BOOKS.

BERLIOZ'S MEMOIRS.*

TEN years had already elapsed since the first appearance of these Memoirs in French, when the now historic revival of Berlioz's Faust at Manchester early in the year 1880 enabled the British musical public of this generation to form for the first time a • Autobiography of Hector Berlioz. Translated by Rachel and Eleanor Holmes. London: Hacmillsa and Co. fair estimate of the most popular of that composer's colossal works. The steady growth of his reputation in England since that date, thanks to the energy of Mr. Charles Halle;—himself a friend of Berlioz—and Mr. August Manna, has fully justified. the publication of an English version of that deeply interesting and painful autobiography, in which all the traits of his manysided character, its chivalry and devotion, its capacity for loving and scorning, hating and suffering, are set forth with relentless and indelible distinctness. How this version has been executed it will be our unpleasant duty to indicate later on ; but we may be allowed here to express our regret that the characteristic photograph which forms the frontispiece of the French edition of 1870 should not have been reprodnced for the benefit of the many readers whose impressions of Berlioz must be derived from this extraordinary translation. That portrait represents the composer at the age of sixty-one, seated, with head erect, and both hands thrust deep into his breeches-pockets. It is a defiant, distinguished face, thin-lipped and closely shaven, with clear-cut, sensitive features, surmounted by ample locks, brushed fantastically down over the right temple. The autograph, too, is most characteristic and interesting. Above his signature he has written the opening phrase for the violins in the largo of his " Symphonie Fantastique." It was the air of one of his earliest songs (burnt, like so many of his youthful compositions), written under the influence of his boyish passion for a fair neighbour. It " came back reproachfully to him " in 1829, when he was composing his symphony, and was, as we have seen, adopted, in 1865, with peculiar appropriateness as the musical legend of his life when, at the close of his stormy career, he found some solace in thefriendship of the " aged, saddened, and obscure woman " who had fired his youthful fancy, and to whom his soul went out with undiminished fervour after an interval of forty-nine years. This "persistency of old feelings, apparently so irreconcilable with the new," is further strikingly illustrated by his unshaken fidelity to hie first loves in music and literature, Gluck and Virgil, to whom he recurred in his last work, drawing the libretto of Les Troyens from the second and fourth books of the Eneid ; while the melodic simplicity of the musical setting recalls the stately charm of the German master.

Born in 1803, at La Cote St. Andr5, Hector Berlioz was bred up to follow the profession of his father, a country doctor. He never went to school, but studied at home,—a system the obvious drawbacks of which he readily and frankly admits,—and gained a considerable proficiency on the flageolet, flute, and afterwards the guitar, while pursuing his anatomical studies. He never could do more, according to his own account, than play a few chords on the piano ; and the inconveniences and advantages consequent upon this deficiency are illustrated in a striking manner throughout these memoirs. It forced him to compose in silence, and freed him from the tyranny of an instrument which, as a means of representing an orchestral work, he designates " a guillotine destined to lay low all the noble heads, and from which only plebeians have nothing to fear." Certainly, it seems as though Berlioz's extraordinary orchestral instinct was furthered and stimulated by his freedom from the shackles of the pianoforte ; and though limited as a performer to the three above-mentioned majestic and incomparable instruments, as he satirically calls them, he knew more about the entrails of every instrument in the orchestra, to use the phrase of a German critic, than any of his predecessors or contemporaries. A fine orchestra finely conducted was to him the highest product of modernart, and be writes of the instruments as if they were friends and living creatures. The sight of a beautiful harp inspired him with " a vague feeling of poetic love." Nothing escaped. his notice in a new orchestra. The numbers, the position, the mechanism and tone of the instruments ; the peculiarities, physical and artistic, of individual performers, are all noted with a minuteness of observation thoroughly characteristic of the author of the " Queen Mab " scherzo, or the famous setting of the " Rakoczy " march.

