Musicians of To-Day | Page 5

medium height, rather thin and angular in figure, and when
seated he seemed much taller than he really was.[9] He was very
restless, and inherited from his native land, Dauphiné, the
mountaineer's passion for walking and climbing, and the love of a
vagabond life, which remained with him nearly to his death.[10] He
had an iron constitution, but he wrecked it by privation and excess, by
his walks in the rain, and by sleeping out-of-doors in all weathers, even
when there was snow on the ground.[11]
[Footnote 8: "A passable baritone," says Berlioz _(Mémoires_, I, 58).
In 1830, in the streets of Paris, he sang "a bass part" _(Mémoires_, I,
156). During his first visit to Germany the Prince of Hechingen made
him sing "the part of the violoncello" in one of his compositions
(_Mémoires_, II, 32).]
[Footnote 9: There are two good portraits of Berlioz. One is a
photograph by Pierre Petit, taken in 1863, which he sent to Mme.
Estelle Fornier. It shows him leaning on his elbow, with his head bent,
and his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were tired. The other is the
photograph which he had reproduced in the first edition of his
_Mémoires_, and which shows him leaning back, his hands in his

pockets, his head upright, with an expression of energy in his face, and
a fixed and stern look in his eyes.]
[Footnote 10: He would go on foot from Naples to Rome in a straight
line over the mountains, and would walk at one stretch from Subiaco to
Tivoli.]
[Footnote 11: This brought on several attacks of bronchitis and frequent
sore throats, as well as the internal affection from which he died.]
But in this strong and athletic frame lived a feverish and sickly soul
that was dominated and tormented by a morbid craving for love and
sympathy: "that imperative need of love which is killing me...."[12] To
love, to be loved--he would give up all for that.
[Footnote 12: "Music and love are the two wings of the soul," he wrote
in his _Mémoires_.]
But his love was that of a youth who lives in dreams; it was never the
strong, clear-eyed passion of a man who has faced the realities of life,
and who sees the defects as well as the charms of the woman he loves,
Berlioz was in love with love, and lost himself among visions and
sentimental shadows. To the end of his life he remained "a poor little
child worn out by a love that was beyond him."[13] But this man who
lived so wild and adventurous a life expressed his passions with
delicacy; and one finds an almost girlish purity in the immortal love
passages of Les Troyens or the "_nuit sereine"_ of _Roméo et Juliette_.
And compare this Virgilian affection with Wagner's sensual raptures.
Does it mean that Berlioz could not love as well as Wagner? We only
know that Berlioz's life was made up of love and its torments. The
theme of a touching passage in the Introduction of the Symphonic
fantastique has been recently identified by M. Julien Tiersot, in his
interesting book,[14] with a romance composed by Berlioz at the age of
twelve, when he loved a girl of eighteen "with large eyes and pink
shoes"--Estelle, _Stella mentis, Stella matutina_. These words--perhaps
the saddest he ever wrote--might serve as an emblem of his life, a life
that was a prey to love and melancholy, doomed to wringing of the
heart and awful loneliness; a life lived in a hollow world, among

worries that chilled the blood; a life that was distasteful and had no
solace to offer him in its end.[15] He has himself described this terrible
"_mal de l'isolement_," which pursued him all his life, vividly and
minutely.[16] He was doomed to suffering, or, what was worse, to
make others suffer.
[Footnote 13: _Mémoires_, I, 11.]
[Footnote 14: Julien Tiersot, _Hector Berlioz et la société de son
temps_, 1903, Hachette.]
[Footnote 15: See the _Mémoires_, I, 139.]
[Footnote 16: "I do not know how to describe this terrible sickness....
My throbbing breast seems to be sinking into space; and my heart,
drawing in some irresistible force, feels as though it would expand until
it evaporated and dissolved away. My skin becomes hot and tender, and
flushes from head to foot. I want to cry out to my friends (even those I
do not care for) to help and comfort me, to save me from destruction,
and keep in the life that is ebbing from me. I have no sensation of
impending death in these attacks, and suicide seems impossible; I do
not want to die--far from it, I want very much to live, to intensify life a
thousandfold. It is an excessive appetite for happiness, which becomes
unbearable