TENDENCIES IN MODERN MUSICAL COMPOSITION 255 



made everything — both ups and downs — look several times larger than 

 the reality. . . . His enormous skill and mastery of resource, brilliant 

 intelligence, and fiery energy were all concentrated in the endeavor to 

 make people see in their minds the histrionic presentation of such fit his- 

 trionic subjects as dances of sylphs, processions of pilgrims, and orgies 

 of brigands. Even the colossal dimensions of his orchestra, with its many 

 square yards of drum surface, with its crowds of shining yellow brass 

 instruments, is mainly the product of his insatiable theatrical thirst. It 

 imposes upon the composer himself as much as it imposes upon his audi- 

 ence, by looking so very big and bristling to the imagination. But, though 

 it makes a great noise, and works on the raw impressionable side of human 

 creatures, and excites them to an abnormal degree, the effect it produces 

 is not really so imposing as that of things which make much less show — 

 for instance, the opening of Beethoven's B flat Symphony, which requires 

 only seven different instruments to play it, and is all pianissimo. The 

 means are in excess of the requirements ; or rather, what should be means 

 become requirements, because the effect is made by the actual sound of 

 the instruments, and often not all by the music they are the means of 

 expressing. And this aspect of Berlioz's work is even more noteworthy in 

 relation to modern musical development than the fact that he uniformly 

 adopted a programme for his instrumental works. He was a man of 

 unusually excitable sensibility, and the tone of instruments, like color, 

 appealed to him more than any other feature in music. He was also a 

 man of Uterary tastes, and had no inconsiderable gifts in that line, and 

 was more excited by the notion of what music might be brought to express 

 than by the music itself." 



The above is a most admirable statement of modern tendencies in 

 orchestral composition, and it is no reflection on the few great living 

 orchestral composers to say that it is now possible for a composer to claim 

 as originahty what is in reality the opposite, because the world today is 

 looking for startHng, heretofore undreamed of orchestral effects; and 

 every composer who desires recognition must strive to rival his colleagues 

 in the virtuoso style of orchestral composition, knowing that a beautiful 

 musical thought simply stated would be looked upon either as stolen from 

 the masters of the past or as a confession of an inability to write in a 



