those outrageous
orchestral arabesques that descend on the themes of the "Faust" and
"Marguerite" movements, and whip them into grinning distortions. We hear
it deny and stamp and curse, topple the whole world over in ribald
scorn. The concluding chorus may seek to call in another emotion. You
may turn with all apparent fervor and pray "das Ewig-Weibliche" to save
you. The other expression remains the telling one. It is one of the
supreme pieces of musical irony. It ranks with "Till Eulenspiegel" and
"Petrouchka."

It is also the saddest of your works. For it makes us know, once for
all, how infinitely much greater a musician you might have been, O
miserable and magnificent Abbe Liszt!

Berlioz

The course of time, that has made so many musicians recede from us and
dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The
age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him
unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of
gigantic edifices, not the builder. His music seemed scaffolding only.
Though a generation of musicians learned from him, came to listen to the
proper voices of the instruments of the orchestra because of him, though
music became increasingly pictural, ironic, concrete because he had
labored, his own work still appeared ugly with unrealized intentions. If
he obtained at all as an artist, it was because of his frenetic
romanticism, his bizarreness, his Byronic postures, traits that were
after all minor and secondary enough in him. For those were the only of
his characteristics that his hour could understand. All others it
ignored. And so Berlioz remained for half a century simply the composer
of the extravagant "Symphonic Fantastique" and the brilliant "Harold in
Italy," and, for the rest, a composer of brittle and arid works, barren
of authentic ideas, "a better litterateur than musician." However, with
the departure of the world from out the romantic house, Berlioz has
rapidly recovered. Music of his that before seemed ugly has gradually
come to have force and significance. Music of his that seemed thin and
gray has suddenly become satisfactory and red. Composers as eminent as
Richard Strauss, conductors as conservative as Weingaertner, critics as
sensitive as Romain Rolland have come to perceive his vast strength and
importance, to express themselves concerning him in no doubtful
language. It is as though the world had had to move to behold B