In 1822 we find him launched in Paris as a medical student. Writing after the lapse of a quarter of a century, Berlioz gives rein to his Fuseli-like imagination in a truly ghastly picture of his first visit to a dissecting-room. This taste for the cadaverous, as instanced by his visite to Italian morgues and charnelhouses, is one of the most disagreeable features in his character. His experimoces were unfortunate ; but we resent the needless details wantonly thrust on the reader, and the lack of restraint which marks these descriptions. Indeed, one of the very few

abridgments that admit of vindication in this translation is that of the passage in which he relates with nauseous fidelity the circumstances of the disinterment of his wife's remains at Montmartre. Berlioz conquered the loathing inspired by this visit, and resumed his studies ; but an evening spent at the opera unhinged his resolve, and his discovery of the musical treasures of the Conservatoire library gave the death-blow to his medical career. This defection led to a bitter family quarrel. His allowance was cut off, and when his father finally consented to sanction this new departure, his mother, a religious and narrow-minded provincial, with a holy horror for all artists and their ways, disowned and cursed him. To make matters worse, Berlioz had great difficulty for a long time in giving proof posi tive to his parents that he really possessed sufficient talent to justify his choice of music as a career. His master, Lesueur, assured them that he exhaled music at every pore ; but it was not until the fifth attempt that he succeeded in 1830 in carrying off the Prix de Rome, which guaranteed him independence for five years. Previous to this he kept himself afloat by giving lessons and singing in the chorus at one of the Parisian Theatres.

His studies and adventures in Italy are described in some of the most brilliant chapters of the book. But the Eternal City failed to awaken his enthusiasm,—

" The shadow of ancient Rome, which alone casts a halo round modern Rome, failed to compensate me for all I had lost I became more and more convinced that for an artist who is really in earnest, nothing can be sadder than to live there."

But if Italian town life disgusted him, and " the frolics of the gentle populace" during the Carnival stirred his mem indignatio to the depths, he thoroughly enjoyed his rambles with gun or guitar, drinking in deep draughts of liberty amid the wilds of the Abruzzi, consorting with lazzaroni, or listening to the quaint and plaintive strains of the pifferari. "A brigand's life," he sardonically remarks, " in spite of its fatigues, would really be the only satisfactory career for an honest man, if there were not so many stupid, unsavoury wretches even in the smallest bands." These last words strike a key-note in his character which resounds throughout all this book. Berlioz was, in art as in politics, an aristocrat to the core, and loathed the canaille and the bourgeoisie with an equally fierce and bitter hatred. "Music," as he finely puts it, "is the daughter of a noble race, such as Princes only can dower now-a-days, who must be able to live poor and unmated, rather than form a misalliance." He regrets the days of the Medicis, and warmly applauds the generous patronage extended by the German Princes to composers and execntants. Finally, and these words are not without their

point to English readers, he expresses his deliberate conviction that— "The most musical nation is not that which can show the greatest number of mediocre musicians, but rather that which has given birth to most great masters, and in which the feeling for musical beauty

has been most cultivated Artisan-musicians do a vital injury both to art and artists, and are capable of corrupting the taste of a whole nation by their numbers no lees than their low instincts."

His sojourn in Italy was not a productive period, though it furnished him with subjects for at least one symphony (the "Harold en Italic "). His extraordinary journey home, prompted by homicidal jealousy, and the unexpected bathos of its termination, is harrated with a frankness and absence of reserve difficult for an English reader to comprehend or appreciate. He was -allowed to leave Rome before his time was fully up, and exempted from the necessity of studying in Germany. Thenceforth Paris was to be the centre of his labours, his " whirlpool " in which he was to be tossed about and finally engulfed after some forty years of ceaseless struggling. Berlioz's stormy relations with Cherubini,—the musical dictator of Paris at the time,—the difficulty of his music, his lack of executive power, and his uncompromising and imperious disposition, closed the ordinary avenues to advancement and popularity. It was, therefore, as a. feztilletoniste that he was obliged to maintain himself for more than thirty years, supplementing his scanty earnings by organising concerts for the performance of his own

works,—a costly and precarious undertaking, owing to their colossal proportions. How distasteful was the work of fcuilleton

