Part 14 (2/2)

”At one of your rehearsals,” I replied. He could hardly believe his ears.

The sum total of Berlioz' work is very considerable. Thanks to the initiative of two courageous orchestral leaders (M. Jules Pasdeloup and M. edouard Colonne), the present public has already become acquainted with several of the great composer's vast conceptions--the ”Symphonic Fantastique,” the ”Romeo and Juliet” Symphony, the ”Harold Symphony,”

the ”Enfance du Christ,” three or four great overtures, and, above all, that magnificent work the ”d.a.m.nation de Faust,” which in the course of the last two years has roused such transports of enthusiasm as would have stirred the artist's very ashes, if the dead could stir. But what a mine remains yet unexplored! Shall we never hear his ”Te Deum,” in all its grandeur of conception? And will no director produce that charming opera, ”Beatrix et Benedict?” Such an attempt nowadays, when opinion has so veered round to Berlioz' side, would have every chance of success.

Though no particular merit on the score of risk encountered could be claimed, it might be wise to seize the favourable opportunity. The following letters have a double charm. They are all unpublished hitherto, and every one of them has been written in the spirit of absolute sincerity, which is the eternally indispensable condition of true friends.h.i.+p. Some may deplore the lack of deference they betray with respect to men whose talents should apparently s.h.i.+eld them from irreverent and unjust description. People will say, and not unreasonably, that Berlioz would have done better not to style Bellini a ”little blackguard,” and that the appellation of ”ill.u.s.trious old gentleman” as applied to Cherubini, with evidently ill-natured intent, was very inappropriate to the eminent composer whom Beethoven considered the greatest of his age, and to whom he, Beethoven, the mighty symphonist, paid the signal honour of humbly submitting the MS.

of the ”Messe Solennelle” (Op. 123), with the request that he would freely express his opinion concerning it. Be that as it may, and in spite of blots for which the writer's cross-grained temper is alone responsible, the letters are most deeply interesting. Berlioz bares his heart in them, as it were. He lets himself go; he enters into the most intimate details of his private and artistic life. In a word, he opens his whole heart to his friend, and that in terms of such effusive warmth and affection as prove how worthy each was of the other's friends.h.i.+p, and how complete the mutual understanding was. To understand each other!

How the word calls up that immortal fable of our heaven-sent La Fontaine, ”Les deux Amis.”

To understand! to enter into that perfect communion of heart and thought and interest to which we give the two fairest names in human language--friends.h.i.+p and love. Therein lies life's whole charm, and the most powerful attraction, too, in that _written life_, that conversation betwixt parted friends which is so appropriately known as ”correspondence.”

The musical works of Berlioz may earn him glory. The published letters will do more. They will earn him love, and that is the most precious of all earthly things.

CHARLES GOUNOD.

M. CAMILLE SAINT-SAeNS AND HIS OPERA ”HENRI VIII.”

When, after years of perseverance and struggle, a highly gifted artist gains the exalted place in public opinion to which he is justly ent.i.tled, everybody, even his most obstinate opponent, exclaims, ”Didn't I always say people would end by coming round?”

Five and twenty years ago, or more (for he came out as an infant prodigy), M. Saint-Saens made his first appearance in the musical world.

How many times since then have I been told: ”Saint-Saens? Eh? Now really? Oh, as a pianist or an organist, I dare say. But as a composer!

Do you really and truly think?...” And all the rest of the usual stereotyped phrases. Well, I _did_ think so, really and truly; and I was not the only person who did. Now everybody else thinks so too.

Misgivings have all faded away, prejudices are all dispelled--M.

Saint-Saens has won. He has only to say, ”J'y suis, j'y reste,” and he will be one of the glories of his time and of his art.

According to admitted opinion among certain artists, if a man speaks well of a brother artist's work, the natural inference is that he thinks ill of it, and _vice versa_. But why? Must you refuse to admit other men's talent or genius in order to prove your own? Did Beethoven slay Mozart? Will Rossini prevent Mendelssohn from living on? Do you believe that, as Celimene says in the play, ”C'est etre savant que trouver a redire”?

Are you afraid there will not be room enough for you? Pray calm that fear! There will always be room and to spare in the Temple of Fame. If your place is marked there, it awaits you. The great point is that you should come and take it.

No; the real dread is that of not being foremost Alack! this fretful, nervous preoccupation concerning relative value is the very ant.i.thesis of real merit. It is the same shabby old story--love of self usurping the place and duty of love in the true sense. Let us love our art. Let us fight, in all honesty and boldness, for any man or woman who serves it bravely and n.o.bly. Let us not hold truth ”captive in the hand of injustice.” That which we strive to conceal to-day will surely be in public knowledge on the morrow. The only honourable course is to prepare that judgment of posterity, the _vox populi, vox Dei_, which ranks no man by favour, or, what is worse, by interest, but gives sentence in true justice, infallible and eternal.

To keep back the truth, proves that we do not love it. To grieve because some other man serves truth better than ourselves, proves that we would have the honour due to truth alone paid to our own persons.

Let us rather do all we can to diffuse the light of truth. We never can have too much of it.

M. Saint-Saens is one of the most astonis.h.i.+ngly gifted men, as regards musical powers, I have ever met with. He is armed at all points. He knows his business thoroughly. I need only remark that he uses his orchestra, and plays with it, just as he plays on and with his piano.

He possesses the gift of description in the highest and rarest degree.

He has an enormous power of a.s.similation. He can write you a work in any style you choose--Rossini's, Verdi's, Schumann's, Wagner's. He knows them all thoroughly--the surest safeguard, it may be, against his imitating any. He never suffers from that bugbear of the chicken-hearted, the dread of not making his effect. He never exaggerates; thus he is never far-fetched, nor violent, nor over-emphatic. He uses every combination and every resource without abuse, and without being enslaved by any one of them.

He is no pedant. There is no solemnity, no _transcendentalism_ about him. He is too childish still, and has grown far too wise, for that. He has no special system; he belongs to no party or clique. He does not set up to be a reformer of any sort. He writes as he _feels_ and _knows_.

Mozart was no reformer either, and, as far as I am aware, that fact has not prevented his reaching the highest pinnacle of his art.

Another virtue (and one I desire to emphasise in these days), M.

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