His monster concerts and the huge Orchestra he required were subject to ridicule and caricature. The comic papers were full of illustrated jokes at his expense.
“I am so sorry to hear that your husband has become deaf. How did it happen?” one sympathetic lady says to a friend, who replies, “Well, you see he would go to that last concert of Berlioz!”
Another picture shows two street venders looking at one of their tribe flaunting a rich dress. “How did she become so rich?” one asks the other; and the latter explains: “Why, she sells cotton at the door of Berlioz’s concerts for people to stuff in their ears!”
Berlioz’s symphony Harold in Italy, written in 1834, at Paganini’s request for a solo part in which he could exhibit his fine Stradivari viola, attracted some attention when it was performed at the Conservatory. His dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette, performed at the Conservatory in 1839, won him fresh laurels. It was dedicated to Paganini, who having heard the Fantastic Symphony and Harold in Italy given under Berlioz’s direction at a concert in Paris in 1838, dropped on his knees before the composer, kissed his hand and the next day sent him a cheque for twenty thousand francs ($4,000). Berlioz spent much time polishing this score; and of all his compositions he preferred the Adagio (love scene) of Roméo et Juliette Symphony.
Berlioz’s life was comparatively uneventful. His operas, Benvenuto Cellini and Béatrice et Bénédict (Much Ado about Nothing) and his two works on the Trojan War were unsuccessful. His gigantic works such as the Damnation of Faust and Requiem were also failures. His success was gained outside of his beloved Paris in 1843 and 1847, when he gave concerts in Germany and Russia. His extraordinary reception amazed his own countrymen, with whom Berlioz was never popular.
In 1852 he became Librarian at the Paris Conservatory. France gave him the cross of the Legion of Honor and other countries bestowed decorations upon him.
“Liszt was at first a pianist, the most extraordinary and fascinating ever known, and one of the most wonderful of improvisators. Yielding to the taste of the time, he composed Fantasias, arrangements, or paraphrases, upon fashionable operas, bristling with difficulties of execution so extreme that no one but himself could attempt to play them.
“It was not until a later period that he began really to compose and then he brought into his work the quality of mysticism which was in his own nature.”[77]
Franz Liszt (1811-1886), is another phenomenon in musical history. He was great as a pianist, great as a composer, great as a conductor, great as a man, great as a friend. In looking over his life it seems incredible that any man could have accomplished so much and in so many varied directions.
All the good fairies of fortune presided over his career from his earliest hours. He was born at Raiding in Hungary, in 1811, the son of Adam Liszt, an official in the Imperial service of Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy (the patron of Haydn) and amateur musician, who taught his son so well that at the age of nine years he appeared at a concert in Œdenburg. Soon afterwards several Hungarian noblemen subscribed a sum to provide for his education for six years. Young Franz studied with Czerny and Salieri (Mozart’s rival) in Vienna and in 1823 played before Beethoven, who embraced him on the stage. In that year “the little Liszt” was taken to Paris by his father and there he had the best instruction. After the death of his father in 1827, he supported himself and his mother in Paris, by teaching and giving concerts.