Chapter II: Part 2

In Vienna (1845) he found much to delight him. To be sure he was often painfully struck by many things, such as the lamentable “ignorance prevailing with respect to the works of Gluck”. He was in the habit of asking musicians if they knew “Alceste” or “Iphigenia” and invariably he received the answer: “They are never performed in Vienna; we do not know them”. Whereupon his mental reaction would be: “But, you wretched creatures, whether they are performed or not, you ought to know them by heart!” On the other hand, he heard numbers of remarkable artists and admits he “would have to write a book to do justice to each and to catalogue all the musical wealth of Vienna in detail”. He received, naturally, the usual silver baton “inscribed with the titles of his works”. Also, a little present of a hundred ducats from the Emperor after one of his concerts in the Redouten Saal; and, from the same exalted source, the message, conveyed by the Imperial master of ceremonies: “Tell Berlioz that I was greatly amused”!

Meanwhile the composer had been working by fits and starts on “The Damnation of Faust”. He wrote page after page of it at the most unbelievable times of day and night and in the unlikeliest places—on the Boulevard Poissonière, on a stone of the Boulevard du Temple, in the park at Enghien (when in a somnambulistic trance he had boarded a suburban train and it had simply deposited him there); at Lille, at Rouen, in Passau, in Prague, in Silesia; while walking, while eating, while traveling. When he left Vienna for Budapest he prepared to perform at his first Hungarian concert the Rakoczy March of which he had made what, in effect, has long been the standardized and most overpowering orchestration of all. This national melody invariably drove Magyar listeners into frenzies of patriotic enthusiasm (for that matter few audiences even now can hear it unstirred). And on the program piloted by Berlioz it led to such a wild demonstration that, as he directed it, the composer’s hair stood on end and he was seized for a few moments with a kind of nightmare terror. He thereupon introduced the march into the score of “The Damnation” and placed the opening scene of the Faust action in Hungary so as to motivate the presence in the score of the volcanic page.

* * *

It is hard to grasp today that the first performance of the “Damnation of Faust” at the Paris Opéra Comique (December 6, 1846) was the most heart-breaking fiasco of Berlioz’ life. It was not a question of violent opposition (if only it had been!) but of abysmal, devastating indifference. Only a scattering of friends occupied the first rows of the Salle Favart, with further back a handful of cynical faces. Otherwise an inhuman emptiness sat enthroned in the gaping theatre (the comic journal, Charivari, sniggered that if the Song of the Rat went unnoticed it was because there was not so much as a cat in the house!). From the outset Berlioz knew himself ruined, materially and spiritually. It was less the few remaining francs saved on his travels which mattered than the irreparable hurt done the morale of the afflicted man. “Nothing in my artistic career wounded me more deeply than this unexpected indifference”, he was to write in his Memoirs—lapsing, for once, into pitiful understatement! Not till 1877 was “The Damnation of Faust” revived in Paris, by which time the composer had been dead eight years.

Although Berlioz recouped some of his financial losses from the “Faust” misadventure when he went to Russia the following year he was the plaything of destiny once again when, late in 1847, he accepted an invitation from Louis Antoine Jullien to go to London and conduct opera at the Drury Lane Theatre, of which Jullien was then the manager. This spectacular French adventurer and charlatan, who speculated ruinously, went to jail for debt and died in a lunatic asylum, failed shortly after Berlioz suffered himself to be inveigled into what he thought would be a six years’ engagement; and the composer, after giving a few concerts of his own music, found himself back in Paris by July, 1848. But England saw him again in 1851-52, when the New Philharmonic Society of London secured him as conductor, and in 1855 when he occupied the same post—not to mention a visit two years earlier when he was lured across the Channel to witness a Covent Garden representation of his first opera, “Benvenuto Cellini”. This turned out almost as distressingly as had, in Paris, “The Damnation of Faust”.