• writing may be gathered from these passages :—

" When I talk of my laziness, it only applies to the writing of prose. I have often sat up all night over my scores, and have spent eight hours at a stretch working at instrumentation ; but it is an effort to me to write a page of prose, and about the tenth line or so I get up, walk about the room, look out into the street, take up a book, and strive by any means to overcome the weariness and fatigue which instantly overpowers me. I have to return to the charge eight or ten times before I can finish an article for the Journal des Debate,

and it takes me quite two days to write one even when I like the subject."

In another chapter he says he cannot hear of a first performance without an uneasiness which goes on increasing until his feuilleton is finished. Apart from financial considerations, he found it almost impossible to give it up

"on pain of remaining defenceless in the face of the furious and almost innumerable animosities which it has stirred up against me.

And yet what wretched circumspection am I not forced to use, what circumlocution to evade the expression of the truth ! What concessions to social relations and even to public opinion."

Once he remained shut up for three whole days, unable to find words to begin a feuilleton on the Opera Comique, and fifteen years later thus bitterly described his " punishment " :—

" To write nothings about nothings, to speak one day of a great master and the next of a great idiot, with the same gravity, in the same language This is, indeed, the lowest depth of degradation. Better be—Finance Minister in a Republic !"

Notwithstanding the effort it cost him to write, nothing could be more brilliant or picturesque than his descriptive style, more pungent than his satire, more spontaneous than his dialogue. This last device he uses frequently and with great effect, recording in dramatic form the conversations, real or imaginary, that he has had, or that have taken place about him. He is particularly happy in describing the effect produced upon him by the masterpieces of Gluck or Beethoven, or in general in the expression of his enthusiastic admiration for great works or great men. " It is far more difficult," he remarks, "for a Frenchman to sound the deeps of Shakespeare, than for an Englishman to appreciate the subtlety and originality of Moliere or La Fontaine. Our two poets are rich continents.

Shakespeare is an entire world." How excellent, too, though spiteful, is his explanation of the aversion felt by Handel and Rossini for Gluck and Weber, by the fact that it is impossible for two men of stomach to understand two men of heart. He vehemently protested at all times against the practice of adapt ing or altering the works of the great masters, and bitterly complains of the constant disregard of the axiom that correction should come from above, adding, at the close of a long list of composers and dramatists wbo have been mutilated :—" It does not look as if the corrections came from above, but rather from below, and very perpendicularly below, too." Such vigorous and often admirable criticisms are unfortunately marred by exaggeration and violence, and the specimens we have quoted are mild in comparison with some of his savage tirades against Parisian Philistinism, the industrialism of art, or managerial intrigues. As a Russian once said of him, he wrote his feuilletons with a dagger, and indemnified himself for any restraint that social or other relations imposed upon him by the savage ferocity of his home-thrusts at his avowed enemies. He admits that his witticisms were often indiscreet and ill-tempered ; but claims the credit of never having failed to declare in the amplest terms his appreciation for the merits and services of his opponents — a claim fully justified by the admiration expressed for some of the music of Rossini and Cherubini. Here and there his humour, which is charming when be is in his whimsical vein, jars upon our ears by lapses into Scriptural parody. But apart from these occasional offences against good-taste and literary decorum, Berlidz must be admitted to rank very high as a master of style. His letters from Germany, where, as he says, he went, "like the devout men of ancient Greece, to consult the oracle," are written with inimitable vigour, freshness, and charm. Specially interesting are his sketches of the great composers, conductors, and virtuosi whom he came across. His relations with Mendelssohn gave rise to a certain amount of misunderstanding, and we are assured by the translators that Berlioz has garbled the letter in which Mendelssohn bade him welcome to Leipzig. This may be so ; but even as it stands, the letter is a most cordial and charming one, and Berlioz, always his own severest critic, does not fail to bring his own petulance and aggressiveness into strong contrast with Mendelssohn's unfailing courtesy. What evidently piqued Berlioz was Mendelssohn's inability to appreciate his more ambitious efforts, while the "inflexible rigorousness" of the latter's artistic principles, his " fondness for the dead," and the orthodoxy of his reli gions views, combined to stir the ever-smouldering combativeness of the Frenchman, whose lack of reserve and reverence so often led him into caustic profanity and spiteful repartee. But he speaks with a sincere enthusiasm of Mendelssohn's compositions, his matchless ability as a pianist, and the unwearied patience with which he undertook in person the" menial task " of training the chorus for a performance of Romeo and Juliet, and good. naturedly revised the faulty text.

