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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2011
It was Paganini's request for a concerto that prompted Berlioz to embark on the composition that eventually became Harold in Italy. The legendary virtuoso, then at the height of his fame, had recently acquired a fine Stradivari viola and needed a suitable vehicle for introducing the instrument to the public. He was puzzled and disappointed by Berlioz's score. It certainly was not the anticipated virtuoso vehicle, and within months Paganini had composed a substitute for himself, the Sonata per la grand viola. Berlioz explained that his work was ‘a new kind of symphony and not a composition written to show off a unique talent like [Paganini's]’. Berlioz's programmatic symphony with solo viola – the concerto that wasn't – would appear on the surface to be utterly devoid of the established codes of the virtuoso concerto.
1 From a letter to his friend Humbert Ferrand dated 31 Aug. 1834 in Berlioz: Selected Letters, ed. Macdonald, Hugh and trans. Nichols, Roger (London, 1995), 118Google Scholar.
2 A sensitive and thorough treatment of Berlioz's grappling with the Beethovenian symphonic tradition is Bonds, Mark Evan, ‘Sinfonia anti-eroica: Berlioz's Harold en Italieand the Anxiety of Beethoven's Influence‘, Journal of Musicology, 10 (1992): 417–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Memoirs, ch. XXXVII. There are many editions of Berlioz's memoirs. For this article, I have consulted Mémoires de Hector Berlioz (Paris, 1878) andGoogle ScholarMemoirs of Hector Berlioz from 1803 to 1865 comprising his travels in Germany, Italy, Russia, and England (first pub. 1932), trans.Google ScholarHolmes, Rachel and Holmes, Eleanor, annotated, and the translation revised, by Newman, Ernest (New York, 1966)Google Scholar.
4 Memoirs, ch. XLV:‘Je voulus faire de l'alto, en le plaçant au milieu des poétiques souvenirs que m'avaient laissés mes pérégrinations dans les Abruzzes, une sorte de rêveur mélancolique dans le genre du Child-Harold de Byron’. It has been established in the literature that while Berlioz may have seen himself in the persona of ‘Harold’, this persona does not represent Byron's Childe Harold. See Court, Glyn, ‘Berlioz and Byron and Harold in Italy’, Music Review, 17 (1956): 229–36;Google ScholarAustenfield, Thomas, ‘“But Come, I'll Set Your Story to a Tune”: Berlioz's Interpretation of Byron's Childe Harold’, Keats– Shelley Journal, 39 (1990): 83–94;Google ScholarSperry, Stuart M. Jr., ‘The Harolds of Berlioz and Byron’, Your Musical Cue, 4/6 (Apr. 1968): 3–8; and esp.Google ScholarRushton, Julian, The Musical Language of Berlioz (Cambridge, 1983), 277,Google Scholar which spells out the connections clearly: Berlioz saw himself as ‘Harold’ just as Byron saw himself as Childe Harold. In other words, the spurious connection between the poem and the musical work – that Berlioz's ‘Harold’ somehow represents Byron's Childe Harold – as highlighted sarcastically by Tovey, for example, has been largely dismissed. (Tovey, Donald Francis, ‘Berlioz: “Harold in Italy”, Symphony with Viola Obbligato, Op. 16’, in Essays in Musical Analysis, 4: Illustrative Music (London, 1937), 74–82Google Scholar.) In fact, in Berlioz's time commentators were about as likely to compare the piece to Shakespeare as to Byron (Griepenkerl quoted in Levy, David B., ‘“Ritter Berlioz” in Germany’, in Berlioz Studies, ed. Bloom, Peter (Cambridge, 1992), 145Google Scholar).
5 The theme is foreshadowed, in the minor, by the orchestra at Figure 1 of the score edited by Malherbe, Charles and Weingartner, Felix (New York: Dover, 1984).Google Scholar
6 This texture alludes to the ancient art of storytelling, in which the narrator accompanies himself/herself on a strummed instrument. The ‘Strophes’ in Roméo et Juliette refer directly to this tradition. The substitution of a solo instrument for the voice occurs not only in Harold, but also in the lyric monodrama Lélio – in which a muted solo clarinet is accompanied by broken chords on the harp. See Berlioz, Hector, Treatise on Instrumentation, trans. Front, Theodore, enlarged, and rev. Strauss, Richard (New York, 1948), 214–15Google Scholar.
