Social Calls

It was in London, in the spring of 1855, when Berlioz was engaged as conductor to the New Philharmonic Society, and Wagner to the Old, that they had their closest meeting of minds. Writing on the day before Wagner’s final concert, which took place on Monday, June 25, 1855, the Frenchman told their mutual friend that he was deeply moved by even Wagner’s passionate outbursts (“ses violences”),2 CG 5:116. while his own gift for self-dramatization was usually more apparent in writing. Wagner tended to take his vantage point at the top of the mountain; Berlioz, at the edge of the grave. After that last concert, on that very Monday evening, Berlioz, Marie, and five other friends went to see the German master in his rooms in London. All seem to have engaged in lively conversation, drunk plenty of champagne punch, and eventually departed, after effusive embraces all around, at three o’clock in the morning.

How did the maestri converse? One witness, Ferdinand Praeger—whose book on Wagner remains controversial but whose observations on this occasion ring true (Wagner confirmed Praeger’s presence at the soirée in a letter to his wife),3 Wagner to Minna, June 26, 1855, in Wagner, Sämtliche Briefe, 7:233. tells us that “Berlioz was reserved, self-possessed, and dignified,” and that his “clear, transparent delivery was as the rhythmic cadence of a fountain,” while “Wagner was boisterous, effusive, and his words leaped forth as the rushing of a mountain torrent.”4 Praeger, Wagner as I Knew Him, 94. Wagner’s gift for self-dramatization was clearly manifest in person, and Berlioz found him full of enthusiasm, warmth, and heartfelt emotion. When Wagner, in London, was presented to Queen Victoria, he spoke to her, and she to him, in German. In Berlioz’s company, he obviously spoke French.

What did they talk about on that Monday evening in London? Women? In the presence of Marie Recio and Madame Praeger, this is unlikely. Furthermore, Wagner was or would become in this arena what one would have to call a connoisseur, while Berlioz would remain an amateur. Birds? Like Flaubert and Courbet, Berlioz had a pet parrot at one time or another, and so, too, did Wagner.5 CG 5:552; and Wagner, My Life, 267. (Later, in 1878, Wagner chose “Berlioz” as the name of a pet rooster.)6 Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, 2:1042–1043. Critics? Berlioz pilloried the leading Parisian critic of the eighteen-twenties and thirties, F.-J. Fétis, in his mélologue, Le Retour à la vie; Wagner lampooned the leading Viennese critic of the eighteen-sixties, Eduard Hanslick, in a (not-final) version of the libretto of Die Meistersinger. Both composers did so under the rubric of comic relief, but both critics reacted with whatever is the opposite of good humor.

Did they talk about Jews? Among others, Dieter Borchmeyer has argued that Wagner’s anti-Jewish sentiments were in origin French, not German, and were conspicuously stirred during his first, celebratedly miserable sojourn in Paris by the sometimes open hostility expressed by such friends of Berlioz as Vigny and Balzac, and by the writings of some of the early socialists, among them Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose Qu’est-ce que la propriété? Wagner is known to have read.7 Borchmeyer, “The Question of Anti-Semitism,” 178. Berlioz, who was never tempted by antisemitism, would presumably hear nothing of Wagner’s animadversions contra Meyerbeer, with whom the French composer long remained on perfectly cordial terms, to say nothing of other Jewish artists, such as Heine and Mendelssohn, whom Berlioz unfailingly admired. Wagner’s most heinous essay, Das Judentum in der Musik, first published in Franz Brendel’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, in September 1850, appeared almost immediately in French translation, in La France musicale, of which we know Berlioz was a reader: the editors, Léon and Marie Escudier, regularly publicized and reviewed his concerts in around mid-century. It is not impossible that Berlioz saw the essay, here entitled “Les Juifs musiciens,” but it is unlikely that he would have known the identity of the author, who long remained anonymous.8 Bloom, “The French Text of Wagner’s Das Judentum,” 263–283.

