Performances of his music, 1869-1884

Introduction 
Table of performances

This page is also available in French

Introduction

    ‘At last they are going to play my music’ (Enfin on va jouer ma musique) Berlioz is reported (by Ernest Reyer) to have said while he lay on his deathbed. If true the remark was prophetic. Over the next few years performances of his music in Paris multiplied as never before and works that had not been heard there for years became regular items in concert programmes. ‘At present [Berlioz] is all the rage in Paris’ observed a London critic in 1880, while two years earlier another London critic had drawn a contrast between France and Britain: ‘works of Berlioz [are] all but unknown in this country’. In Paris the Berlioz revival had started well before 1878, indeed almost from the time of his death.

    This page is designed to document this revival by setting out in a series of chronological tables all the performances of the music of Berlioz that are known to have taken place in Paris from 1869 to the first half of 1884. The listing is intended to be as complete as possible, though gaps and errors may remain. The evidence has been compiled from the musical journal Le Ménestrel which appeared weekly in Paris every Sunday for over a century from 1833 to 1940, with one interruption of just over a year from late 1870 to late 1871 because of the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune in Paris, and a longer interruption from 1915 to 1918 because of World War I. The journal is available online on the Internet site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Le Ménestrel provided to its readers a virtually complete listing, week by week, of all major musical events that were taking place in Paris, together with shorter or longer reviews and other articles. The tables on this page are further supported by a companion page which reproduces a selection of reviews of these performances by a number of different contributors to Le Ménestrel. This latter page also gives links to articles by two friends and supporters of Berlioz, Auguste Morel and Ernest Reyer, which are reproduced on other pages of this site. Morel contributed to Le Ménestrel from 1876 to 1881, while Reyer had already been writing for the Journal des Débats since 1866.

    The terminal date of 1884 is somewhat arbitrary and is not intended to be final (the sequel is covered in the pages on Édouard Colonne, Charles Lamoureux and the Conservatoire, together with their associated texts). That year did not mark a waning of interest in Berlioz in Paris, and his music continued to be performed there for years to come. Indeed, it was in 1884 that a subscription for a monument in honour of Berlioz at Square Vintimille – subsequently renamed Square Berlioz – was launched, and the monument was inaugurated in 1886. The date has been chosen partly for convenience, to keep the subject within manageable limits, and partly because it was the date when the Concerts populaires conducted by Jules Pasdeloup came to an end. For more than two decades since the foundation of his concert society in 1861, Pasdeloup had played a decisive part in the concert life of Paris: he provided regular concerts at modest prices to large audiences who had not been catered for previously. At these concerts not only established classics were performed, but also contemporary composers, including Berlioz and Wagner, and Pasdeloup was prepared to promote contemporary music even against opposition from sections of his own public. After the end of the winter season 1883-1884 Pasdeloup, under increasing financial pressure, decided to retire from the scene; he did make one final comeback late in 1886 but died the following year, and the field was left to younger rivals who had learned and profited from his example, notably Édouard Colonne and Charles Lamoureux.

    There was a striking contrast between the difficulties Berlioz had faced in his lifetime in getting his music performed in Paris, and what happened after his death. (For comparison see the page Concerts and performances 1825-1869 and its companion page of Texts and documents.) It may be pointed out by the way that Berlioz did not enjoy at the outset the same advantages as Wagner did at his death 14 years later. When Wagner died in 1883, he was famous throughout Europe and at the height of his glory; all his works were known and received frequent performances, and he had built himself at Bayreuth a theatre dedicated to the performance of his music. He left after him a veritable dynasty: a devoted widow, Cosima the daughter of Liszt, a son Siegfried and two daughters, while Berlioz died without descendants (his son Louis had died in 1867). Wagner had also groomed in his lifetime a band of devoted followers, among them the conductors Hans Richter, Felix Mottl and Hermann Levy. At his death Berlioz enjoyed few of these assets.

    The reasons for the revival are complex, and probably no single factor is sufficient to account for it. One should probably think rather in terms of the interaction of favourable circumstances: after 1869 the public mood changed and audiences became more receptive to Berlioz; the more they heard his music the more they liked it, and concert societies and their conductors, who were themselves well-disposed to his music, thus felt encouraged to include more of his works in their programmes.

