BERLIOZ PART 3

It was with great sadness that we heard of the death of Sir Colin Davis the day
preceding our first day of term. He was the greatest champion of the music of
Berlioz and it was fitting that Matthew immediately dedicated this series to the
memory of Sir Colin. I first saw him when he took the second half of a prom in
the late 50s in Mozart and Stravinsky but my particular early recollection was
of seeing him, not in any of the concert halls or opera houses but on a spring
evening in 1961 at the open air theatre of Regents Park. My passion for
Berlioz was in full swing and I was attracted like a moth to flame when I saw
advertised a concert there to be conducted by Colin Davis, not with any of our
major orchestras but with the mass band of the Coldstream Guards playing
the Symphonie Funbre et Marche Triomphale of Berlioz. The programme
started at 6 pm and I had difficulty getting away from work in time. As I puffed
across the park I could hear the brass already in action. I sat on the grass
watching the guardsmen in their red tunics playing under the energetic, tail
coated Colin Davis. The sounds were awesome if a little lost in the breeze.
There was an array of historical percussion instruments as are never seen
today. I wondered how this apparent mis-match between military and musician
had come about and I only learned recently from his obituary that Sir Colin had
served his national service in the guards as a clarinettist.
The 1830s had been a productive decade for Berlioz but it had been a struggle
to get his works performed. The payment made by Paganini had been a
godsend. Without it there would have been no Romeo and Juliet. With a family
to support, Berlioz depended largely on his income as a music critic, writing
for the Journal des Dbats for more than thirty years. There is no doubt, as his
Memoirs testify, that he had a talent for writing but he felt resentful and
constrained at the amount of time this took up and which limited his time for
composing. At the end of the 1830s he did receive some recognition. He was
appointed Deputy Librarian at the Conservatoire. He also got his K. He was
made a Chevalier de la Lgion d'honneur and he received a new government
commission for a large scale work.
Originally his Requiem had been written with the idea of commemorating the
tenth anniversary of the July 1830 revolution, the one where Berlioz joined the
crowds after completing his winning composition for the Prix de Rome. As we
have seen, the Requiem was put to ceremonial use in a massive way following
the death of a general in Algeria. Now the Government needed something new
in a hurry for the tenth anniversary of the revolution and what they wanted, or
what they got, was right up Berliozs street a symphony to be played by the
National Guard at the Place de la Bastille where a new column was to be
erected. Actually, Berlioz had little sympathy for the rgime, but the 10,000
francs on offer wasnt to be sneezed at. It was a case of Go For It or, as
Berlioz might have said, Allez-y. So was born, in the tradition of monumental
French public ceremonial music, the Symphonie Funbre et Triomphale to be
played in the open air of the Place de la Bastille as I would hear it 140 years
later in the open air of Regents Park under Colin Davis. It was originally

scored for a wind band of 200 players marching in procession alongside the
transporting of the ashes of those who had died in the 1830 uprising. Berlioz
revised it two years later for inside performance by adding strings and a final
chorus. It doesnt sound symphonic so much as processional but it became
one of the composer's most popular works. Wagner went to the performance
of the new 1842 version and he wrote to Schumann that he found passages in
the Berlioz's symphony so "magnificent and sublime that they can never be
surpassed."
This work gave birth to the idea by Berlioz of concerts - he called them
Festivals -which became very popular, in France and later on in England.
Mammoth orchestras, often of 400 players with a chorus to match, playing
mammoth works, or selections, by Berlioz and his arrangements of others
such as Palestrina, Handel and Gluck. These took place in gigantic venues
such as the Cirque Olympique, a little like Olympia or Earls Court perhaps.
