]
[Footnote 94: These words are taken from Berlioz's directions on the
score of his arrangement of the _Marseillaise_ for full orchestra and
double choir.] Not only did he fill his scenes in the theatre with
swarming and riotous crowds, like those of the Roman Carnival in the
second act of _Benvenuto_ (anticipating by thirty years the crowds of
_Die Meistersinger_), but he created a music of the masses and a
colossal style. His model here was Beethoven; Beethoven of the Eroica,
of the C minor, of the A, and, above all, of the Ninth Symphony. He was
Beethoven's follower in this as well as other things, and the apostle
who carried on his work.[95] And with his understanding of material
effects and sonorous matter, he built edifices, as he says, that were
"Babylonian and Ninevitish,"[96] "music after Michelangelo,"[97] "on an
immense scale."[98]
[Footnote 95: "From Beethoven," says Berlioz, "dates the advent in art
of colossal forms" (_Memoires_, II, 112). But Berlioz forgot one of
Beethoven's models--Haendel. One must also take into account the
musicians of the French revolution: Mehul, Gossec, Cherubini, and
Lesueur, whose works, though they may not equal their intentions, are
not without grandeur, and often disclose the intuition of a new and
noble and popular art.
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