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Public Library Kansas City, Mo. 3 WrooJS'eSf'f i976 __ U : NOUVELLES LETTRES DE BERLIOZ NEW LETTERS OF BERLIOZ NOUVELLES LETTRES DE BERLIOZ 1830-1868 AVEC PREFACE ANNOTATIONS ET TRADUCTION EN LANGUE ANGLAISE PAR JACQUES BARZUN PROFESSEtJR A COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK NEW LETTERS OF BERLIOZ 1830-1868 WITH INTRODUCTION NOTES AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY JACQUES BARZUN PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK COLUMBIA BICENTENNIAL EDITIONS AND STUDIES The Energetics of Development BY LESTER G. BARTH AND LUCENA J. BARTH New Letters of Berlioz, 1830-1868 TEXT WITH TRANSLATION, EDITED BY JACQUES BARZUN On the Determination of Molecular Weights by Sedimentation and Diffusion BY CHARLES 0. BECKMANN AND OTHERS LUIGI PIRANDELLO Right You Are TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY ERIC BENTLEY The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age BY MARGARETE BIEBER The Algebraic Theory of Spinors BY CLAUDE C. CHEVALLEY HENRY CARTER ADAMS Relation of the State to Industrial Action AND Economics and Jurisprudence EDITED BY JOSEPH DORFMAN ERNST CASSIRER The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY PETER GAY The Language of Taxonomy BY JOHN R. GREGG Ancilla to Classical Reading BY MOSES HADAS JAMES JOYCE Chamber Music EDITED BY WILLIAM Y. TINDALL Apocrimata: Decisions of Septimius Severus on Legal Matters EDITED BY WILLIAM L. WESTERMANN AND A. ARTHUR SCHILLER COPYRIGHT, 1954, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, CANADA, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN BY GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, TORONTO, BOMBAY, AND KARACHI MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-5189 GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE THE MODERN UNIVERSITY has become a great engine of pub lic service. Its faculty of Science is expected to work for our health, comfort, and defense. Its faculty of Arts is sup posed to delight us with plays and exhibits and to provide us with critical opinions, if not to lead in community sing ing. And its faculty of Political Science is called on to ad vise government and laity on the pressing problems of the hour. It is unquestionably right that the twentieth-century university should play this practical role. But this conspicuous discharge of social duties has the effect of obscuring from the public and sometimes from itself the university's primary task, the fundamental work upon which all the other services depend. That primary task, that fundamental work, is Scholarship. In the laboratory this is called pure science; in the study and the classroom, it is research and teaching. For teaching no less than research demands original thought, and address ing students is equally a form of publication. Whatever the form or the medium, the university's power to serve the public presupposes the continuity of scholarship; and this in turn implies its encouragement. By its policy, a uni versity may favor or hinder the birth of new truth. This is the whole meaning of the age-old struggle for academic freedom, not to mention the age-old myth of academic retreat from the noisy world. Since these conditions of freedom constitute the main theme of Columbia University's Bicentennial celebration, [v] and since the university has long been engaged in enter prises of public moment, it was doubly fitting that recog nition be given to the activity that enlarges the world's "access to knowledge." Accordingly, the Trustees of the University and the Directors of its Press decided to signal ize the zooth year of Columbia's existence by publishing some samples of its current scholarship. A full representa tion was impossible: limitations of time and space exer cised an arbitrary choice. Yet the Bicentennial Editions and Studies, of which the titles are listed on a neighbor ing page, disclose the variety of products that come into being on the campus of a large university within a chosen year. From papyrology to the determination of molecular weights, and from the state's industrial relations to the study of an artist's or poet's work in its progress toward perfection, scholarship exemplifies the meaning of free activity, and seeks no other justification than the value of its fruits. JACQUES BARZUN [vi] TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION XI I. THE ROMANTIC FLOWERING J FROM THE Symphonic fantastique TO THE Sym phonic funebre, 1830-1842 II. MID-CENTURY AND MID-CAREER 47 Faust, THE Te Deum, AND The Infant Christ, 1843-1855 III. A STOIC'S FULFILLMENT 157 THE Trojans AND THE RUSSIAN