Hector Berlioz

Born 11 December 1803, La Côte-St.-Andre;, near Grenoble.
Died 11 March 1869, Paris.

The son of a beloved country physician, Berlioz was sent to Paris to study medicine but abandoned this idea after investigating, simultaneously, the city morgue and the Opera. His brand of Romanticism—and his future wife, the actress Harriet Smithson—were discovered in 1827 at performances of Shakespeare by an English theater troupe. The next year he learned the symphonies of Beethoven at concerts by the new Paris Conservatory Orchestra. All this culminated in his first symphony, the Symphonie fantastique (1830).

After a sojourn in Rome (1831-32) he became a noted, sometimes notorious composer, conductor, and journalist. In the 1840s and 1850s he traveled ceaselessly through Europe, conducting concerts of his works and befriending the major composers of his era (Liszt, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, and Paganini). His greatest masterpiece is the opera Les Troyens ("The Trojans," 1858).

Of his many advances in orchestration, perhaps the most formidable are found in the Requiem, a monster work for mega-orchestra and chorus with four brass choirs placed around the performing body. He called this "architectural music," that is, music that takes the acoustical effects of the performance space into account.

Works

Symphonies (4)
Symphonie fantastique (1830)
    movt. V: Dream of a Witches' Sabbath
Harold in Italy (w. viola solo, 1834)
Romeo and Juliet (1839)
Grande Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (1840)

Orchestra & Chorus
Requiem (1837)
The Damnation of Faust (dramatic legend w. soloists, chorus, 1846)
The Childhood of Christ (oratorio, 1854)

Overtures
Roman Carnival ov. (1844)
Le Corsaire (1844)

Operas
Benvenuto Cellini (1838)
The Trojans (1858)
Beatrice and Benedict (1863)

Songs
Les Nuits d'été ("Summer Nights," w. orch., 1841)

Books (6)
Treatise on Orchestration (1843)
Memoirs (1870)