Berlioz's actual biography is a long tale of storm and stress. Not only was he slow in gaining appreciation while he lived; full comprehension of his power was not granted him till after his energetic life was over. Recognition in his own country is incomplete to day. He was born in 1803, near picturesque Grenoble, in the little town of Côte St. André, the son of an excellent country doctor. Sent to Paris to study medicine, he became a musician against his father's wish, and in lieu of the allowance that his father promptly withdrew, the young man lived by engaging in the chorus of the Gymnase, and by catching at every straw for subsistence. He became a regular music-student of the Conservatory, under the admirable Lesueur and Reicha; quitted the Conservatory in disgust at its pedantry, in 1825; and lived and advanced in musical study as best he could for a considerable time. His convictions in art were founded largely on the rock of Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber; and however modern, and however widely his work departs from such academic models, Berlioz never forswore a certain allegiance to these great and serene masters. He returned to the Conservatory, studied hard, gained the Prix de Rome, gradually took a prominent place among Parisian composers, and was as enthusiastically the subject of a cult as was Wagner. His concerts and the production of his operas encountered shameful cabals. His strongest works were neglected or ill-served. To their honor, German musicians understood him, Schumann and Liszt in especial. Only in Germany to-day are his colossal operas heard. The Italian Paganini showed a generous interest in his struggles. Russia and Austria too admired him, while his compatriots hissed. His career was one of endless work, disappointments, brief successes, battles, hopes, and despairs. Personally, too, it was full of the happiness and unhappiness of the artistic temperament.
It was between the two periods of his Conservatory life that he endured his chief sentimental misfortune,--his falling in love with and finally marrying Henrietta Smithson. Miss Smithson was a young English actress playing Shakespearean roles in France with a passing success. She was exquisitely lovely--Delaroche has painted her spirituelle beauty in his 'Ophelia.' The marriage was the typically unfortunate artist-match; and she became a paralytic invalid for years. After her death, tours in Germany and elsewhere, new works, new troubles, enthusiasms, and disappointments filled up the remainder of the composer's days. He returned to his beloved Dauphiné, war-worn and almost as one who has outlived life. In his provincial retreat he composed the huge operatic duology 'The Trojans at Carthage,' and 'The Taking of Troy,' turning once more to Virgil, his early literary love. Neither of them is often heard now, any more than his amazing 'Benvenuto Cellini.' Their author died in Dauphiné in 1869, weary, disenchanted, but conscious that he would be greater in the eyes of a coming generation than ever he had been during his harassed life.
Berlioz's literary remains are valuable as criticisms, and their personal matter is of brisk and varied charm. His intense feeling for Shakespeare influenced his whole æsthetic life. He was extremely well read. His most unchecked tendency to romanticism was balanced by a fine feeling for the classics. He loved the greater Greek and Latin writers. His Autobiography is a perfect picture of himself emotionally, and exhibits his wide æsthetic nature. His Letters are equally faithful as portraiture. He possessed a distinctively literary style. He tells us how he fell in love--twice, thrice; records the disgraceful cabals and intrigues against his professional success, and explains how a landscape affected his nerves. He is excellent reading, apparently without taking much pains to be so. Vivacity, wit, sincerity, are salient traits. In his volume of musical essays entitled 'A Travers Chants' (an untranslatable title which may be paraphrased 'Memoirs of Music and Musicians') are superior appreciations of musicians and interpreters and performances in opera-house and concert-hall, expressed with grace and taste in the feuilletonist's best manner. In the Journal des Débats, year by year, he wrote himself down indisputably among the great French critics; and he never misused his critical post to make it a lever for his own advantage. His great treatise on Orchestration is a standard work not displaced by Gevaert or more recent authorities. He was not only a musical intelligence of enormous capacity: he offers perhaps as typical an embodiment of the French artistic temperament as can be pointed out.
THE ITALIAN RACE AS MUSICIANS AND AUDITORS
From Berlioz's Autobiography
It appears, however,--so at least I am assured,--that the Italians do occasionally listen. But at any rate, music to the Milanese, no less than to the Neapolitans, Romans, Florentines, and Genoese, means nothing but an air, a duet, or a trio, well sung. For anything beyond this they feel simply aversion or indifference. Perhaps these antipathies are mainly due to the wretched performance of their choruses and orchestras, which effectually prevents their knowing anything good outside the beaten track they have so long followed. Possibly, too, they may to a certain extent understand the flights of men of genius, if these latter are careful not to give too rude a shock to their rooted predilections. The great success of 'Guillaume Tell' at Florence supports this opinion, and even Spontini's sublime 'Vestale' obtained a series of brilliant representations at Naples some twenty-five years ago. Moreover, in those towns which are under the Austrian rule, you will see the people rush after a military band, and listen with avidity to the beautiful German melodies, so unlike their usual insipid cavatinas. Nevertheless, in general it is impossible to disguise the fact that the Italians as a nation really appreciate only the material effects of music, and distinguish nothing but its exterior forms.
Indeed, I am much inclined to regard them as more inaccessible to the poetical side of art, and to any conceptions at all above the common, than any other European nation. To the Italians music is a sensual pleasure, and nothing more. For this most beautiful form of expression they have scarcely more respect than for the culinary art. In fact, they like music which they can take in at first hearing, without reflection or attention, just as they would do with a plate of macaroni.
Now, we French, mean and contemptible musicians as we are, although we are no better than the Italians when we furiously applaud a trill or a chromatic scale by the last new singer, and miss altogether the beauty of some grand recitative or animated chorus, yet at least we can listen, and if we do not take in a composer's ideas it is not our fault. Beyond the Alps, on the contrary, people behave in a manner so humiliating both to art and to artists, whenever any representation is going on, that I confess I would as soon sell pepper and spice at a grocer's in the Rue St. Denis as write an opera for the Italians--nay, I would sooner do it.
Added to this, they are slaves to routine and to fanaticism to a degree one hardly sees nowadays, even at the Academy. The slightest unforeseen innovation, whether in melody, harmony, rhythm, or instrumentation, puts them into a perfect fury; so much so, that the dilettanti of Rome, on the appearance of Rossini's 'Barbiere di Seviglia' (which is Italian enough in all conscience), were ready to kill the young maestro for having the insolence to do anything unlike Paisiello.