by Stephen Fry
His plan started to go a little awry, though, when, while in Rome, he heard that Camille had taken a lover. Damn. This buggered things up completely. How would Harriet Smithson ever be jealous if she had nothing to be jealous of? So what did he do? Well he did what any 'mad as a spoon' romantic French composer of the 1830s would do. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? He immediately headed back to Paris, disguised as a lady's maid. OF COURSE! (This is, I assure you, totally true. No © symbol here, you notice?) Well, who can honestly say that they haven't done that in their time? I know I have. Anyway, Hector le Fou only got as far as Genoa, when he somehow lost his disguise -which is a great shame, because I for one would have loved to know the outcome. Sounds like perfect material for a bedroom farce. In the end, he went back to Rome, deflated.
When he finally did return to Paris, he discovered that Smithson was in town. Oh, no - here we go again. He had to act fast. What would be the thing that would convince her that he was the best thing since sliced baguette? Fill her room with flowers? Send her a leather-bound book of the most romantic love poetry she'd ever read? No. HB - the man who was clearly one lead short of a pencil - decided he knew what would win her over. He would arrange a performance of his ridiculously large Symphonie Fantastique - the five-movement hulk of a symphony, containing four brass bands and a Dream of a Witches' Sabbath. That was bound to be the best love token she'd ever had.
But get this. It worked! She was won over! He got her! Well, I've got to say, Berlioz - and indeed Harriet - and I will clearly never see eye to eye on the subject of romance. To be fair, the Symphonie Fantastique is a tremendous work, and, also to give him his due, it does contain a 'Harriet Smithson' tune, which keeps cropping up all the way through. So she must have been quite touched. He subtitled the whole thing 'An Episode in the Life of an Artist', and the artist of the subtitle has apparently poisoned himself with opium, leading to him having all manner of strange hallucinations, which are depicted in the music - so not a million miles from what Velvet Underground were doing in the '60s. Throw in Timothy Leary, and you're about there.
At the time, as most forward-thinking works are prone to do, the Symphonie Fantastique provoked quite a few 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' reactions. Schumann hated it - with a passion - but probably the best quote about it came from the light-hearted lunch-lover, Rossini, who said 'What a good thing it isn't music' - not only one of the best quotes about the Si7, but, I think, one of the best quotes about any music. And there are these two composers: the frank Frenchness of Berlioz, the forward-pushing romantic, with the emphasis on the antic; and the Polish polish of Chopin, with his delicate, tweaking romanticism, with the emphasis on the 'twea' - the two major romantic forces in Paris at the time.
RPM'
L
et me step back, for a moment, and try and gain some sort of overview, if I can, of the first half of the nineteenth century. It's basically all about one word: revolution. How many revolutions per month you have all depends on which part of the world you live in. The background is still that of France and the US - huge, world-changing revolutions, which made their effects felt everywhere, not least in the field of music. Hand in hand with this is, of course, nationalism. Everybody wanted to be themselves. They wanted to be of their own country, as it were. I can understand that. It's all just about 'a heightened sense of worth, individual freedom and personal expression'. Now, hold on to that phrase, if you would; hold on to that thought - 'a heightened sense of worth, individual freedom and personal expression'. Because if you lift that phrase and graft it on to the world of music, well, what you have, more or less, is a viable definition of the word Romanticism. In fact, you didn't need to separate the worlds of music and political revolution: ever since Beethoven had been some two parts revolutionary to three parts artist, revolutionary life and art had been inextricably linked. You not only didn't need to separate them, you COULDN'T.
Various people seemed to be on the move: 1838 - the Boers started the Great Trek; ten years later the Mormons would set out for the Great Salt Lake. And, oddly enough, with the exploration of the new, came an increased passion for the old - it may sound odd, but it's fi Revolutions per minute. true: the homeland becomes all the more cherished when it is left behind. So nationalism would increase apace - and it would be matched in music. Not just Chopin, with his urn of Polish earth, but deeper, in the very heart of music. Glinka wrote the first truly Russian opera in 1836 - A Life for the Tsar, with its story of real Russian peasants, not nobility, and complete with real Russian folk songs, embedded into the score.