They were called Monsters and attracted audiences of 8,000. It was at the
exhibition of French Industry in August 1844 that the Hymne La France was
played with over a thousand performers. So, Mahler was not exactly the first
with his Symphony of A Thousand in 1906. The true spiritual successor to
Berlioz is not Wagner nor Mahler but Jean-Michel Jarre with his gigantic
amplified pop displays. The Symphonie Funbre is rarely performed these
days but perhaps someone with flair how about Lord Coe might do it at the
O2 so as to be heard in Blackheath. Now that would bring the Paragon down
and the protesters out.
In quiet contrast Berlioz wrote his song cycle Nuits dt in 1841. Originally
he conceived it either for mezzo or tenor to be accompanied as was usual by
piano. However he decided to orchestrate the accompaniment and created
thus another first, the orchestral song cycle, forty years before Mahler. His
design was then to mix it and have two of the songs sung by the tenor and the
others by the mezzo. It is nearly always sung by the just the one which saves a
costly extra at a concert. The work was written for Marie Recio, Berliozs new
attachment. His marriage to Harriet Smithson had become rocky from about
1836 with her having taken to drink and her career as an actress beyond
revival. According to Berlioz she accused him of associations elsewhere,
perish the thought, and which he protested in the Memoirs was not justified.
He found it hard to be accused of something the pleasure of which he did not
even receive. He had met Marie Recio in 1841. She was a passable singer and
soon after Harriet did have something to complain about. Marie became his
mistress but it would not be until three years later before he and Harriet
separated. Nuits dt or parts of it were written for Marie who sang it on
concert tours. Maries standing as a singer was not high in the critics
estimation. With Berlioz having a reputation of requiring nothing short of
perfection these commentators were a little baffled. The simple answer must
be that when one has found companionship, a stable relationship and a
comfortable bed to share, why spoil it by quibbling over a few wobbles?
In 1841, the Paris Opera planned to mount a production of Webers Der
Freischutz but, to adapt it to the norms of the House, it required ballet music
and recitative instead of the spoken word. Berlioz was engaged for the task. It

was usual for an outside composer to write the ballet music but Berlioz was
insistent that only Webers music should be used. In 1819 Weber had written a
piano piece entitled Invitation to the Dance. Berlioz adapted it as the basis for
the ballet and renamed it Invitation to the Waltz. The production was a great
success and the opera received 61 performances up till 1846. The Invitation to
the Waltz took on a life of its own in 1911 when Fokine used the Berlioz's
orchestration for Diaghilevs Ballets Russes for a ballet called Le Spectre de
La Rose. This is not a name that connects in any way to the Weber but
confusingly it happens also to be the title of the second song of Les nuits
dt!
At this time there was a gleam of hope that his career would take off.
Habanecks health was failing and the position of chief conductor at the Opra
was due to come up. With his successful involvement with Der Freischutz,
Berlioz had strong hopes of acceding to this prestigious position. It went to
someone else. Then, Cherubini, the old archenemy died in March 1842 and his
vacant seat in the Acadmie Franaise was up for election. This involved
campaigning and seeking support from Academicians. Berlioz was backed by
Spontini but to his surprise the coveted seat was awarded to the composer,
Georges Onslow. Berlioz wasnt to make the Academy until 1856. By now, his
reputation was growing abroad. His Requiem was played in St Petersburg; his
critical articles were translated into German and published in the German
musical press. All of this against the lack of public acceptance at home. He
then started a series of foreign tours, with his first invitation from Belgium,
and in September 1842, accompanied by Marie Recio, he took the Brussels
diligence (stagecoach). The Belgian tour was short, successful and left Berlioz
with the taste for more.
