Hector Berlioz

I

Introduction

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), French composer, known for his melodic and orchestral innovations. He was a principal force in the development of 19th-century musical romanticism and an influential music critic.

II

A Precocious Talent

Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André in southeastern France. His father was a physician with musical tastes who taught his son not only music but also Latin, history, geography, and other school subjects. The young Berlioz’s musical studies under various teachers made him an accomplished performer on the flute and on the guitar. It soon became clear that music was a vocation rather than a pastime for him. By the age of 12 Berlioz was producing compositions for a local ensemble and displaying his extraordinary gift for melody. The opening bars of his Symphonie fantastique (Fantastic Symphony, 1830) were first used in these juvenile works.

In 1821 Berlioz was sent to Paris to follow in his father’s footsteps and receive training in medicine, but he spent his free time at the library of the Paris Conservatory, studying scores (printed music), and at the opera. After two years he abandoned classes in medicine and began studying music, and in 1826 he enrolled at the conservatory to study with French composer Jean François Le Sueur and Czech composer Anton Reicha. In 1830 Berlioz won the Prix de Rome with his composition La mort de Sardanapale (The Death of Sardanapalus). By that time he had discovered the new music of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven and the dramas of William Shakespeare, and had composed a requiem mass, two overtures, a number of songs, an orchestral fantasia on Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and the Symphonie fantastique.

With the Symphonie fantastique Berlioz turned away from the conventions of the classical symphony that had been established by Austrian composers Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Instead of providing the expected four movements in contrasting moods, tempos, and forms, Berlioz constructed a musical drama in five parts with a recurrent musical theme. Originally titled Episodes in the Life of an Artist, the Symphonie fantastique contained autobiographical elements chiefly surrounding the composer’s obsessive love for Irish actress Harriet Smithson. With the symphony he hoped to gain her attention and win her love.

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Berlioz gave each of the symphony’s five movements its own title and he had program notes distributed at performances. In the first movement, “Reveries—Passions,” a young musician falls desperately in love. In “A Ball,” the second movement, the musician is haunted by images of his beloved. “Scene in the Country” finds the musician brooding, while in “March to the Scaffold” he poisons himself, convinced that his love is not returned. In the final movement, “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” the musician has visions of his beloved participating in a wild dance. Each movement evokes its own emotional mood, and each contains variations on a recurrent melody, or idée fixe (fixed idea), which represents the beloved. Never before had music displayed such strong narrative content, nor had it been so closely tied to specific emotions. Critical response was mixed; many listeners of the time found the symphony noisy and eccentric.

Winning the Prix de Rome in 1830, after several failed attempts, enabled Berlioz to travel to Italy in 1831 and 1832. In Rome he composed two overtures—Le roi Lear (King Lear, 1831) and Rob Roy (1832)—as well as Lélio ou le retour à la vie (Lelio or the Return to Life, 1831), a musical drama for soloists and orchestra that Berlioz conceived as a continuation of the Symphonie fantastique.

III

Composer, Critic, Conductor

From his return to Paris in 1832 to his final tour of Russia in 1867, Berlioz composed the dozen or so works for which, in addition to the Symphonie fantastique, he is known today. At the suggestion of Italian virtuoso Nicolò Paganini, Berlioz wrote Harold in Italy (1834), a symphony inspired by Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1818), an autobiographical poem by English romantic author Lord Byron. Paganini, who had hoped for a viola concerto, was initially disappointed that the viola part was not larger. When Paganini finally heard Harold in Italy performed in 1838, however, he was so impressed that he sent the composer 20,000 francs. The money enabled Berlioz to compose his dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet, 1839), which was based on Shakespeare’s tragic play. This symphony with solo voices and chorus is considered one of Berlioz’s outstanding achievements.

Another work by Berlioz from this period is a colossal Grande messe des morts (Requiem Mass, 1837). Commissioned by the French government, the Requiem Mass called for 400 singers and musicians. Berlioz’s opera Benvenuto Cellini met with critical failure at its 1838 premiere, but its overture, Le carnaval romain (Roman Carnival), became a concert staple. In 1845 Berlioz revived a work of his youth, based on the tragedy Faust by German dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and turned it into an orchestral work, La damnation de Faust (The Damnation of Faust).

Berlioz’s oratorio L’enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ, 1854) and his ceremonial Te Deum (1855) were well received at their Paris premieres, both conducted by the composer. His masterpiece is considered to be the monumental opera Les Troyens (The Trojans, written 1856-1858, first performed 1863). It was based on the Aeneid, the great Latin epic by Roman poet Virgil. Berlioz knew the Aeneid by heart and wrote the libretto himself. Due to the grand scale of the opera—it has multiple choruses, processions, ballets, and scene changes, and lasts four-and-a-half hours—Berlioz never saw it performed in its entirety. The final three acts of the opera were performed as Les Troyens à Carthage in 1863. Berlioz’s last work was the opera Béatrice et Bénédict (1862), after the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing.

During this time Berlioz’s personal life was not entirely happy. He had married Smithson in 1833, but she drank heavily and the marriage was soon troubled. The two separated in the early 1840s, and after Smithson’s death in 1854 Berlioz married singer Marie Recio, who died in 1862. In addition, his music failed to achieve popular or critical success in France. To support himself, he wrote musical criticism for the periodical Journal des Débats from 1835 until 1863. He supplemented his income by serving as librarian of the Paris Conservatory from 1838 on. He also turned to conducting. From 1842 until his retirement in 1867 he repeatedly toured in Germany, Russia, and England, playing his own works as well as those of Beethoven and other composers. These conducting tours brought him European recognition.

IV

Evaluation

Berlioz’s position in 19th-century music is that of an original and groundbreaking figure who directly influenced symphonic form and the use of the orchestra as well as musical aesthetics. His Symphonie fantastique created an aesthetic revolution by its integral use of a literary program (nonmusical story or idea) and established program music as a dominant orchestral genre of the romantic movement. In Symphonie fantastique and in Harold in Italy, his use and transformation of a recurrent theme (ideé fixe) foreshadowed the genre termed symphonic poem by the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The genre was developed by many notable composers in addition to Liszt, including Richard Wagner, who publicly acknowledged his debt to Berlioz, and Richard Strauss. Other forms Berlioz introduced are the dramatic symphony, with Romeo and Juliet; the concert opera, with Damnation of Faust; and the orchestral song cycle, with Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights, 1841).

Berlioz enlarged the size of the orchestra and called for many instruments not customarily used in orchestral music of his time—for example, bells, snare drums, piccolos, E-flat clarinets, and ophicleides (bass brass instruments). In addition, Berlioz combined instruments in unexpected ways, producing unusual and startling harmonies and tone colors. His colorful orchestration contributed to the musical expression of emotion. To many music lovers Berlioz exemplifies the romantic image of the composer as artist, experiencing feelings of suffering, loneliness, and misunderstanding and incorporating these feelings into his music. He labored ceaselessly to promote the new music of his time. Forced to train orchestras to meet the demands of this music, he educated a generation of musicians and became the first virtuoso conductor.

Berlioz’s profoundly influential Traité d’instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes (Treatise on Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration, 1844), the first book on that subject, was an exposition of the aesthetics of musical expression as well as a handbook. His Soirées d'orchestre (Evenings with the Orchestra, 1853) became a bestseller shortly after its publication. His Mémoires (published posthumously, 1870) provide a vivid picture of musical and cultural life in 19th-century France.

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