Berlioz's inner domestic life, painful as it was, yet reveals some of the finest and most chivalric traits in his character.

He married the Irish Shakespearian actress, Henrietta Smithson, at a time when she brought him no other dowry save her debts and eclipsed fame. They "loved and lacerated each other" for a few years, and then separated. But to the very last Berlioz paid with scrupulous fidelity the expenses of her separate establishment, expenses enhanced latterly by her broken health and helpless condition. This drain on his resources only rivetted more firmly the chains of his bondage to the feuilleton, his only regular means of gaining an income, and forced him to resign for many years his dreams of composition. But if he was unfortunate in love, he found great solace in the sympathy and generosity of his friends. Paganini's munificence set him at liberty to compose one of his greatest works. Alexandre Dumaspere showed him "the greatest kindness all his life." Liszt, " that admirable Liszt," was his firm and constant ally from 1830 onwards. For Ernst, the famous violinist, and Stephen Heller, the composer, both " charming humourists," he had the warmest affection.

In 1846 he was indebted to the generosity of his friends for the means of undertaking the journey to Russia, which saved him from ruin. With Balzac and Heine he was intimate ; and the truly remarkable, though incomplete, estimate formed by the latter of Berlioz's genius is well worth citing :

" Berlioz's music has generally something primitive or primeval about it. It makes me think of vast mammoths or other extinct animals ; of fabulous empires filled with fabulous crimes, and other enormous impossibilities. His magic accents call up Babylon, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh."

And elsewhere he speaks of him as "a colossal nightingale or gigantic lark ; a creature of the antediluvian world." It is only fair to add that Heine modified his judgment after the produc tion of the Enfance du Christ, which he describes as " a sheaf of sweet flowers of melody and a masterpiece of simplicity."

With such a wealth of material to choose from, it is impossible, within the limits of the space at our disposal, to do more than indicate a few of the characteristic features of this singular genius. Amongst these may be noted his fondness for travel and rapid movement ; his capacity for suffering without any apparent reason, or for being worried by such trifles as a clock which chimed a minor third, or the cry of a hawk ; his power of appreciating the essentially national characteristics of other countries ; his unfortunate inability to learn German ; his uncompromising contempt for those who adopted the profession of music from sordid aims; and his unshaken resolve never to let financial considerations tempt him to write down to the level of le gros public ; his emotion, reminding us of Macaulay, on reading the great masterpieces of literature ; the irregularity of his inspiration and composition ; his touching adoration for Shakespeare, Gluck, Beethoven, and Weber, and his corresponding detestation for the Italian sensualist school, as well as for the modern German school of music without melody. Musicians will find much to stimulate them in these volumns, and will listen with a redoubled pleasure to Berlioz's masterpieces, after learning the romantic circumstances of their genesis.

