La Mort de Cléopâtre

Although the Prix de Rome was something that every young French composer seriously coveted – for the prestige, the money and the privilege of two years residence at the Villa Medici in Rome – very few of the winning entries have become part of the standard repertoire. This is not so much because the outstanding students of their day like Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet were incapable of producing anything of lasting interest as because the rules of the competition and the conservatism of the jurors virtually precluded any display of originality or individuality.

Berlioz went in for the Prix de Rome four times in four successive years and finally won it in 1830 with La Mort de Sardanaple, which was not the best of his Prix de Rome cantatas but the most obedient. The most inspired of the four is La Mort de Cléopâtre, which so offended the jury in 1829 that rather than give their approval to such an unruly score they chose not to award a first prize at all that year. As the composer wrote to his father, “the subject inspired me with many things which seemed to me great and new and which I didn’t hesitate to write down. That’s where I went wrong.” Up to a point, one can sympathise with those “grave and reverend signors” who, listening to the piano transcription (as the rules required) of an essentially orchestral conception and hearing harmonic transgressions not even the dreaded Beethoven would have perpetrated, must have been severely baffled by the work.

Interestingly, however, the notoriously severe Director of the Paris Conservatoire, Luigi Cherubini, was one of the small minority who voted for it. As a not unprogressive opera composer himself, he no doubt had to acknowledge the dramatic intensity in the swirling figuration and urgent syncopations of the instrumental introduction, the eloquence of Cleopatra’s opening recitative and the pathos of the following near-aria. It is difficult to imagine, on the other hand what even the most liberal academic could have made of the central “Méditation” (which was to be recycled in Lélio two years later) with its ominously strummed rhythms, its macabre trombone colours and its weird harmonic progressions. As for the naturalistic rather than conventionally emphatic ending – after the fatal snake-bite the music just dies away on an erratic and failing pulse – that demonstration of Berlioz’s genius was the ultimate offence as far as most of the jurors were concerned. “My dear friend,” said one of them, “you had the prize in your hands and you dashed it to the ground.”

Although the Prix de Rome was something that every young French composer seriously coveted – for the prestige, the money and the privilege of two years residence at the Villa Medici in Rome – very few of the winning entries have become part of the standard repertoire. This is not so much because the outstanding students of their day like Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet were incapable of producing anything of lasting interest as because the rules of the competition and the conservatism of the jurors virtually precluded any display of originality or individuality.

Berlioz went in for the Prix de Rome four times in four successive years and finally won it in 1830 with La Mort de Sardanaple, which was not the best of his Prix de Rome cantatas but the most obedient. The most inspired of the four is La Mort de Cléopâtre, which so offended the jury in 1829 that rather than give their approval to such an unruly score they chose not to award a first prize at all that year. As the composer wrote to his father, “the subject inspired me with many things which seemed to me great and new and which I didn’t hesitate to write down. That’s where I went wrong.” Up to a point, one can sympathise with those “grave and reverend signors” who, listening to the piano transcription (as the rules required) of an essentially orchestral conception and hearing harmonic transgressions not even the dreaded Beethoven would have perpetrated, must have been severely baffled by the work.

Interestingly, however, the notoriously severe Director of the Paris Conservatoire, Luigi Cherubini, was one of the small minority who were impressed by certain aspects of it. As a not unprogressive opera composer himself, he no doubt had to acknowledge the dramatic intensity in the swirling figuration and urgent syncopations of the instrumental introduction, the eloquence of Cleopatra’s opening recitative and the pathos of the following near-aria. It is difficult to imagine, on the other hand what even the most liberal academic could have made of the central “Méditation” (which was to be recycled in Lélio two years later) with its ominously strummed rhythms, its macabre trombone colours and its weird harmonic progressions. As for the naturalistic rather than conventionally emphatic ending – after the fatal snake-bite the music just dies away on an erratic and failing pulse – that demonstration of Berlioz’s genius was the ultimate offence as far as most of the jurors were concerned. It was agreed not to award a first prize that year. “My dear friend,” said one of them, “you had the prize in your hands and you dashed it to the ground.”