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Louis Hector Berlioz (December 11,
1803–March 8, 1869) was a French
people|French Romantic music|Romantic composer
best known for the Symphonie Fantastique |
Symphonie fantastique, first performed in 1830,
and for his Requiem (Berlioz)|Grande Messe des
morts (Requiem) of 1837, with its tremendous
resources that include four antiphonal brass
choirs.

==Biography==
Berlioz was born in France at La
Côte-Saint-André, between Lyon and Grenoble. His
father was a physician and young Hector was sent
to Paris to study medicine at the age of eighteen.
 Berlioz was horrified by the process of
dissection and, despite his father's disapproval,
he abandoned his career path in medicine to study
music a year later. He then attended the
Conservatoire de Paris|Paris Conservatoire
studying opera and composition. (Kamien 241)

He became identified early on with the French
romantic movement. Among his friends were writers
such as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Honoré
de Balzac. Later, Théophile Gautier wrote,
"Hector Berlioz seems to me to form with Hugo and
Eugène Delacroix|Delacroix, the Trinity of
Romanticism | Romantic Art."

Berlioz is said to have been innately romantic,
experiencing emotions deeply from early childhood.
This manifested itself in his weeping at passages
of Virgil as a child, and later in a series of
love affairs. At the age of 23, his unrequited (at
first) love for the Ireland|Irish William
Shakespeare|Shakespearean actress Henrietta
Constance Smithson was the inspiration for his
Symphonie Fantastique | Symphonie fantastique. In
1830, the same year as the symphony's premiere,
Berlioz won the Prix de Rome.  

After Smithson's initial rejection of Berlioz, an
engagement with Marie Moke was broken off when her
mother forced her to marry the pianist and piano
manufacturer Ignaz Pleyel|Camille Pleyel. Berlioz,
residing in Rome at the time under a Prix de Rome
scholarship, planned to ride back to Paris dressed
as a chambermaid, kill Marie, her mother and her
fiancé, and commit suicide. He got as far as Nice
before giving up the idea.

Berlioz's letters were considered so overly
passionate by Smithson that she initially refused
his advances.  The symphony which these emotions
are said to inspire was received as startling and
vivid.  The autobiographic nature of this piece of
program music was also considered sensational at
the time. After his return to Paris from his two
years study in Rome, he finally married Smithson
when she had finally attended a performance of the
Symphonie Fantastique.  She quickly realized that
it was his depiction of his passionate letters to
her. However, after only a few years, the
relationship quickly fell apart. (Kamien 242)

During his lifetime, Berlioz was more famous as a
conducting|conductor than a composer. He regularly
toured Germany and England where he conducted
operas and symphonic music, both his own and music
composed by others. He met virtuoso and composer
Niccolò Paganini a few times and, according to
Berlioz's memoirs, Paganini offered him 20,000
francs after he saw Harold in Italy performed live
as the money was intended as a reward for writing
a viola piece for the violin virtuoso to perform
as his own.

Hector Berlioz is buried in the Cimetiere de
Montmartre with his two wives, Harriet Smithson
(died 1854) and Marie Recio (died 1862).

===Legacy===
The music of Berlioz enjoyed a revival during the
1960s and 1970s, due in large part to the efforts
of British conductor Colin Davis, who recorded his
entire oeuvre, bringing a number of Berlioz's
lesser-known works to the light. Davis's recording
of Les Troyens was the first complete recording of
that work. The work, which Berlioz never saw
staged in its entirety during his life, is now
revived regularly. 

In 2003, the bicentenary of Berlioz's birth, a
proposal was made to remove his remains to the
Panthéon,_Paris|Panthéon, but it was blocked by
President Jacques Chirac in a political dispute
over Berlioz's worthiness as a symbol of the glory
of France in comparison to such figures as Andre
Malraux, Jean Jaures, and Alexandre Dumas. In his
land of birth, Berlioz still remains something of
the neglected prophet.

==Musical influence==
Berlioz had a keen affection for literature, and
many of his best compositions are inspired by
literary works. For The Damnation of Faust | La
damnation de Faust, Berlioz drew on Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe's Faust; for Harold in
Italy, he drew on Lord Byron|Byron's Childe
Harold; for Benvenuto Cellini (opera)|Benvenuto
Cellini, he drew on Benvenuto Cellini|Cellini's
own autobiography. For Roméo et Juliette, Berlioz
turned to Shakespeare's tragedy of the similar
name. For his magnum opus, the monumental opera
Les Troyens, Berlioz turned to Virgil's epic poem
The Aeneid. For his last opera, the comic opera
Béatrice et Bénédict, Berlioz prepared a
libretto based loosely on Shakespeare's Much Ado
About Nothing. 

Apart from the many literary influences, Berlioz
also championed Ludwig_van_Beethoven|Beethoven who
was at the time unknown in France. The performance
of the Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven)|"Eroica"
symphony in Paris seems to have been a turning
point for Berlioz's compositions. Next to
Beethoven, Berlioz worshipped Christoph Willibald
Gluck, Carl Maria von Weber, and Gaspare Spontini.

==Works of music and literature==

===Musical works===
In addition to the Symphonie Fantastique, some
other works of Berlioz currently in the standard
orchestral repertoire include his "légende
dramatique" La damnation de Faust and "symphonie
dramatique" Roméo et Juliette (both large-scale
works for mixed voices and orchestra), the song
cycle Les nuits d'été (originally for voice and
piano, later with an orchestral accompaniment),
and his symphonic viola concerto Harold in Italy.

The unconventional musical of Berlioz irritated
the established concert and opera scene.  Berlioz
had to arrange for his own performances as well as
pay for them himself.  This took a heavy toll on
him financially and emotionally.  He had about
1,200 loyal attendants to his performances who
guaranteed ticket sales, but the nature of his
large works—involving hundreds of
performers—made financial success difficult.
 His journalistic abilities became essential for
him to make a living and he survived as a witty
critic emphasizing the importance of drama and
expressivity in musical entertainment. (Kamien
243)

===Literary works===
While Berlioz is best known as a composer, he was
also a prolific writer, and supported himself for
many years writing musical criticism. He wrote in
a bold, vigorous style, at times imperious and
sarcastic. Evenings With the Orchestra (1852) is a
scathing satire of provincial musical life in 19th
century France. Berlioz's Memoirs (1870) paints a
magisterial portrait of the Romantic
music|Romantic era through the eyes of one of its
chief protagonists.

A pedagogic work, The Treatise on Modern
Instrumentation and Orchestration, established his
reputation as a master of orchestration. The work
was closely studied by Gustav Mahler and Richard
Strauss and served as the foundation for a
subsequent textbook by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov who
as a music student attended the concerts Berlioz
conducted in Moscow and St Petersburg. Music
critic Norman Lebrecht wrote:
Before the visits of Berlioz, there
was no Russian music. His was the paradigm that
inspired the genre. Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky raided the Symphonie
fantastique like a tuck-shop for his third
symphony. Modest Mussorgsky|Mussorgsky died with a
copy of the Berlioz Treatise on his bed.
http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/031210-NL-Be
rlioz.html

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== See Also ==
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