Berlioz’s Imaginary Composer

It’s easy to criticize—especially to criticize harshly. A reviewer can shred in ten minutes a score that cost a composer ten years of thought, and many “musical critics” have far less learning or natural ability than the people they ridicule. Some composers could fight back with words as well as with notes. Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner, for example, both loved polemics.

Berlioz was also a critic himself, and he enjoyed teasing the lesser reviewers. He once set a trap to expose their incompetence. He wrote a piece of real value called The Flight into Egypt, but on the concert programme he credited it to “Pierre Ducre,” a composer supposedly from the seventeenth century. He even wrote it in an antique style to match.

The critics swallowed it whole. They published glowing notices about the “important rediscovery,” invented historical details about Ducre’s life, and spoke of hunting down more works from his pen. When admiration reached its peak, Berlioz stepped forward and claimed the piece as his own, revealing that Ducre had existed only in imagination.

Having praised it unanimously, the reviewers could hardly withdraw their approval. Berlioz got his work prominently before the public—attention it might never have received if it hadn’t arrived wearing the costume of antiquity.