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Hector Berlioz: Music
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The legacy of French composer and conductor Hector Berlioz can be gleaned from his towering Symphonie Fantastique. First performed in 1830, it flaunts the composer's visionary orchestral techniques and its dynamic, sometimes volatile, use of the ideee fixe (a musical theme representing his beloved) hints at his polar personal temperament. Born December 11, 1803, he was a self-taught flautist, guitarist, and composer, and wrote small chamber pieces in his youth. He entered for the Prix de Rome four times before winning, which is an all too representative example French society's life-long disregard for the composer. Among his most important influences were Shakespeare, whose plays inspire three major works, the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, whom he wed after a fantastically bizarre courtship (which included composing Symphonie Fantastique), and Beethoven. Widely underappreciated, he relied on journalism and criticism for a living, producing the scathing satire of musical life in 19th century France in Evenings with the Orchestra.
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In his own time Hector Berlioz was something of an outsider, as far as the French musical establishment was concerned. Nevertheless he remains the outstanding figure in French romantic music, typical of the period particularly in his literary interests. At first a medical student, he eventually entered the Paris Conservatoire, but encountered some difficulty in his subsequent career, as he strove for a hearing of his music. He earned his living in part as a critic and writer, and his Mémoires remain a fascinating if prejudiced account of musical life in Paris in his time.
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The entry for Hector Berlioz in the first edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, published in 1879, closes ...: "He stands alone — a colossus with few friends and no direct followers." The composer had died 10 years earlier, a lonely man and a misunderstood artist.
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A daring composer in his own right, Hector Berlioz made a considerable reputation and a modest living for himself writing about music. This compact volume gathers brief, pithy essays Berlioz wrote on Beethoven's nine symphonies, his opera, Fidelio, and his piano sonatas and trios.
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Hector Berlioz is the epitome of the romantic artist, together with the writer Victor Hugo and the painter Eugène Delacroix. Berlioz helped to break old molds and create new forms full of strong contrasts of passion and emotion. He ranks indubitably as one of the most original creative musicians of all time.
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After the 1830s, Berlioz found it increasingly difficult to achieve recognition for his music in France, and as a result, he began to travel to other countries more often. Between 1842 and 1863 he traveled to Germany, England, Austria, Russia and elsewhere,[9][13] where he conducted operas and orchestral music - both his own and others'. During his lifetime, Berlioz was as famous a conductor as he was as a composer.[43] In 1840, the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale was commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the July Revolution of 1830. Due to the strict deadline, it was performed only days after it was completed. The performance was held in the open air on 28 July, conducted by Berlioz himself, at the Place de la Bastille, in honour of the victims of the revolution, and during the performance, the piece was difficult to hear due to the crowds and timpani of the drum corps.[35] Next year he began but later abandoned the composition of a new opera, La Nonne sanglante, of which some fragments survive.[44] This was later remedied by a concert performance a month later, and Wagner voiced his approval of the work.[35] In 1841, Berlioz wrote recitatives for a production of Weber's Der Freischütz at the Paris Opéra, and ... orchestrated Weber’s Invitation à la valse to add ballet music to it. Later that year Berlioz finished composing the song cycle Les nuits d'été for piano and voices (later to be orchestrated in a revision). He also entered into a relationship with Marie Recio, a singer, who would become his second wife.
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