ginning pre-eminently with Berlioz, composers have had more
highly cultivated imaginations, much more to say; and the wider
range of emotion resulting therefrom has necessitated differences
of form and treatment. A frequent misconception on the part
of the layman is that worthy music should be so constructed
that the hearer be spared all mental exertion. As long as it was
certain that a composer would present just so many themes in a
prescribed order and treated in the routine fashion, listening to
music was a comparatively easy task. Since Berlioz, music has
made ever greater demands on the hearer; who only when his
receptivity is of an equal degree of cultivation with the creative
power of the composer, can grasp the full meaning of the mu-
sic. The first step, therefore, toward an appreciation of Berlioz
is to recognize the peculiar, picturesque power of his imagina-
tion, which was of an entirely new order, and may be called
musico-poetic in distinction from purely musical activity. This
form of double consciousness is equally necessary on the part
of the hearer. As Debussy, the modern French composer, so
well says, people often do not understand or enjoy new music
because it differs from “une musique”i.e., from a conventional
and unvarying type which they have in their mind. The real
effect of Berlioz’s “Carnaval Romain” Overture, to take a sim-
ple example, is to complement and intensify the mental picture
which any well-read person—or better still, any one who has
actually visited Rome—will have of this characteristic incident
in Italian life. If the work be considered merely as abstract mu-
sic, notwithstanding the stimulation and delight caused by the
rhythmic vitality and by the orchestral effects, the real poetic
purpose of the composer remains unfulfilled. This peculiar qual-
ity of Berlioz was partly the result of his fiery excitable temper-
ament and partly the reactive effect of the environment in which
he found himself. What an amazing group in Paris (beginning
about 1830) was that with which he was associated! De Musset,
de Vigny, Liszt, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Balzac, Dumas, Chopin,
Heine, Delacroix, Géricault: young men representing every art
and several nationalities, all under the lead of Hugo, that prince
of Romanticists; their object being—revolt from conventional
standards and a complete expression of their own personalities.
Hugo, as he says in the famous preface to Cromwell, was tearing
down the plaster which hides the facade of the fair temple of art;
Dumas had just demolished Racine; Géricault and Delacroix,
by their daring conceptions, were founding our modern school
ann
(Ann)
#1