There then followed his first German tour. His object was to promote
knowledge of his music and, so as ensure its authentic interpretation by other
conductors. He was able to couple this mission with a French Government
brief to find and report back on the state of music in Germany. He therefore
travelled as composer, conductor and government envoy. His accounts are
included in his memoirs by the reproduction of various letters he wrote in this
capacity to various men of letters (Heine), composers (Liszt) and ministries. He
visited numerous town and cities. He met Schumann who had written a long
critique of the Symphonie Fantastique in 1835. He renewed his acquaintance
with Mendelssohn whom he had met en passant in Rome 13 years before. He
also met Wagner in Dresden. Wagner had been present at the first
performances of the Symphonie Funbre and Romeo and Juliet. Later they
would develop a growing mutual antipathy but at this stage there was a
reciprocal admiration evidenced by the note Wagner inscribed on the edition
of Tristan and Isolde which he sent as a tribute to the composer of Romeo and
Juliet. One might question whether the famous first notes of the Prelude to
Tristan are themselves a conscious reference to the opening of Romeo Alone.
Berlioz was amazed at the standard of orchestras in German towns and of the
subsidies they were paid. On the other hand he was somewhat miffed when
they did not have available certain instruments one might call Berliozian, in
particular harps, cor anglais and the ophicleide. Probably most local town
orchestras would not have known of them. Ophicleides were particularly

French and were to give way soon to the tuba; on the other hand Berlioz
without a cor anglais, may not be like Chopin without a piano but without it, no
Symphonie Fantastique, no Harold in Italy and no, shortly to be composed,
Carnaval Romain overture which he began to compose once back in Paris.
Berlioz was a waste not want not composer who knew how to scrape every
bit of meat from the bone. The music for this concert overture was a
reworking of the Mardi Gras music from his failed opera, Benvenuto Cellini,
itself a reincarnation of the Resurrexit of the destroyed Saint Roch Mass. Only
Berlioz could turn the resurrection of Christ into a joyous Roman carnival.
Berlioz might have seemed to have slowed down in his rate of composing but
he was busily engaged otherwise. In early 1844, he published a treatise on
instrumentation. He also arranged further monster concerts with, as an
example, 36 double basses used for the third movement of Beethovens fifth
symphony. The venue for one of these series was shared with Johann Strauss
the elder who had brought an orchestra to Paris for a festival of dancing.
Unfortunately the police chief viewed the Viennese waltz on a par with tje
shenanigans of the Paris St Germain supporters club, and banned any dancing
as likely to lead to disorder. Glinka, the first Russian nationalist composer was
in Paris between 1844 and 1845 and persuaded Berlioz to embark on a tour of
Russia. Berlioz's response "If the Emperor of Russia wants me, then I am up
for sale" was taken seriously and his visit to Russia two years later, as well as
a second in 1867, turned out in each case to be very lucrative for him indeed.
Following a bout of fever Berlioz went to Nice to recuperate and where he
composed another concert overture, The Tower of Nice. He would rename it,
Le Corsaire, after the popular verse of that name by Byron. Le Corsaire spills
over at the end in with a verve which could be said to anticipate the world of
Offenbach and the high kicking can-can. It brings to mind yet another great
Berlioz conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, Tommy to the faithful. Towards the
end of his career he conducted some of the time resting a little on a piano
stool. He had the shortest baton I can remember which appeared at times like
an extension of his right arm. To this day, I can still see him, rising up before
his orchestra at the climax of Le Corsaire, right arm and baton aloft, swiping
and swishing away like an old swashbuckler with his cutlass.
Up till this time Berlioz and Harriet Smithson had continued living under the
same roof. Marie Recio on the other hand would be the one to accompany him
on tours. Now with their marriage a failure, Berlioz and Harriet separated and
he moved in with Marie. He would continue to provide for Harriet for the rest of
her life.
His second German tour, as extensive as the first, started with a visit to Bonn
for the unveiling of a Beethoven statue. His trip was this time to take him to
Austria including Vienna and on to Prague. He would take in Weimar where
Liszt, a long time champion, held court. Berlioz was now working on a new
large scale work, The Damnation of Faust, incorporating the earlier Eight
Scenes from Faust. Whilst operatic in nature it was written for concert
performance, the conception being too ambitious to be capable of staging as
an opera. (These days, with theatre equipment and cameras it can be staged).

