It is as if the art of music, with its
new scales, its new harmonies, its new coloring, its new rhythmical
life, were being revolutionized, as if it were returning to its
beginnings. It is as if some of the original impulse to make music were
reawakening. And so, through this confusion, Berlioz has suddenly flamed
with significance. For he himself was the rankest of barbarians. A work
like the "Requiem" has no antecedents. It conforms to no accepted
canon, seems to obey no logic other than that of the rude and powerful
mind that cast it forth. For the man who could write music so crude, so
sheerly strong, so hurtling, music innocent of past or tradition, the
world must indeed have been in the first day of its creation. For such a
one forms must indeed have had their pristine and undulled edge and
undiminished bulk, must have insisted themselves sharply and
compellingly. The music has all the uncouthness of a direct and
unquestioning response to such a vision. Little wonder that it was
unacceptable to a silver and romantic epoch. The romanticists had
aspired to paint vast canvases, too. But the vastness of their canvases
had remained a thing of intention, a thing of large and pretentious
decoration. Berlioz's music was both too rude and too stupendous for
their tastes.
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