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Berlioz's Self-Borrowings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1965

Hugh Macdonald
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Extract

To have borrowed the music of one work for the composition of another is, understandably I think, not a confession that composers are fond of making. If they are afraid of the misunderstanding and sarcastic comment that it might arouse in the minds of the unthinking, it is our duty, it seems to me, to study and explain (where explanation is necessary) this pelican-like habit. Berlioz has suffered particularly in this respect for being a ‘programmatic’ composer, although, as I shall later try to show, the very existence of so much borrowed material demonstrates the fatuity of such a term as an attempt to isolate one particular type of composer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 92 , 1965 , pp. 27 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Berlioz, Mémoires, 2 vols., Paris, 1878, i. 16.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., i. 18.Google Scholar

3 For Barbier's share in this project, see Charavay Catalogue No. 697 (June 1957), which offered for sale a scenario in Berlioz's hand with some contributions by Barbier.Google Scholar

4 Mémoires, i. 55.Google Scholar

5 Bibliothèque Nationale Rés. Vm2. 177.Google Scholar

6 Bibliothèque du Conservatoire MS 1. 188.Google Scholar

7 For example Tom S. Wotton, Berlioz—Four Works, (The Musical Pilgrim), London, 1929, p. 6.Google Scholar

8 As for example by Newman in his translation of the Mémoires, New York, 1932, p. 98n.Google Scholar

9 ‘Entrez en danse’ in the Ballet is set as ‘Pressons la danse’ in Cellini.Google Scholar

10 Berlioz, Lettres Intimes, Paris, 1882, p. 102.Google Scholar

11 Lettres Intimes, p. 47.Google Scholar

12 Bibliothèque Nationale, Ancien fonds 12756. The author is probably the Baron de Trémont.Google Scholar

13 Bibliothèque Nationale, Rés. Vm2. 178.Google Scholar

14 For detailed studies of this work, sec Tiersot, ‘Berlıoziana’, Le Ménestrel, (1906), 287–303 and Wotton, ‘An Unknown Score of Berlioz’, The Music Review, iv (1943), 224–8.Google Scholar

15 The original titles were: ‘Adieu du haut des Alpes aux braves tombés dans les champs d'Italic’ followed by ‘Entrée triomphale des vainqueurs à Paris’. These sketches are described by Tiersot in his ‘Berlioziana’, Le Ménestrel, (1906), 362–8.Google Scholar

16 Bibliothèque du Conservatoire D. 1172.Google Scholar

17 Tiersot, Lettres de musiciens écrites en français, Turin, 1924, ii. 192.Google Scholar

18 Ernest Newman contrived to use the evidence of self-borrowing to support this view, see his Musical Studies, London, 1905, p. 43 seq.Google Scholar

19 For example: Tiersot, ‘Etude sur La Damnation de Faust’, Le Guide Musical, xliv (1898), p. 943—xlv (1899), p. 176, and A. E. F. Dickinson, ‘The Revisions for the Damnation of Faust’, Monthly Musical Record, lxxxix (1959), pp. 180–5.Google Scholar

20 Le Ménestrel, (1906), p. 368.Google Scholar

21 Music Review, iv (1943), p. 228.Google Scholar

22 Une Page d'Amour Romantique, Paris, 1903, p. 15.Google Scholar

23 Bonavia, ‘Berlioz’, Monthly Musical Record, lix (1929), p. 231.Google Scholar

24 Berlioz, A Travers Chants, Paris, 1924, p. 155.Google Scholar

25 The best example is to be found in his letter of 12 August 1856, during the composition of Les Troyens:Google Scholar

The most difficult task is to find the musical form, this form without which music does not exist, or is only the craven servant of speech. That is Wagner's crime; he would like to dethrone music, and reduce it to ‘expressive accents’, exaggerating the system of Gluck, who, fortunately, did not succeed in carrying out his ungodly theory. I am in favour of the kind of music you call free. Yes, free and proud and sovereign and triumphant, I want it to grasp and assimilate everything, and have no Alps nor Pyrenees to block its way; but to make conquests, music must fight in person, and not merely by its lieutenants; I should like music if possible to have fine verses ranged in battle order, but it must itself lead the attack like Napoleon, it must march in the front rank of the phalanx like Alexander. Music is so powerful that it fan sometimes conquer on its own, and has a thousand times claimed the right to say, like Medea: ‘Moi, c'est assez’. To want to tie it down to the old kind of recitation of the ancient choros is the most incredible, and, mercifully, the most fruitless folly ever recorded in the history of art.Google Scholar

Berlioz, Briefe an die Fūrstin Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, ed. La Mara, Leipzig, 1903, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar