their
distinction, originality, or charm--it is not for me to judge
them--but to deny their existence is either unfair or foolish. They
are often on a large scale; and an immature or short-sighted
musical vision may not clearly distinguish their form; or, again,
they may be accompanied by secondary melodies which, to a limited
vision, may veil the form of the principal ones. Or, lastly,
shallow musicians may find these melodies so unlike the funny
little things that they call melodies, that they cannot bring
themselves to give the same name to both."[75]

And what a splendid variety there is in these melodies: there is the
song in Gluck's style (Cassandre's airs), the pure German _lied_
(Marguerite's song, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"), the Italian melody,
after Bellini, in its most limpid and happy form (arietta of Arlequin in
_Benvenuto_), the broad Wagnerian phrase (finale of _Romeo_), the
folk-song (chorus of shepherds in _L'Enfance du Christ_), and the freest
and most modern recitative (the monologues of Faust), which was
Berlioz's own invention, with its full development, its pliant outline,
and its intricate nuances.[76]

[Footnote 75: _Memoires_, II, 361.]

[Footnote 76: M. Jean Marnold has remarked this genius for monody in
Berlioz in his article on _Hector Berlioz, musicien (Mercure de France_,
15 January, and 1 February, 1905).]

I have said that Berlioz had a matchless gift for expressing tragic
melancholy, weariness of life, and the pangs of death. In a general way,
one may say that he was a great elegist in music. Ambros, who was a very
discerning and unbiassed critic, said: "Berlioz feels with inward
delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has
felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's
originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size
of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable
aptness. For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and
tender heart; he has nothing of the heroism of Beethoven, or Haendel, or
Gluck, or even Schubert. He has all the charm of an Umbrian painter, as
is shown in _L'Enfance du Christ_, as well as sweetness and inward
sadness, the gift of tears, and an elegiac passion.

* * * * *

Now I come to Berlioz's great originality, an originality which is
rarely spoken of, though it makes him more th