Читать книгу The Life of Hector Berlioz as Written by Himself in His Letters and Memoirs - Hector Berlioz - Страница 8

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After the death of his son, poor Imbert went back to Lyons; his place was taken by Dorant, a man of far higher standing. He was an Alsacian, and played almost every instrument, but he excelled in clarinet, ’cello, violin, and guitar. My elder sister—who had not a scrap of musical instinct, and could never read the simplest song, although she had a charming voice and was fond of music—learnt the guitar with Dorant and, of course, I must needs share her lessons. But ere long our master, who was both honest and original, said bluntly to my father:

“Monsieur, I must stop your son’s guitar lessons.”

“But why? Is he rude to you or so lazy that you can do nothing with him?”

“Certainly not. Only it is simply absurd for me to pretend to teach anyone who knows as much as I do myself.”

So behold me! Past master of those three noble instruments—flageolet, flute, and guitar!

Can anyone doubt my heaven-sent genius or that I should be capable of writing the most majestic orchestral works, worthy of a musical Michael Angelo! Flute, guitar, flageolet!!! I never was any good at other instruments. Oh yes! I am wrong, I am not at all bad at the side-drums.

My father would never let me learn the piano—if he had, no doubt I should have joined the noble army of piano thumpers, just like forty thousand others. Not wishing me to be a musician, he, I believe, feared the effect of such an expressive instrument on my sensitive nature. Sometimes I regret my ignorance, yet, when I think of the ghastly heap of platitudes for which that unfortunate piano is made the daily excuse—insipid, shameless productions, that would be impossible if their perpetrators had to rely, as they ought, on pencil and paper alone—then I thank the fates for having forced me to compose silently and freely by saving me from the tyranny of finger-work—that grave of original thought.

As with most young folks, my early work was downright gloomy, it simply grovelled in melancholy. Minor keys were rampant. I knew it was a mistake, but it seemed impossible to escape from the black crape folds that had enshrouded my soul ever since the Meylan affair.

The natural result of constantly reading Florian’s Estelle was that I ended by setting parts of that mawky pastoral to music.

The faded old-time poetry comes back to me as I write here in London, in the pale spring sunshine. Torn as I am by anxiety, worried by sordid, petty obstacles, by stupid opposition to my plans, it is strange to recall the sickly-sentimental words of a song I wrote in despair at leaving the Meylan woods, which were “lighted by the eyes”—and, may I add, by the little pink slippers of my cruel lady love.

“I am going to leave forever

This dear land and my sweet love,

So alas! must fond hearts sever,

As my tears and grief do prove!

River, that has served so gaily

To reflect her lovely face,

Stop your course to tell her, daily,

I no more shall see this place!”

Although it joined the quintettes in the fire before I went to Paris, yet in 1829, when I planned my Symphonie Fantastique, this little melody crept humbly back into my mind; it seemed to me to voice so perfectly the crushing weight of young and hopeless love that I welcomed it home and enshrined it, without any alteration, for the first violins in the largo of the opening movement—Rêveries.

But the fatal hour of choosing a profession drew rapidly nearer. My father made no secret of his intention that I should follow in his footsteps and become a doctor, since this he considered the finest career in the world; I, on the other hand, made no secret of my opinion that it was, to me, the most repulsive.

Without knowing exactly what I did want, I was absolutely certain that I did not want to be tied to the bedsides of sick people, to pass my days in hospitals and operating theatres, and I determined that no power on earth should turn me into a doctor.

My resolve was intensified by the lives of Gluck and Haydn that I read about this time in the “Biographie Universelle.” “How glorious,” I cried, “to live for Art, to spend one’s life in her beautiful service!” and then came a mere trifle which threw open the gates of that paradise for which I had been so blindly groping.

As yet I had never seen a full score; all I knew of printed music was a few scraps of solfeggi with figured bass or bits of operas with a piano accompaniment. But one day I stumbled across a piece of paper ruled with twenty-four staves, and, in a flash, I saw the splendid scope this would give for all kinds of combinations.