FIVE, 1856-1868 APPENDICES CHECK LIST OF UNPUBLISHED BERLIOZ LETTERS 273 CHRONOLOGY OF BERHOZ's DOMICILES 304 ADDITIONAL NOTES 307 BIBLIOGRAPHY 310 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 313 INDEX 315 TABLE DES MATlfiRES PREFACE X I. I/ESSOR ROMANTIQUE 2 DE LA Symphonie fantastique A LA Symphonic funebre, 1830-1842 H. A MI-CHEMIN DU SIECLE ET DE LA VIE 46 LE Te Faust, Deum, L'Enfance du Christ, 1843- 1855 in. L'APOTHEOSE D'UN STOIQUE 156 DES ens A LA ECOLE RUSSE Troy JEUNE ; 1856-1868 APPENDICES REPERTOIRE DES LETTRES INEDITES DE BERLIOZ 273 CHRONOLOGIE DES DOMICILES DE BERLIOZ 304 NOTES SUPPLEMENTAIRES 307 ' BIBLIOGRAPHIE n, SOURCES ET REMERClMENTS ^7 INDEX ILLUSTRATIONS PORTRAIT OF BERLIOZ BY PRINZHOFER 42 ALBUM LEAF: "SALUT MATINAL" 43 PREFACE ON A SOUVENT proclam Berlioz le parfait romantique. On pense sans doute aux epanchements de coeur, a la fi&vre cicatrice, a Textravagance verbale, qui passent pour etre les traits caracteristiques du maitre et qu'on croit retrouver dans ses fameux Memoires. D'autre part on lui a reproch6, avec t6moins a 1'appui, son abord reserve, voire froid, son attitude hautaine envers ses adversaries, aux cruelles attaques desquels il n'a jamais daigne repondre. C'etait, comme on Fa dit aussi, une na ture aristocratique. Appreciation d'ailleurs facile a notre epoque, ou celui qui porte le jugement ou qui le lit dispose de tres faibles moyens de comparaison. Devant ces apparences contradictories, le plus simple est de conclure au paradoxe: le romantique est paradoxal de sa nature. II se livre et il ne se livre pas. II est chaud et il est froid: c'est intolerable. On se rappelle le plerin d'Esope, qui fut assassine par ses hotes pour avoir soufH6 sur ses doigts afin de les rechauffer, et ensuite sur sa soupe afin de la refroidir. Or Tassassinat des morts se fait par la formule. On cache les multiples halites de toute une vie sous une etiquette, apres quoi plus n'est besoin de se pencher sur la complexite des faits. Et c'est ainsi que Tidee romanesque du romantique sert a nous cacher le vrai Berlioz. II suffit de lire sa correspondance pour s'apercevoir que Fexistence laborieuse du compositeur, de T6crivain, du prophete musical, de Tanimateur de foules, et de Thomme INTRODUCTION BERLIOZ has often been called the typical Romanticist. One thinks, no doubt, of the emotional confidences, the crea tive fire, the verbal exuberance which are said to be his chief characteristics, and which it is then easy to find again in his famous Memoirs. At the same time, Berlioz has been accused on good authority of being reserved, if not cold, and of displaying a haughty disdain toward his detractors, none of whom he ever answered. His was, as many have reported, "an aristocratic nature" a safe enough judgment in our time, when the person who makes it and he who reads it possess very limited means of testing their terms. Faced with opposite appearances, the easiest way out is to cry "contradiction!" The Romanticist is invariably a bundle of contradictions; he wears his heart on his sleeve and is quite heartless; he is a hothead and a cold fish: it is beyond endurance. One thinks at once of the wayfarer in Aesop's fable, who was murdered by those who gave him hospitality because he began by blowing on his hands to warm them and then on his food to cool it. Now the way to murder the dead is to dispose of them in a formula. One conceals the diversity of life under a label, after which there is no need to bother about discrepant facts. It is thus that the sentimental notion of the Romanticist serves to extinguish the actual Berlioz. But one has only to read his letters to see that the strenuous life of the composer, the writer, the musical [xi] d'ordre conscient, presente toute une serie de phenomencs intellectuel ou sentimental qui ne rentrent nullement dans Tid6e qu'on se fait de Tame romantique. D'ailleurs, chez Berlioz Fexageration par les mots, de son penchant au reve et a la melancolie ou pour tout dire, dela de la pose 1830 ne tient que tres peu de place au cette date. Une fois que, revenu a Paris, le pensionnaire et de 1'Academic de Rome reprend la lutte pour Tart pour la la vie, ses lettres respirent au contraire la foi et volonte de Fartiste discipline, qui s'adapte avec courage aux ter- nelles circonstances stupidite, jalousies, amities d6pues, deuils, guerres, revolutions. A ces obstacles s'ajoutent, bien entendu, les conse quences de defauts qui sont le revers des grandes quali- t6s: la colere du createur en butte aux rivalits d'arrivistes et de pompiers; la terrible franchise d'un caractere loyal et droit; la brusquerie autoritaire du genie qui salt, veut, et doit commander.