Berlioz liked to use it in this way for additional ornamentation, so we hear a great deal of this kind of piccolo gilt-edging, as we might call it, in his works. Berlioz gave it a great deal of thought. “In pieces of a joyous character,” he wrote, “the sounds of the second octave are suitable in all their gradations; while the upper notes are excellent _fortissimo_ for violent and tearing effects: in a storm, for instance, or in a scene of fierce, or infernal, character. Thus the piccolo flute figures incomparably in the fourth movement of Beethoven’s _Pastoral Symphony_—now alone and displayed above the low tremolo of violins and basses, imitating the whistlings of a tempest whose full force is not yet unchained—now on the higher notes still, together with the entire mass of the Orchestra. Gluck in the tempest of _Iphigénie en Tauride_ has known how to make the high sounds of the piccolo flute in unison grate still more roughly by writing them in a succession of sixths, a fourth above the first violins. The sound of the piccolo flutes issuing out in the upper octave, produces, therefore, a succession of elevenths with the first violins, the harshness of which is here of the very best effect. “In the chorus of the Scythians, in the same opera, the two piccolo flutes double in the octave the little grouped passages of the violins. These whistling notes mingled with the ravings of the savage troop, with the measure and incessant din of the cymbals and tambourine make us shiver. “Everyone has remarked the diabolic sneer of the two piccolo flutes in thirds in the drinking-song of _Freischütz_. It is one of Weber’s happiest orchestral inventions. “Spontini in his magnificent bacchanalian strain in the _Danaïdes_ (since become an orgy chorus in _Nurmahal_) first conceived the idea of uniting a short piercing cry of the piccolo flutes to a stroke of the cymbals. The singular sympathy, which is thus created between these very dissimilar instruments, had not been thought of before. It cuts and rends instantaneously, like the stab of a poignard. This effect is very characteristic—even when employing only the two instruments mentioned; but its force is augmented by an abrupt stroke of the kettledrums joined to a brief chord of all the other instruments. “Beethoven, Gluck, Weber and Spontini have thus made ingenious use—no less original than rational—of the piccolo flute. But when I hear this instrument employed in doubling in triple octave the air of a baritone, or casting its squeaking voice into the midst of a religious harmony, or strengthening and sharpening—for the sake of noise only—the high part of the orchestra, I think it a stupid method of instrumentation.