Berlioz, Hector. Important series of three letters to his cherished friend, Humbert Ferrand. Ferrand was Berlioz's closest fri...

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Berlioz, Hector. Important series of three letters to his cherished friend, Humbert Ferrand. Ferrand was Berlioz's closest friend; a lawyer by profession, he was also a poet and novelist They were students together, and from 1827, when Ferrand left Paris for Beiley (90 km east of Lyon), they rarely met but corresponded frequently and devotedly. Of all his correspondents it was Ferrand to whom Berlioz truly opened his heart. His letters to him, spanning 43 years, provide the most expansive and vital autobiographical record - comparable to his Memoires, but written for private rather than public consumption. Berlioz, Hector. Important series of three letters to his cherished friend, Humbert Ferrand. Ferrand was Berlioz's closest friend; a lawyer by profession, he was also a poet and novelist They were students together, and from 1827, when Ferrand left Paris for Beiley (90 km east of Lyon), they rarely met but corresponded frequently and devotedly. Of all his correspondents it was Ferrand to whom Berlioz truly opened his heart. His letters to him, spanning 43 years, provide the most expansive and vital autobiographical record - comparable to his Memoires, but written for private rather than public consumption. The group includes: Berlioz, Hector. Autograph letter signed, ("H. Berlioz") In French,3 pages (9 x 7.5 in.; 229 x 191 mm.), Paris, 17 December 1837, to his lifelong friend Humbert Ferrand at Belley; address panel on verso of third page; mounting remnants on left margin on first page; paper loss skillfully repaired on third page. The Requiem was admirably played; its effect upon the majority of the audience was terrible . . . The French composer writes in full: Flayol wrote to you eight or ten days ago. For that reason I waited patiently, and but for that my letter would have reached you very much sooner. That is a fact. The Requiem was admirably played; its effect upon the majority of the audience was terrible; the minority, who neither felt nor understood it, do not quite know what to say; the newspapers as a rule, except Le Constitutionnel, Le National, and La France, on which I have determined enemies, have been most favorable. You were missing and missed, my dear Ferrand, and you would have been well pleased, I think; it is precisely your idea of sacred music. It is a success which popularizes me, and that is the great point. It produced a tremendous impression upon people of diametrically opposite feelings and constitutions. The curé of the Invalides shed tears at the altar for a quarter of an hour after the ceremony; he wept as he embraced me in the vestry. When it came to the Jugement dernier, the startling effect produced by the five orchestras and the eight pairs of kettle-drums accompanying the Tuba mirum was beyond description; one of the choristers had a nervous seizure. In truth, its grandeur was terrible. You have read the letter of the Minister of War; I have received I do not know how many others, couched in much the same terms as those I receive from you occasionally, minus the friendship and the poetry. Among others, I have one from Rubini, one from the Marquis de Custine, one from Legouvé, one from Madame Victor Hugo, and one, a stupid one, from d'Ortigue, besides very many others from various artists, painters, musicians, sculptors, architects, and prose-writers. Ah! Ferrand, it would have been a happy day if I had had you by my side during the performance. The Due d'Orleans, according to what his aides-de-camp say, was also very deeply moved. The Minister of Interior has some idea of purchasing my work, which would thus become national property. M. de Montalivet, so I heard today at his office, is not disposed to give me the bare four thousand francs, but intends adding a considerable sum to it How much will he give me for the copyright of the score? We shall soon see. My turn at the Opera will, possibly, come soon. This success has had a beneficial effect on my affairs; the principals and chorus-singers are even more decidedly on my side than the orchestra. Habeneck himself is completely converted. As soon as the score is stereotyped, you shall have it I think I shall be able to secure a repetition of the greater part of the movements in it at a sacred concert, to be given at the Opera. It will require four hundred performers, which means an outlay of ten thousand francs, but the receipts are safe. Let me know, as soon as you can, what you are doing, where you are, and what is becoming of you (if you are not too angry with me for my long silence), how your wife and family are, if you intend coming to Paris, &c, &c... Berlioz's Requiem was a government commission for a ceremonial occasion designed to encourage the Rome laureate. The choral work grew out of the composer's preoccupation with a half-Revolutionary, half-Napoleonic conception on the grandest scale, which took various forms. Remnants of