use of the orchestra, and to know its expression and timbre, as
well as the range and mechanism of most of the instruments. By
carefully comparing the effect produced with the means used to
produce it, I learned the hidden bond which unites musical
expression to the special art of instrumentation; but no one put me
in the way of this. The study of the methods of the three modern
masters, Beethoven, Weber, and Spontini, the impartial examination
of the traditions of instrumentation and of little-used forms and
combinations, conversations with virtuosi, and the effects I made
them try on their different instruments, together with a little
instinct, did the rest for me."[69]

[Footnote 68: One may judge of this instinct by one fact: he wrote the
overtures of _Les Francs-Juges_ and _Waverley_ without really knowing if
it were possible to play them. "I was so ignorant," he says, "of the
mechanism of certain instruments, that after having written the solo in
D flat for the trombone in the Introduction of _Les Francs-Juges_, I
feared it would be terribly difficult to play. So I went, very anxious,
to one of the trombonists of the Opera orchestra. He looked at the
passage and reassured me. 'The key of D flat is,' he said, 'one of the
pleasantest for that instrument; and you can count on a splendid effect
for that passage'" _(Mémoires_, I, 63).]

[Footnote 69: _Mémoires_, I, 64.]

That he was an originator in this direction no one doubts. And no one
disputes, as a rule, "his devilish cleverness," as Wagner scornfully
called it, or remains insensible to his skill and mastery in the
mechanism of expression, and his power over sonorous matter, which make
him, apart from his creative power, a sort of magician of music, a king