[28] Wagner, who had criticised Berlioz since 1840, and who published a detailed study of his works in his Oper und Drama in 1851, wrote to Liszt in 1855: "I own that it would interest me very much to make the acquaintance of Berlioz's symphonies, and I should like to see the scores. If you have them, will you lend them to me?"
[29] See Berlioz's letter, cited by J. Tiersot, Hector Berlioz et la société de son temps, p. 275.
[30] Roméo, Faust, La Nonne sanglante.
[31] I shall content myself here with noting a fact, which I shall deal with more fully in another essay at the end of this book: it is the decline of musical taste in France—and, I rather think, in all Europe—since 1835 or 1840. Berlioz says in his Mémoires: "Since the first performance of Roméo et Juliette the indifference of the French public for all that concerns art and literature has grown incredibly" (Mémoires, II, 263). Compare the shouts of excitement and the tears that were drawn from the dilettanti of 1830 (Mémoires, I, 81), at the performances of Italian operas or Gluck's works, with the coldness of the public between 1840 and 1870. A mantle of ice covered art then. How much Berlioz must have suffered. In Germany the great romantic age was dead. Only Wagner remained to give life to music; and he drained all that was left in Europe of love and enthusiasm for music. Berlioz died truly of asphyxia.
[32] Here is an official list of the towns where Benvenuto has been played since 1879 (I am indebted for this information to M. Victor Chapót, Berlioz's grandnephew). They are, in alphabetical order: Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, Dresden, Frankfort-On-Main, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Hamburg, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Mannheim, Metz, Munich, Prague, Schwerin, Stettin, Strasburg, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Weimar.
[33] Mémoires, II, 420.
[34] "I do not know how Berlioz has managed to be cut off like this. He has neither friends nor followers; neither the warm sun of popularity nor the pleasant shade of friendship" (Liszt to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 16 May, 1861).
[35] In a letter to Bennet he says, "I am weary, I am weary...." How often does this piteous cry sound in his letters towards the end of his life. "I feel I am going to die.... I am weary unto death" (21 August, 1868—six months before his death).
[36] Letter to Asger Hammerick, 1865.
[37] Letters to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 22 July, 21 September, 1862; and August, 1864.