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Hector Berlioz: Works
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[T]itled "Episode in the Life of an Artist," this first symphony by Berlioz was one of the most original and fanciful work of the 19th century. Completed in February, 1830, the programmatic symphony described a romantic tale of a young artist meeting a woman, his un-reciprocated love, and the eventual tragic sequences. The story was concocted from Berlioz's own despair and love for Harriet Smithson, the English actress who first dazzled Berlioz by playing Orphelia in a Paris production of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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[One] 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).
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In 1855 Berlioz managed to obtain a choir of 600 orphan children, together with the double choir of 150 singers and a hundred and fifty-strong orchestra. He had hoped to engage Liszt or Saint-Saëns to play the organ part, but eventually had to be satisfied with the services of the organist of St-Eustache, Édouard Batiste, when the English organist Henry Smart cancelled with only two days’ notice. The lack of a military occasion had led Berlioz to substitute the martial Prélude with a Marche pour la présentation des drapeaux, in conjunction with the grand opening of the Festival de l’Industrie. At the last minute ... the Festival was postponed, so the Marche was played without any extra ceremony of the blessing of the flags of the Festival artisans. The final structure arrived at appears to be a seven-movement liturgical work with the abandonment of the military Prélude.
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Berlioz was a perennial candidate for the Institute only to be denied that honor, even considering how many crosses and medals he owned from overseas. But finally in 1856 he made this coveted position. And it was this year he published a new version of his 1844, "Treatise on Instrumentation." But, the next year he had intestinal problems that interfered with work, yet he published some of his memoirs to raise money for his ex-Navy son's merchant marine exam.
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One of Berlioz's greatest works, the Grand Messe des Morts is written for Tenor Solo, SSTTBB Chorus and Orchestra. The scale of this work should not be underestimated: it runs at an hour and a quarter and the orginal scoring included no fewer than 16 timpani and four extra brass choirs! However, not all of its music is massive (the extra forces explode onto the scene in the Tuba mirum portion of the Dies irae sequence in No. 2 and then disappear). Indeed much of it is quite intimate -- for example the slender No. 3 Quid sum miser, which immediately follows the outburst in No. 2, or the opening of No. 9 Sanctus, which features the solo tenor. And the Requiem ends in absolute tenderness, the Lamb of God (No. 10 Agnus Dei) having taken away the sins of the world and accepted the dead into a new world, of which we mortals can hear only vague echoes -- timpani strokes left over from the explosive Last Judgment held earlier in the mass, now distant and gentle.
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On its first performance on December 5, 1830, Berlioz handed out written programs of the symphony for the audience prior to its performance, a practice unheard of before. Berlioz's intention was to give the concert-goers an actual outline of the tale depicting by the music in the work. The concert was a great success. The audience even requested to have an encore of the March played.
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