[From a drawing by Sir Edwin Landseer. (Grove.)]
It is impossible after this lapse of time to realize the sensation which Paganini's appearances made. His tall, emaciated figure and haggard face, his piercing black eyes and the furor of passion which characterized his playing, made him seem like one possessed, and many hearers were prepared to assert of their own knowledge that they had seen him assisted by the Evil Spirit. His caprices remain the sheet anchor of the would-be virtuoso. The entire art of violin playing rests upon two works—the Bach sonatas for violin solo, and the great Paganini caprices. Everything of which the violin is capable, or which any virtuoso has been able to find in it, is contained in these works.
Upon two composers of this century Paganini's influence was extremely powerful. Schumann took his departure from the Paganini caprices, seeking to perform upon the piano the same kind of effect which Paganini had obtained from the violin, or to discover others equivalent to them. And Liszt set himself to do upon the piano the same kind of impossibilities which Paganini had performed upon the violin. Both these masters accomplished more than they planned for. Schumann enriched the current of musical discourse by his experiments having their departure from Paganini, thereby accomplishing something which Paganini did not; for while the great violinist's works are of astonishing value for the violin, they are not particularly significant as tone-poetry. They are pleasing and sensational, and at times passionate, show pieces for the virtuoso.
II.
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), for whose genius Paganini had such admiration, was perhaps the most remarkable French personality in music during the nineteenth century, and one of the most commanding in the whole world of music. He was born at Grenoble, in the south of France. His father, a physician, intended that the son should follow his own profession, but when the young Berlioz was sent to Paris to study medicine, at the age of eighteen, music proved too strong for him, and he entered the Conservatory as a pupil of Lesueur. His parents were so incensed by this course that the paternal supplies were cut off, and the young enthusiast was driven to the expedient of earning a scanty living by singing in the opera chorus at an obscure theater, La Gymnase Dramatique. The daring originality of the young musician, and his habit of regarding every rule as open to question, rendered him anything but a favorite with Cherubini, the director of the Conservatory, and it was only after several trials that he carried off the prize for composition. The second instance of this kind occurred in 1830, the piece being a dramatic cantata "Sardanapole," which gained him the prize of Rome, carrying with it a pension sufficient to maintain the winner during three years in Italy.
On his return to Paris, he found it extremely difficult to secure a living by his compositions, their originality and the scale upon which he carried them out, placing them outside the conventional markets for new musical works designed for public performance. In this strait he took to writing for the press, in the Journal des Débats, for which his talent was little, if any, less marked than for musical production upon the largest scale. As a writer, he was keen, sarcastic, bright and sympathetic. A man of the world, and at the same time an artist, he touched everything with the characteristic lightness and raciness of the born feuilletonist. Very soon (in 1834), he produced his symphony "Harold en Italie," which Paganini so much admired that he presented Berlioz with the very liberal, even princely douceur of 20,000 francs ($4,000). Meanwhile Berlioz was unable to secure recognition in Paris. His compositions were regarded as extravagant and fantastic, and Parisians were curiously surprised at the reception the composer met with in Germany, when he traveled there in 1842 and 1843, and again in 1852, bringing out his works. The Germans were by no means unanimous regarding his merits. Mendelssohn, who found Berlioz most interesting as a man, had no admiration for his music. To him it appeared crazy and unbeautiful. The sole recognition which Berlioz had in France was the librarianship of the Conservatoire, with a modest salary, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In spite of the small esteem in which this clever master was held by his countrymen during his life, he produced a succession of remarkable works, without which the art of music would have missed some of its brightest pages. Among these we may mention his dramatic legend of "The Damnation of Faust," for solos, chorus and orchestra, which marks one of the highest points reached by program music. This great work is now generally accepted as one of the best of the romantic productions, and the orchestral pieces in it have become part of the standard repertory of orchestras everywhere.
Berlioz was above all the composer of the grandiose, the magnificent. This appears in his earliest works. In 1837 he composed his Requiem, for the funeral obsequies of General Damremont. This work is of unprecedented proportions. It is scored for chorus, solos and orchestra, the latter occasionally of extraordinary appointment. In the "Tuba Mirum," for example, he desires full chorus of strings, and four choirs of wood-wind and brass. The wood-wind consists of twelve horns, eight oboes, and four clarinets, two piccolos and four flutes. The brass is disposed in four choirs as follows, each at one of the corners of the stage; the first consists of four trumpets, four tenor trombones and two tubas; the second of four trumpets and four tenor trombones; the third the same; the fourth of four trumpets, four tenor trombones and four ophicleides. The bewildering answers of these four choirs of brass give place at the words "Hear the awful trumpet sounding," to a single bass voice, accompanied by sixteen kettle drums, tuned to a chord. A movement of similar sonority is the "Rex Tremendæ Majestatis." At other times the work is very melodious. It is indeed singular that a young composer should commence his career with a piece so daring. But to Berlioz's credit it must be said he never makes a mistake in his calculations of effect. When he desires contrast and blending effect of different masses, these results always follow whenever his work is performed according to his directions.
All the music of Berlioz belongs to the category of "program music," that is to say, everywhere there is an attempt at painting a scene or representing something by means of music, that something being habitually suggested and explained by the text, if the work be vocal, or by explanatory notes, if the work be instrumental. This is as true of his symphonies, "Romeo and Juliet," and "Harold in Italy," as in the vocal works themselves. The list of these contains an oratorio, "The Childhood of Christ" (1854), "The Damnation of Faust" (1846), the operas "Benvenuto Cellini," produced at the Académie, 1838, "The Trojans" (1856), "Beatrice et Benedict" (1863). The first was performed under the direction of Liszt at Weimar, about 1850, but with indifferent success. Berlioz instrumented several pianoforte compositions for orchestra, the best known of them being Weber's "Invitation to the Dance," and "Polonaise in E flat." His treatise upon instrumentation, published in 1864, remained standard until since the appearance of the elaborate and more systematic work upon this subject by F.A. Gevaert. The greatest of Berlioz's works is his splendid "Te Deum," written during the years 1854 and 1855, for some kind of festival performance. He planned this composition as part of a great trilogy of an epic-dramatic character in honor of Napoleon, the first consul. At the moment of his return from his Italian campaigns, he was to have been represented as entering Notre Dame, where this "Te Deum" is sung by an appointment of musical forces consisting of a double chorus of 200 voices, a third choir of 600 children, an orchestra of 134, an organ, and solo voices. The entire work was never completed, and the "Te Deum" had its first and only representation in Berlioz's lifetime at the opening of the Palace of Industry, April 30, 1855. The work is full of splendid conceptions, and is freer from eccentricities than any other of the author. It is extremely sonorous, and is destined to be better known as festival occasions upon a larger scale become more numerous.
The whole effect of Berlioz's activity was that of a virtuoso in the department of dramatic and descriptive music, and in the art of wielding large orchestral masses. It is curious that between him and Wagner the relations should never have been cordial, although the ends proposed by both were substantially identical, and the genius of both incontestable. Berlioz had no confidence in Wagner's "endless melody," and when he writes about music he does so in the attitude of a humble follower of the old masters.