His biggest success was to take place at Pest, whose council had
commissioned him orchestrate the popular Rakoczi March. The tune, written
in the 1730s, would symbolize Magyar resistance to the Hapsburg regime.
Berlioz sets off quietly and at first there were concerns expressed as to
whether it would generate sufficient excitement as to rouse his Hungarian
audience. In the end there turned out to be no fears on that score. With the
first cannon shots on the bass drum the work takes off to reach a tumultuous
climax. Too good to lose, Berlioz worked it into the Damnation of Faust as the
Hungarian March, setting the story in the plains of Hungary and only later
moving it to the Elbe. At Breslau Berlioz wrote the students chorus which
includes the student song gaudeamus igitur. Now, as it happens, Brahms
would later on receive an honorary doctorate from Breslau University as a
result of which he wrote his Academic Festival Overture, one of his happiest
works. It too contained student songs ending with Gaudeamus Igitur con
gusto. Co-incidence or otherwise, Berlioz was again the opening batsman.
La Damnation in French you dont pronounce the m - was completed on
his return home but it immediately ran into difficulties. It was not written to be
performed as an opera but as a concert legend, a halfway status between
opera and cantata. It got turned down at the Opra and instead was first
performed at the Opra-Comique where it got pulled after only two
performances. This left Berlioz heavily in debt to the tune of 5000 to 6000
francs. Berlioz did cock a snook at the conservative musical establishment
who still maintained that opera should always contain a fugue. So Berlioz
included an Amen Chorus in ludicrous full fugue as a requiem for a rat which
gets burned alive in the bakers oven. The work is one of his most vivid, more
so because so much is left to the imagination to picture. Mephistopheles
always makes his entry in an undisguised fart on the brass appearing like an
audible burst of wind out of nowhere,.. The best example of its audio-visual
character must be the Ride to Pandemonium. Faust has just signed a
parchment without having read it and there being no cooling off period. He
should of course have gone to a solicitor. Following a terrifying trochaic
gallop by Faust and Mephistopheles, supposedly to save Marguerite, it ends
up with Faust peering over the abyss, expressing his horror, before being
plunged into the cauldron of hell followed by an incomprehensible diabolical
language of Berlioz Babel by the devilry.
Back on the stump, Berlioz travelled first to St Petersburg and Moscow for his
first Russian Tour where he more than recovered the losses from the
Damnation. This was followed by a seven-month visit to England and where he
was appointed conductor at the Drury Lane Theatre with a five year contract.
Unfortunately his term there lasted no longer than that of a Chelsea football
manager, the musical director of the theatre having been made bankrupt. It
was whilst he was in England that he began writing his Mmoires, which you
simply must add to your holiday reading. Berlioz was to return to England
twice more where his reputation as a conductor was as great as that of
composer and his monster concerts were very much sell outs. The Victorian
taste for bigger and better was reflected in the performances of Handels
Messiah which had grown to the size of a mammoth-whale. Berlioz had started
out as a conductor for the second performance of his Messe Solenelle at St

Roch in 1827 simply to ensure his own music was played correctly. The role of
todays modern conductor was virtually invented by Berlioz. In the eighteenth
century the leader of the band, such as Haydn, directed from the harpsichord
or be the first violinist. By Beethovens time the leader might conduct with a
few hand movements. Mendelssohn was said to be the first conductor to use
a wooden baton finding it served as a useful visual aid with which to beat time.
One of Berliozs most cherished keepsakes was the baton Mendelssohn gave
to him at Leipzig. Berlioz would have started out conducting possibly just a
little earlier than Mendelssohn. In France conductors were still the lead
violinist including Habaneck who I have already said was no Simon Rattle. As
lead violinist, he would use his bow to beat time, when he was not stopping to
take out his snuff box. Berlioz was viewed as being quite eccentric in
conducting without playing any instrument. He went further than beating the
tempo raised but added the role of chief interpreter. He was in fact the first
( that word again) virtuoso conductor to be followed by the likes of von Bulow,
Nikisch, Furtwangler, Karajan, Bernstein and, yes, Simon Rattle.
