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{bair'-lee-ohz}
The French composer Louis Hector Berlioz, b. Dec. 11, 1803,
d. Mar. 8, 1869, was one of the most important musical figures
of the romantic era. His large-scale, brilliantly orchestrated
compositions helped create the modern orchestra, and his musical
ideas and innovations greatly influenced the development of
19th-century music.
Berlioz was sent to Paris by his father in 1821 to study medicine.
Inspired by the operas of Christoph Willibald GLUCK, he also
studied music, first privately with the composer Jean Francois
LESUEUR and then in 1826 at the conservatory with Anton Reicha,
a respected professor of counterpoint. After four ill-fated
attempts, Berlioz received the prestigious Prix de Rome in
1830 with his cantata Sardanapalus. This permitted a sojourn
in Rome at government expense.
That same year he was enthusiastically acclaimed for his first
major work, the Symphonie fantastique, a musical description
of the opium-induced reveries of a frustrated artist. It was
inspired by Berlioz's intense adoration of the Irish actress
Harriet Smithson (whom he married in 1833) and Thomas DE QUINCEY's
Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It is one of the most
influential programmatic works of the 19th century.
The symphony is in five movements instead of the classical
four and is unified by Berlioz's novel use of a short, recurrent
theme (idee fixe), which symbolizes the presence of the "loved
one" and is heard throughout the composition.
For other themes, Berlioz frequently turned to the works of
Shakespeare and the works of contemporary writers and poets.
Harold in Italy (1834), best termed a symphony with viola
solo, is based on Byron's Childe Harold. The Damnation of
Faust (1846) is based on GOETHE's poem; and Berlioz's song
cycle Les Nuits d'ete stems from poems by Theophile GAUTIER.
The Requiem (1837), characteristic of Berlioz's grand musical
conceptions, is an overwhelming work for large orchestra that
includes 110 violins, an augmented brass section, 16 timpani,
and more than 200 voices. Commissioned by the French government
and well received, it did not compensate for the depressing
rejections of his operas. Benvenuto Cellini (1838) was a total
failure. Les Troyens (1856-59) was never performed in its
entirety during Berlioz's lifetime.
Despite the support of such influential figures as Giacomo
MEYERBEER, Berlioz's grand compositions requiring enormous
choruses and orchestras vastly larger than the conventional
60-odd players aroused mockery and misunderstanding in France.
In 1867, Berlioz returned in poor health from his last conducting
tour in Russia. After a lengthy illness he died in Paris,
having passed his last years in growing bitterness and loneliness
after the deaths of his second wife, the singer Marie Recio,
and his son Louis.
By his almost magical manipulation and understanding of individual
instruments, Berlioz greatly increased the expressive capabilities
of the orchestra, and his unorthodox musical structures and
meters helped free composers from restrictive classical forms.
Numerous French composers, among them Camille SAINT-SAENS,
Charles GOUNOD, and Paul DUKAS, in addition to WAGNER, LISZT,
Gustav MAHLER, and Richard STRAUSS, who revised Berlioz's
treatise on instrumentation in 1905, are indebted to his vision.
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