7 Liszt, for example, heard Harold as ‘speaking’ lines from Byron's third Canto: ‘Harold enters and he seems, singing his profound monody, to reproduce the words of the poet in his language’ (Harold tritt ein und seine tiefsinnige Monodie singend scheint er in seiner Sprache die Worte des Dichters wiederzugeben). See Liszt, Franz, ‘Berlioz und seine “Harold-Symphonie” 1855’, Gesammelte Schriften, 4, first published in Leipzig, 1882 (Hildesheim and New York, 1978), 78.Google Scholar More recently Jacques Barzun has described the viola's role as ‘lyric declaimer’ in Berlioz and the Romantic Century (Boston, 1950), 246Google Scholar.
8 Memoirs, ch. XXXVII.
9 Ibid., ch. XXXIX. Berlioz was mesmerized by the playing of the pifferari. The account of the ragazzo Crispino whose serenade so inspired the composer can be found in the same chapter.
10 It is worth mentioning that the theme recurs in the orchestra as the viola ruminates in the coda section. I am grateful to my anonymous reader for reminding me of this.
11 Julian Rushton coins the generic title ‘picturesque symphony’ to describe Mendels-sohn's work in ‘Genre in Berlioz', in Bloom, , Berlioz Studies, 49.Google Scholar For more on the Charpentier work, see Wright, Lesley, ‘Berlioz's Impact in France’ in the same volume, 267.Google Scholar
12 ‘L'auditoire de véritables dilettanti qui était accouru àce beau concert ait voulu prolonger la douce rêverie dans laquelle l'avait plongé cette pensée musicale toute poétique et toute religieuse, et savourer aussi long-temps que possible la fraîcheur du soir, le parfum des montagnes qui s'en exhalent, et vous jettent, malgré que vous en ayez, dans la contemplation mystérieuse de l'infini’. Blanchard's, Henri review of Harold in Italy in Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 7/12 (9 Feb. 1840): 96.Google Scholar Blanchard generally avoided reviewing Berlioz's works since, as a Fétis-influenced critic, he was unsympathetically disposed towards them, and since the journal, to which Berlioz himself was a contributor in the 1830s, instituted a policy of presenting Berlioz ‘through the positive means of highlighting his strengths’. (Under Fétis's direction, the Gazette musicale, predecessor to the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, had launched stinging attacks on Berlioz.) For an illuminating discussion of the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris's Berlioz coverage, see Ellis, Katharine, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris, 1834–80 (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 11, esp. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Chard, Chloe, ‘Introduction’, in Transports: Travel, Pleasure, and Imaginative Geography, 1600–1830, ed. Chard, Chloe and Langdon, Helen (New Haven, 1996), 11.Google Scholar
14 Seen in this light, the piece may amount to nothing more than one composer's subjective impressions of Italy – in which case, Michael Cooke's description of Byron's poem as a ‘personal travelogue with a truly pointless titular hero’ would apply equally to Berlioz's music ( Cooke, Michael G., The Blind Man Traces the Circle (Princeton, 1969), 40Google Scholar ).
15 ‘L'exécutant doit être placé sur l'avant-scène, pré de l'orchestre’. Berlioz, Hector, Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy in Full Score, ed. Malherbe, Charles and Weingartner, Felix (New York: Dover, 1984), 151Google Scholar.
16 The sense of separation between the viola and the orchestra was reinforced in Berlioz's remark to Liszt when the pianist made his arrangement of the work for viola and piano. To Liszt, who had wanted to expand the viola's role, Berlioz remarked, ‘Don't you think the part you give to the viola, being more extensive than the part in the score, changes the physiognomy of the work? The viola should not feature in the piano arrangement except in the manner in which it appears in the score. The piano represents the orchestra, while the viola should remain apart and confine itself to its sentimental rambling. Everything else is outside its field, it observes the action but does not take part in it’. Quoted in Banks, Paul and Macdonald, Hugh, ‘Foreword’ to New Berlioz Edition Harold en Italie (New York: Baärenreiter, 2001), x, fromGoogle ScholarBerlioz, Hector, Correspondance générale, ed. Citron, Pierre et al. (Paris, 1972) 4: 181, 183–4Google Scholar.
17 In a letter to Ferrand dated 30 Nov. 1834 (Letters, 122). This scene of musical brigandage was foreshadowed in Lélio. Jacques Barzun interprets a brigand as a gangster and the orgy as a wild party in Berlioz and the Romantic Century, 253–4.
