"Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), one of the first French romantic composers and a daring creator of new orchestral sounds, was born in a small town near Grenoble. His father, a physician, sent him to Paris to study medicine, but he was 'filled with horror' by the dissecting room and shocked his parents by abandoning medicine to pursue a career in music. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, haunted the opera house, and composed.
"When he was twenty-three, Berlioz was overwhelmed with the works of Shakespeare and also fell madly in love with a Shakespearean actress, Harriet Smithson, to whom he wrote such wild, impassioned letters that she considered him a lunatic and refused to see him. To depict his 'endless and unquenchable passion,' Berlioz wrote the Symphonie fantastique (fantastic Symphony) in 1830, which startled Parisians by its sensationally autobiographical program, its amazingly novel orchestration, and its vivid depiction of the weird and diabolical.
"In 1830, too, Berlioz won the Prix de Rome (the Rome Prize), subsidizing two years' study in Rome; when he returned to Paris, he finally met and married Harriet Smithson--after she had attended a performance of the Fantastic Symphony and realized that it depicted her. (They separated, however, after only a few years.)
"Berlioz's unconventional music irritated the opera and concert establishment. To get a hearing for his works, he had to arrange concerts at his won expense--an enormous undertaking which drained him financially, physically, and emotionally. Although he had a following of about 1,200 who faithfully bought tickets to his concerts, this was not enough support for a composer of difficult, monumental works requiring hundreds of performers. Berlioz turned to musical journalism, becoming a brilliant and witty music critic who tried to convince the Parisians that music was not merely entertainment but a dramatic expression.
"Outside France, Berlioz's stock was higher. After 1840, he was in demand through Europe, conducting his own and other's music. As one of the first great conductors, he influenced a whole generation of musicians. But his last years were bitter; he was passed over for important positions and honors and composed very little during the six years before his death at sixty-five.
Berlioz's Music
"' The prevailing qualities of my music,' Berlioz wrote, 'are passionate expressiveness, inner fire, rhythmic drive, and unexpectedness.' Above all, Berlioz's music sound unique. It includes abrupt contrasts, fluctuating dynamics, and many changes in tempo.
"As an orchestrater, Berlioz was extraordinarily imaginative and innovative. At a time when the average orchestra had about sixty players, he often assembled hundreds of musicians to achieve new power, tone colors, and timbres. His melodies are often long, irregular, and asymmetrical, taking unexpected turns. Most of his works are for orchestra, or orchestra with chorus and vocal soloists; all are dramatic and programmatic. He invented new forms: his 'dramatic symphony' Romeo and Juliet (1839) is for orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists; and his 'dramatic legend' The Damnation of Faust combines opera and oratorio. He also wrote three operas and a grandiose, monumental Requiem."
"Berlioz knew he was a pioneer; he wrote of the Requiem, 'I have seen one man listening in terror, shaken to the depths of his soul, while his next neighbor could not catch an idea, though trying with all his might to do so."
The above is from Music an Appreciation by Roger Kamien, Brief Edition, McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. Pages 192-194.
Links
13
