Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/608

596 school. His great popularity as a composer commenced in 1830, with his setting of Alfrec de Musset's 'L'Andalouse.' Many more of de Musset's ballads and romances were afterwards set by him; and he rendered the same service to poems by Victor Hugo. But Monpou was not a highly trained musician, and his music is very faulty. He was a slave to the influences of the Romantic school, and well illustrates the extreme exaggeration to which it was prone. Nevertheless, his songs are full of interest; the melodies are original and striking, and if the harmony be incorrect, and at times harsh, it is never without dramatic power. They are difficult to sing, but notwithstanding this drawback, 'Le lever,' 'Le voile blanc,' 'Les deux archers,' and 'La chanson de Mignon' have an established popularity. The last song reveals the best and most refined qualities of Monpou's imagination. Similar qualities were, likewise, displayed by an incomparably greater musician, Hector Berlioz, in whom there was a depth of poetic insight and a subtle sense of beauty, to which Monpou could make no pretension. Of all Berlioz's works, his songs are, perhaps, the least tinged with the characteristic exaggeration of the Romanticists; but to describe or classify them is by no means easy. He wrote about twenty-seven in all: some are for more than one voice, and some had originally an orchestral accompaniment, though they are now also published for the PF.; op. 2, 'Irlande,' consists of nine melodies for one or two voices, and sometimes chorus: the words are imitations of Thomas Moore's by Gounet; and nos. 1 and 7, 'Le coucher du soleil,' and 'L'origine de la harpe,' are perhaps the best. In op. 7, 'Nuits d'été,' there are six songs for one voice, with orchestral or PF. accompaniment, and these are perhaps the choicest of all; nos. 3 and 4, 'Sur les lagunes,' and 'L'absence,' are especially beautiful. Op. 12, 'La captive,' embodying a remarkable crisis of the writer's life, is a long piece, written for a contralto voice, and its chief interest attaches to the varied accompaniment, which has been reduced to PF. score by Stephen Heller. Op. 13, 'Fleurs des Landes,' consists of five romances or chansons, some for one voice, and some for two, or chorus, all bearing a distinctively local colouring. In op. 19, 'Feuillets d'Album,' the first piece is a bolero, the second an aubade, and the third a chorus for men's voices with a tenor solo. Three songs without an opus number—'La belle Isabeau,' 'Le chasseur danois,' and 'Une priere du matin' (which is really a duet)—complete the list of Berlioz's songs. No one can study them without being struck by the fragmentary character of the melodies, and the want of symmetry in the rhythmic phrases. But these defects are atoned for by the exquisite beauty of the melodic fragments; and the rhythmic phrases are never abruptly broken or disjointed without justification. An explanation for it will always be found in the words, which it was Berlioz's constant study to illustrate with perfect fidelity. What can be more poetical than the opening phrase in his song 'L'absence'!

And this, when repeated for the last time very softly, and as if in the far distance, produces a magic effect, especially when accompanied by the orchestra.

Berlioz's accompaniments are highly developed, and participate fully in the poetic intention of the words. A proof of his skill in this respect is afforded by the subjoined extract from 'Le spectre de la rose,' where, after a full, rich, and varied accompaniment throughout, he gives to the last words merely single notes, and thus unmistakeably marks the transition from the passionate tale of the rose to its epitaph.