82.—HOW BERLIOZ FOOLED THE CRITICS.
It is very easy to criticize, especially to make adverse criticism. A critic may tear to tatters in ten minutes a composition which represents a composer's best thought for ten years. Many of the so-called musical critics have not a tithe of the learning or natural ability of the men whose works they deride. This being the state of affairs, it behooves a composer to be able to defend himself with his pen as well as with a music score.
A few of the greater lights have been quite able to take their own part in an argument. Berlioz and Wagner were especially given to polemics. Berlioz was particularly caustic in his writings, and Wagner was well able to defend his position in the musical and even in the political world. It is not often that we find a great composer and a prominent critic and musical writer in the same person. But Berlioz was a critic and liked to make fun of the lesser critics, like a big fish would worry the smaller fry.
One of his plans to prove the incompetence of his brother critics was, to say the least, original. He wrote a work of much value and interest, called the "Flight into Egypt," and put it on a programme as the work of one "Pierre Ducre," who was stated to have lived in the seventeenth century. The composition was, of course, in the antique style of that day. The critics gave glowing articles concerning the valuable work Berlioz had unearthed, and went so far as to give historical details of the life of the composer and to speak of hunting up more works from his pen. When the admiration was at its height, Berlioz stepped in and claimed the work as his own composition and showed such a personage as Ducre to have existed only in imagination.
The critics could then hardly withdraw their unanimous approbation. So Berlioz had his work favorably criticized and brought prominently before the public, getting a share of public attention that it would not have received were it not for its supposed antiquity.