Musicians of To-Day | Page 4

certainly times when he is past understanding himself. He allows himself to drift where chance will take him,[4] like an old Scandinavian pirate laid at the bottom of his boat, staring up at the sky; and he dreams and groans and laughs and gives himself up to his feverish delusions. He lived with his emotions as uncertainly as he lived with his art. In his music, as in his criticisms of music, he often contradicts himself, hesitates, and turns back; he is not sure either of his feelings or his thoughts. He has poetry in his soul, and strives to write operas; but his admiration wavers between Gluck and Meyerbeer. He has a popular genius, but despises the people. He is a daring musical revolutionary, but he allows the control of this musical movement to be taken from him by anyone who wishes to have it. Worse than that: he disowns the movement, turns his back upon the future, and throws himself again into the past. For what reason? Very often he does not know. Passion, bitterness, caprice, wounded pride--these have more influence with him than the serious things of life. He is a man at war with himself.
[Footnote 4: "Chance, that unknown god, who plays such a great part in my life" (_Mémoires_, II, 161).]
Then contrast Berlioz with Wagner. Wagner, too, was stirred by violent passions, but he was always master of himself, and his reason remained unshaken by the storms of his heart or those of the world, by the torments of love or the strife of political revolutions. He made his experiences and even his errors serve his art; he wrote about his theories before he put them into practice; and he only launched out when he was sure of himself, and when the way lay clear before him. And think how much Wagner owes to this written expression of his aims and the magnetic attraction of his arguments. It was his prose works that fascinated the King of Bavaria before he had heard his music; and for many others also they have been the key to that music. I remember being impressed by Wagner's ideas when I only half understood his art; and when one of his compositions puzzled me, my confidence was not shaken, for I was sure that the genius who was so convincing in his reasoning would not blunder; and that if his music baffled me, it was I who was at fault. Wagner was really his own best friend, his own most trusty champion; and his was the guiding hand that led one through the thick forest and over the rugged crags of his work.
Not only do you get no help from Berlioz in this way, but he is the first to lead you astray and wander with you in the paths of error. To understand his genius you must seize hold of it unaided. His genius was really great, but, as I shall try to show you, it lay at the mercy of a weak character.
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Everything about Berlioz was misleading, even his appearance. In legendary portraits he appears as a dark southerner with black hair and sparkling eyes. But he was really very fair and had blue eyes,[5] and Joseph d'Ortigue tells us they were deep-set and piercing, though sometimes clouded by melancholy or languor.[6] He had a broad forehead furrowed with wrinkles by the time he was thirty, and a thick mane of hair, or, as E. Legouvé puts it, "a large umbrella of hair, projecting like a movable awning over the beak of a bird of prey."[7]
[Footnote 5: "I was fair," wrote Berlioz to Bülow (unpublished letters, 1858). "A shock of reddish hair," he wrote in his _Mémoires_, I, 165. "Sandy-coloured hair," said Reyer. For the colour of Berlioz's hair I rely upon the evidence of Mme. Chapót, his niece.]
[Footnote 6: Joseph d'Ortigue, _Le Balcon de l'Opéra_, 1833.]
[Footnote 7: E. Legouvé, Soixante ans de souvenirs. Legouvé describes Berlioz here as he saw him for the first time.]
His mouth was well cut, with lips compressed and puckered at the corners in a severe fold, and his chin was prominent. He had a deep voice,[8] but his speech was halting and often tremulous with emotion; he would speak passionately of what interested him, and at times be effusive in manner, but more often he was ungracious and reserved. He was of 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