18 Memoirs, ch. LVII, following the Brunswick performance on 9 Mar. 1843. On this occasion he thanked the members of the orchestra, saying, ‘you are perfect brigands!’ Cf. also Griepenkerl: ‘the violins laugh demonically while the trombones warn in a quite frightening manner of the day of judgement’, while the ever-imaginative Tovey, picking up on the ‘sardonic laughter’, pictured ‘bright deaths quivering at victims’ throats, of streams of gore, and of round objects rolling on the ground’. Griepenkerl quoted in Levy, ’ “Ritter Berlioz” in Germany’, 145, and Tovey, ‘Harold in Italy’, 81.
19 Mario Praz, for instance, considered the Byronic ‘outlaw’ character types (the corsair, the giaour) to be ‘metamorphoses of Satan’ in The Romantic Agony, trans. Davidson, Angus, 2nd edn (London, 1951).Google Scholar Bearing testament to the huge popularity of Byron's works in Paris is the staggering number of editions in both English and French that appeared there in the 1820s.
20 Chloe Chard, ‘Crossing Boundaries and Exceeding Limits: Destabilization, Tourism, and the Sublime’, in Chard, and Langdon, , Transports, 117–49;Google Scholar page numbers in my text refer to this article. See also Chard, Chloe, Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography 1600–1830 (Manchester, 1999),Google Scholar chs 4 (‘Destabilized Travel’) and 5 (‘Tourism’).
21 See Chard, , Pleasure and Guilt, 183Google Scholar.
22 This transgression relates not only to tourism but also has a distinct political dimension, as Jacques Barzun has pointed out: ‘the brigand of Berlioz’ time is the avenger of social injustice, the rebel against the City, who resorts to nature for healing the wounds of social man’. And so, ‘in Harold [Berlioz] purged himself, the release of violence and vulgarity acting as a needful antidote to the repressions of conventional life’. In the orgies of the brigands Berlioz found a way to express his ‘anti-bourgeois policy’, for in their shared opposition to the bourgeois monarchy the aims of the brigands were aligned with the principles of budding democracy. See Barzun, Jacques, Berlioz and His Century (New York, 1956), 146–7Google Scholar.
23 Paul Banks has pointed out that in Berlioz's original manuscript it did not make this return: ‘Berlioz's first intention was that once reduced to silence at b. 107 the solo viola should be heard no more in the final movement: f. 94 of the MS bears the note “L'Alto compte jusqu'à la fin”. However this was deleted, no doubt at the same time that ff. 125–6, containing the brief reappearance of the soloist and a further reminiscence of the Pilgrims’ March, were added’. Paul Banks, ‘Byron, Berlioz and Harold’, paper delivered at a meeting of the Royal Musical Association (1982), 19. I am grateful to Professor Banks for providing a typescript of this unpublished paper.
24 Bonds, ‘Sinfonia anti-eroica’.
25 Memoirs, ch. LVII. The consolation of religion in the midst of extreme perturbation was, of course, a device Berlioz had already used in the first movement of the Symphonie fantastique.
26 For a complete list of performances during Berlioz's lifetime, see the New Berlioz Edition Harold en Italie, Appendix IV.
27 ‘Dans les salons, dans les foyers, partout où l'on se rassemble, l'on entend parler de la Marche des Pélerins; partout l'on s'extasie sur l'effet de ce rythme mystérieux, de cette priére à laquelle les arpéges de l'alto principal prêtent une couleur si religieuse, et de cette cloche que l'on entend d'abord dans le lointain, dont le son devient toujours plus fort et plus distinct à mesure que les moines avancent au monastére, et qui, lorsqu'ils sont entrés dans la chapelle, finit par résonner seule, en laissant toutefois parvenir àl'oreille le murmure d'une psalmodie grave avec ses interruptions et ses pauses’. Anon. review of Harold in Italy, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1/48 (7 Dec. 1834): 394.Google Scholar Berlioz had ‘enormous power’ over the journal's message in the 1830s as a contributor and as temporary director ( Ellis, , Music Criticism, 219Google Scholar ).
28 ‘L'alto à la voix mystérieuse, impressionnante … pour inspirer la mélancolie. C'est le dramatique contralto des voix instrumentales, dont le violon est le ténor brillant et passionné’. Blanchard, Henri, ‘Des instruments et des instrumentistes’, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 16/47 (25 Nov. 1849): 371Google Scholar.
