Stirling Newberry:

>Critics such as deFetis, Strong, Hanslick might not get much recognition
>now, ...

Fetis was an idiot, who ows to Berlioz's "Memories" --and to some hated
counterpoint excercises-- the major part of his "inmortality", if not all
of it. Strong is unknown to me. However, I don't understand why do you say
that Hanslick "might not get much not recognition now", I supopose that you
are talking about him as a critic of  Wiener Zeitung and Neue Freie Presse,
not as the author of  "Von Musikalisch Schonen ", whose influence in
formalist musical aesthetics of XX century is very strong, indeed. Even
today, that essay could provide the base to a musical philosophy for a
young composer. A couple friends of mine declared themselves (half in jest)
"devotes to Hanslick Church", to which I used to respond that I couldn't
join them, because I hadn't broke up yet even with Athanasius Kircher....

>...and most people might not be familiar with the obsessional devotion to
>fugue stylism in academic training of the 19th century, both in Russia and
>in France as well as Germany.

I haven't perceived such obsession in Mahler's viennese training years
with Epstein and Hellmesberger. It's true that, at the second half of
XIXth century, fugue and counterpoint were established and regular academic
matters, but professors used to torture their pupils with formal problems,
more than with "canon cancricans" and such things. The ability to compose
a regular fugue was often expected from a  candidate to Kapellmeister just
as the most elemental test of professional fitness, not of his talents as
an "artist".

>It is against this background of carping about counterpoint and fugues
>that we must understand Berlioz Fugue in *Dream of a Witches Sabbath*,

More than a parody of a fugue, this passage sounds to me as a sort
of mensural canon. In fact, I've always seen here a depiction of the
"romantic" Middle Age. "Dies irae" and "protus autenticus" taste aside,
Berlioz is constructing  the whole movement with ruins and relics from the
past, far more ancient than fugues. He seems to be so delighted doing this
as Byron walking among his beloved ruins of Newstead Abbey.

Pablo Massa
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