    From the comments of contemporary critics and writers a whole series of factors can be identified — the mere fact of the death of Berlioz, which drew attention to him and helped to reduce the instinctive hostility his name had sometimes evoked — the posthumous publication of his Memoirs early in 1870, timed to coincide with a Berlioz Festival organised in his honour by Ernest Reyer (22 March) — the presence on the scene of a group of devoted friends and supporters, such as Ernest Reyer himself, Georges de Massougnes, Oscar Comettant and Adolphe Jullien, for all of whom Berlioz though dead was a living presence, whose name and achievements demanded vindication through performance of his music — the existence from the start of two active concert societies that were in a position to begin to fulfil this demand, the long-established Conservatoire which had the finest orchestra in France but was more tradition-bound, and the more recently founded but much more adventurous Concerts populaires of Jules Pasdeloup — the growing appetite for orchestral concerts on the part of the Parisian public, which resulted in the launching of new concert societies in emulation of Pasdeloup, the most successful of which were those of Colonne at the Châtelet theatre (from autumn 1873) and Lamoureux at the Théâtre du Château-d’Eau (from autumn 1881) — the rivalry which developed between these conductors and their orchestral societies as they competed for attention and audiences (all their concerts were held on Sunday afternoons), which led them to include in their programmes music they believed would be well-received. Berlioz, as it turned out, became one major beneficiary of this remarkable and seemingly unique competition. The concert scene in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s was lively indeed, and before the invention of broadcasting and recording the concert hall or the opera house were the only places where large-scale orchestral music could be heard. Concert audiences of the time were exceptionally demonstrative in voicing their likes and dislikes, particularly the large crowds at the Concerts populaires. The Cirque d’hiver, where they took place, could seat nearly 5000, whereas the smaller Conservatoire only had a capacity of just over 1000 (the audience there was divided between the more strait-laced ‘subscribers of the first series’ — abonnés de la première série — as against the less exalted ‘subscribers of the second series’ — abonnés de la deuxième série — who had to wait till the following Sunday to hear the same programme). Audiences generally expected pieces to be encored if they so demanded, a practice which some deplored (Lamoureux tried to ban it, but without complete success), and programme schedules were not infrequently re-arranged at short notice to satisfy the demand for works that had been particularly successful.

    More generally, there arose in France in the 1870s a new mood of patriotism as a reaction to the defeat at the hands of Prussia in the 1870-1871 war, and this stimulated pride in France’s cultural achievements, in music and in other fields. The remarks of the young critic and writer Octave Fouque writing in 1878, who insisted that ‘Berlioz was French and truly French’, are one illustration of this. It was somewhat paradoxical that Berlioz should have benefited from the mood of the time. Though he had musical roots in 18th century France and was heir to the musical traditions of the French revolution, he did not present himself as a specifically ‘French’ composer and emphasised instead his debts abroad – Gluck, Beethoven, Weber and Spontini were his heroes, and he once described himself as ‘a musician who was three-quarters German’ (un musicien aux trois-quarts allemand). One should add that some of the leading champions of Berlioz in France (Ernest Reyer, Adolphe Jullien) were at the same time admirers of Wagner and deplored the rift that had developed between the two composers in their lifetime. For concert audiences what ultimately mattered was probably the music itself. Increasingly frequent performances of his music during the 1870s ensured that Berlioz became accepted, just as Wagner’s music gained increasing recognition in Paris through repeated concert performances in the early 1880s.

    Of all the works of Berlioz none achieved greater popularity in Paris than la Damnation de Faust, a work which had marked one of the greatest setbacks in the composer’s career when it was first performed in Paris in December 1846. The rise to fame of la Damnation can be traced in detail over a period of several years. The last time a substantial excerpt of the work had been heard in Paris in the composer’s lifetime was on 7 April 1861, when Part II, from Mephistopheles’ Voici des roses to the end, was performed at the Conservatoire, and according to Adolphe Jullien the reception was generally cool. No more was heard of the work in Paris until several years later (19 January 1868), when Pasdeloup, who had already been performing excerpts from Berlioz’s music on and off since 1862, now included for the first time the Marche hongroise in the programme of his Concerts populaires, a piece destined to become a firm favourite with Paris audiences (Le Ménestrel 19/1/1868, p. 63). In 1869 Henri Litolff, a composer whom Berlioz had befriended and championed, was the first to perform all three of the familiar orchestral excerpts (the Menuet des Follets, Valse des Sylphes, and Marche hongroise) at two concerts at the Opéra in November, only months after the composer’s death, and this was greeted by critics as a significant event. A few weeks later Pasdeloup followed his example (9 January 1870), and at the anniversary festival in honour of Berlioz on 22 March Reyer now included a larger selection of vocal pieces from Part II in the programme.

