to subvert the laws of music, only to make a new and indi-
vidual use of them. As he was no abstract maker of music,
his autobiography—one of the most fascinating in the history
of art, only to be compared with that of Benvenuto Cellini—
should be familiar to all who would penetrate the secrets of his
style. Berlioz’s compositions, in fact, are more specifically au-
tobiographic than those of any other notable musician. Both
in his music and his literary works are the same notes of pas-
sionate insistence on his own point of view, of radical dislike for
accepting conditions as they were (he says of himself that he
loved to make the barriers crack) and of fondness for brilliant
outward effect. In considering Berlioz, one is always reminded
of Matthew Arnold’s lines on Byron, who resembles Berlioz so
closely.
“He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him, like the thunder’s roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch’d the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.”
Only realize that Berlioz’sFantastic Symphonywas composed
but twenty-one years after Haydn’s death, and compare the sim-
ple, self-centered Haydn with the restless, wide-visioned Berlioz,
of a mentality positively omnivorous; who, in addition to his mu-
sical achievements, was a brilliant critic andlittérateur, a man of
travel and wide acquaintance with the world. Then indeed you
will appreciate what an enormous change had come over music.
A mere mention of the authors from whom Berlioz drew his sub-
jects: Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Scott, Virgil, Hugo, shows
the wide range of his reading and the difference in output which
would inevitably result. The previous impersonal attitude to-
wards music is shown by the very names of compositions which,
broadly speaking (till the beginning of the 19th century) were
seldom more than Symphony, Sonata, or Quartet, No. so and
so; while the movements, in an equally mechanical way, were
known by the designations of tempo: allegro, adagio, andante,
etc.—those “senseless terms,” as Beethoven himself says. Be-