comes on the stage
with the artists to salute the audience. There is nothing more laughable
than to see him, as the last note of an opera dies away, jump down from
his stand and run like mad to reach the stage in time.

The excellence of the work of English choristers has been highly and
justly praised. Perhaps it would be fairer not to praise them so
unreservedly when we are so severe on our own. Justice often leaves
something to be desired. At all events it must be admitted that Berlioz
treated the voices in an unfortunate way. Like Beethoven, he made no
distinction between a part for a voice and an instrument. While except
for a few rare passages it does not fall as low as the atrocities which
disfigure the grandiose _Mass in D_, the vocal part of the _Requiem_ is
awkwardly written. Singers are ill at ease in it, for the timbre and
regularity of the voice resent such treatment. The tenor's part is so
written that he is to be congratulated on getting through it without any
accident, and nothing more can be expected of him.

What a pity it was that Berlioz did not fall in love with an Italian
singer instead of an English tragedienne! Cupid might have wrought a
miracle. The author of the _Requiem_ would have lost none of his good
qualities, but he might have gained, what, for the lack of a better
phrase, is called the fingering of the voice, the art of handling it
intelligently and making it give without an effort the best effect of
which it is capable. But Berlioz had a horror even of the Italian
language, musical as that is. As he said in his _Memoirs_, this aversion
hid from him the true worth of _Don Juan_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_. One
wonders whether he knew that his idol, Gluck, wrote music for Italian
texts not only in the case of his first works but also in _Orphee_ and
_Alceste_. And whether he knew that the aria _"O malheureuse Iphigenie"_
was an Italian song badly translated into French. Perhaps he was
ignorant of all this in his youth for Berlioz was a genius, not a
scholar.

The word genius tells the whole story. Berlioz wrote badly. He
maltreated voices and sometimes permitted himself the strangest freaks.
Nevertheless he is one of the commanding figures of musical art. His
great works remind us of the Alps with their forests, glaciers,
sunlight, waterfalls and chasms. There are people who do not like the
Alps. So much the worse for them.

CHAPTER XIV

PAULINE VIARDOT

Alfred de Musset cov