    Concert activity in Paris was then interrupted for a year by the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune, but after it resumed the Conservatoire soon programmed again (7 and 14 January 1872) the selection from Part II that it had performed a decade earlier; this time, according to Adolphe Jullien, it was much better received. The selection was repeated the following December at the Conservatoire, now under the conductor Deldevez, who had some personal connections with the work: he had assisted in the proof-reading of the first edition in 1854, as Reyer recalls, and was devoted to the music of Berlioz. Two years later Deldevez repeated the programme once more (26 December 1874, 3 January 1875), and a year later took the further step of performing the first two parts complete (13 & 20 February 1876). Pasdeloup followed suit in 1877 (11 February), but in the meantime Colonne had also taken notice of the work’s increasing popularity.

    From the first concert of his new society in March 1873 Colonne, like Pasdeloup, had been regularly including shorter pieces by Berlioz in his programmes. In 1875 he went one step further and decided to attempt complete performances of longer works, l’Enfance du Christ in January, then Roméo et Juliette in November and December. He did not perform any longer works during 1876, while by this time Pasdeloup had provided Paris with its first complete performances since the time of Berlioz of the Symphonie fantastique (23 February 1873) and Harold en Italie (9 January 1876). Colonne now decided to put on the complete Damnation for 18 February 1877, but so did Pasdeloup at exactly the same time: they were the first complete performances of the work in Paris since 1846.

    This turned out to be a momentous occasion in the concert life of Paris: Pasdeloup’s performance went well despite a last minute change of singer, but Colonne’s was a triumph and a revelation. At once the work became famous and started on its extraordinary career of success: it had to be performed six times by Colonne in that season alone, and thereafter the public simply could not tire of it. It became Berlioz’s most popular and successful work in Paris and France (well ahead of the Symphonie fantastique), to the benefit of Colonne, who came to be seen as the leading Berlioz conductor of the time, his concert society which prospered thanks to the success of la Damnation, and the publisher Richault who took advantage of the new vogue to issue numerous arrangements of its most popular pieces. Other conductors were anxious to share in the work’s success: Pasdeloup continued to perform it from time to time (31 March and 7 April 1878; 6 March, 27 November and 4 December 1881; he also performed it in London in 1878), and Lamoureux gave four highly-praised performances in February 1884 with a completely fresh cast. But in practice Colonne seemed to have established a virtual monopoly of the work: down to the end of 1883 he conducted no less than 38 performances of the complete Damnation, and many more were to follow in his subsequent career. Colonne went on to attempt other works of Berlioz that had hitherto been overlooked, including the Requiem (March 1878), Lélio (November 1881) and the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (January 1882). One contemporary critic said of Colonne that he had ‘the honour of being the Habeneck of the French Beethoven’ (Le Ménestrel 17/3/1878).

    Pasdeloup on his side did not give up: in November and December 1879 he put on concert performances of la Prise de Troie, a work which had never been performed, and Reyer is emphatic that the credit for the initiative belonged to Pasdeloup, not to Colonne (the announcement in Le Ménestrel is misleading in this respect). Colonne for his part felt obliged to reciprocate with rival performances of his own. He was unable to get ahead of Pasdeloup, who performed Act I then Acts I-II before him, but on 7 December the complete work was played, at the same time, in two different halls in Paris, and under two different conductors. Here again as with la Damnation Colonne in the end enjoyed greater success than his rival: he was able to give a further three performances, whereas Pasdeloup had to cancel another scheduled performance because of adverse weather conditions (which apparently did not affect a repeat performance by Colonne on the same day), and decided the following week to leave it at that.

