For all his radicalism, he was too trammeled by the classical concepts,
the traditional musical schemes and patterns to quite realize the
symphony based on an extra-musical scheme. His symphonic poems reveal
how difficult it was for him to make his music follow the curve of his
ideas. In "Die Ideale," for instance, for the sake of a conventional
close, he departed entirely from the curve of the poem of Schiller which
he was pretending to transmute. The variations in which he reproduced
Lamartine's verse are stereotyped enough. When was there a time when
composers did not deform their themes in amorous, rustic and warlike
variations? The relation between the pompous and somewhat empty "Lament
and Triumph" and the unique, the distinct thing that was the life of
Torquato Tasso is outward enough. And even "Mazeppa," in which Liszt's
virtuosic genius stood him in good stead, makes one feel as though
Liszt could never quite keep his eye on the fact, and finally became
engrossed in the weaving of a musical pattern fairly extraneous to his
idea. The "Faust Symphony" is, after all, an exception. Berlioz, too,
failed on the whole to achieve the musical novel. Whenever he did attain
musical form, it was generally at the expense of his program. Are the
somewhat picturesque episodes of "Harold in Italy," whatever their
virtues, and they are many, more than vaguely related to the Byronism
that ostensibly elemented them? The surprisingly conventional overture
to "King Lear" makes one feel as though Berlioz had sat through a
performance of one of Shakespeare's comedies under the impression that
he was assisting at the tragedy, so unrelated to its subject is the
music.
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