The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Orchestral Conductor, by Hector Berlioz

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Title: The Orchestral Conductor
Theory of His Art

Author: Hector Berlioz

Release Date: December 28, 2008 [EBook #27646]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE
Orchestral Conductor

THEORY OF HIS ART

BY
HECTOR BERLIOZ.

NEW YORK

PUBLISHED BY CARL FISCHER

6-10 Fourth Ave., Cooper Square.

Copyright, 1902, By Carl Fischer.

THE ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTOR.

THEORY OF HIS ART.

BY HECTOR BERLIOZ.

Music appears to be the most exacting of all the Arts, the cultivation
of which presents the greatest difficulties, for a consummate
interpretation of a musical work so as to permit an appreciation of its
real value, a clear view of its physiognomy, or discernment of its real
meaning and true character, is only achieved in relatively few cases. Of
creative artists, the composer is almost the only one who is dependent
upon a multitude of intermediate agents between the public and himself;
intermediate agents, either intelligent or stupid, devoted or hostile,
active or inert, capable--from first to last--of contributing to the
brilliancy of his work, or of disfiguring it, misrepresenting it, and
even destroying it completely.

Singers have often been accused of forming the most dangerous of these
intermediate agents; but in my opinion, without justice. The most
formidable, to my thinking, is the conductor of the orche