Berlioz, Hector

▪ French composer

Introduction

in full  Louis-Hector Berlioz 

born December 11, 1803, La Côte-Saint-André, France

died March 8, 1869, Paris

 French composer, critic, and conductor of the Romantic period, known largely for his Symphonie fantastique (1830), the choral symphony Roméo et Juliette (1839), and the dramatic piece La Damnation de Faust (1846). His last years were marked by fame abroad and hostility at home.

Early career

      The birthplace of Berlioz was a village about 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Grenoble in the French Alps. France was at war; the schools were disrupted; and Berlioz received his education from his father, an enlightened and cultured physician, who gave him his first lessons in music as well as in Latin. But, like many composers, Berlioz received in his early years little formal training in music. He worked out for himself the elements of harmony and by his 12th year was composing for local chamber-music groups. With help from performers, he learned to play the flute and the guitar, becoming a virtuoso on the latter.

      In 1821 his father sent him to Paris to study medicine, and for a year he followed his courses faithfully enough to obtain his first degree in science. He took every opportunity to go to the Paris-Opéra (Paris Opéra), however, where he studied, score in hand, the whole repertory, in which the works of Gluck (Gluck, Christoph Willibald) had for him the most appeal and authority. His musical vocation had become so clear in his mind that he contrived to be accepted as a pupil of Jean-François Lesueur, professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. This led to disagreements between Berlioz and his parents that embittered nearly eight years of his life. He persevered, took the obligatory courses at the Conservatoire, and in 1830 won the Prix de Rome, having received second prize in an earlier competition. These successes pacified his family but were, in a sense, incidental to his career, for in the same year he had finished and obtained a performance of his first great score, which is also a seminal work in 19th-century music, the Symphonie fantastique.

      It was in some respects unfortunate that, instead of being able to follow up this success, Berlioz was required, under the terms of his prize, to spend three years abroad, two of them in Italy. During his long Paris apprenticeship, he had experienced the “revelation” of two modern musicians, Beethoven and Weber, and of two great poets, Shakespeare and Goethe. He had meanwhile fallen in love, at a distance, with Harriet Smithson, a Shakespearean actress who had taken Paris by storm; and, on the rebound from this rather one-sided attachment, he had become engaged to a brilliant and beautiful pianist, Camille Moke (later Mme Pleyel). In leaving Paris, Berlioz was not only leaving a flirtatious fiancée and the artistic environment that had stimulated his powers; he was also leaving the opportunity to demonstrate what his genius saw that modern French music should be. The public was content with the “Paris school,” dating back to the 1780s, and there is evidence that all Europe (including the Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert) accepted the productions of André Grétry, Étienne Méhul, Luigi Cherubini, and their followers as leading the musical world.

      Berlioz wanted to bring forward the work of Weber and Beethoven (including the last quartets) and add contributions of his own. He also preached, for the sake of dramatic expression in music, a return to the master of the stage, Gluck, whose works he knew by heart. These three musicians were all in some sense dramatists, and to Berlioz music must first and foremost be dramatically expressive. This doctrine he had begun to expound in his first musical reviews, as early as 1823, and, with the sharpness and strength of an early vision, it remained the artistic creed of his mature years. When one understands its intellectual and intuitive basis, one understands also the reasons for his dynamic career. What may look like self-seeking—the unceasing effort to have his music played—was, in fact, the dedication of his tremendous energies to a cause, often at the expense of his own creative work. The result of his many journeys to Germany, Belgium, England, Russia, and Austria-Hungary was that he taught the leading orchestras of Europe a new style and, through them, taught a new idiom to the young composers and critics who flocked wherever he went.

      Before these “campaigns” began, however, Berlioz had his time of reflection in Italy. He wrote in his Mémoires (1870) how unproductive he was after the rich output of the Paris years, which had brought forth an oratorio, numerous cantatas, two dozen songs, a mass, part of an opera, two overtures, a fantasia on Shakespeare's Tempest, and eight scenes from Goethe's Faust, as well as the Symphonie fantastique. Even in Italy, however, Berlioz filled notebooks, met the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, made a lifelong friend of Mendelssohn, and tramped the hills with his guitar over his shoulder, playing for the peasants and banditti whose meals he shared. The impressions gathered in Italy remained a source of both musical and dramatic inspiration down to the last of his works, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict (first performed 1862). Meanwhile, his love affair stagnating and his impatience with life at the Villa Medici in Rome becoming acute, he returned to France after 18 months and forfeited part of his prize.

Mature career

      Back in Paris, he set about conquering it anew. He put together a collection of earlier pieces in a form then fashionable, the monodrama, or recitation by one actor interspersed with musical scenes. Since the Symphonie fantastique had ended with the death and demonic torments of the protagonist, Berlioz called his new work Le Retour à la vie (later Lélio, after the hero's name). First performed in 1832, this concoction, which contains three or four delightful pieces, enjoyed great success, and Berlioz had reason to think himself launched again.