    One fact stands out from the above outline: the credit for promoting the music of Berlioz in Paris in the 1870s and after belongs exclusively to the orchestral conductors and their concert societies, Pasdeloup, Colonne, and to a lesser extent the Conservatoire, but not to the opera houses. It was in concert performances that la Prise de Troie was first heard, not on stage at the Opéra as it should have been. Ever since the fall of Benvenuto Cellini in 1838 Berlioz had been excluded from the Opéra, and in 1863 it was only on the smaller Théâtre-Lyrique that he was able to get Les Troyens performed at long last, but in a truncated form. The story in Germany was different: in Weimar Benvenuto Cellini was revived thanks to Liszt in 1852 and 1856, and Béatrice et Bénedict received its first performances in Baden-Baden in 1862 and 1863, and was also performed in Weimar in 1863. Both works continued to be staged in Germany after Berlioz’s death (for example Cellini was revived once more by Hans von Bülow in Hanover in 1879, Béatrice was performed in Weimar in 1876), and the complete Les Troyens was first staged in Germany in Karlsruhe in 1890, though not as a single work but over two consecutive evenings. Ernest Reyer was among those who repeatedly pointed out and deplored the failure of opera houses in Paris to do justice to Berlioz. For Paris audiences of the end of the 19th century Berlioz remained above all a composer of orchestral music, ‘notre grand symphoniste français’ and the French counterpart to Beethoven (see for example Le Ménestrel 13/5/1877; 4/11/1877; 19/3/1882; 14/1/1883). Even admirers of Berlioz such as Reyer did not think of him as a great composer for the stage, a judgement that was not easily challenged so long as Les Troyens was not performed complete in the opera house as the composer had originally conceived it. Hence Berlioz’s success in the concert hall was not translated to the opera house (see further the page on Berlioz’s Operas in France 1869-1914). Wagner in Paris was more fortunate: increasingly accepted in the concert hall from the early 1880s he eventually reached the stage of the Opéra. In this crucial respect the posthumous Berlioz revival in Paris was incomplete.

Advert in the Ménestrel, 31 March 1878,  page 144

(Large view)

Table of performances

    The tables below are for the most part self-explanatory. The references to Le Ménestrel are in the format day/month; the year is that of the relevant table. The regular concerts of the main orchestral societies (the Conservatoire, Pasdeloup, Colonne, later Lamoureux) all took place on Sundays, which was also the day when at the time Le Ménestrel was published. It was normal practice for Le Ménestrel to announce the programme of the concerts on the day they took place, with a longer or shorter review often appearing the following week (hence many of the entries below have more than one reference). The concert season normally ran from late October to the end of March or early April, and there often were special concerts on Good Friday. The links in the Reviews column relate to three different pages: the separate page of articles and reviews from Le Ménestrel, the page of articles by Auguste Morel from 1876 to 1881, also from Le Ménestrel, and the page of feuilletons by Ernest Reyer in the Journal des Débats over the whole of the period covered.

    In the column of works performed abbreviations have been used to save space. Benvenuto = Benvenuto Cellini, Carnaval = overture le Carnaval romain, Chasse royale = Chasse royale et orage from Les Troyens, Corsaire = overture le Corsaire, Damnation = la Damnation de Faust, Enfance = l’Enfance du Christ, Fantastique = Symphonie fantastique, Francs-Juges = overture les Francs-Juges, Harold = Harold en Italie, Invitation = Invitation to the Dance (Weber, orch. Berlioz), Invocation = Invocation à la nature from Damnation, Marche = Marche hongroise from Damnation, Menuet = Menuet des Follets from Damnation, Pâtre breton = le Jeune pâtre breton, Trio = Trio for 2 flutes and harp from Enfance, Valse = Valse des Sylphes from Damnation. Where a title is mentioned without qualification (e.g. Damnation) it refers to a performance of the complete work. When excerpts from a larger work were performed the concert listings in Le Ménestrel did not always make clear which particular pieces were involved, though this can sometimes be deduced from the review after the concert.

    Abbreviations are also used for some of the venues mentioned below: Château-d’Eau = Théâtre du Château-d’Eau, Châtelet = Théâtre du Châtelet, Trocadéro = Salle des Fêtes du Trocadéro.

1869

1870

1871

1872

1873

1874

1875

1876

1877

1878

1879

1880

1881

1882

1883

1884

The Hector Berlioz Website was created on 18 July 1997 by Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb; this page created on 15 November 2011, updated on 1st May 2013.

© Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb. All rights reserved.

Articles and reviews of concerts, 1869-1884 (in French)
Auguste Morel and Berlioz (in French)
Ernest Reyer and Berlioz (in French

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