The Life of Hector Berlioz Author:Hector Berlioz Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for flute, two violins, viola, and 'cello, which was played by three amateurs, my master, and myself. This was indeed a triumph though, unfortunately, my fath... more »er did not seem as pleased as my other friends. Two months later another quintette was ready, of which he wished to hear the flute part before we performed it in public. Like most provincial amateurs, he thought he could judge the whole by a first-violin part, and at one passage he cried: " Come now ! That is something like music." But alas ! this elaborate effusion was too much for our performers—particularly the viola and 'cello— they meandered off at their own sweet will. Result —confusion. As this happened when I was twelve and a half, the writers who say I did not know my notes at twenty are just a little out. Later on I burntJ the two quintettes, but it is strange that, long afterwards in Paris, I used the very motif that my father liked for my first orchestral piece. It is the air in A flat for the first violin in the allegro of my overture to the Francs-Juges. MUSIC AND ANATOMY After the death of his son, poor Imbert went back to Lyons; his place was taken by Dorant, a man of far higher standing. He was an Alsacian, and played almost every instrument, but he excelled in clarinet, 'cello, violin, and guitar. My elder sister— who had not a scrap of musical instinct, and could never read the simplest song, although she had a charming voice and was fond of music—learnt theguitar with Dorant and, of course, I must needs share her lessons. But ere long our master, who was both honest and original, said bluntly to my father : 1 Berlio2' " burnt "does not necessarily mean that they were put in the fire, but simply that they were relegated to a portfolio limbo, whence they sometimes emerged to be used again with fi...« less