the 1825 mass, a military symphony sketched out on the journey back from Italy, and a preoccupation with the Last Judgment all contributed to plans for a huge work in seven movements commemorating France's national heroes, of which two movements were completed in 1835. These do not survive, although they were probably included in the Requiem commissioned by the minister of the interior and performed in the Invalides on 5 December 1837. Together with: Berlioz, Hector. Autograph letter signed ("H. Berlioz"), in French, 3 pages (8.12 x 5.25 in.; 206 x 133 mm.), Paris, 26 August 1862, to Humbert Ferrand on black-bordered stationery. I am hastening to untie or cut all the bonds that tie me to art. Berlioz writes that he would love to visit Ferrand, but a mass of minor matters keep him in Paris. His son (Louis) has resigned his naval post, and from what my friends in Marseilles say, he was right to do so. So there he is, on the streets: we have to look for new employment for him. I have other matters to complete, following the death of my wife. Besides that, I have had to busy myself with the publication of my score of Béatrice, of which I am developing a little the musical part of the second act. I am in the process of writing a trio and a chorus and I cannot leave the work in suspense. I am hastening to untie or cut all the bonds that tie me to art, so that I can say at any moment to death: when you will! He dares not complain when he thinks of Ferrand's intolerable sufferings, and wonders whether such pains are necessary consequences of our organizations. Must we be punished for having adored the beautiful all our lives? Probably so: we have drunk too deeply of the intoxicating cup, we have run too far after the idea... At least Ferrand has an attentive and devoted wife to aid him in bearing his cross. You have no knowledge of the terrible duet sung in your ears, during the busyness of days and amid the silence of nights, by isolation and boredom. May God keep you from it: it is sad music! He promises to visit Ferrand, but maybe in winter. I do not need the sun, for there is always sun when I see you. Edouard Benazet had commissioned Berlioz to write an opera for the inauguration of the new theater at Baden in 1860 -Beatrice et Benedict, a comic opera in two acts. Berlioz chose a subject that he had toyed with years earlier (in 1833), Much Ado about Nothing, translating passages from Shakespeare for most of the dialogue. By the end of the year he had completed the libretto and much of the music, finding the work a relaxation after Les Troyens. The score was finished in February 1862, and he himself conducted the premiere on 9 August 1862. Berlioz, Hector. Autograph letter signed ("H. Berlioz"), 2 pages (4.12 x 5.25 in.; 105 x 133 mm.), Sunday morning [1 November 1863], Humbert Ferrand. The rehearsals of Les Troyens are a complete success . . . He writes in full: Your letter has arrived, and I have barely time to tell you that the rehearsals of Les Troyens are a complete success. Yesterday I was so thoroughly overcome when I left the theater that I could scarcely speak or walk. In all probability I shall not be in a fit state to write to you on the evening of the performance. I shall have lost my head completely. In April 1856, Berlioz began to compose a vast epic opera based on the second and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid. By abandoning most of his concert tours and much of his journalism he did in fact complete Les troyens, words and music, in less than two years, with small additions and revisions to be made at intervals over the next five years. He also devoted this time to a series of frustrating attempts to see Les troyens on the stage. Berlioz's enemies in the press were quick to exaggerate its length and its demands.... He gave numerous readings of the poem to carefully chosen audiences; he vainly sought the patronage of Napoleon III and his ministers. Eventually, in 1860, he accepted an offer to mount it at the Théâtre-Lyrique, an independent theater run by the enterprising impresario Carvalho, while Wagner's Tannhäuser was staged with unprecedented extravagance at the Opéra. Tannhäuser's failure in March 1861 was bitterly ironic for Berlioz, and it created an opportunity for Les troyens to be accepted at the Opéra. Yet, this agreement fell through early in 1863 so turning Berlioz back to the Théâtre-Lyrique, where, in order to see any production at all, he was forced to divide his opera into two parts, Acts 1 and 2 becoming La prise de Troie and Acts 3 to 5 Les troyens a Carthage. The second part was first performed on 4 November 1863, with Mme Charton Demeur as Dido. It was an unequivocal success, warmly admired by the majority of the press and running to 21 performances. Berlioz was proud and touched, but gradually embittered, then enraged, to see cuts made by Carvalho at subsequent performances of La prise de Troie Berlioz only ever heard one extract sung at Baden-Baden in 1859. After 1863, Berlioz discouraged revivals of Les troyens and none took place for nearly 30 years.