29 Mark Evan Bonds, for example, remarks on ‘the viola's status as the quintessential “outsider” of the orchestra’ and how, in a string quartet, ‘it is the one voice least likely to play a leading role’ (‘Sinfonia anti-eroica’, 448). The viola was known as ‘the instrument of the middle’ on account of its use in alto and tenor registers ( Boyden, David D. and Woodward, Ann M., ‘Viola’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley, 2nd edn (London, 2001), 26: 689Google Scholar ).
30 The assignment of the first violinist, rather than the violist, of the Müller Quartet to the solo role of Harold in Italy at the Brunswick performance of 9 Mar. 1843 is a case in point. See Holoman, D. Kern, Berlioz (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 299Google Scholar.
31 ‘De tous les instruments de l'orchestre, celui dont les excellentes qualités ont été le plus longtemps méconnues, c'est l'Alto… . Son timbre en général, d'une mélancolie profonde, différe de celui des autres instruments àarchet’. Berlioz, Hector, ‘L'Alto’, in Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration (Paris, 1844, repr. Westmead, UK, 1970), 34Google Scholar.
32 ‘Les Joueurs de Viole, étaient toujours pris dans les rebuts des Violonistes. Quand un musicien se trouvait incapable de remplir convenablement une place de Violon, il se mettait àl'Alto. D'où il résultait que les Violistes ne savaient jouer ni du Violon ni de la Viole. Je dois même avouer que de notre temps, ce préjugé contre la partie d'Alto n'est pas entièrement détruit’. Ibid.
33 See Appendix 4 for a translation of the section from which this quotation is taken. This assessment certainly fits with Joël-Marie Fauquet's view of Berlioz's conceptions of instruments as ‘faithful reflections of his own personality. His fundamental principle, in true romantic fashion, is a subjective one, for the characteristic timbre of each instrument is categorized, on an affective scale, with the help of a system of comparisons openly colored by anthropomorphism… . The function of each instrument is seen from an “interactive” point of view. That is, the morphological description of the sounding body is seen as inseparable from the particular capacity it possesses to express this or that emotion: the oboe is rustic, tender, timid; the clarinet is the “voice of heroic love”; the horn is noble and melancholy, and so on. The instrument no longer simply colors the musical discourse, it actually engenders it’. See ‘The Grand Traité d'instrumentation’, in Bloom, , Berlioz Studies, 166Google Scholar.
34 The first performance took place on 23 Nov. 1834, at the Salle du Conservatoire conducted by Narcisse Girard.
35 ‘Le rêveur Harold’. ‘M.S’. (probably Maurice Schlesinger) in a brief review of a concert of Berlioz's work, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 10/48 (26 Nov. 1843): 402Google Scholar.
36 ‘le véritable Harold, l'artiste aux impressions intimes, vaporeuses et poétiques, àl'alto mystique et si plein d'une douce mélancolie’. Blanchard's review of Harold in Italy, 97.
37 Revue et gazette musicale (12 May 1844): 167–9,Google Scholar quoted in Holoman, , Berlioz, 164,Google Scholar my italics. Berlioz certainly thought highly of Urhan, ranking him in the top tier of ‘true artists who combined the ability to feel with healthy soul and spirit’ (see Appendix 4).
38 ‘L'artiste bizarre, exceptionnel, qui mêlait à son amour extatique pour l'alto le double culte de la religion catholique et de la musique romantique’. Blanchard, , ‘Des instruments et des instrumentistes’, 372.Google Scholar Urhan's given name was prophetic, as noted by Legouvé, Ernest, Soixante ans de souvenirs, 3 (Paris, 1888), 169.Google Scholar (Urhan took the French form of his first name, Chrétien, in Paris.) The reason for Urhan's religiosity was explained by Georges Kastner as stemming from ‘the events of 1814 and the entry of the allies in Paris, which brought about a sudden revolution in social affairs. This grand catastrophe changed Urhan's individual position, made of him a prudent person, and awakened in his heart the religious ideas towards which he forever felt himself drawn’. See his obituary in Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 12 (1845): 385Google Scholar (my translation).
39 Legouvé, , Soixante ans, 121.Google Scholar More recently, David Cairns has assessed on the historical evidence that ‘Urhan, though an admired player, was no Paganini’ ( Cairns, , Berlioz, 2: Servitude and Greatness (London, 1999), 41Google Scholar ).
