VIII
Bearing in mind, then, that the Berlioz whom we have hitherto been discussing is mostly the youthful Berlioz—the writer of mad letters, the actor of extravagant parts, the composer of the Symphonie fantastique (1829-1830), and Lélio (1831-1832)—let us look for a moment at his art as it was then, and afterwards trace it through its later and more sober manifestations.
In trying to follow him historically we meet with this difficulty, that it is impossible to say exactly when some of his conceptions first saw the light. He was in the habit of using up an early piece of material in a later work, especially if the early work was one that had been tried and had failed. We know, as I have already said, that the theme of the opening of the Symphonie fantastique is taken from a boyish composition. A phrase from another boyish work—a quintet—is used again in the Francs Juges overture. Parts of the early cantata La Mort d'Orphée become the Chant d'amour and La harpe éolienne in Lélio. The Chœur d'ombres in Lélio is a reproduction of an aria in the scena Cléopâtre—one of his unsuccessful Prix de Rome essays. Part of the Messe solennelle (1824) goes into Benvenuto Cellini (1835-1837). The Marche au supplice in the Symphonie fantastique is taken from his youthful opera Les Francs Juges. The fantasia on The Tempest goes into Lélio. I strongly suspect, indeed, that more of his work dates from the first ten years of his artistic life (1824-1834) than we have ever imagined. My theory is that he was overflowing with ideas in his younger days, and that there was a gradual failure of them in his latest years, owing to the terrible physical tortures he endured, and the large quantities of morphia he had to take to still his pangs. At first he turns out work after work with great rapidity. Taking the larger ones alone, we have in 1826 [10] La révolution grecque, in 1827 or 1828 the Waverley and Francs Juges overtures, in 1828-1829 the eight Faust scenes, in 1829 the Irish Melodies, in 1829-1830 the Symphonie fantastique, in 1830 the Sardanapalus and the Tempête, in 1831 the Corsair and Le Roi Lear overtures, in 1831-1832 the Rob Roy overture, Le Cinq Mai, Lélio and part of the Tristia, in 1832-1833 various songs, in 1834 the Harold en Italie, and the Nuits d'Été, in 1835-1837 Benvenuto Cellini and the Messe des Morts, in 1838 the Roméo et Juliette. This is a good output for some twelve years of a busy and struggling man's life, during the earlier part of which he was little more than an apprentice in his art. Berlioz lived another thirty-one years, but in that time did surprisingly little. Again keeping to the larger works, we have in 1840 the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, in 1843 the Carnaval romain overture, in 1844 the Hymne à la France, in 1846 the completion of Faust, in 1848 the remainder of the Tristia, in 1851 La Menace des Francs, in 1850-1854 the Enfance du Christ, in 1849-1854 the Te Deum, in 1855 L'Impériale, in 1860-1862 Béatrice et Benedict, in 1856-1863 the double opera La Prise de Troie and Les Troyens à Carthage. Even allowing for the facts that in his middle and later periods he spent a good deal of time in foreign tours and in literary work, we shall still, I think, be forced to conclude that his ideas flowed more slowly in his later days, while they were certainly of an inferior quality at times. We must remember, too, that some of his works were written long before their production, and that there is sometimes reason to believe this to have been the case even where we have no positive testimony on the point. The idée fixe theme of the Symphonie fantastique first appeared in Herminie (1828); the "Harold" theme in the Harold en Italie had already figured on the cor anglais in the Rob Roy overture. It is probable that the Roméo et Juliette was not all written in 1838 as a consequence of Paganini's gift, as every one was led to believe; Berlioz had the idea of the work in 1829, and perhaps conceived some of the music then. [11] The Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, produced in 1840, was to a great extent written in 1835. The stirring phrases that are the life and soul of the Carnaval romain overture (1843) are taken from Benvenuto Cellini (1835-1837); while the theme of the love-episode in the overture had already appeared in Cléopâtre (1829). It is, indeed, impossible to say how much of the music of what I have called Berlioz's second epoch really dates from his first, thus still further diminishing the quantity belonging to the years after 1838. I think, if the truth were known, it would be found that one or two of the themes of Béatrice et Benedict, ostensibly written between 1860 and 1862, belong to 1828, when Berlioz first resolved to make an opera out of Shakespeare's play. It is incontestable that the ten years from 1828 to 1838 were years of inexhaustible musical inspiration. At times, he himself has told us, he thought his head would have burst under the peremptory pressure of his ideas; so rapidly did they flow, indeed, that he had to invent a kind of musical shorthand to help his pen to keep pace with them. There was, I take it, very little of this in the last two or three decades of his life. Make what allowances we will for other demands upon his time, it seems undeniable that his brain then worked less eagerly and less easily in musical things. Had the ideas been there in full vigour they would have come out in spite of all other occupations; and that they were not there as they were in his youth can only be explained, I think, on physiological grounds. [12]
The latter aspect of the case, however, will be dealt with more fully later on. Here we may just note that Berlioz's early life was in every way calculated to produce both the inflation of the prose style that we see in his letters and the eccentricity and exaggeration that we see in some of his early music. His friend Daniel Bertrand tells us that "in his youth he sometimes amused himself by deliberately starving, in order to know what evils genius could surmount; later on his stomach had to pay for these expensive fantasies." At the time of his infatuation with Henrietta Smithson, he used to play the maddest pranks with his already over-excited brain and body; he would take long night-walks without food, and sink into the sleep of utter exhaustion in the fields. His body, like his brain, could not be kept at rest; he had a mania for tramping and climbing that invariably carried him far beyond his powers of endurance. [13] In 1830 the veteran Rouget de l'Isle, without having seen the youthful musician, diagnosed him excellently from his correspondence—"Your head," he wrote, "seems to be a volcano perpetually in eruption." We may smile at his antics all through this epoch, especially in l'affaire Smithson. But though there may have been a little conscious pose in it all, it is unquestionable that in the bulk of it he was in deadly earnest. Twice he tried to commit suicide—once at Genoa, and again in the presence of Henrietta. Nor were they merely stage performances, mere efforts at effect; it was not his fault that they did not turn out successfully.