It is one of the real misfortunes of musical history that Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner never became to each other the kinsmen and spiritual brothers they should have been. Some unhappy flaw in their respective natures always thwarted a consummation which, one feels, fate should have preordained. Or some barrier sprang up between them precisely at the moment they should best have complemented each other. They had, in the larger sense, the same ideals, the same luminous visions, the same majestic aims, the same reluctance to palter and to compromise. They were both tortured by nerves and exacerbated by futile suspicions and jealousies. Yet each had the true measure of the other’s importance, whether admitted or not. Prejudices and preconceptions, sometimes artificially fostered, if not fed by envy or rankling disappointment had a way of cropping up to blind them as soon as they gave promise of seeing eye to eye. Wagner was the stronger of the two, not only as to creative power but in toughness of fibre. But if they were not equally matched, the differences and asperities of the one fitted perfectly into the natural flaws and crudities of the other, as Wagner himself once took occasion to point out.

Berlioz appears to have recognized in Wagner, much as he may have resented it, a force of the future which sooner or later must challenge him. All the same, it is wrong to imagine that Wagner underrated his French rival, however he discerned the weaknesses of his work. His appreciation of the artist Berlioz was broader and more fundamental than the appreciation of Berlioz for him, which was so often soured by jealousy and blinded by bias. Wagner was incontestably sincere when he wrote: “We must honor Berlioz as the true renewer of modern music”. Too few people are familiar with that extraordinary episode at Bayreuth, long after the Frenchman’s death when the ageing Wagner flew into a towering rage on hearing the still youthful Felix Mottl criticise some detail of a Berlioz work. “When a master like Berlioz writes something you are too shallow to grasp your duty is to accept it without question or murmur!” he had screamed at his astonished disciple.

Only once did the pair draw close enough to justify the belief that they might have developed, under more hospitable circumstances, a lasting friendship. This was in 1855, when the two men, in the depths of discouragement, met in London whither Wagner had come to conduct the Old Philharmonic. The improved relations were only temporary. The creator of “Tristan” appreciated that the jealous Marie Recio stood in the way of any lasting rapprochement. And he confided to Liszt that “a malicious wife can ruin a brilliant man ... and bring out the worst aspects of his character; indeed, I have sometimes to wonder if God would not have done better to have left women out of the scheme of creation”. In 1861, at the “Tannhäuser” fiasco at the Paris Opéra, Berlioz played a part that reflects eternal discredit on his memory, even if the shabby treatment he so often endured at the hands of his countrymen could account for his spitefulness.

* * *

The domestic situation of Berlioz had hopelessly deteriorated. Harriet, lame, coarse, shrewish had lost the last vestiges of her once admired beauty and talent. She was in due course to suffer paralytic strokes and then to become bedridden. Her son, Louis, having grown to young manhood, became an “aspirant-marinier” at Le Havre and decided to follow the sea, inheriting an early but unfulfilled ambition of his father. A true sailor he had a wife in every port and Hector, who was aware of the wanderer’s inclinations, sometimes longed to meet those grandchildren of his he knew lived scattered through the hemispheres. Now and then Louis would return briefly to Paris and look in on his wretched mother at her little house on the hill of Montmartre. Occasionally he would seek out his father at his domicile near the Place Pigalle—though only when Marie Recio was out! The moment he heard her footsteps in the hall he would flee. He could not pardon his father and he said so unmistakably. So did others! To all reproaches the unhappy composer had only one helpless answer: “What would you? I love her.”

Yet if that far-off adoration of his Ophelia and Juliet had, apparently, long since turned to ashes something like retribution was to overtake him. For years he had been paying her routine visits, understanding her solitude even as she divined his misery. But early in March, 1854, he was called to her bedside and found her dying. At that, he was not even granted the wretched solace of receiving her last breath! Harriet expired a few moments after he had left the house on some trivial errand. The blow was far more terrible than Hector had thought possible. In a flash he recognized that he really loved the wife more than he did the mistress; and in prodigious rebellion he cursed “that stupid God, atrocious in his infinite indifference”. To his son he wrote: “You will never know what your mother and I suffered because of each other and it was these sufferings which brought us so close together. It was as impossible for me to live with her as without her!” He was to see her once again! Ten years later they exhumed her and, in Hector’s presence, placed her ghastly remains in a new coffin and reinterred them in the Montmartre Cemetery.

In October, 1854, Berlioz legalized the situation of Marie Recio by marrying her.

