Daily Blague

Some cosmologists speak of multiple universes. I speak of two universes - musical universes. On the one hand, there is the universe of Berlioz. Then there is the universe of everything else, from Bach to the Bee Gees, from klezmer to koto. I mark the distinction not because I regard Berlioz as the greatest composer ever. That would contradict my point. Rather, Berlioz is the only composer that you can think of when you're listening to Berlioz, and when you're listening to anything else, the music of Berlioz seems impossible.

Listening to Berlioz, I am gripped by the passionate conviction that only Berlioz understands what music is for. Only he opens the lid all the way; he alone knows how to flood the scene with exciting brilliance. Sometimes the tone is angelically serene. Sometimes the laboratory seems about to explode. Sometimes, the laboratory has exploded. And sometimes Berlioz is just plain cheesy. Certainly not even Mozart conserved more of his noise-loving inner little boy.

Perhaps that's what it is: Berlioz gives voice to the infantile, to the raw disorderly and contradictory cravings of infants and toddlers. Like so many small children, Berlioz doesn't seem to know his own strength. He measures it unerringly, of course; that's why its impact is so focused. I'm listening, as I write this, to the "Choeur des ombres" from Lélio, and noting the offbeat drum thuds that only Berlioz would have written in - not to mention the tam-tam. The music is more generally known in its La Mort de Cléopatre version, but why listen to a sole soprano sing it when you can have an entire chorus singing it in unison? More is better, better, better!

And what wild little boy doesn't want to run off and join the pirates? Lélio is a recycling of miscellaneous compositions - a chanson for tenor and piano, another for tenor and orchestra, several choruses, and an orchestral piece - strung together by narration. The narrator is Berlioz himself, come back to life after the hanging at the end of the Symphonie Fantastique. (Lélio is a pendant to that far more famous work, with which it shares an opus number.) The wonderfully tacky "Chanson des brigands" is preceded by this bit of tantrum (which must be difficult for a sane actor to do well):

J'ai envie d'aller dans le Royaume de Naples ou dans la Calabrie demander au service à quelque chef de Bravi, dussé-je n'être que simple brigand... J'y ai souvent songé. Oui! de poétiques superstitions, une madone protectrice, de riches dépouilles amoncelées dans les cavernes, des femmes échevelées, palpitantes d'effroi, un concert de cris d'horreur accompagné d'un orchestre de carabines, sabres et poignards, du sang et du lacryma-christi, un lit de lave bercé par les tremblements de terre, allons donc, voilà la vie!

No adult on earth dreams of sleeping on a bed of lava rocked by earthquakes. It is a pleasure that only a mind long on fevered imagination and short on actual experience could envision. You have to leave the adult universe to enter the into spirit of the proceedings. The succeeding number is the chanson for tenor and orchestra, a "Chant de bonheur."

The final piece is an epithalamium to Miranda, of The Tempest, a " Choeur d'esprits de l'air." The text is in Italian, of all things. There's a sparkling piano obbligato, Miranda is told that she will know love, and Caliban is warned about Ariel's anger. The music is preceded by instructions to the performers! "Que SHAKESPEARE me protège!" It's as though a three year-old had been given a college education. The nakedness of Berlioz's fantasies, which he realizes perfectly in music, ought to be embarrassing, but if you are truly in the universe of Berlioz, it is all quite simply comme il faut. The music winds up to a tremendous swirl, drums bursting and trumpets blazing and the world generally seeming to come to an end in an ecstatic tarantella - in time for dinner.

I don't rule out the possibility of travel between the universes. There are several luminous passages in Verdi's operas that suggest that the Italian composer made the trip.