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham

Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)

Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)

Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP

Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz

Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant)—LP

LP—Also available on Long Playing Microgroove Recordings as well as on the conventional Columbia Masterworks.

VICTOR RECORDS

Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini

Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major

Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn

Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits

Haydn—Symphony No. 4 in D major (The Clock)

Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo

Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)

Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture

Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture

Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and II

Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Gotterdammerung—Siegfried Idyll

Under the Direction of John Barbirolli

Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)

Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn

Respighi—Fountains of Rome

Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the Philharmonic Symphony League of New York)

Schubert—Symphony No. 4 in C minor (Tragic)

Schumann—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin)

Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia

Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg

J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major

J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra)

Beethoven—Egmont Overture

Handel—Alcina Suite

Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)

Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March

Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)

Schelling—Victory Ball

Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture

Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

Special Booklets published for
RADIO MEMBERS
of
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G. Schirmer’s)

BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn

BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn

MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser

WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar

TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F. Peyser

SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser

MENDELSSOHN and certain MASTERWORKS by Herbert F. Peyser

ROBERT SCHUMANN—Tone-Poet, Prophet and Critic by Herbert F. Peyser

These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the limited supply lasts.

A wealth of great music superbly performed by the magnificent Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York is available on COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS RECORDS. For your greater listening pleasure hear this immortal music as it was written, with pauses only where the composer intended, on COLUMBIA’S revolutionary LONG PLAYING LP MICROGROOVE RECORDS, which play up to fifty minutes of music with breathtaking concert hall fidelity.

Among the memorable works recorded for COLUMBIA by the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York are the following:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67. Bruno Walter conducting.

*ML 4009 Set MM-498

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73. Artur Rodzinski conducting.

*ML 4068 Set MM-725

Khachaturian: Gayne—Ballet Suites Nos. 1 and 2. Efrem Kurtz conducting.

*ML 4030 Set MM-664 and Set MX-292

Schubert: Symphony No. 7 in C Major. Bruno Walter conducting.

*ML 4093 Set MM-679

Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32. Leopold Stokowski conducting.

*ML 4071 Set MM-806

Wagner: Die Walküre—Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music. Leopold Stokowski conducting.

Set MX-301

*LP Records (Long Playing)

Transcriber’s Notes

• A few palpable typos were silently corrected.
• Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.
• Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)