Camille Saint-Saens wrote in his _Portraits et
Souvenirs_, 1900: "Whoever reads Berlioz's scores before hearing them
played can have no real idea of their effect. The instruments appear to
be arranged in defiance of all common sense; and it would seem, to use
professional slang, that _cela ne dut pas sonner_, but _cela sonne_
wonderfully. If we find here and there obscurities of style, they do not
appear in the orchestra; light streams into it and plays there as in the
facets of a diamond."]
[Footnote 67: See the excellent essay of H. Lavoix, in his _Histoire de
l'Instrumentation_. It should be noticed that Berlioz's observations in
his _Traite d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes_ (1844) have
not been lost upon Richard Strauss, who has just published a German
edition of the work, and some of whose most famous orchestral effects
are realisations of Berlioz's ideas.]
Think of the effect that such works must have produced at that period.
Berlioz was the first to be astonished when he heard them for the first
time. At the _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_ he wept and tore his hair, and
fell sobbing on the kettledrums. At the performance of his _Tuba mirum_,
in Berlin, he nearly fainted.
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