Tchaikowsky's, too, is predominantly lurid and sensual.
And while Wagner's at least is full of animal richness, Tchaikowsky's is
morbid and hysterical and perverse, sets us amid the couches and
draperies and pink lampshades instead of out under the night-time sky.
Berlioz's, however, is full of a still and fragrant poesy. His is the
music of Shakespeare's lovers indeed. It is like the opening of hearts
dumb with the excess of joy. It has all the high romance, all the
ecstasy of the unspoiled spirit. For Berlioz seems to have possessed
always his candor and his youth. Through three hundred years men have
turned toward Shakespeare's play, with its Italian night and its balcony
above the fruit-tree tops, in wonder at its youthful loveliness, its
delicate picture of first love. In Berlioz's music, at last, it found a
worthy rival. For the musician, too, had within him some of the
graciousness and highness and sweetness of spirit the poet manifested so
sovereignly.
But it is chiefly in the "Requiem" that Berlioz revealed himself in all
the grandeur and might of his being. For in it all the aristocratic
coolness and terseness of "La Damnation de Faust" and of "Harold en
Italie," all the fresco-like calm of "Les Troyens a Carthage," find
their freest, richest expression.
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