[94] These words are taken from Berlioz's directions on the score of his arrangement of the Marseillaise for full orchestra and double choir.
[95] "From Beethoven," says Berlioz, "dates the advent in art of colossal forms" (Mémoires, II, 112). But Berlioz forgot one of Beethoven's models—Händel. One must also take into account the musicians of the French revolution: Mehul, Gossec, Cherubini, and Lesueur, whose works, though they may not equal their intentions, are not without grandeur, and often disclose the intuition of a new and noble and popular art.
[96] Letter to Morel, 1855. Berlioz thus describes the Tibiomnes and the Judex of his Te Deum. Compare Heine's judgment: "Berlioz's music makes me think of gigantic kinds of extinct animals, of fabulous empires.... Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the wonders of Nineveh, the daring buildings of Mizraim."
[97] Mémoires, I, 17.
[98] Letter to an unknown person, written probably about 1855, in the collection of Siegfried Ochs, and published in the Geschichte der französischen Musik of Alfred Bruneau, 1904. That letter contains a rather curious analytical catalogue of Berlioz's works, drawn up by himself. He notes there his predilection for compositions of a "colossal nature," such as the Requiem, the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, and the Te Deum, or those of "an immense style," such as the Impériale.
[99] Mémoires, II, 364. See also the letter quoted above.
[100] Mémoires, II, 363. See also II, 163, and the description of the great festival of 1844, with its 1,022 performers.
[101] Hermann Kretzschmar, Führer durch den Konzertsaal.
[102] Mémoires, I, 312.
[103] Letter to some young Hungarians, 14 February, 1861. See the Mémoires, II, 212, for the incredible emotion which the Marche de Rakoczy roused in the audience at Budapest, and, above all, for the astonishing scene at the end:—