40 For more information on Urhan's life and career, see Kastner, , ‘Obituary’, 385–7 and 392Google Scholar; Garnault, Paul, ‘Chrétien Urhan (1790–1845)’, Revue de musicologie, 11 (1930): 98–111;Google ScholarSchuppener, Ulrich, Christian Urhan: zum 200. Geburtstag des bedeutenden Musikers aus Monschau (Monschau, 1991)Google Scholar; Riley, Maurice W., The History of the Viola, 1 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1980), 202–5; andGoogle ScholarWalton, Benjamin, ‘Urhan, Chrétien’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 26: 155.Google ScholarFauquet, Joël-Marie, Les Sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la Restauration à 1870 (Paris, 1986), 235–6,Google Scholar gives an overview of his performing activities. Further details can be found of Urhan's friendship with Liszt in Walker, Alan, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1: 1811–47 (New York, 1983), 136–7; andGoogle Scholar‘Liszt and the Schubert Song Transcriptions’, Musical Quarterly, 67/1 (Jan. 1981), 53Google Scholar; of his beliefs and lifestyle in Doisy, Henri, Les Débuts d'une grande paroisse: Saint-Vincent de Paul (Paris, 1942), 289–91.Google Scholar References to Urhan's character, career and performances, and the bust made of him by Dantan jeune, can be found in Music in Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties, ed. Bloom, Peter A. (Stuyvesant, NY, 1987)Google Scholar.
41 Stowell, Robin, The Early Violin and Viola: A Practical Guide (Cambridge, 2001), 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 George Kastner also commented on Urhan's remarkable solo playing on the viola d'amore in Kreutzer, Rodolphe and Kreubé's, opera Le Paradis de Mahomet (1822) and in the ballet inGoogle ScholarSchneitzhoffer's, opera Zémire et Azor (1821).Google Scholar See Kastner, , ‘Obituary’, 386Google Scholar.
43 Interestingly, when Valentine sings of her love for Raoul (in Act 3) her declaration is accompanied by actual horn calls (a pair of horns playing in intervals of sixths, fifths, and thirds), here coded as noble rather than heroic (as in Leonore's Act 2 aria, ‘Komm, Hoffnung’, ‘Ich folg’ dem innern Triebe’, in Fidelio). Valentine's role is notable for its contrast to that of Marguerite de Valois, a coloratura soprano role (the ‘virtuoso violin’ to Valentine's ‘viola’?).
44 Urhan's student Mme Bordèse played the piano ‘religiously’ according to a review of 1838; so central was Urhan's religiosity to public perceptions of him that its transmission through his teaching elicited comment. ‘Mme Bordèse est élève de M. Urhan; on reconnait le maître au choix des morceaux de l'élève. Jamais cette jeune dame n'est venue fatiguer les oreilles du public, de variations, de caprices, de fantaisies, etc.; c'est toujours de la forte et généreuse musique, exécutée simplement et religieusement. Nous sommes heureux de devoir encore à M. Urhan la connaissance de ce nouveau chefd'œuvre Weber; c'est lui déjà qui le premier a repandu à Paris les mélodies de Schubert, et les mélodies religieuses de Beethoven’ ( Escudier, L., ‘Concert de la ville’, France musicale, 1/1 (31 Dec. 1838): 6–7Google Scholar ).
45 ‘La séance s'est ouverte par un quintet pour deux violins, deux altos et basse avec accompagnement de quatre bassoons, composé par M. Urhan; l'auteur qui, comme nous avons déjà eu l'occasion de le dire, ne voit dans la musique qu'une poésie destinée à donner un corps àune métaphysique d'un ordre élevé, a voulu exprimer dans ce morceau la lutte de la musique qu'il appelle mondaine avec la musique religieuse, lutte terminée par le triomphe de la dernière qui chante sur l'alto les mélodies graves et suaves, tandis que la première module ses fioritures sur les cordes brillantes du premier violon’. Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 3/1 (3 Jan. 1836): 6.Google Scholar Bélanger further noted, ‘the solo viola has above all a song of a sublime melody which was rendered admirably by Tilman, Sr’. ‘L'alto principal a surtout un chant d'une mélodie sublime qui a été rendu admirablement par M. Tilman, aîné’. The reason Urhan did not play may have been that he was preparing to perform the next piece on the programme. The sole surviving parts of the Quintette romantique are housed in the Stadtarchiv at Monschau, the birthplace of Urhan. The archive's holdings, limited to only the first and second violin parts, make it impossible to study further the remarkable battle between violin and viola.
