Requiem for a Myth
By DAVID CAIRNS
Yet when it was all over and the last mutterings of those ghostly drumbeats had died away, the crabbed old fallacies—`genius without talent,' 'marvellous ideas miserably developed,' ridiculous and sublime by equal turns'—lifted their manhole covers and crawled shamelessly out of hiding as if nothing had happened. We were back where we started. The myth—born of the fatal union of Berliozian originality with Parisian frivolity, nurtured on conservatoire obscurantism and educated at the school of Wagner—still stalks across our consciousness.
Last week's performance at the Royal Phil- harmonic Society's concert has come in for some hammering. Yet, though superficially disappoint- ing, it was a blow for the cause. Admittedly the acoustics of the hall do not know what to make of the Tuba Mirum and its distant choirs of brass calling from the corners of the world, or those strange chords in which flutes and trombones hang suspended across vast gulfs of space and time. Admittedly the London Philharmonic Choir are a shadow of what they once were (though they did not do badly on one hour's full rehearsal with the conductor). And Sir Thomas Beecham was, for him, withdrawn and circumscribed. There were rousing moments, but one missed the sheer physi- cal quality of such strokes as the sudden, terrifying eruptions of timpani in the second half of the Lacrymosa.
But in a deeper sense all this is irrelevant. What mattered was first that the work was heard at all, and secondly that Beecham's interpretation explained far more than it left unsaid. A brash, extravert performance of the Requiem gets nowhere; on the contrary, it seems to prove the detractors' points for them. Some conductors, like a man accidentally dropping a lighted match into a box of fireworks, put all they have into the open- ing fanfare—a splendid blaze, but over, so to Speak, in a flash. No one has denied Berlioz a certain talent for the spectacular. But in playing down the more obvious effects (though by that I do not mean that they are not primarily musical effects) Beecham did the composer a kind of ser- vice: he revealed the beauty and sustained musical quality of the work as a whole.
For the Requiem, considered as it is and with- out prejudice, makes nonsense of the academic parrot-cry about Berlioz's unevenness. It is only uneven in the sense that Kanchenjunga is lower than Everest. Only in the light of his own most dazzling inventions do Berlioz's works (allowing for the proportion of poor stuff that all composers, except Mozart, are inevitably guilty of) fall short of excellence. What single movement by any other romantic composer, Verdi included, could stand without paling beside the Lacrymosa, a movement. which is unexcelled in force and originality of ideas, mastery of construction and formidable aptness of dramatic illustration (the whole human race seems to stream past in panic-stricken lamen- tation). Yet the Offertorio which follows, with its long, sinuous melodic lines restlessly searching about a never varying three-note figure in the chorus, does not suffer by comparison.
The Requiem, in fact, is (with one exception) a consistent, homogeneous work. It therefore dis- poses of another canard—Berlioz the inspired savage, who is memorable by accident and whose art is as likely to plunge into abysses of banality as to stumble on a blinding moment of truth. The structure bears abundant evidence of the care and nice judgment of its creator, and none at all of reckless enthusiasm and hit-or-miss methods. In the balancing of numbers, the delicate economy of the huge forces involved and the frequent use of recurring musical themes, it is obvious that Berlioz knew very well what he was about.
Nor is the shaping of the individual numbers any less assured. Take the Tuba Mirum—notor- ions as an apotheosis of noise, a tumult which in raising the roof raises the eyebrows of the bland. But forget about the Last Trump for a moment if you can, pedants and worshippers of good taste; and note the skill with which Berlioz prepares his climax and then maintains it. The Dies lite begins as a soft chant, modal in flavour, accompanied mainly by neutral woodwind tones; it is a sound 'old as man's weariness,' impersonal, remote, oddly comforting. Without warning a rushing figure in chromatic thirds on the strings wrenches the music up a semitone. The Dies Ire returns, slightly quicker, more urgent, nearer home, with the march rhythm accentuated by double basses pizzicato. Again, the jagged chromatic interrup- tion sends the key reeling upwards, this time a minor third. The tenor line breaks into agitated quavers. The terror is no longer distant but here and now; and when the brass enters, mirum spargens sonum, it is the fulfilment of a promise that has been presaged throughout 150 bars of slowly gathering tension.. Or take the Rex Tre- menthe which, when played correctly Andante maestoso (as Beecham did), combines majesty, confidence, blaspheming fear and supplication (and incidentally a quotation from the Missa Solennis) into a coherent formal whole.
In its musical style. the Requiem is a Berliozian blend Of the antique and the utterly personal new, There is, however, the one vexed question of the Sanctus. Whether it is insipid, or merely in a vein of French Catholic piety which is none the worse for one's not being able to like it, I cannot for myself decide. The Hosanna is undeniably dull. Beethoven was also conventional at this point in the Mass, but with,a purpose—to deepen the sur- rounding mysteries of the Sanctus and Benedictus. In Berlioz for once I can find no such purpose.
But what other large-scale romantic choral work is free from flaw? The comparative weakness of Verdi's Sanctus is hidden under the panache of brass, double chorus and the lot, but it is there. That one movement apart, the Berlioz Requiem keeps to a wonderfully unbroken level of inspira- tion. This is something that cannot be proved; one can only feel and judge for oneself. My own view, for what it is worth (and formed only in the last year or two), is that the faults and banalities in Berlioz—the supposed uncouthness of his har- ni°nY, his perplexing melodic line, his 'literary' Preoccupation, his apparently abrupt transitions —turn out, on deeper knowledge, to have been Mere reflections of one's own misunderstanding. An one needs, and what this long-suffering, mighty genius is still waiting for, are sufficient, and accurate, performances by conductors who, like Beecham and a few others, have grasped the nature of his unique style. Listen often enough to Berlioz well played and the objections miraculously dis- appear, and one is left wondering how one could have been so blind.
Previous page
