The other expression remains the telling one. It is one of the
supreme pieces of musical irony. It ranks with "Till Eulenspiegel" and
"Petrouchka."
It is also the saddest of your works. For it makes us know, once for
all, how infinitely much greater a musician you might have been, O
miserable and magnificent Abbe Liszt!
Berlioz
The course of time, that has made so many musicians recede from us and
dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The
age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him
unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of
gigantic edifices, not the builder. His music seemed scaffolding only.
Though a generation of musicians learned from him, came to listen to the
proper voices of the instruments of the orchestra because of him, though
music became increasingly pictural, ironic, concrete because he had
labored, his own work still appeared ugly with unrealized intentions. If
he obtained at all as an artist, it was because of his frenetic
romanticism, his bizarreness, his Byronic postures, traits that were
after all minor and secondary enough in him. For those were the only of
his characteristics that his hour could understand. All others it
ignored.
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