46 A published score of this work is housed in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek.
47 The third relation between the key of F sharp major and the tonic, D major, shows Schubert's influence. The key of Urhan's ‘hymn’ also prefigures Liszt's ‘religious’ key. Indeed, it appears that Liszt attended a performance of the Quintette romantique, according to poet Antoine Fontaney who, on 15 Feb. 1832, went with Victor Hugo, Cazalès, and d'Ortigue ‘to hear a quintet of Urhan's which is dedicated to Victor. Liszt was there, a fine figure of an enthusiastic and modest young man. His eyes are brilliant and animated, the corners of his mouth turned down’. Quoted by Williams, Adrian, Portrait of Liszt: By Himself and His Contemporaries (Oxford, 1990), 49–50, fromGoogle ScholarAus der Glanzzeit der Weimarer Altenburg, ed. Mara, La (Leipzig, 1906), 234–8Google Scholar.
48 For more on the virtuosic ‘self’ Paganini presented in his music and unique performance style, see Kawabata, Maiko, ‘Drama and Heroism in the Romantic Violin Concerto’, Ph.D. diss. (University of California, Los Angeles, 2001), ch. 3Google Scholar.
49 Paganini, Niccolò, Sonata per la Grand Viola e Orchestra, ed. Drüner, Ulrich (Mainz: Schott, 1974).Google Scholar The autograph MS is now housed in the Paganini archive of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. The editor explains that the work was in a private collection until 1971 and therefore inaccessible; it was for this reason that the extraordinary sonata remained unknown for so long and could not be prepared for an edition until 1973–74 ( Drüner, Ulrich, ‘Das Viola-Konzert vor 1840’, Fontes artis musicae, 28 (1981): 167Google Scholar ). The exact date of composition is unknown, although Geraldine de Courcy surmises, taking into account the dates of Paganini's tour to Belgium, that ‘it must have been in the early weeks of 1834’ ( Paganini the Genoese (Norman, Okla., 1957), 2: 141Google Scholar ).
50 It is therefore unsurprising – not to mention understated – when Ulrich Drüner notes in his study of the viola concerto before 1840 that ‘within the history of viola playing and of the development of the viola concerto, this sonata represents from a technical standpoint the climax and conclusion of the period considered here’ ( Drüner, , 'Das Viola-Konzert vor 1840’, 167Google Scholar ). Composers of viola concertos before Paganini's time included Dömming, Gehra, Graun, Karl Stamitz, and Telemann; Paganini may have known the three concertos and concertino for solo viola of Alessandro Rolla.
51 Quoted in Pulver, Jeffrey, Paganini: The Romantic Virtuoso (London, 1936), 283Google Scholar.
52 Anon., The Times (29 Apr. 1834): 5.Google Scholar The concert was hardly Paganini's most spectacular – indeed, by this time, his career was in decline: he had injured a finger and did not play his best, critics were disappointed, receipts were low, and attendance had been so poor in recent weeks that concerts had had to be cancelled. It was under such conditions that Paganini made his viola debut.
53 Kapp, Julius, Niccolö Paganini, 15th edn (Munich, 1969), 74.Google Scholar Paganini borrowed this instrument from his friend and advocate Luigi Germi.
54 Recalled by violinist Charles Severn, quoted in Riley, , The History of the Viola, 207Google Scholar.
55 ‘Par ses riches arpèges et ses sons harmoniques, aériens, il semblait dialoguer avec les harpes archangéliques du Paradis de Milton’. Blanchard, , ‘Des instruments et des instrumentistes’, 372Google Scholar.
56 Cf. Mark Evan Bonds's observation of this passage: ‘in its almost étude-like character, it may represent an oblique allusion to Paganini; more likely still, it symbolizes the kind of abnegation and self-discipline that are at the center of the religious pilgrim's outlook’ ('Sinfonia anti-eroica’, 438.) The programmatic interpretation rings true, though in my reading the arpeggios represent not so much an oblique allusion as a referential negation of the virtuosity associated with Paganini. Cf. also Liszt's observation: ‘the viola accompanies these transparent streaming harmonies with arpeggiated chords, as Paganini first applied them and which here sound magical’ (Die Viola begleitet diese durchsichtig hinstrà menden Harmonien mit arpeggirten Akkorden, wie sie Paganini zuerst angewandt hat und die hier wundersam erklingen) (p. 83). An extreme viewpoint is Tovey's: ‘the viola … no longer represent[s] Harold, but some angelic or natural phenomenon’ (Essays in Musical Analysis, 4: 80).