Did they talk about conducting? This is a point of critical importance, for the two men’s opposite approaches set the stage for much future interpretive debate (Wagner conducted from memory, freely; Berlioz conducted from score, strictly—although, if Ferdinand Hiller is to be believed, with enormous, even excessive, energy).9 Hiller, Künstlerleben, 98. The young pianist-conductor Karl Klindworth, among the guests, would have lent an ear to such a discussion, but in the competitive circumstances that prevailed in London in 1855, when the principal critics, James William Davison of the Times and Henry Chorley of the Athenaeum, were more in Berlioz’s camp than in Wagner’s, the subject was probably too hot to handle. The treatise on conducting that Wagner began in the year of Berlioz’s death and published first in installments, in the press, in 1870, makes no mention of the French composer, but Über das Dirigieren surely owes something to the Berliozian model, the Grand Traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes, likewise first published in installments, in the press, in 1841–1842, and many years later “Wagnerized” by that great Wagnerian who was Richard Strauss. Had Berlioz and Wagner spoken about orchestration itself, the French composer would surely have emphasized, as he does in the Mémoires, that of that art, his teachers, Jean-François Lesueur and Anton Reicha, taught him nothing at all.10 Mémoires, 194. Wagner might conceivably have admitted, by that time, that he had learned a thing or two from… Berlioz.

Did they talk about violinists? Wagner’s host and concertmaster, Prosper Sainton, was of the company. Perhaps they talked about tremolo, which both composers were accused of abusing. Or about oboe players! This is not as silly as it sounds, for Wagner’s former oboist in Dresden, Rudolf Hiebendahl, was at precisely that moment applying legal pressure to obtain repayment of a loan he had made to the composer some ten years earlier.11 Wagner to Wilhelm Fischer, June 4, 1855; Sämtliche Briefe 7:196–197. Berlioz could not have forgotten this fellow, for it was he who had spoiled the Scène aux champs, by adding trills and grace-notes to the off-stage solo that opens the third movement of the Fantastique, when Berlioz gave the work in Dresden in 1843. Warned against executing such melodic niceties, Hiebendahl refrained from doing so at the rehearsals, but let loose again at the concert, knowing that in the presence of the King, Berlioz could not punish such perfidiousness.12 Journal des débats (September 12, 1843); taken over in Mémoires, 544.

Did they talk about the piano? Berlioz seems always to have had one—he had purchased a spinet in his student days in the eighteen-twenties, and we long thought, because of the composer’s effusive but imprecise thanks, that Pierre Érard had made to him the gift a rosewood grand piano, in 1851.13 Because there is no record of it in the Érard archives, Robert Adelson, author of Érard: A Passion for the Piano (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), is certain (in private correspondence) that no such gift was made to Berlioz. (Madame Érard bestowed such a gift upon Wagner, in 1858.) In fact, Marie Recio had purchased an Érard grand piano, in 1847, and that is presumably the piano that Berlioz enjoyed until the end of his life. Neither Berlioz nor Wagner composed at the instrument. Berlioz was no pianist—he appears to have withdrawn his candidacy for the post of professor of harmony at the Conservatoire, in 1838, on learning that the teaching of practical keyboard accompaniment was a sine qua non14 AnF, F21 1292 (the folder of Paul-Émile Bienaimé).—although he sometimes plunked out a few notes. Wagner was no soloist, but he did use the piano to test what he had composed at his desk.15 Bailey, “The Method of Composition,” 273.

Did they talk about books? Both men were avid readers: Berlioz seems to have preferred literature; Wagner, history and philosophy. To understand the sources of Wagner’s inspiration we must read Feuerbach and Schopenhauer; to plumb the wellsprings of Berlioz’s imagination, we must plunge into Chateaubriand, Hugo, and Vigny, to say nothing of Virgil and Molière, whose work he knew by heart. One book is certain to have popped into the conversation, Les Soirées de l’orchestre, because on June 23, 1855, Berlioz wrote to his publisher, Michel Lévy, to ask that he send a copy of that book, now in its third printing, to Wagner’s address in Zurich.16 CG 5:115 (where the letter, whose autograph became available in October 2020, is incorrectly dated). Years later, Cosima and Richard mentioned the book when chattering, in Wahnfried, on March 24, 1879.17 Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, 2:282.

We can be fairly sure that Berlioz and Wagner talked about Beethoven—hoping individually to gain by the comparison—and we can be sure that they talked about Liszt, that great mid-century friend and advocate of both. A reading of Berlioz’s letter to Liszt of June 25, 1855, and of Wagner’s letter to Liszt of July 5 of that year, offers proof that the two mighty artists had had a truly gratifying exchange. Berlioz writes that “on his word of honor” (as though in some way hoping to reassure Liszt), “I believe that [Wagner] loves you every bit as much as I do, myself.” Wagner, reporting ten days later, admits that he had discovered a Berlioz quite different from the one he had earlier imagined—a veritable “Leidensgefährte,” a companion in misfortune.