Stephen Heller's review of Roméo et Juliette appeared in two parts in the Revue et Gazette musicale in December 1839 and in five parts in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, Leipzig, in January–February 1840. Heller was not the only sympathetic reviewer of the first performances (see Chapter 8), but he was the best-qualified musician, Wagner aside, to report on them. Schumann, as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift, had reviewed the Symphonie fantastique favourably in 1835, and the present article aided the growth of German interest in Berlioz upon which he capitalized in the 1840s and 1850s. I have indicated short cuts by […]. They consist mainly of extracts from the libretto or factual descriptions of instrumentation, unnecessary here; a few contain allusive matter without adding to the argument. The leisurely style of reviews in specialized nineteenth-century periodicals has necessitated some compression in the translation which, however, affects style rather then substance. All the notes are mine.

To Robert Schumann, at Leipzig, Paris, December 1839

My dear friend:[…] I would rather send you Berlioz's symphony itself than a dry analysis; that way you could hear and see, with perfect clarity, what criticism can only hint at. […] What the public most wants of art is novelty and originality; yet on experiencing plenty of both it reacts badly because its own understanding is incomplete. Perversely, it blames the author rather than itself; it asks for works newly minted from basic principles, which at the same time fulfil its own routine expectations. […] Berlioz's symphony needs no more defence from such prejudice than his other works.