      A series of accidents brought him in touch with the actress Harriet Smithson, whom he married on October 3, 1833. The marriage did not last, though for some years the couple led a peaceful existence at Montmartre in the house that Maurice Utrillo later never tired of painting. Among the visitors there were the young poets and musicians of the Romantic movement, including Alfred de Vigny and Chopin. It was there that Berlioz's only child, Louis, was born and also where he composed his great Requiem, the Grande Messe des morts (1837), the symphonies Harold en Italie (1834) and Roméo et Juliette (1839), and the opera Benvenuto Cellini (Paris, 1838).

 It was after the premiere of Harold en Italie that Berlioz had the astonishing experience of seeing the famous violin virtuoso Paganini (Paganini, Niccolò) fall at his feet and declare that he was a genius destined to carry on the new musical tradition initiated by Beethoven. The next day Berlioz received 20,000 francs with a letter from Paganini repeating this judgment. Using the money to free himself from journalistic drudgery, Berlioz composed the choral (choral music) symphony Roméo et Juliette, dedicated to Paganini.

      In Paris it was always expected that a composer, regardless of his bent, should be tested at the Opéra. Berlioz's friends intrigued to procure the assignment of a libretto. An adaptation of Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography was secured, and Berlioz finished his score in a short time. The intrigue now passed to the other side, which saw to it that the production of Benvenuto Cellini at the Opéra failed. From this blow the work itself and the composer's reputation in France never recovered during his lifetime. The score is a masterpiece, and the attribution of the failure to the libretto shows ignorance of the qualities of both the libretto and the music.

      The Requiem of 1837 had been a government commission for a ceremonial occasion designed to encourage the Rome laureate. The request to compose another work for a public ceremony—the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (Funeral Symphony) for military band, chorus, and strings, commissioned for the 10th anniversary of the July Revolution (1840)—was intended as a partial solace for the defeat of Benvenuto Cellini. A few years before, Berlioz's literary gifts had won him the post of music critic for the leading Paris newspaper, the Journal des Débats, and his employers wielded political influence. Once again, there were intrigues, but the score of the Funeral Symphony was ready for the inauguration of the Bastille column. Unfortunately, the music was drowned out by the drum corps, a disaster that Berlioz repaired by giving the work the following month at a concert hall. This was the score that Wagner (Wagner, Richard), then seeking fame in Paris, admired so wholeheartedly.

      Berlioz was able to put Wagner in the way of some musical journalism and thus began a fitful connection of 30 years between the two men whose influence on modern music (music drama) still resembles a battle of ideals: Berlioz aiming at the creation of drama in and through music alone; Wagner at marriage of symphony with opera. Although Berlioz and Wagner met again in London in 1855 and found each other congenial, their philosophical differences generally kept them apart.

      After 1840 Berlioz's life consisted of a series of tours across Europe. The last of these was an exhausting series of concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1867, when he was desperately ill. But it had the effect of introducing the Russian Five, notably Mussorgsky, to his style through his manuscript scores and his conducting. For Berlioz was the first of the virtuoso conductors (conductor), having made himself such in order to supply the deficiencies of men who were unable to direct the new music according to the new canon: play what is written. Moreover, the rhythmical difficulties of his scores and the unfamiliar curve of his melodies disconcerted many. The orchestras themselves had to be taught a new precision, vigour, and ensemble, and this was Berlioz's handiwork. Wagner's memoirs bear testimony to this “revelation of a new world,” which he experienced at Berlioz's hands in 1839.

      On orchestration (instrumentation) itself (and, even more important, on instrumentation) Berlioz produced the leading treatise, Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes (1844). Much more than a technical handbook, it served later generations as an introduction to the aesthetics of expressiveness in music. As Albert Schweitzer (Schweitzer, Albert) has shown, its principle is as applicable to Bach as to Berlioz, and it is in no way governed by considerations of so-called program music. To this last-named genre of dubious repute, Berlioz did not contribute more than the printed “story” of his first symphony, which is intelligible as music, without any program.

      Among Berlioz's dramatic works, two became internationally known: La Damnation de Faust (1846) and L'Enfance du Christ (1854). Two others began to emerge from neglect after World War I: the massive two-part drama Les Troyens (1855–58), based on Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas, and the short, witty comedy Béatrice et Bénédict, written between 1860 and 1862 and based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. For all these Berlioz wrote his own librettos. He also wrote a Te Deum (1849; perfomed 1855), which is a fitting counterpart to the Requiem, and between 1843 and 1856 he orchestrated his songs, including the song cycle Les Nuits d'été (Summer Nights). Among his best known overtures are Le Roi Lear (1831), Le Carnaval romain (1844), based on material from Benvenuto Cellini, and Le Corsaire (1831–52).

      In Berlioz's final years he was incapacitated by illness and saddened by many deaths. His first wife, from whom he was separated but to whom he still felt a deep attachment, died in 1854; his second wife, Maria Recio, who had been his companion for many years and whom he had married when he became a widower, died suddenly in 1862. Finally, his son, Louis, who was a sea captain and on whom he concentrated the affection of his declining years, died of yellow fever in Havana at the age of 33.

