Not enough attention has been drawn to the classical nobility from which
Berlioz's art so spontaneously springs. It is not fully acknowledged
that he was, of all nineteenth-century musicians, the one who had in the
highest degree the sense of plastic beauty. Nor do people always
recognise that he was a writer of sweet and flowing melodies.
Weingartner expressed the surprise he felt when, imbued with current
prejudice against Berlioz's lack of melodic invention, he opened, by
chance, the score of the overture of _Benvenuto_ and found in that short
composition, which barely takes ten minutes to play, not one or two, but
four or five melodies of admirable richness and originality:--
"I began to laugh, both with pleasure at having discovered such a
treasure, and with annoyance at finding how narrow human judgment is.
Here I counted five themes, all of them plastic and expressive of
personality; of admirable workmanship, varied in form, working up by
degrees to a climax, and then finishing with strong effect. And this
from a composer who was said by critics and the public to be devoid of
creative power! From that day on there has been for me another great
citizen in the republic of art.
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