It only remains for us to perform the disagreeable duty of pronouncing an opinion upon the manner in which the translation has been executed. While heartily commending the two ladies who are responsible for it for their excellent intentions, and, in the main, for the musical knowledge they have brought to bear upon their task, we are bound to state that both for faults of omission and commission, this is, from a literary point of view, the worst performance of the sort we have ever encountered. In the first place, besides the omission of unimportant words in almost every sentence, whole paragraphs are constantly cut out. On pp. 106-107 of Vol. II., more than a page of characteristic criticism has been entirely left out, and the same fate has befallen a brilliant onslaught on the mutilator of King Lear

(Vol.p. 86). We have, besides these, marked sixteen other

cases of serious omissions. One or two are pardonable, in deference to the susceptibilities of the polite reader; but it would only have been fair to the manes of Berlioz to announce, in a preface, that the principle of Bowdlerisation was going to be adopted throughout. In some cases these omissions are absolutely misleading, as, for example, that on p. 288, Vol II , where the English leads one to suppose that Ernst excelled in mere florid execution. Other instances of misleading omissions will be found on p. 92, Vol. I., and p. 290, Vol. II. In the next, place we have to notice the adoption of a systematic method of boiling down the original, a process in which nearly all that is characteristic of the author's style evaporates.. " How he revels in his own soothing harmony " does duty for " est-il henreux de se bercer mollement stir son beau lac d'harmonie." In the course of a most brilliant letter to Heine,. he asks what good does it do one " cbirober sous des paupieres

mal closes de veratres prunelles prdsenter it son interlocuteur un siege arm d'un dard perfide on convert d'un glutineux enduit ?" This is rendered : " Rolling one's eyes in apparent agony, and playing bitter, practical jokes on one's neighbour" (Vol. II., p. 74). Frequently, one word has to do duty for half a dozen, as " solemn " for " it In fois terrible et. ch5solde " (Vol. I., p. 322), and " penniless " for " sans fen ni lieu, ni sou ni maille." Thirdly, there are at least fifty notable instances where the original has, by a misunderstanding of the construction, been more or less misrepresented, distorted, or incorrectly paraphrased. For example, on p. 123, Vol. I., " Si j'avais un do mes file au concours et qu'on lui fit des tours. pareils, n'y aurait-il pas de quoi me jeter par la fenetre ?" is rendered, " If one of my sons were a competitor and I did that sort of a thing, wouldn't they discharge me on the spot?" Passages mangled as dreadfully as this will be found on p. 115, Vol. I., and pp. 310, 319, 338, Vol. II. Under this head we may also call attention to the needless and frequent alteration of a piquant oratio recta into the form of reported speech, as well as the constant exaggeration of strong language, " mon Dieu" being rendered "good God," and " Ce diable de Requiem," "That d—d Requiem." Fourthly, we come to the blunders purely verbal. Of these we can vouch for the existence of at least one hundred, some of which are worthy of the authors of the Septuagint. " Carat:in " (Vol. I., p. 23), i.e., medical student, is translated " a veteran soldier." " Carambolage" (I., 75) (cannoning at billiards). becomes " artillery ;" " humeur tree-pen embrassante" (I., 151), "anything but an embarrassed mood ;" " intempestive " (II., 286), " tempestuous ;" " Sarde " (I., 159), " Scandinavian." Berlioz describes a thoroughly French sporting expedition ho made in Italy, when his bag included a cat, a snake, a robin,. and a porcupine, " dont j'emporte en trophee quelques beaux piquants " (quills). This is rendered " I carried away more than one wound from his quills" (I., 246). When we add that the notes in great part consist of uncalled-for and irrelevant comments on Berlioz's character, that the paragraphs are often wrongly divided, numbers incorrectly given, and titles and proper names frequently left in their French form ; that the grammar is• slipshod ; that inverted commas are inserted where they do not exist in the original, and that the author's best jokes are spoilt or omitted, we shall not even then have exhausted the catalogue of the defects of this unfortunate version. Our chief motive in inflicting so complete an account of them upon our readers is the desire to do justice to a man who resented misinterpretations and garbled versions with all the fiery indignation of his• passionate heart. We trust that the well-known firm of publishers whose name appears on the title•page will not be slow in offering reparation, in the shape of a revised edition, for thewrong done to this brilliant and unhappy Frenchman.