BLACK AND WHITE RAGE
lsewhere, one of the chief phenomena that would advance the Romantic manifesto, as it were, was the further rise of the pianist-composers. Chopin himself, as well as Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, were the real big movers and shakers of this part of the romantic era, and not surprisingly, really, considering that Beethoven's nine-fold legacy left many composers in absolute fear of taking on the symphony, for want of appearing inadequate. Berlioz, of course, was too loopy to care, but the rest were more than a little daunted.
As he couldn't play an instrument to any great level, Berlioz, then, became the standard bearer for the romantic orchestra. So, if Chopin was, say, Billy Joel (gentle, thoughtful stuff for piano), and Liszt was Elton John (rather camp, over the top stuff for piano), then Berlioz is like James Last - a mad, orchestra man, with big hair. It is true, of course, that other people composed for the orchestra around this time, but, because he took it on in such a different way, Berlioz brought it to another level, before anyone else. His orchestral works were both highly individual and EPIC - the perfect recipe for moving any art form into its next phase.
Finally, into all this, add the ever-present ingredient of better technical resources. Instruments became so markedly different too. New trumpets, with keys, were now becoming more and more common, whereas previously the trumpet played would have several different 'crooks' - a crook was a piece of the trumpet tubing that could be removed. If you put a crook of a different length back in, you were effectively changing the length of the trumpet tubing, and, thus, the notes it could play. This was all eventually replaced by keys. Similar things happened with the clarinet, with more keys added to increase its versatility. The orchestra could make almost a completely different sound from the one available to, say, Mozart, only thirty-odd years ago. Thirty-odd years ago - amazing, isn't it? It seems like another world. Pianos, too, were just beyond comparison. The advent of the iron-stringed piano made dynamics so much more pronounceable -so, not only did the Romantic pianist-composers want to go somewhere different, they also had the means to get there. What more could you want?
WELL, BERGAMO
ooming back in, now, and the time has come for another opera composer to get his fifteen minuets of fame. Post 1829, he was becoming as popular in Paris - remember, the current centre of the music world - as he was in his native Bergamo. He was the final three-ninths of the opera triumvirate that was: Rossini, Bellini and… Donizet [pause for full Italian effect] ti.
Donizet ti was a man who'd been given a huge shot in the arm, as far as composing operas went, in 1829, the year Rossini stopped composing. The shot in the arm was, well, that Rossini stopped composing, frankly. Up to this point, Donizet ti had produced more or less one opera every twenty-five minutes. OK, I say 'more or less', but, to be fair, it was in fact less. OK. It just seemed like he was producing an opera every twenty-five minutes. And, also to be fair -because I do like to be fair - more or less ALL of them were not so good. Of course, the audiences enjoyed them enough, and so he kept churning them out. Well, why not, I suppose. Who would be prepared to say they would have done any differently? But then, all of a sudden, Rossini made his sudden and unexpected move - suddenly and unexpectedly retreating from music. And, lo and behold, the effect on Donizet ti was astonishing. He started to write his best ever stuff. In fact, all his operas which could fairly stake a claim to be labelled 'masterpieces' came from the time af
ter Rossini had decided to shtay shtum: Anna- Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Don Pasquale, Lucia di Ilkley Moor/ and, my own personal favourite, the darling Uelisir d'amore - The Elixir of Love.
The Elixir of Love, from 1832, is a comic opera that conceals a divine tragic kernel in its best-known aria, 'Una furtiva lagrima'. MMMMMMMMMMWHAH! A gorgeous aria, on many people's list of Top Five Tracks to Propose To, alongside 'Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool' by Little Jimmy Osmond. Donizet ti is said to have composed the entire opera in only two weeks - which, if it's true, makes it all the more astonishing. Try it some time. The Royal Opera House used to have an 'oldie but goldie' production of it, which was quite charming in a quaint, country bumpkin sort of way. The only thing which I ever found hard to take about it was the fact that I always seemed to see it with Pavarotti in the role of Nemorino - the guy who gets to sing 'Una furtiva lagrima'. This is meant to be the young, virile lover, but sometimes the sight of Big Luc in a country smock, trying to gambol and skip, strained my limited suspension of disbelief. And in opera, that's saying something.
