Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869)

Hector Berlioz was born in 1803 in the French village of La Côte-Saint–André. He was home-schooled by his father, a doctor, who gave him an excellent classical education, including instruction in Latin and the rudiments of music. Berlioz learned to play the flute and the guitar, and many of his first pieces feature these instruments. By the age of 12, he was writing his first chamber pieces for local musicians.

In 1821 Berlioz went to Paris to study medicine. He hated medical school, but pursued his studies there for two unhappy years, during which time he attended the Paris Opéra religiously. Attracted by the idea of writing music on a larger scale, he began to study composition with Le Sueur, a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Soon Berlioz gave up the idea of medicine altogether, entering the Conservatoire as a full-fledged student and devoting himself entirely to music.

Finally free of distractions, Berlioz launched into a period of remarkable musical productivity. He composed cantatas, worked on developing operas, symphonies, and songs, and encountered powerful new influences. The works of Beethoven and Weber profoundly changed his ideas about music, and were to inspire him for the rest of his life. On seeing a performance of Romeo and Juliette one night he fell in love with both Shakespeare and the actress portraying Juliette, Harriet Smithson. Berlioz was to admire Shakespeare for the rest of his life; he based three musical works on Shakespeare plays. His instant unrequited love for Harriet Smithson was to last and intensify for two years. She did not return his feelings—in fact, she spoke no French, and Berlioz spoke no English! Berlioz’s eventual disillusionment with her provided the inspiration for his first really great piece of music, Symphonie Fantastique (1830) a programme symphony complete with a Romantic "plot" and revolutionary orchestration. It was a sensational success in Paris.

In the midst of all this Berlioz finally won the Prix de Rome, France’s most prestigious composition award, which he had failed to capture four times already. Unfortunately, the prize required the winner to spend at least two years in Italy. Berlioz, who had just gotten engaged (to Camille Mokel, a brilliant pianist he met on the rebound from Harriet Smithson) and was starting to make it big in Paris, did not want to leave. His two years in Italy were on the whole unproductive and frustrating. However, they did provide him with inspiration for later works such as Les Troyens and Harold en Italie.

On returning to Paris Berlioz, whose fiancée Camille had left him for a wealthy pianomaker, re-established contact with Harriet Smithson. They fell in love and married in 1833. Berlioz went on to write a number of masterpieces (Harold en Italie, 1834, Grande messe des morts, 1837, Roméo et Juliette, 1838, and Grande Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, 1840, to name a few). They were considered original, but their genius was not fully recognized by the public. Berlioz’s income from his composition was so meager that he had to work as a magazine music critic and assistant librarian at the Conservatoire. Dismayed at the inability of most orchestras to perform his music correctly, Berlioz also became a master conductor. He was responsible for training a new generation of musicians throughout Europe to meet the technical challenges of his music-- and the music of other unconventional composers like Beethoven and Weber.

In Paris, a composer was not considered great until he had mounted a succesful production at the Opéra. Berlioz, who had idolized Gluck since his medical school days, wanted nothing more than to become a great operatic composer. His first opera to see performance, Benvenuto Cellini (perf. 1838), was brilliant, but understood by few. The production was a flop, and Berlioz’s reputation inside France never quite recovered. The failure of his opera probably encouraged Berlioz to focus on writing symphonies and cantatas—and to build a strong touring career in other countries where his music was appreciated. It was on one of his many enthusiastically received tours of Europe that Berlioz, who had virtually ended his stormy marriage with Harriet Smithson, became involved with singer Marie Recio. She was to remain his partner for the rest of his life.

Berlioz began to compose Les Troyens in 1856, adapting the libretto himself from Virgil’s Aeneid. He was never to see a full production of the work during his lifetime. Excerpts from the opera were well received in Germany, but an abridged version of the opera was a failure in Paris.

After the Paris failure of Les Troyens, Berlioz began to slip into a long, slow decline. He composed a few new works (Béatrice et Bénédict, 1860, an opera based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, was successful in Germany) and continued to conduct his own music sporadically. But the last years of his life were soured by illness and the deaths of many close friends and family members—among them his father, Harriet Smithson, his son, and Marie Recio. Berlioz sank into a depression. He gave up criticism and went to see music rarely, concentrating instead on writing his Memoirs. He died in 1869, at the age of 66.