Whilst Berlioz was in England, revolutions broke out all over Europe including
France in February 1848. The second republic was born, a fairly conservative
lot. No bloody Robespierres, Dantons or Marats like the first time round. The
elected president was Napoleons nephew Louis Bonaparte whom Berlioz had
met in England and who had until then been banned from France. He
managed a further coup within four years and, like uncle like nephew, he
proclaimed himself the Emperor, Napoleon III. Berlioz had arrived back in
France in 1848, only to be informed that his father had died shortly after his
return. He went back to La Cte to join his sisters in mourning their father.
Father and son had been reconciled for some time with the father now proud
of the achievement of his son. The old doctor had never heard a note of
Berliozs music although he had expressed a wish to hear his Requiem. Just
as well perhaps that he did not...as that would surely have killed him off
anyway.
In 1849 Berlioz spent most of the year writing a Te Deum. It was to be another
monumental work. Some of it was previously used in the St Roch Mass. In
1835, after Harold in Italy, he had started to write a symphony to the glorious
memory of Napoleon, as likely as not a military symphony, but it never got
finished. The meat on that bone would be used for another meal. The Te
Deum includes an enormous organ and three choirs including one for
children. He had been impressed in London by hearing over 6000 children
singing together in St Pauls. He had hoped the work would be played at the
coronation of the Emperor but it did not get a performance until 1855. It was
dedicated to Prince Albert, the prince consort, which was right up his alleyway. The success was enormous and Berlioz wrote to Liszt that his Requiem
now had a brother.
During 1850 Berlioz played a trick on his many critics. He composed a work
entitled the Shepherd's Farewell claiming it to be written by a fictitious
sixteenth century composer named Pierre Ducr. As there was no Wikipedia to
go online to to verify this, the trick worked a treat and the critics praised the
work by 'Ducr' with one even claiming that Berlioz could never do that!".

Berlioz later incorporated it into LEnfance du Christ, (The Childhood of the

Christ). Then one malicious joker tried to get the printers to alter the poster to
LEnfant du Christ (The Child of the Christ).
Harriet's health had deteriorated since 1850 when she suffered a series of
strokes that left her paralysed. Berlioz provided four servants to look after her
on a permanent basis and visited her almost daily. In 1855 she died and was
buried in Montmartre where she had been living. Berlioz married Marie Reccio
within a few months, writing to his son, Louis, that it was his duty to do so.
Harriet would re-appear ten years later in his life in somewhat gruesome
circumstances which he related in his Memoirs. What transpired could only
happen to Berlioz and is as fantastic as the Dream of the Witches Sabbath in
his fantastic symphony. The cemetery was to be closed down and Berlioz
attended to witness the transfer of her remains to a nearby larger cemetery. He
wrote
A municipal officer, who had orders to witness the exhumation, was waiting
for me. The grave had already been opened. On my arrival, the grave-digger
jumped down into it. The coffin, though ten years in the ground, was still
intact; only the lid had decayed from damp. Instead of lifting out the whole
coffin, the gravedigger wrenched at the rotting planks, which came away with
a hideous crack, exposing the coffins contents. The gravedigger bent down
and with his two hands picked up the head, already parted from the body the
ungarlanded, withered, hairless head of poor Ophelia and placed it in a new
coffin ready for it at the edge of the grave. Then, bending down again, with
difficulty he gathered in his arms the headless trunk and limbs, a blackish
mass which the shroud still clung to, like a damp sack with a lump of pitch in
it. It came away with dull sound, and a smell.
Alas, it was not the skull of Yorick but that of his poor Ophelia that he had
known so well.
Now in the 1850s Berlioz returned to a theme which had been with him since
childhood, a grand opera based on Virgils Aeneid, The Trojans, in two parts.
