French Composer Hector Berlioz
Conductor, Writer and Symphonist Known For Symphonie Fantastique
Sep 24, 2007
French composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), is one of the founders of modern orchestration. Together with Liszt and Wagner, he was a major figure in the Romantic movement. His music, filled with the spirit of the Romantic Period and often radically expressed, was inspired by drama and literature.
Berlioz was born on December 11, 1803, a son of a doctor. His father sent him to Paris to study medicine but instead, he entered the conservatory of music and won the Prix de Rome in 1830.
At age 24, while watching a stage production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he fell deeply in love with its Ophelia, played by the actress Harriet Smithson, whom he eventually married in 1933. At the same time, he was smitten by William Shakespeare, composing to name a few:
- King Lear Overture
- Romé et Juliette, symphony inspired by Romeo and Juliet
- Beatrice et Benedict (1862), opera inspired by Much Ado About Nothing.
Berlioz supplemented his income becoming a critic, writing witty dissections of the idiocies of Parisian musical life. At 35, Paganini sent him 20,000 francs to enable him to devote all his time to composition. The Paganini-inspired symphonic Harold en Italie was written in 1834, followed by Romeo et Juliette and Benvenuto Cellini.
Berlioz travelled much during the next few years and conducted in Germany, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Russia and London. His brilliant ‘legende dramatique’ La Damnation de Faust (influence of Goethe’s Doctor Faustus) was premiered in 1846 and the massive Te Deum.
He composed his masterpiece, the epic opera Les Troyens (The Trojans) from Virgil’s classic Aeneid. His works also include the cantata L’enfance du Christ. For many years his reputation rested on his Symphonie fantastique.
He wrote seven books, including Treatise on Orchestration (1844) and his Memoires (Memoirs), to be published after his death. The book makes fascinating reading about him, a modern man of tremendous genius, perhaps born before his time. He never gave up his struggle as an artist, with a description of him by Théodore Gautier that befits, as "a splendid head, like an exasperated eagle." (Quoted from Music by Frank G. Barker, Windward, 1981)
Berlioz was successful in all three careers: composer, conductor and writer.
Works by Hector Berlioz
- Opera, Les Francs-juges, 1826
- Overture, Waverley, 1828
- Symphonie fantastique, 1830
- Overture, The Corsair and King Lear, 1831
- Symphony, Harold en Italie (Harold in Italy), 1834
- Opera, Benvenuto Cellini; Grande messe des morts (Requiem), 1837
- Dramatic symphony, Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet), 1839
- Grande symphonie funebre et triomphale, 1840
- Song cycle, Les Nuits d'été, 1841
- Overture, Roman Carnival (From Benvenuto Cellini), 1844
- Dramatic cantata, La Damnation de Faust (The Damnation of Faust), 1846
- Te Deum, 1850
- Oratorio, L'Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ), 1854
- Opera, Le Troyens (The Trojans), 1858
- Opera, Beatrice and Benedict, 1862
Sources:
The Grove Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan (1994)
Music by Frank G. Barker, Windward (1981)
