Hector Berlioz: A Romantic Tragedy

HERBERT F. PEYSER
Written for and dedicated to the RADIO MEMBERS of THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK
Copyright 1949 THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY of NEW YORK 113 West 57th Street New York 19, N. Y.
1865—Berlioz—Theme from the beginning of the Fantastique Symphony
A thumbnail sketch like the present is, of course, the last place in the world to recount even an infinitesimal part of a life so vivid and crowded with bitter conflict and tragic experience as that of Hector Berlioz; and the person who attempts it is beaten in advance. Moreover, such an effort seems almost gratuitous. For Berlioz has told his own story better than anyone else could possibly do it. When Ernest Newman was asked at one time to write a new biography of the epoch-making composer he informed the publisher who suggested it that “no Life by any other hands will ever be able to bear comparison as a piece of literature with Berlioz’ Autobiography. All others are for the most part a watering down into the author’s inferior style of the sparkling prose of Berlioz himself”. How much more futile is it to attempt on the minuscule scale of the following tiny, if rambling, pamphlet to touch upon even a thousandth of those achievements and unremitting conflicts which entered into the texture of this master’s agitated and inharmonious life! Actually, it aims to do no more than contribute a mite toward a larger interest in the writings and the great mass of insufficiently discovered compositions of a Romanticist whose labors are still surprisingly unrecognized art works of the future.
H. F. P.
By HERBERT F. PEYSER
“No doubt I deserve to go to Hell”, said Berlioz once to a friend who had reproached him for his treatment of Henrietta Smithson, his first wife; “but what would you have? I am in Hell already!”
It was not an exaggeration or a figure of speech. Berlioz was in hell the greater part of his life. Of all the great composers he was perhaps the most consistently wretched. Misery and frustration pursued him from his youth to his grave. Time and again his existence seemed like the fulfillment of a curse. Actually, his mother had called one down upon him at the very beginning of his career and for the rest of his days it appeared to work itself out implacably. One might even believe the malediction had retained its power beyond the tomb. For the posthumous glory of Berlioz is by no means unchallenged. Almost alone among the masters he does not command anything like universal admiration, let alone affection. He has his redoubtable champions and they include many of the greatest musicians, living and dead. But where Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner need no defense Berlioz incontestably does. Rightly or wrongly he continues to be a problem, with all that this condition implies. Yet without him music could not conceivably be just what it is. And perhaps the strangest aspect of the paradox is that only a limited portion of his output enjoys anything like what might be called frequent hearing. The greater part of his greatest works remains to all intents, undiscovered—nay, unsuspected—by the multitude.