57 Since writing, I have discovered that Wolfgang Dömling had arrived at the same coinage in his liner notes to Harold en Italie, Wolfram Christ, viola, Berlin Philharmonic/Lorin Maazel ( Deutsche Grammophon 415 109–4, 1985Google Scholar ). Mark Evan Bonds alternatively considers Harold an ‘anti-symphony’ because he wants to situate the work as a response to the towering figure of Beethoven ('Sinfonia anti-eroica'). Bloom, Peter wittily calls it a ‘virtuoso symphony with obbligato viola’ in The Life of Berlioz (Cambridge, 1998), 97.Google Scholar Tovey amusingly wrote, ‘anything less like a concerto has never been conceived: the part has its difficulties of endurance, tone-production, and conception, but is about as suited for the display of a virtuoso's powers as a bath-chair for a world's speed-record’ (Essays in Musical Analysis, 4: 77).
58 ‘Reconnaissant alors que mon plan de composition ne pouvait lui convenir, je m'appliquai àl'exécuter dans une autre intention et sans plus m'inquiéter des moyens de faire briller l'alto principal’. Memoirs, ch. XLV.
59 The original version has been printed in the New Berlioz Edition Harold en Italie, Appendix I (a), 219–20. I am grateful to my anonymous reader for prompting me to dig deeper into the work's genesis.
60 Thus, modifying Ralph Locke's characterization of the work as a ‘SymphonyPlus’, I would venture the designation ‘Concerto-Minus’. Locke, Ralph, ‘Berlioz and the Symphony-Plus’, paper read at the Berlioz Symposium, Lincoln Center, New York (8 Mar. 2003)Google Scholar.
61 No account exists of any personal encounter between Urhan and Paganini, and it is unlikely that they ever met. However, it appears that they did once participate in a musical performance together. Paganini's performance at the Paris Opéra on 13 Mar. 1831 was only the second of his epoch-making appearances in the city. On this occasion he performed his Violin Concerto no. 2, ‘La Campanella’, so called because it featured a small bell in the finale. The part of the bell was played by Urhan according to the violinist Charles Dancla: ‘Pour les concerts de Paganini, l'orchestre était placé sur le théâtre. Lorsque j'ai entendu le finale de La Clochette j'étais àcôté de M. Urhan, le célèbre alto chargé de faire tinter la clochette qui répondait au violon solo dans les fas aigus’. Dancla, Charles, Notes et souvenirs (Paris, 1893), 10.Google Scholar The passages of call and response between the bell and the solo violin were probably the closest Paganini and Urhan came to meeting that night. It is difficult to overlook the antithetical symbolism of their instruments: the diabolical virtuosity of the one and the pure, quasi-religious tone of the other.
62 ‘Le virtuose infernal’, was Adolphe Boschot's coinage in Un Romantique sous Louis-Philippe. Cf. Joël-Marie Fauquet's description of violinist Pierre Baillot as an ‘anti-virtuose' following contemporary music critic d'Ortigue, who was the first to clarify ‘the antinomy that existed between the musical personalities of Baillot and Paganini, the countenance of the first opposing itself to the eccentric attitude of the second’ ('The Grand Traité d'instrumentation’, 66).
63 Musicologists Joseph Wechsberg and Kurt Pahlen doubted that Paganini ever intended to perform the work in the first place, thereby throwing attention onto Urhan as an early choice; Julius Kapp went so far as to suggest that the story of the ‘commission' was a publicity stunt concocted by Paganini and that Berlioz sought to take advantage of the solid and uncontroversial drawing power of Urhan. These accounts are gathered together in Schuppener, Christian Urhan, 83; a translation of the relevant excerpts is given in Appendix 1. De Courcy refutes first Boschot's claim that the commission story was invented by Paganini to generate publicity and second Kapp's supposition that Paganini would have written himself a solo viola vehicle instead of requesting one from Berlioz ( Courcy, de, Paganini the Genoese, 2: 139–41)Google Scholar.
