He once talked of an opera in which a wicked King was to arrange a burlesque of the Day of Judgment, only to have his performance interrupted by the real coming of Christ and the blast of angel trumpeters. He heard children singing in St. Paul's Cathedral, and had a vision of devils burlesquing the scene in hell.

Wagner said of him: " He lies buried beneath the ruins of his own machines." Heine's estimate of him is well worth quoting :' A colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle, such as once existed, they say, in the primitive world. Yes, the music of Berlioz in general has for me something primitive, almost antediluvian; it sets me dreaming of gigantic species of extinct animals, of mammoths, of fabulous empires with fabulous sins, of all kinds of impossibilities piled one on top of the other, these magic accents recall to us Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh, the audacious edifices of Mizraim.

After all, Belioz was one of the big men who compel not only admiration in what they archive, but sympathy in what they aim at and failed to compass.

Later on, like so many more composers, he went to Italy to complete his training. From Rome he was recalled in a very amusing way. It was almost a necessity of Berlioz's nature that he should be in love, and his passions were of such heat and fervour that they rarely failed to carry him beyond all bounds of reason.

It was so now. He heard that a frivolous and unscrupulous Parisian beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse rather freely, was about to be married. The news should have given him joy, but, instead of that, it set up a spirit of revenge, and he hurried off to Paris with loaded pistols, not even waiting for passports.

It was shortly after this that he saw a pretty Irish actress on the stage, and fell hopelessly in love with her. A romantic passion it was, and it dominated Berlioz's life. Harriet Smithson was playing Shakespeare, and for Berlioz she became a celestial divinity, a lovely ideal of art and beauty, a personification of the transcendent genius of the dramatist.

Two of Berlioz's greatest works--the Symphonie Fantastique and the Romeo and Juliet symphony--were directly inspired by his passion for Harriet Smithson. The first won him his wife. It also won him the handsome pecuniary reward of 20,000 francs, paid him out of sheer admiration by the weird, gaunt, demon fiddler Paganini,whose "dark flowing hair" Leigh Hunt sings.

Writing of his life in Paris in 1837, the late Sir Charles Halle gives this little sketch of Berlioz, then a young man of thirty-four: "There never lived a musician who adored his art more than did Berlioz; he was, indeed,'enthusiasm personified.' To hear him speak of, or rave about, a real chef-d euvre such as Armida, Iphigenie,or the C minor symphony, the pitch of his voice rising higher and higher as he talked, was worth any performance of the same.

For a genius of his rank, Berlioz had extraordinary limitations. He was no executant upon any instrument (for being able to strum a few chords on the guitar does not count), and he was painfully aware how much this was a hindrance to him and to his knowledge of musical literature, which indeed was limited. Halle was often astonished to.find that works familiar to every pianist were unknown to him--not merely works written for the piano, such as Beethoven's sonatas, of which he knew but few, but also orchestral works, oratorios, etc., known to pianists through arrangements

Perhaps many undoubted crudities in his work would have been eliminated had he been able to hear them before committing fhem to paper, for the eye alone was not sufficient to give him a clear idea of the effect of his musical combinations. Berlioz died in I869. He had married a second time, but he outlived his wife, and latterly had to be taken care of by his mother-in-law.

The above was written by Cuthbert Haddon in 1916.

Last Updated on 17th November 2003 by Reg

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