for the
first impression is a lasting one.

[Footnote 1: "And you, Russia, who have saved me...." (Berlioz,
_Memoires_, II, 353, Calmann-Levy's edition, 1897).]

That is the worst of it; people imagine that they understand Berlioz
with so very little trouble. Obscurity of meaning may harm an artist
less than a seeming transparency; to be shrouded in mist may mean
remaining long misunderstood, but those who wish to understand will at
least be thorough in their search for the truth. It is not always
realised how depth and complexity may exist in a work of clear design
and strong contrasts--in the obvious genius of some great Italian of the
Renaissance as much as in the troubled heart of a Rembrandt and the
twilight of the North.

That is the first pitfall; but there are many more that will beset us in
the attempt to understand Berlioz. To get at the man himself one must
break down a wall of prejudice and pedantry, of convention and
intellectual snobbery. In short, one must shake off nearly all current
ideas about his work if one wishes to extricate it from the dust that
has drifted about it for half a century.

Above all, one must not make the mistake of contrasting Berlioz with
Wagner, either by sacrificing Berlioz to that Germanic Odin, or by
forcibly trying to reconcile one to the other. For there are some who
condemn Berlioz in the name of Wagner's theories; and others who, not
liking the sacrifice, seek to make him a forerunner of Wagner, or kind
of elder brother, whose mission was to clear a way and prepare a road
for a genius greater than his own. Nothing is falser. To understand
Berlioz one must shake off the hypnotic influence of Bayreuth. Though
Wagner may have learnt something from Berlioz, the two composers have
nothing in common; their genius and their art are absolutely opposed;
each one has ploughed his furrow in a different field.

The Classical misunderstanding is quite as dangerous. By that I mean the
clinging to superstitions of the past, and the pedantic desire to
enclose art within narrow limits, which still flourish among critics.
Who has not met these censors of music? They will tell you with solid
complacence how far music may go, and where it must stop, and what it
may express and what it must not. They are not always musicians
themselves. But what of that? Do they not lean on the example of the
past? The past! a handful of works that they themselves hardly
understand. Meanwhile, music, by