64 It is therefore puzzling that when the accolades for Urhan began to appear in the Parisian papers, he was acclaimed as the ‘Paganini of the viola’, ‘Byron of the orchestra’, 'Salvator Rosa of the symphony’ (see Appendix 2). I share Schuppener's view that the comparison with Salvator Rosa, the wild Italian painter, is strange. But since, as Anne Mellor observes, ‘the Italian painter peopled his scenes of Alpine desolation either with gaunt, fervently praying or crucified saints or with banditti lurking to attack innocent travelers’, it is possible that the press meant to compare Urhan to Rosa's saintly subjects. See Mellor, Anne K., Romanticism & Gender (New York and London, 1993), 86Google Scholar.
65 ‘Beethoven spento non c'era che Berlioz che potesse farlo rivivere’. From a letter to Berlioz dated 18 Dec. 1838. Berlioz: Selected Letters, 157.
66 Cairns, , Berlioz, 2: Servitude and Greatness, 173 and 217.Google Scholar
67 Ibid., 174.
68 Hallé claimed to have heard this from Madame Bertin. Quoted in Cairns, , Berlioz, 2: Servitude and Greatness, 175, andGoogle ScholarPulver, , Paganini: The Romantic Virtuoso, 298Google Scholar.
69 Paganini biographer Jeffrey Pulver, for example, stated that ‘fundamentally this story was true’ back in 1936 (Paganini: The Romantic Virtuoso, 298).
70 ‘It seems unlikely that such a man as Paganini should agree to act as front for another's philanthropy’ (Cairns, , Berlioz, 2: Servitude and Greatness, 175Google Scholar).
71 Ibid.
72 Codignola, Arturo, Paganini intimo (Bergamo, 1935–1938), 585–7.Google Scholar
73 For example, Jeffrey Pulver states, ‘Paganini may have lost a viola solo, but the world profited by the possession of “Harold” ‘, in Paganini: The Romantic Virtuoso, 281.
74 In his review of the work, Janin acknowledged that Paganini ‘paid for the score as no king would’, an interesting comment for its implication that Paganini was a selfmade patron in the model of a bygone era (quoted from Cairns, Berlioz, 2: Servitude and Greatness, 197).
75 This situation has been neatly summarized by Cook, Nicholas in Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1998), ch. 2Google Scholar.
76 My interpretation thus goes a step further than de Courcy's; she writes, ‘one can easily appreciate Berlioz’ point of view and his refusal, as a composer, to submit himself to the demands of mere technical virtuosity. As Jacques Barzun wittily remarked (writing of Berlioz), this was “one program he declined to follow” (i.e., the virtuoso's desire to parade his technical tours de force)’. Courcy, De, Paganini the Genoese, 2: 141Google Scholar.
77 Revue et gazette musicale (12 May 1844): 167–9,Google Scholar quoted in Holoman, , Berlioz, 164Google Scholar.
78 Goehr, Lydia, The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998), 134.Google Scholar Italics in original.
79 Ibid., 135–6. She further explores how these practices were sustained by the debate over formalist versus anti-formalist aesthetics – the formalist aesthetic sustaining the Apollonian ideal and the anti-formalist aesthetic sustaining the Dionysian one. See ch. 4, ‘Conflicting Ideals of Performance Perfection in an Imperfect Practice’, 132–73.
80 Wechsberg, Joseph, Zauber der Geige (Frankfurt, 1974), 286.Google Scholar
81 Kapp, Julius, Niccolo Paganini, 15th edn (Tutzing, 1969), 74.Google Scholar
82 Pahlen, Kurt, Sinfonie der Welt (Zürich, 1978) (first published 1967), 79.Google Scholar
83 Garnault, P., Revue de Musicologie, 11 (1930): 107.Google Scholar
84 Pontmartin, Armand de, Souvenirs d'un vieux mélomane, 2nd edn (Paris, 1879), 59f.Google Scholar
85 Ludwig van Beethoven, edited by J. Schmidt-Görg u. H. Schmidt, 47.
86 Sietz, Reinhold, ‘Christian (Chrétien) Urhan’, in Rheinische Musiker, 6. Folge, ed. Kaämper, Dietrich (Cologne, 1969), 209.Google Scholar
87 Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 13, Sp. 1162.
88 Ramann, Lina, Franz Liszt. als Künstler und Mensch, 1: Die Jahre 1811–1840 (Leipzig, 1880), 125.Google Scholar
89 Yosipovich, V., ‘Christian Urhan, the First Interpreter of the Viola Part in Berlioz's “Harold”, in Voprosï muzïkal'no-ispolnitelskovo iskusstva, 4, ed. Nikolayev, A. A. (Moscow, 1969), 258.Google Scholar
90 Ibid., 259.