“What orchestration I might get with that!” I said, and from that minute my music-love became a madness equalled only in force by my aversion to medicine.

As I dared not tell my parents, it happened that by means of this very passion for music, my father tried decisive measures to cure me of what he called my “babyish antipathy” to his loved profession.

Calling me into his study where Munro’s Anatomy, with its life-size pictures of the human framework, lay open on the table, he said:

“See, my boy, I want you to work hard at this. I cannot believe that you will let unreasoning prejudice stand in the way of my wishes. If you will do your best, I will order you the very finest flute to be got in Lyons, with all the new keys.”

What could I say? My father’s gravity, my love and respect for him, the temptation of the long-coveted flute, were altogether too much for me. Muttering a strangled “Yes,” I rushed away to throw myself on my bed in the depths of misery.

Be a doctor! Learn to dissect! Help in horrible operations! Bury myself in the hideous realities of hospitals, wounds, and death, when I might tread the clouds with the immortals!—when music and poetry wooed me with open arms and divine songs.

No, no, no! Such a tragedy could not happen!

Yet it did.

My cousin, A. Robert—now one of the first doctors in Paris—was to share my father’s lessons. Unluckily he played the violin well, being a member of my quintette party, and, of course, we spent more time over music than over osteology. Still he worked so hard at home that he was always ready with his demonstrations, and I was not. Hence frequent scoldings and the vials of my father’s wrath poured out on my poor head. Nevertheless, by hook or by crook, I managed to learn all that my father could teach me without dissections, and when I was nineteen, I consented to go with Robert to Paris to embark on a medical career.

Before beginning to tell of the deadly conflict that, almost immediately on my arrival in Paris, I began with ideas, people and things generally, and which has continued unremittingly up to this day, I must have a short breathing space.

Moreover, to-day—the 10th April 1848—has been chosen for the great Chartist demonstration. Perhaps, in a few hours, these two hundred thousand men will have upset England, as the revolutionists have upset the rest of Europe, and this last refuge will have failed me. I shall know soon.

8 P.M.—Chartists are rather a decent sort of revolutionists. Those powerful orators—big guns—took the chair, and their mere presence was so convincing that speech was superfluous. The Chartists quite understood that the moment was not propitious for a revolution, and they dispersed quietly and in order. My good folks, you know as much about organising an insurrection as the Italians do about composing symphonies.

12th July.—No possibility of writing for the last three months, and now I am going back to my poor France—mine own country, after all! I am going to see whether an artist can live there, or how long it will take him to die amid those ruins beneath which Art lies—crushed, bleeding, dead!

Farewell, England!

France, 16th July.—Home once more. Paris has buried her dead. The paving-stones, torn up for barricades, are replaced; but for how long?

The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is one mass of desolation and ruin; even the Goddess of Liberty on the Bastille column has a bullet through her. Trees, maimed and uprooted; houses tottering to a fall; squares, streets, quays, still palpitating from the riot—all bear witness to the horrors they have suffered.

Who could think of Art at such a time! Theatres are closed, artists undone, professors idle, pupils fled, pianists become street musicians, painters sweep the gutters, and architects mix mortar in the national work-sheds.

Although the National Assembly has voted a subsidy to the theatres, and some help to the poorest of the artists, what is that among so many?

Take a first violin of the opera, for instance; his pay is nine hundred francs a year, which is eked out by private lessons. What chance has he of saving? Transportation would be a boon to him and his colleagues, for they might earn a living in America, Sydney, or the Indies. But even this is denied them. They fought for the Government and against the insurgents, and being only deserving poor instead of malefactors, they cannot even claim this last favour—it is reserved for criminals.

Surely this way—in this awful, hideous confusion of just and unjust, of good and evil, of truth and untruth—this way doth madness lie!

I must write on and try to forget.