Music: Forgotten Glory

Most composers have as much trouble as writers of program notes trying to explain with words what their music is trying to say. An exception was redhaired, articulate Hector Berlioz. He had been commissioned by the ministers of Louis-Philippe, the citizen-king, to commemorate the 1830 Revolution’s tenth anniversary with a symphony. It was a proud era for France. Chopin, Liszt and George Sand reigned in the salons. Berlioz set out to do justice to it:

“I wanted first to recall the struggles of the famous “Three Days of Glory” [when Bourbon Charles X was dethroned] with a march both terrible and despairing, to be played during the procession; then to present a sort of funeral discourse or farewell addressed to the illustrious dead . . . and finally to intone a hymn of glory as an apotheosis, to be played while the eyes of all should be fixed on the tall column [in the Place de la Bastille], crowned by the figure of Liberty. . . .”

For the occasion Berlioz, a Paul Bunyan of music, hired a military band of 200, added 80 strings and a chorus of 200.* But his stirring symphony could barely be heard in the square. Wrote he: “The final blow came when the troops of the National Guard began to march away to the accompaniment of fifty drums, which continued to play during the entire performance of the Apotheosis.”

This week, only the roar of an occasional plane and the distant hum of automobiles interfered with the music in Manhattan’s Central Park when Hector Berlioz’ long-buried Grande Symphonic Funebre et Triomphale had its first U.S. performance.

The Grand Symphony had been played often during Berlioz’ life, and Richard Wagner, notably stingy with praise for his contemporaries, had called it great and noble from first note to last. Said he: “This symphony will live as long as there is a nation that calls itself France.” But after Berlioz’ death in 1869, his symphony for band was largely neglected. Richard Franko Goldman, son and heir-apparent of famed Bandmaster Edwin Franko Goldman (now 69) had come across it in the scarce diggings of classical band literature, adapted its score for the 56 instruments in the Goldman Band. Said he: “Few, if any, bands today could manage to produce the eight bassoons which Berlioz desired.” Goldman substituted saxophones for some of the bassoons, eliminated the strings but kept the chorus. Even played in more modest proportions, Berlioz’ big work sounded both noisy and exultant.

*For sheer din, he was outdone later by Tchaikovsky, who scored his brassy 1812 Overture for full orchestra, bells, and a cannon.