Vocality in Hector Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette’s love duet

Abstract

Berlioz’ relation to vocality appears very original. As most of the romantics after
Lacépède and Rousseau, Berlioz thinks that instrumental music is vaguer and therefore
more expressive than words. Nevertheless, he is tackled, mainly by the Germans
(Schumann) on the ingeniousness of his conception. As a matter of fact, the link to
vocality in Romeo and Juliet’s love duet is ambiguous: theater and the idea of musical
characters are always underlying. There is nothing similar to the viewpoint of
Mendelssohn’s Songs without words, contemporaneous with the Symphonie fantastique.
Could it be possible to specify this conception of a link between musical
sound, vocal sound and word? Could it be possible to go so far as to suggest that the
conception of language was different in France and in Germany?