The first would be the Capture of Troy (Book 2), more a prologue than a full
opera, and the second The Trojans in Carthage (Book 4). It is in five acts.
The only performance in Berliozs life was a truncated version of The Trojans
at Carthage and no complete performance took place until it was performed in
1957 at Covent Garden under Rafael Kubelik. It was a visual overwhelming
experience with the Trojan horse so high that you only saw on stage its
wheels and legs with the Greeks descending from above the proscenium on
ropes dangling from its imagined belly. The first full performance in France
took place under John Eliot Gardiner unbelievably as late as 2003, 200 years
after the birth of Berlioz! That same year ENO undertook a joint production
with Los Angeles Opera. Never have I been so let down by such a feeble
production. No armour, no breastplates, just dressed down Trojans in vests
and jeans. Their weapons werent spears or swords but bombs with miniature
war heads. At the time there were inspectors waiting to go into Iraq to look for
weapons of mass destruction and I therefore wrote to the Rt. Hon Tony Blair to

ask him if he was aware that there were WMD in Carthage. Despite this
sensitive intelligence, which he could have sexed up, he did not reply!.
In 1862 Berlioz wrote his last opera, Beatrice and Benedict, first performed in
Baden Baden, with great success. Batrice was sung by Madame ChartonDemeur, a supporter of Berlioz who had sung the role of Dido in the Trojans.
That same year Marie Recio, Berlioz's wife, died suddenly from a stroke at the
age of 48. Oddly enough Berlioz did not eulogise about Marie but she was
probably the real true love of his life with no illusions but sharing difficulties
through thick and thin over twenty two years. She was buried at Montmartre
and later to be joined there by Harriets transferred remains. Maries mother
had lived with the couple and Berlioz dutifully continued to look after her.
He was now becoming a disillusioned lonely old man. His eccentricities
continued. He made attempts to form a new liaison with a 26 year old lady
called Amlie, whom he met in the cemetery. Eventually, she begged him to
stop. Six months later he learned she had died when he saw her tombstone in
the cemetery. He then sought out Estelle Fornier, the same Estelle from his
childhood passion. Now 40 years on he was 63 and she 69. Ever a romantic he
claimed he still longed for her, and eventually she had to inform him sensibly
and kindly that as a married woman there was no possibility that they could
become closer than friends. Ever persistent he went on writing, she having
moved to Geneva. It was finally left that he would visit her there once a year.
Then in 1867 Berlioz's son Louis, first mate in the merchant fleet, died of
yellow fever in Havana. This was the most crushing blow of all for Berlioz. He
himself had been experiencing intestinal pains and whole days were passed in
agony.
Later in 1867, twenty years after his first tour there, he embarked on his
second concert tour of Russia. The tour was massively lucrative for him that
he turned down an offer of 100,000 francs to perform in New York. He returned
to Paris in 1868, exhausted, with his health damaged from the prolonged trip.
Once again he went off to Nice to recuperate but whilst there he he slipped on
some rocks by the sea shore and crashed his head. He had had a possible
stroke and was forced to return to Paris. On 8 March 1869 Hector Berlioz died
at his Paris home with his mother in law and Madame Charton-Demeur, his
Dido, at his bedside. His last words were reputed to be At last, they are going
to play my music. He was buried in Montmartre Cemetery with his two wives
placed next to him. Thus at last he would find in death a modus vivendi, his
mnage trois.

When I first set out to write this note, I begged your indulgence pointing out
that Berlioz had long been one of my passions. This series by Matthew and
the researches I have made only reinforce those feelings. I also mentioned at
the outset the magnetism that Berlioz still had on others, as felt for example by
Michael Ayrton. And does Berlioz have such an effect on me? Judge for
yourself. The other day, as I lay in bed re-reading his memoirs and other books
about him around me, my dear wife came in with a mug of tea and exclaimed
There are three people in this marriage, Me, You and........Berlioz.