Music
Berlioz Triumphant
By DAVID CAIRNS WHEN critics begin to deny, rather loudly, that there is such a thing as a Berlioz contro- versy, we are really getting somewhere. So Mr. Neville Cardus in the Guardian: 'those of us who long ago in Manchester were led to the centre of Berlioz . . . are amused at the efforts among the young to stir up a "Berlioz controversy" '; and it would be a mistake to make too much of the fact that long ago in Manchester Mr. Cardus was writing this kind of thing: 'in, all the work [The Trojans at Carthage] there is scarcely half a dozen genuinely musical ideas.'
Desmond Shawe-Taylor in the Sunday Times this week trots out the old gambits but he ends by finding Berlioz 'a major composer, beyond doubt.' When he says this he may be allowed his unawareness of the historical background of LOU°, his dismay at Romeo and Juliet's having two Scherzos on Queen Mab, his implied regret at Berlioz's 'habit of never thinking in terms of the piano,' or his strange notion that I think 'no
praise too high' for Berlioz (and it would be un- gracious to hide from him my private conviction that Berlioz is no more flawless than Verdi or Wagner, whom I love as much). The appearance of Saul among the prophets is no moment to quarrel over details. The 1963 Edinburgh Festi- val was already having its effect, before a shot was fired or a note heard.
The Festival undoubtedly reflects an important change of taste in this country which is more than the consequence of there being at present so many
admirers of Berlioz in positions of authority and influence. Quite apart from the Festival, with its concentration on his music during the first week, there has never been so much Berlioz performed, not even in the pre-war days of Harty and Beecham. It began with The Trojans in 1957, as Robert Collet correctly prophesied at the time in an admirable article in the Score: Until very recently it was customary to hear quite knowledgable musicians and amateurs talk of Berlioz as a wayward Byronic eccen- tric, with an interest in the orchestra that was unusual for his day and an undoubted gift for musical grotesquerie, but otherwise a striking figure in musical history rather than a truly great composer. No one who has listened to The Trojans with even partial understanding can accept .such a superficial and one-sided view
any longer. The Covent Garden production should bring about a fundamental change in the attitude of the musical public to Berlioz's work as a whole.
When an anonymous writer in The Times, echoing old prejudices, talks of 'characteristically extravagant orchestration' in connection with Yarold in Italy, we can laugh because we know it is untrue and can be demonstrated to be un- true. 'Berlioz is a special case,' says Mr. Shawe- Taylor. Yes, but not in the sense that the un- doubted unevennesses of his music are somehow different in kind from those of other composers, but rather that there are unique historical reasons Why it should have taken so long to accept him. Some of them are musical reasons, some extra- musical. From the calmer atmosphere of today We more easily understand them. Because he 'wed and worked in a musical culture with which he was hopelessly at odds, and because, re- jected by the Paris Opera, he tried to make his way by giving concerts (for which no organisa- tion existed) and in pursuit of this aim pub- licised himself and his music, the image arose of a wild, incomprehensible genius, more literary than truly musical, obsessed with the grandiose and the grotesque at the expense of more com- panionable qualities (had he not written the Witches' Sabbath, the Ride to the Abyss, and the Tuba Mirum of the Messe des Morts?), and creating the obstacles to its own fulfilment. In this and similar ways a Berlioz legend was fab- ricated which his music could not refute since it was not sufficiently understood.
At the same time the music presented genuine difficulties. It was so unlike anything known or expected at the time—in its concern with ex- tended melody, in its rhythmic and metrical irregularity, in its utterly non-pianistic texture and harmonic formation, and in its feeling— the obvious romanticism raised certain expec- tations which were not answered. Berlioz was not at all, like Wagner, a sublime egoist whose great works were vast ritual fulfilments of the self, any more than he was, as Verdi was, a popular artist who mirrored the common human passions even while he ennobled -them. There is an objectivity, almost an aloofness, at the heart of his most ardent visions. He is, in a subtler and more elusive way than Brahms, a mixture, at the very core of his nature, of classic and roman- tic.
In short, his style was and remained much harder to grasp than that of any other nineteenth- century composer, not excluding Mahler. And as with all difficult styles, whether modern or not, the vulnerability to bad performances, and the likelihood of bad performances, were greatly in- tensified. That, briefly, was why Berlioz was for so long controversial; it 'was not that the numerous objectors had any real case, only that they seemed to have. In the general climate of non-acceptance it was possible to talk about a predominantly literary impulse or a mastery of orchestration (with pejorative implications) and be widely believed. One may concede this much to Mr. Shawe-Taylor's 'special case': the very delicate atmosphere of certain pieces like the con- tralto song in Romeo and Juliet needs careful handling or it is lost. But this does not tell us very much. If we think for a moment, it is not really so surprising that poorly conducted Berlioz can distort the truth as badly and sound as in-
'Matter of fact, sir, you're the third today.'
coherent as poorly conducted Schoenberg, or that a faithful interpretation can be as revealing as a performance of Schoenberg's. Violin Con- certo under Rosbaud. A hundred years is not necessarily a long time in the posterity of an artist.
Fortunately the auguries at Edinburgh, at the time of writing, are good. Solti's conducting of The Damnation of Faust made a profound im- pression at the opening concert on Sunday. About it and about Tristia, the unmentionable Lei°, and the Berlioz Exhibition on view at the French Institute here, as well as about some of the Bar- tok and Britten performances which are help- ing to give this year's festival its distinctive savour, I hope to write in subsequent articles.
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