December 31, 2007
A final word about the Dante Symphony
A final word about the Dante Symphony. I have read somewhere that Liszt used pages to produce an effect which Berlioz accomplished in the apparition of Mephistopheles in _Faust_ with three notes. This comparison is unjust. Berlioz"s happy discovery is a work of genius and he alone could have invented it. But the sudden appearance of the Devil is one thing and the depiction of Hell quite another. Berlioz tried such a depiction at the end of the Damnation, and in spite of the strange vocabulary of the chorus, 'Irimiru Karabrao, Sat raik Irkimour,' and other pretty tricks, he succeeded no better than Liszt. As a matter of fact the opposite was the case.