A full five years and, it would seem, a whole million miles separate UElisir d'amore by Donizet ti from the next MASSIVE work by Bonkers Berlioz, the Grande Messe des Morts. In between, he'd had a strange run-in with Paganini, which I want to tell you all about.
BERLIOZ'S STRANGE RUN-IN
WITH PAGANINI (WHICH I
WANT TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT)
aganini was, by now, a bit of a megastar.
If you remember, apart from a passing reference, when we last really came across Paganini, he was only eleven and both he and his acne had just made their first public appearance. Well, the fiddling had gone well for Mr P. He'd spent virtually all his teens practising and fi Correction - Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia di Ilkley Moor was one of a triptych of operas, only ever sketched, out, following a brief stay in Yorkshire, ana" was, along with its sister operas, II Barbiere di Odey and The Italian Girl in 'alifax, never actually finished!^ performing and, financially, it had paid off. He did blow a great deal of it on gambling, but, ever since he'd landed the job of violinist to Princess Elise - Napoleon's sister - in Lucca, his pizzicato prowess had led to fame and fortune.
In fact, in our age of manufactured pop and even manufactured classical, it's hard to put into perspective quite how much of a star Paganini was. He had, as I mentioned, toured just Italy for most of his life, only venturing abroad when he was well into his forties. When he did, though, he became the toast of every venue - London, Vienna, Berlin - you name it. And, of course, Paris too. Wherever he went, he was hailed as a truly miraculous player. The now famous legend that he had sold his soul to the devil in return for his playing skills - which really were beyond any performer that had gone before - was something which he himself did nothing to disprove. For Paganini, he had nothing to lose from the story - people simply flocked more and more to his concerts to hear the 'devil' playing in person. One critic even swore he had seen a small devil, perched on the fiddler's shoulder during a concert, helping him reach notes beyond the grasp of mere mortals. Some even came to simply try and touch the man himself, to see if he was genuinely human. Whatever the reason they came, Paganini lapped it up and continually raised his ticket fees - occasionally quite simply doubling them.
Over the years, then, Paganini made an absolute fortune from his performing and he spent the last few years of his life wondering quite what to do with it. He'd kicked up a bit of a stink already, trying to open up a gambling house, the 'Casino Paganini', in Paris. He clearly had money to burn. Which is why, when he acquired a beautiful - and, let's not forget it, expensive - viola, he ended up on the doorstep of one Hector Berlioz with a request for a new work. He commissioned the composer - who was, after all, the shock jock of 1830s music, the Damien Hirst of romantics - to provide him with a viola concerto. What Paganini had in mind was something that would allow him to do with the viola what he already did with the violin. Quite why he didn't just write one himself, as he had done till now, is anybody's guess. Maybe he had lost his muse, a little. Whatever. He asked Screaming Lord Berlioz to write the dots for him.
What Berlioz had in mind, however, came out as the 1834 work Harold en Italie, which he subtitled Symphony in G for Viola and Orchestra. In this piece, the viola was more of a parallel commentator, an ethereal, often melancholic will-o-the-wisp, giving off all manner of molten impressions. It was not quite the 'TEEPERS, this is so BLOODY hard to play it makes me look FANTASTIC for pulling it off showstopper that Paganini had hoped for. As a result, he threw a luwie fit, and he refused to play it. In the end, the premiere fell to someone else, a performance which Berlioz himself conducted. Amazingly, Mr P attended the concert. He ended up being so overcome by die work he had rejected, he went on stage at the end, walked over to Berlioz, and knelt down in homage in front of him.
The very next day, Paganini had a message delivered to the French composer's door. It read: 'Beethoven is dead and Berlioz alone can revive him!' Inside the letter was a cheque - for 20,000 francs! WAS PAGANINI LOADED OR WHAT?
Ironically, the strange run-in with Paganini, which I've now told you about, was to prove invaluable to barmy Berlioz. The 20,000 francs made for a much easier time of it while he was writing not only his Romeo and Juliet, but also his headbanging, Ozzy Osbourne of a work, the Grande Messe des Morts.
