Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/506

496[April 24, 1869] of the life of Berlioz is a sad one—a story of defiance, followed by bitterness; but it is a story well worth being narrated, and taken to heart by every one concerned in such excitements as those to which his existence was devoted. A man more gifted (under restriction), and more perverse (without restriction), could hardly be named as belonging to that company of unhappy musicians which includes the names of such sufferers as Beethoven, Schumann, and Böhner. There are few, if any, survivors who can be distressed by the leading facts of his life being recounted plainly, yet in all tenderness to an unhappy man whose restless life has closed.

He was born, say the French obituary notices, at the Côte Saint André (department of L'Isère) on the 11th of December, 1803. His father, a physician of repute, tried to coerce or persuade the boy to embrace his own profession. It was all in vain. The boy had no vocation for "the healing art"—some instincts, obviously, for Music, but neither that patient and persistent humility, nor that brilliancy of instinctive genius, out of either of which a great career may be made. The extreme crudity of his first compositions is warrant for the slenderness of his knowledge no less than his audacity. And yet we are assured that, on his escape to Paris, he studied under that most formal of theorists, Reicha. For a time, we now learn, he figured as a chorister at the Opéra Comique, probably enduring much privation. He gained admittance to the Conservatoire in 1826. After producing his overture to Waverley, and a portentous piece of pompous cacophony, the symphony entitled Épisode dans la vie d'un Artiste, he put forth a cantata on the subject of Sardanapalus. This gained the prize which entitled him, as Laureate, to a couple of years' residence and study at Rome. What he learned—or, rather, say, what he failed to learn—in Italy he has told, in the language of derision, in his Reminiscences. How different in this was he from Mendelssohn, who, in the writer's presence, on hearing musical Rome and the doings in Rome derided, said: "Well, but for the artist there is always Rome to be learned." And yet that Berlioz was as sensible of the influences of the atmosphere of the Eternal City as was the more genial and grateful Prussian, his own writings show unmistakably. His best inspirations are clearly referable to his sojourn in the south, such as his overture to Le Carnaval Romain, his March of Pilgrims in the Abruzzi, and his entire opera Benvenuto Cellini. From Rome Berlioz brought, as fruits of his residence there, his strange overture to King Lear, and a symphony entitled Return to Life. Among the writer's first musical recollections are the astonishment and derision which these inspired on their assaulting the prudish and pedantic connoisseurs of Paris, who were even then reluctantly annealing their ears to receive, without a shiver of disgust, the compositions given out by Beethoven in his golden prime. It may be, however, that one so presumptuous as young Berlioz fancied that it was better to be talked about, it matters not how, than to be passed over, as a respectable mediocrity. But no other instance could be named in the annals of Music of a like intrepidity (to use the gentlest of epithets) at the outset of any artist's career. How, little by little, Berlioz gained a certain hold on French curiosity, cannot be told in detail here; no small part of his advancement must be ascribed to the sharpness of his tongue, and (so soon as he entered on journalism) to the poignancy of his pen. Further, his intellect and poetical sympathy with other subjects than music, were quick, and directed to original forms of research and exercise. Foremost among these must be noted, as a marked characteristic, that enthusiastic profession of devotion to Shakespeare, which had a large influence on his life and writings. This was evidenced at an early period of his career. A company of English actors was then endeavouring to introduce our dramatist's plays to a sound appreciation in Paris. At the head of the troop was Miss Smithson. With her the young Frenchman fell passionately in love. His suit was coldly received by our tragedy queen, then in the hey-day of her fame. Miss Smithson's career as an actress, however, was cut short by a severe personal accident. On this the constant enthusiast came gallantly forward and renewed his addresses. They were listened to the second time, and Berlioz carried off the prize for which he had so earnestly longed. The marriage was not a happy one, and the unhappiness brought on consequences of estrangement and entanglement which spoiled the later years of the artist. His second wife was Mademoiselle Recio, of the Opéra Comique—a nullity in point of musical and dramatic power, whom few frequenters of that theatre can recollect ever to have seen or heard of. The second marriage proved no happier for the composer than his first had been.

His life was further marked by incidents and associations, strange as belonging to one so severe, and so critical, and who so vehemently denounced everything like charlatanry. It is singular that a man like Paganini, whose music is so regular in its southern ordinance, and who was notoriously miserly and reserved, should have been so bewitched by the young Frenchman's eccentricities, as to attest his delight by making him a magnificent present of money. This, it may be added, could not have arrived more opportunely. A large portion of the donation was spent in the production of his Romeo and Juliet symphony. Later when M. Berlioz was in England, he associated himself to a charlatan, in his sphere, as pretending as the professed artist—the never-to-be-forgotten Jullien. The same irregularity was to be traced in other of his friendships and professed antipathies.

It is impossible to offer anything like a complete list of his works. It comprises three grand symphonies: L'Épisode dans la vie d'un Artiste, Harold in Italy, and, best, longest, and latest of the three, the Romeo and Juliet symphony, which, like Beethoven's ninth symphony, is partially choral. There is more than one grand mass; there are several overtures from his pen. There are three operas: Benvenuto Cellini, Beatrice et Benedict (noticeable