* * *

More wanderings lay ahead of him. He could have gone to New York, had he so chosen, and conducted concerts there. Rightly or wrongly he declined the offer. But in 1855 he harvested rich honors at a Berlioz Festival which his untiring champion, Liszt, staged in Weimar. A work which greatly stirred the audience at the Weimar Court Theatre was the newly composed “L’Enfance du Christ”. This exquisite “legend”, as simple, transparent and unpretentious as most of his other works are huge in scale and demanding, is a delicate little trilogy divided into sections respectively called “Herod’s Dream”, “The Flight to Egypt” and “The Arrival in Sais”. It looked, for a while, like a turn in Hector’s fortunes. Almost wherever the oratorio was performed it met with a favor to which the composer was quite unaccustomed. In Paris there actually were ovations and the press spoke of a “masterpiece”!

Berlioz was aware that Wagner, slowly but surely, was elaborating his gigantic “Nibelungen” project and he, too, became gradually filled with a scheme for a mythological opera. His old love for Virgil’s gods and heroes, dating back to the days of his boyhood and his Latin readings in his father’s library, reasserted itself. He dreamed of a vast fresco in which the siege of Troy, Aeneas, Hector, Priam, Cassandra, Dido and the rest of the splendid personages of the Mediterranean world should be combined in the action of a great lyric tragedy carried out “in the Shakespearian manner.” But though the idea fired him it also terrified him as he thought of the giant efforts it involved and the disappointments it was sure to entail. He confided his ambitions and his fears to Liszt’s friend, the Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein. It was she who spurred him to the task and overrode his doubts and scruples.

“You must create this opera, this lyric poem or whatever you choose to call it”, the Princess insisted, and as he continued to plead the troubles it meant, she silenced him with a pretended severity: “Listen! If you shun the sufferings which this labor may and, indeed, ought to cause you—if you are so weak as to be afraid of it, if you refuse to dare everything for the sake of Dido and Cassandra, then stay away from me, I never want to see you again!”

It was a liberating word and Berlioz returned to Paris for the heart-breaking business of writing poem and music. He had foreseen its pains and obstacles only too clearly, but he wrestled furiously with them and kept the oath he had given. Sombre and lonely he composed, revised, expanded, cut down, suppressed and altered in a thousand different ways. The epic seemed to be taking all sorts of impractical forms and the composer realized that even all the conventional devices of dramaturgy might not avail to fit it for the theatre. Two years of intensive work brought the end of the score in 1858. Meanwhile Berlioz had terminated his Memoirs, which he kept at the Conservatoire out of fear that his second wife, in the course of her often indiscreet searchings, might light upon some secrets he preferred to hide. In the end he confided the manuscript to Liszt, to thwart Marie’s curiosity if he were to die. For Hector had been much haunted by thoughts of death as the time went by. Years of disappointment were more and more taking toll of his nervous system. He was tortured by what the doctors called “intestinal neuralgia”, against which medicine appeared to be unavailing.

“Les Troyens” was, in many ways, the supreme blow of his life and more than anything else his child of sorrow. In the year of its completion he tried in vain to have it sung at the Opéra. Three years later that institution accepted it but did not give it. Finally, Léon Carvalho, manager of the Théâtre Lyrique, mounted it on November 4, 1863. The composer had found it necessary to divide his six and a half hour opera into two parts—“La Prise de Troie” and “Les Troyens à Carthage”—to make a performance possible at all. At that there were cuts, changes, revisions without end, and to this day versions and “editions” have been found indispensable if the work is to be made a practical stage piece. The first presentation did not include the “Prise de Troie” half, and this portion of the work, of which Cassandra, the composer’s beloved “heroic virgin” is the central figure, Berlioz was never to witness. In spite of innumerable difficulties and the unfinished state of the representation the piece was moderately successful at first, the reviews in the main favorable, the box office fair and Hector himself delighted with as much of his creation as he heard. But the worries and tribulations the opera involved (for any change he wanted Hector had to pay out of his own pocket) brought a nervous breakdown and he managed to attend no more than four performances. As soon as his back was turned the management cut and slashed the score without compunction. By the end of a month audiences had fallen off to such an extent that, before Christmas, “Les Troyens” disappeared from the repertoire. This new blow promised to break the unhappy composer’s spirit altogether. “My career is finished” he told someone who hoped for an early resumption of the work. “I have neither hopes, illusions nor great ideas left”, he reflected bitterly; “my contempt for the stupidity and dishonesty of people has reached its peak....” And when he was told that audiences were beginning to flock to hear some work of his he would reply: “Yes, they are coming; but I am going!”

