Musicians of To-Day | Page 2

be educated to listen to good music; that they should be given,
in a general way, a chance to acquaint themselves with the laws
underlying the "Beautiful in Music" and should be shown the demands
which a right appreciation of the Art makes upon the Intellect and the
Emotions.
And, surely, such a "desideratum" may best be effected by a careful
perusal of the manuals to be included in the present series. It is
incontestable that the reader of the following pages--apart from a
knowledge of the various musical forms, of orchestration, etc.--all of
which will be duly treated in successive volumes--will be in a better
position to appreciate the works of the several composers to which he
may be privileged to listen. The last essay, especially, will be read with
interest to-day, when we may hope to look forward to a cessation of
race-hatred and distrust, and to what a writer in the Musical Times
(September, 1914) has called, "a new sense of the emotional solidarity
of mankind. From that sense alone," he adds, "can the real music of the
future be born."
CLAUDE LANDI.

MUSICIANS OF TO-DAY
BERLIOZ
I
It may seem a paradox to say that no musician is so little known as
Berlioz. The world thinks it knows him. A noisy fame surrounds his
person and his work. Musical Europe has celebrated his centenary.

Germany disputes with France the glory of having nurtured and shaped
his genius. Russia, whose triumphal reception consoled him for the
indifference and enmity of Paris,[1] has said, through the voice of
Balakirew, that he was "the only musician France possessed." His chief
compositions are often played at concerts; and some of them have the
rare quality of appealing both to the cultured and the crowd; a few have
even reached great popularity. Works have been dedicated to him, and
he himself has been described and criticised by many writers. He is
popular even to his face; for his face, like his music, was so striking
and singular that it seemed to show you his character at a glance. No
clouds hide his mind and its creations, which, unlike Wagner's, need no
initiation to be understood; they seem to have no hidden meaning, no
subtle mystery; one is instantly their friend or their enemy, for the first
impression is a lasting one.
[Footnote 1: "And you, Russia, who have saved me...." (Berlioz,
_Mémoires_, II, 353, Calmann-Lévy's edition, 1897).]
That is the worst of it; people imagine that they understand Berlioz
with so very little trouble. Obscurity of meaning may harm an artist
less than a seeming transparency; to be shrouded in mist may mean
remaining long misunderstood, but those who wish to understand will
at least be thorough in their search for the truth. It is not always realised
how depth and complexity may exist in a work of clear design and
strong contrasts--in the obvious genius of some great Italian of the
Renaissance as much as in the troubled heart of a Rembrandt and the
twilight of the North.
That is the first pitfall; but there are many more that will beset us in the
attempt to understand Berlioz. To get at the man himself one must
break down a wall of prejudice and pedantry, of convention and
intellectual snobbery. In short, one must shake off nearly all current
ideas about his work if one wishes to extricate it from the dust that has
drifted about it for half a century.
Above all, one must not make the mistake of contrasting Berlioz with
Wagner, either by sacrificing Berlioz to that Germanic Odin, or by
forcibly trying to reconcile one to the other. For there are some who

condemn Berlioz in the name of Wagner's theories; and others who, not
liking the sacrifice, seek to make him a forerunner of Wagner, or kind
of elder brother, whose mission was to clear a way and prepare a road
for a genius greater than his own. Nothing is falser. To understand
Berlioz one must shake off the hypnotic influence of Bayreuth. Though
Wagner may have learnt something from Berlioz, the two composers
have nothing in common; their genius and their art are absolutely
opposed; each one has ploughed his furrow in a different field.
The Classical misunderstanding is quite as dangerous. By that I mean
the clinging to superstitions of the past, and the pedantic desire to
enclose art within narrow limits, which still flourish among critics.
Who has not met these censors of music? They will tell you with solid
complacence how far music may go, and where it must stop, and what
it may express and what it must not. They are not always musicians
themselves. But what of that? Do they not lean on the example of the
past? The past! a