o not let us say: Music can....
Music cannot express such-and-such a thing. Let us say rather, If genius
pleases, everything is possible; and if music so wishes, she may be
painting and poetry to-morrow. Berlioz has proved it well in his
_Romeo_.

This _Romeo_ is an extraordinary work: "a wonderful isle, where a temple
of pure art is set up." For my part, not only do I consider it equal to
the most powerful of Wagner's creations, but I believe it to be richer
in its teaching and in its resources for art--resources and teaching
which contemporary French art has not yet fully turned to account. One
knows that for several years the young French school has been making
efforts to deliver our music from German models, to create a language of
recitative that shall belong to France and that the _leitmotif_ will not
overwhelm; a more exact and less heavy language, which in expressing the
freedom of modern thought will not have to seek the help of the
classical or Wagnerian forms. Not long ago, the _Schola Cantorum_
published a manifesto that proclaimed "the liberty of musical
declamation ... free speech in free music ... the triumph of natural
music with the free movement of speech and the plastic rhythm of the
ancient dance"--thus declaring war on the metrical art of the last three
centuries.[84]

[Footnote 84: _Tribune de Saint Gervais_, November, 1903.]

Well, here is that music; you will nowhere find a more perfect model. It
is true that many who profess the principles of this music repudiate
the model, and do not hide their disdain for Berlioz. That makes me
doubt a little, I admit, the results of their efforts. If they do not
feel the wonderful freedom of Berlioz's music, and do not see that it
was the delicate veil of a very living spirit, then I think there will
be more of archaism than real life in their pretensions to "free music."
Study, not only the most celebrated pages of his work, such as the
_Scene d'amour_ (the one of all his compositions that Berlioz himself
liked best),[85] _La Tristesse de Romeo_, or _La Fete des Capulet_
(where a spirit like Wagner's own unlooses and subdues again tempests of
passion and joy), but take less well-known pages, such as the
_Scherzetto chante de la reine Mab_, or the _Reveil de Juliette_, and
the music describing the death of the two lovers.[86] In the one what
light grace there is, in the other what vibrating passion, and in both
of them what freedom and apt expression of id