ANOTHER FINE MESSE
T
he Italians call it Messa per I Defunti. The Germans Totenmesse. But the best version, by far, comes from the silver-tongued French. The Requiem form is almost as much a part of music as it is a part of life and death, and it's obvious, in a way, that someone like Berlioz might, at some point, want to get his hands dirty having a go at it. Of course, Berlioz wouldn't just write a 'Messe des Morts' - how could he? He had to write a Grande Messe des Morts.
It is hard to think what kind of mayhem the first audience for the Berlioz Requiem thought they were witness to. Time is not so much a great healer, in this case, but more of a disguiser, a 'brasher under the carpet'. As mad, bad and dangerous to hear as the Requiem is to us, now - and that's from a point of view of not just all the romantics, under our belt, so to speak, but also, the late romantics, the modernists, the avant-garde, the post-modern ironicists, the oncle-thom-cobblicists, everyone: we've heard it all before - time has misted the perception of just quite how shocking such a work might have been to the Class of 1837.
It was inspired by the deaths of French soldiers, killed in the French Algerian campaign, and Berlioz really did want to make it monumental - a huge, towering cenotaph of music in tribute to those who had lost their lives. It may have been a work that people might not have liked, but it was certainly a work which they couldn't ignore. It calls for over two hundred voices. Bearing in mind that even a standard symphony chorus - the ones you see at the back of the Albert Hall, huddled round the organ - would only normally ask for around seventy to eighty, you can get some idea of the scale of this work. Indeed, Berlioz himself favoured using around seven to eight hundred singers. Do you want to go back and re-read that line? Yes, I did say Berlioz himself favoured using around seven to eight hundred singers! The orchestra is also massively enlarged - the standard drum section, for example. You can picture in your head the person playing the timpani drums, can't you? LTsually he's got three, maybe four, drums in front of him, yes? Often there's only two, even. Well, 'the Composer in White Coats', as he was known, wrote an amazing sixteen kettledrums into his score - sixteen! There were also four separate brass bands, playing at all four corners of the concert hall.
To be fair to Berlioz, it really must have been a tremendous spectacle, and, if he wanted to have the soldiers of the Algerian campaign remembered, then he certainly achieved that not only with the scale, but also the fact, almost in spite of the towering scale, it is still regularly mounted today. He, himself, was very proud of it, too. 'If I were threatened with the destruction of all my works but one,' he once said, T would beg for mercy for the Messe des???%' A beautifu
l sentiment, spoilt only marginally by the fact that he also chose 'The Birdie Dance', six other records, and a cuckoo clock as his luxury item. His fellow romantic in the opposing camp, Chopin, had a different view on the Requiem, describing it as 'composition by spilling ink on a page'.
Sobering to think that 'modern music' and the shock of the new, as it were, has always been with us. It might be Birtwisde or Berio today, perhaps, but back in 1837 it was Berlioz.
Stand by your beds, now - I'm going to skip four years. But first let me briefly 'mind the gap'.
SPECIALIST SUBJECT 1837-1841: 'YOUR TIME STARTS NOW…'
n order to rid myself of the unbearable guilt of slapping four years, I have put together a series of questions and answers which might prove useful if you were ever to go on Mastermind, with 1837-1841 as your specialist subject. Admittedly, it's only a faint possibility, I grant you, but, well, it might be better than 'the novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle'. And it sure beats auto-flagellation as a way of coping with guilt. Well, for some. So, if you could bring to mind one of those films where they show the passage of time with the flapping pages of a calendar and superbly crafted montages of music and images, denoting the important events, then that would be useful. Have it in your subconscious as you read the next section. Here goes. Q. Was Constable alive in 1837?
A. No, and neither was Pushkin now that you mention it, but at least we had got Morse's 'Electric Telegraph', which looked like it was here to stay, and, with any luck, if given 150 years and a prevailing wind, would one day be refined into that joy of joys, the delight that is… mobile phones on trains. Good. Hope so. Q. Who is on the throne in 1838?
