One week after the first performance of his trilogie sacrée, L’Enfance du Christ, on 10 December 1854, Berlioz wrote confidentially to Franz Liszt: “So I have become a good little boy, human, clear, melodic; I am finally writing music like everybody else—the common voice now proclaims! Farewell—the sensation caused by this conversion is growing. Let us allow it to continue to do so.”

This remarkable statement invites a close investigation of the composer’s identity in the later years of his life and career. It is not without sarcasm that he declares himself a “bon enfant” who finally knows how to please the public with melodious tunes. On the surface, the simple irony of the comment refers to the extraordinary success of the shepherds’ farewell in Part II of the sacred trilogy. This chorus evokes some vaguely “ancient” musical epoch by means of an apparently effortless and naive compositional style that no one, certainly not the critics, expected from the likes of Berlioz. L’Adieu des bergers à la Sainte Famille, the embryo of what became a large-scale composition, had initially appeared in concert as a separate piece purportedly composed by a seventeenth-century maître de chapelle. It delighted the public with its simple melodic phrasing and seemingly traditional harmonic progressions; it might have reminded Parisian listeners of Christmas carols and put them in a nostalgic frame of mind as they imagined a “hopelessly cozy” Holy Family. By following the Christmas story, audiences could associate their own experiences and cultural identities with the characters and feelings presented in the new work. Indeed, it appears that it was much easier for Parisian listeners to cope with Joseph, the shepherds, and even Herod, than it was for them to deal with Byron, Romeo, or Faust.