n the composer's art. We
have a vision of close pages embodying the most unequivocal and drastic
of musical "realism." The full audacity and mastery of a certain sort of
genius are represented in his vast works. They bespeak, too, the
combative musician and reformer. Berlioz took the kingdom of music
by violence.

[Illustration: Hector Berlioz]

His _chef d'oeuvres_ do not all say to us as much as he meant them to
say, not as much as they all uttered twenty years ago. There is much
clay as well as gold in them. But such tremendous products of his energy
and intellect as the 'Requiem,' the 'Te Deum,' 'The Damnation of Faust,'
his best descriptive symphonies such as the 'Romeo and Juliet,' are yet
eloquent to the public and to the critical-minded. His best was so very
good that his worst--weighed as a matter of principle or execution,
regarded as music or "programme music"--can be excused.

Berlioz's actual biography is a long tale of storm and stress. Not only
was he slow in gaining appreciation while he lived; full comprehension
of his power was not granted him till after his energetic life was over.
Recognition in his own country is incomplete to day. He was born in
1803, near picturesque Grenoble, in the little town of Cote St. Andre,
the son of an excellent country doctor. Sent to Paris to study medicine,
he became a musician against his father's wish, and in lieu of the
allowance that his father promptly withdrew, the young man lived by
engaging in the chorus of the Gymnase, and by catching at every straw
for subsistence. He became a regular music-student of the Conservatory,
under the admirable Lesueur and Reicha; quitted the Conservatory in
disgust at its pedantry, in 1825; and lived and advanced in musical
study as best he could for a considerable time. His convictions in art
were founded largely on the rock of Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and
Weber; and however modern, and however widely his work departs from such
academic models, Berlioz never forswore a certain allegiance to these
great and serene masters. He returned to the Conservatory, studied hard,
gained the Prix de Rome, gradually took a prominent place among Parisian
composers, and was as enthusiastically the subject of a cult as was
Wagner. His concerts and the production of his operas encountered
shameful cabals. His strongest works were neglected or ill-served. To
their honor, German musicians understood him, Schumann and Liszt in
especial. Only in G