“I am for free music.  Yes, I want music to be proudly free, to be victorious, to be supreme.  I want her to take all she can, so that there may be no more Alps or Pyrenees for her.  But she must achieve her victories by fighting in person, and not rely upon her lieutenants.  I should like her to have, if possible, good verse drawn up in order of battle; but, like Napoleon, she must face the fire herself, and, like Alexander, march in the front ranks of the phalanx.  She is so powerful that in some cases she would conquer unaided; for she has the right to say with Medea:  ’I, myself, am enough.’”

Berlioz protested vigorously against Gluck’s impious theory[82] and Wagner’s “crime” in making music the slave of speech.  Music is the highest poetry and knows no master.[83] It was for Berlioz, therefore, continually to increase the power of expression in pure music.

[Footnote 82:  Is it necessary to recall the epitre dedicatoire of Alceste in 1769, and Gluck’s declaration that he “sought to bring music to its true function—­that of helping poetry to strengthen the expression of the emotions and the interest of a situation ... and to make it what fine colouring and the happy arrangement of light and shade are to a skilful drawing"?]

[Footnote 83:  This revolutionary theory was already Mozart’s:  “Music should reign supreme and make one forget everything else....  In an opera it is absolutely necessary that Poetry should be Music’s obedient daughter” (Letter to his father, 13 October, 1781).  Despairing probably at being unable to obtain this obedience, Mozart thought seriously of breaking up the form of opera, and of putting in its place, in 1778, a sort of melodrama (of which Rousseau had given an example in 1773), which he called “duodrama,” where music and poetry were loosely associated, yet not dependent on each other, but went side by side on two parallel roads (Letter of 12 November, 1778).]

And while Wagner, who was more moderate and a closer follower of tradition, sought to establish a compromise (perhaps an impossible one) between music and speech, and to create the new lyric drama, Berlioz, who was more revolutionary, achieved the dramatic symphony, of which the unequalled model to-day is still Romeo et Juliette.

The dramatic symphony naturally fell foul of all formal theories.  Two arguments were set up against it:  one derived from Bayreuth, and by now an act of faith; the other, current opinion, upheld by the crowd that speaks of music without understanding it.

The first argument, maintained by Wagner, is that music cannot really express action without the help of speech and gesture.  It is in the name of this opinion that so many people condemn a priori Berlioz’s Romeo.  They think it childish to try and translate action into music.  I suppose they think it less childish to illustrate an action by music.  Do they think that gesture