On June 14, 1862, Marie Recio died suddenly of a heart attack. The blow struck Hector much less violently than did the passing of his first wife. Possibly the circumstance that he was engaged on a new work at the time somewhat blunted the edge of his grief. This latest creation—his last, as it proved—was the two act opera comique, “Béatrice et Bénédict”, a lyric version of “Much Ado About Nothing”—given for the first time at the newly built casino in Baden-Baden. “Béatrice et Bénédict” proved to be a repetition of the “Enfance du Christ” surprise—a brilliant success from the first. Berlioz was happy, but also cynical. “People are now discovering that I have melody, that I can be jubilant and even humorous!” he wrote. Another triumph of the new work at Weimar, in 1863, further demonstrated that the piece had been born under a lucky star. Like Verdi, thirty years later, Berlioz was disposed to conclude his creative career with a comedy inspired by his idolized Shakespeare. “I have written the final note with which I shall ever soil a scrap of music paper. No more of that! Othello’s occupation’s gone; I should like to have nothing more to do—nothing, absolutely nothing!” Actually, he had much more to do—conducting, writing, traveling, suffering. Yet so far as making music was concerned he was finished.

After Marie Recio’s death Hector lived with his mother-in-law, whom he esteemed and who, in turn, loved him. Love of a different kind still lured him on. He met a young girl, by name Amélie and felt a fresh upsurge of romantic passion. But in six months she, too, was dead. Meanwhile Berlioz and his son had drawn much closer together, spiritually. Yet Louis was generally far from France and the pair, though they corresponded, saw but little of each other. One evening a number of Hector’s closest musical friends, angered by the persistent neglect of the composer by his own countrymen, staged a little private glorification in his honor. They waited for the guest of the occasion and when time passed and he did not come a messenger was sent to fetch him. Berlioz lay on the floor of his room, writhing in an agony of grief. He had just received word that Louis was dead in Havana!

He was inspired by a sudden wish to renew one of the ties of his boyhood. And the thoughts of the eternal adolescent turned to Estelle Duboeuf, his “Stella Montis” of long ago. She was now a widowed old lady, patrician and proper, who had had a number of children, all of whom she had carefully reared and some of whom she had lost. She lived in Lyon and to that city Hector presently turned his steps. Estelle Fornier, amazed by the unexpected visit and the importunities of her ageing and weather-beaten guest, received him in kindly fashion, alluded tactfully to his agitated life but, with gentle firmness, discouraged his pleas for a somewhat closer friendship. Nevertheless, Berlioz was carried away by the mere joy of the meeting; and he chose to place an extravagant interpretation on a few commonplace phrases of hers and the words “affectionate sentiments” with which she had concluded a brief message. He continued from afar to worship this mirage and to build it up into elaborate fictions. He corresponded further with the decorous old lady, imagined vain things and confided to the Princess Wittgenstein “this kind of suffering is indispensable to me.”

Meanwhile, he was off again on travels. In 1866 he conducted “La Damnation de Faust” in Vienna and in 1867 led half a dozen concerts in St. Petersburg where he made the acquaintance of Balakireff, Tchaikovsky and other Russian musicians, till, unable to endure the rigors of that climate, he returned to France, longing passionately for the sunshine and warmth of the Riviera. Walking on the beach at Monaco he suffered a bad fall the consequence, it appears, of a slight stroke, which recurred a few days later. He rallied, however, though once back in Paris he found it necessary to spend long and dreary days in bed. He had made his will, leaving his books and scores to the Conservatoire and distributing his meager “fortune” to his nieces, besides settling a sum of 1800 francs on Estelle Fornier (which she is said to have declined) and providing a tiny income for his mother-in-law. Of his various crowns, laurel wreaths and other “trophies” he made superb bonfire! “I feel that I am going to die” he wrote his Russian friend, Vladimir Stassoff. “I believe in nothing any more ... I am exorbitantly bored. Farewell! Writing causes me no end of trouble.”

Gradually his faculties refused to function; little by little his brain became clouded, his tongue thickened, he made no attempt to talk and appeared to want nothing. On March 8, 1869, the long-embattled and sore-tried fighter, who had never attained inner or outer harmony, found peace. A final touch of irony was provided by the fact that his graveside valedictory was spoken, in the name of the Conservatoire, by a certain Elwart, to whom Berlioz had once said: “If _you_ are to make a speech at my funeral I prefer not to die!”

COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
_by_
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

COLUMBIA RECORDS

_Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_

Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
Beethoven—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major (with Joseph
Szigeti)—LP
Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf
Serkin, piano)—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)
Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP
Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)
Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1
Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G major—LP
Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP
Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein,
violin)
Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture
Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP
Schubert—Symphony No. 9 in C major
Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP
Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)
Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

_Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski_

Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts)
Griffes—“The White Peacock”, Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″
Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucassian Sketches (W. Lincer and M.
Nazzi, soloists)
Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP
Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP
Wagner—Die Walkure—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III—Scene
3)

_Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_

Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″
Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar
Levant, piano)—LP
Herold—Zampa—Overture
Kabalevsky—“The Comedians”, Op. 26—LP
Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite Dances—LP
Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP
Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP
Prokofieff—March, Op. 99
Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″
Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″
Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP
Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”
Wieniawski—Concerto No. 2 in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22
(with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP

_Under the Direction of Charles Münch_

Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor, No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano,
Op. 78—LP

_Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud_

Milhaud—Suite Francaise

_Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_

Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)
Bizet—Symphony in C major
Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP
Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP
Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP
Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP
Ibert—“Escales” (Ports of Call)
Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP
Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)
Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP
Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP
Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with
Gyorgy Sandor, piano)
Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor
Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with
Robert Casadesus)—LP
Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor
Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP
Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP
Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”)—LP
Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2)—(with Helen
Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP
Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel,
soprano)
Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP
Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and
Herbert Janssen, baritone)
Wagner—Die Walkure—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano
and Emery Darcy, tenor)
Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture

_Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_

Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP
Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)
Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods
Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP
Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet—LP
Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP
Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP

_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)
Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture
Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major
Brahms—Academic Festival Overture
Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)
Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet
Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)
Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
Ravel—La Valse
Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol
Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor
Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major
Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture
Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)—LP

_Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham_

Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)
Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)
Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

_Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz_

Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant)—LP

LP—Also available on Long Playing Microgroove Recordings as well as on
the conventional Columbia Masterworks.

VICTOR RECORDS

_Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini_

Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major
Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits
Haydn—Symphony No. 4 in D major (The Clock)
Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo
Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)
Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture
Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture
Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and II
Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Gotterdammerung—Siegfried Idyll

_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)
Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn
Respighi—Fountains of Rome
Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the
Philharmonic Symphony League of New York)
Schubert—Symphony No. 4 in C minor (Tragic)
Schumann—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (with Yehudi
Menuhin, violin)
Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia

_Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg_

J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major
J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra)
Beethoven—Egmont Overture
Handel—Alcina Suite
Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)
Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March
Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)
Schelling—Victory Ball
Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture
Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

Special Booklets published for
RADIO MEMBERS
of
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G.
Schirmer’s)
BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn
BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn
MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser
WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar
TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F.
Peyser
SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser
MENDELSSOHN and certain MASTERWORKS by Herbert F. Peyser
ROBERT SCHUMANN—Tone-Poet, Prophet and Critic by Herbert F. Peyser

These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the limited supply lasts.

A wealth of great music superbly performed by the magnificent Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York is available on COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS RECORDS. For your greater listening pleasure hear this immortal music as it was written, with pauses only where the composer intended, on COLUMBIA’S revolutionary LONG PLAYING LP MICROGROOVE RECORDS, which play up to fifty minutes of music with breathtaking concert hall fidelity.

Among the memorable works recorded for COLUMBIA by the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York are the following:

_Beethoven_: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67. Bruno Walter
conducting.
*ML 4009 Set MM-498
_Brahms_: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73. Artur Rodzinski
conducting.
*ML 4068 Set MM-725
_Khachaturian_: Gayne—Ballet Suites Nos. 1 and 2. Efrem Kurtz
conducting.
*ML 4030 Set MM-664 and Set MX-292
_Schubert_: Symphony No. 7 in C Major. Bruno Walter conducting.
*ML 4093 Set MM-679
_Tchaikovsky_: Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32. Leopold Stokowski
conducting.
*ML 4071 Set MM-806
_Wagner_: Die Walküre—Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music. Leopold
Stokowski conducting.
Set MX-301

*LP Records (Long Playing)

Transcriber’s Notes

--A few palpable typos were silently corrected.

--Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.

--Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not
renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)