BERLIOZ (Hector).

Lot 11
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Estimation :
2500 - 3000 EUR
BERLIOZ (Hector).
Autograph letter signed to his sister Nanci Pal, dated Paris April 3, 1850, 4 p. in-8. Envelope. Witty letter about his musical activities, Hugo and Dumas père. His sister Nanci is ill, and he is worried: ... "How much I would like to be able to give you patience and courage, but also how much you need it! "Their sister Adèle will keep him informed, and he would like to be able to write her every day. Precisely, to distract her, he is going to tell her everything he has been doing lately. "Always rehearsals, always concerts, and fortunately also always great success. This very success exasperates to the point of rage the two or three enemies I have left. "Among these enemies, he distinguishes Paul Scudo, ... "who, not content with attacking my music with fury in L'Ordre and in the Revue des deux mondes, has just, I am told, published, not a pamphlet, but a volume [Critique et littérature musicales], to demonstrate that I do not know music and that all that I write is abominable and stupid..." But he does not intend to answer her. He then speaks of the private concerts that he organizes for his musicians, for example at the home of the Marquise de la Force, whom he judges ironically: " Mme la marquise sings very falsely, but she is in 18th heaven to be heard in public, accompanied by an orchestra such as ours. "He announces in passing the future first audition of his Te Deum at Saint-Eustache (this creation will take place only in 1855). Follows the rather piquant account of an evening at Hugo's: " The evening before yesterday I spent at Hugo's, where I met our compatriot Ponsart. His Charlotte Corday is a success; it is, they say, deadly cold (...) Hugo's salon is not very entertaining, in spite of the charming kindness of Mrs. Hugo and the extreme grace of her daughter [Adèle Hugo]. His two sons are two very smug young men and very concerned with the illustration of their father, if not with their own merit. As for him, he is, as he has always been with me, very cordial though serious. "And Berlioz rages against certain guests: ... "a collection of abominable old women, ugly enough to make dogs bark and mean and pretentious to the highest degree. The mother Gay [Mme de Girardin], Mme Hamelin especially, are enthroned next to other less monumental uglinesses. (...) The good thing about this world is that there is no music. In the salon of the painter Gudin, on the other hand, he had to suffer bad music: "A. Dumas, who hates even bad music, distracted himself by making words, which he threw from right to left on the assembly, while walking. He had his daughter on his arm; she is a young person of 19 years old, who looks too much like her father to be pretty, but who has a rather graceful false air of quarteronne and a physiognomy whose originality was increased that evening by a hairdo of golden sequins which made her look like a Madecassian odalisque... Correspondance générale, éd. de P. Citron, t. III, letter 1319, p. 702. Enclosed : advertisement. Complete works of Hector Berlioz. Imprimerie Centrale de Napoléon (Chaix), 1852. A two-page leaflet small in-folio 25 Works described.
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