And I shall not dwell on Berlioz's love of Nature, which, as M.
Prudhomme shows us, is the soul of a composition like the _Damnation_
and, one might say, of all great compositions. No musician, with the
exception of Beethoven, has loved Nature so profoundly. Wagner himself
did not realise the intensity of emotion which she roused in
Berlioz,[73] and how this feeling impregnated the music of the
_Damnation_, of _Romeo_, and of _Les Troyens_.
[Footnote 73: "So you are in the midst of melting glaciers in your
_Niebelungen_! To be writing in the presence of Nature herself must be
splendid. It is an enjoyment which I am denied. Beautiful landscapes,
lofty peaks, or great stretches of sea, absorb me instead of evoking
ideas in me. I feel, but I cannot express what I feel. I can only paint
the moon when I see its reflection in the bottom of a well" (Berlioz to
Wagner, 10 September, 1855).]
But this genius had other characteristics which are less well known,
though they are not less unusual. The first is his sense of pure beauty.
Berlioz's exterior romanticism must not make us blind to this. He had a
Virgilian soul; and if his colouring recalls that of Weber, his design
has often an Italian suavity.
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