Assessment

      The outstanding characteristics of Berlioz's music—its dramatic expressiveness and variety—account for the feeling of attraction or repulsion that it produces in the listener. Its variety also means that devotees of one work may dislike others, as one finds lovers of Shakespeare who detest Othello. But Berlioz also presents a particular difficulty of musicianship in being closer to the true sources of music than to its German, Italian, or French conventions; his melody is abundant and extended and is often disconcerting to the lover of four-bar phrases; his harmony may be obvious or subtle, but it is always functional and frequently depends on elements of timbre; his modulations can be harsh and may even seem harsher than they would in another composer, because he uses his effects sparingly and achieves much by small means and adroit contrasts. This is also true of his orchestration, generally light and transparent, never pasty. As George Bernard Shaw said: “Call no conductor sensitive in the highest degree to musical impressions until you have heard him in Berlioz and Mozart.”

      The Belgian composer César Franck (Franck, César) once said that Berlioz's whole output is made up of masterpieces. He meant by this that each of the composer's dozen great works was the realization of a conception distinct from all the others, rather than successive efforts to attain perfection in the last or best of a series. Franck's judgment is borne out by the fact that, unlike many composers, Berlioz almost never repeats himself. Rather, he created a fresh style for each of his subjects, with the result that familiarity with one is no guarantee of ready access to another. Nothing could be less alike than the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale and Roméo et Juliette or than the Requiem and L'Enfance du Christ. To be sure, Berlioz's harmonic system seems the same throughout, partly because it deviates so noticeably from common expectation and partly because its nuances are only now being appreciated for what they are, instead of being looked upon as clumsy attempts to do something else. Again, his melody and free counterpoint everywhere carry his mark—the sinewy originality and dynamic equilibrium of the former, the ingeniously careless independence of the latter. Yet, out of these characteristic elements Berlioz makes a radically different atmosphere for each of his dramas and within them for each of his dramatis personae. Only a repeated hearing of any given work discloses all the power and art (including what would now be called psychology) that it contains. This does not mean that these works are without flaw; it does mean that they embody unique conceptions, to be taken for what they have to give and which no other composer provides.

      In the creation of drama and atmosphere, Berlioz excels in scenes of melancholy, introspection, love—gentle or passionate—the contemplation of nature, and the tumult of crowds. His intention throughout is to combine truth with musical sensations, be they powerful or (to quote Shaw again) “wonderful in their tenuity and delicacy, unearthly, unexpected, unaccountable.”

      Much might be added or quoted that would show the extent to which Berlioz's music still needs careful and dispassionate study. In 1935 the respected British musicologist Sir Donald Tovey, who had not before heard Les Troyens, declared that it is “one of the most gigantic and convincing masterpieces of music drama.” And, he went on, “You never know where you are with Berlioz.” What is certain is that books that date from the 19th century or echo its views, with or without a bias toward Wagner or Debussy, will mislead the student and possibly close the ears of the listener. It is easy to represent Berlioz as merely a craftsman in tone colour who helped develop the resources of the orchestra. But with the repeated performance of the major works all over the Western world, the more comprehensive judgment has come to prevail that Berlioz is a dramatic musician of the first rank. Before 1945 the Berlioz repertoire was limited to the Symphonie fantastique and a few brief extracts. The great works, done once and usually with insufficient preparation, produced little effect and confirmed the wisdom of letting them lie. The advent of long-playing records radically altered the situation. Audiences can now judge the interpretations that they are being given, and thus they hear Berlioz performances with a knowledge and critical attention comparable to those with which they hear other composers.

Jacques Barzun

Additional Reading

An intensive study of the musical aesthetic elements in Berlioz' work as a whole is being facilitated by the publication of a scholarly edition of both his scores and his literary works. The former, gradually replacing the earlier and untrustworthy “German” edition, are being prepared in England and published in Germany; the latter are being edited in France.Hector Berlioz, Memoirs, trans. by David Cairns (1969), gives the story, atmosphere, and purpose of the artist's life; his Evenings with the Orchestra, trans. by Jacques Barzun (1956), is a sampling of Berlioz' music criticism. The New Letters of Berlioz, 1830–1868, ed. by Jacques Barzun (1954), provides a selection illustrative of the composer's day-to-day activities. For a judgment typical of the Wagnerian era, see Romain Rolland, “Berlioz,” Musiciens d'aujourd'hui, 2nd ed. (1908), trans. in Barrett H. Clark (comp.), Great Short Biographies of the World (1929). J.G. Prod'Homme, Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) sa vie et ses oeuvres, 3rd ed. (1927), marks the beginning of the rehabilitation. Walter J. Turner, Berlioz, the Man and His Work (1934); and Tom S. Wotton, Hector Berlioz (1935, reprinted 1969), affirm, with much musical detail, the now accepted estimate of the man and his works. Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1970), gives the fullest account of Berlioz' life. Cecil Hopkinson, A Bibliography of the Musical and Literary Works of Hector Berlioz, 1803–1869, 2nd ed., ed. by Richard MacNutt (1980), is the standard bibliography.

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