ead upon his breast, he listened to this tumultuous cry of 'Vive
Berlioz!' and when, on looking up, he saw all eyes upon him and all
arms extended toward him, he could not withstand the sight; he trembled,
tried to smile, and broke into sobbing."

Berlioz's supremacy in the field of orchestral composition, his
knowledge of technique, his novel combination, his insight into the
resources of instruments, his skill in grouping, his rich sense of
color, are incontestably without a parallel, except by Beethoven and
Wagner. He describes his own method of study as follows:

"I carried with me to the opera the score of whatever work was on
the bill, and read during the performance. In this way I began to
familiarize myself with orchestral methods, and to learn the voice and
quality of the various instruments, if not their range and mechanism.
By this attentive comparison of the effect with the means employed to
produce it, I found the hidden link uniting musical expression to the
special art of instrumentation. The study of Beethoven, Weber,
and Spontini, the impartial examination both of the _customs_ of
orchestration and of _unusual_ forms and combinations, the visits I
made to _virtuosi_, the trials I led them to make upon their respective
instruments, and a little instinct, did for me the rest."

The principal symphonies of Berlioz are works of colossal character
and richness of treatment, some of them requiring several orchestras.
Contrasting with these are such marvels of delicacy as "Queen Mab," of
which it has been said that the "confessions of roses and the complaints
of violets were noisy in comparison." A man of magnificent genius and
knowledge, he was but little understood during his life, and it was
only when his uneasy spirit was at rest that the world recognized his
greatness. Paris, that stoned him when he was living, now listens to his
grand music with enthusiasm. Hector Berlioz to the last never lost
faith in himself, though this man of genius, in his much suffering from
depression and melancholy, gave good witness to the truth of Goethe's
lines:

"Who never ate with tears his bread,
Nor, weeping through the night's long hours,
Lay restlessly tossing on his bed--
He knows ye not, ye heavenly Powers!"

A man utterly without reticence, who, Gallic fashion, would shout his
wrongs and sufferings to the uttermost ends of the earth, yet without
a smack of Gallic posing and affectation, Berl