Berlioz, HECTOR

Berlioz, HECTOR, a musical composer of remarkable but eccentric genius, was born December 11, 1803, at Côte-St-André, in the department of Isère, France, where his father was a physician. Against the wishes of his parents, who intended him to pursue the same profession, and sent him to Paris to study medicine, he devoted himself to music, entering the Conservatoire as a pupil of Lesueur. Amid severe privations—for his father had cut off his supplies—Berlioz continued his musical education, winning the second prize in 1828, and the first, or Grand prix de Rome, in 1830, with a cantata entitled Sardanapalus. In accordance with the conditions attached to this prize, Berlioz now went to Italy, where he resided for upwards of a year, and became acquainted with Liszt and Mendelssohn. The artistic surroundings of his life in Rome, however, were profoundly distasteful to him, and his sojourn was not marked by much creative work. After his return to Paris, in the year 1832, Berlioz soon brought some of his compositions to a hearing; but their complicated and peculiar nature failed to win popular recognition, and Berlioz was driven to support himself and his wife—he married the Irish actress, Henrietta Smithson, in 1833—by writing musical criticisms for various newspapers, an irksome burden from which he only freed himself at the close of his life. In this work, often wrung from him with the utmost pain and effort, are revealed those remarkable gifts of style, of picturesque expression, and of humour, which render his letters and his memoirs such admirable reading. When occasion offered, Berlioz also adopted the precarious livelihood of a concert-giver. In 1838 Paganini was so much impressed by a performance of the Symphonic Fantastique that he presented, or became the medium for presenting, Berlioz with the sum of 20,000 francs. In 1842 he set out on the first of those foreign concert tours which more than anything else indemnified him for the indifference of his compatriots. More than once he was offered a post in Germany, but could not make up his mind to tear himself away from Paris. In the course of these journeys Berlioz visited and was received with almost uniform enthusiasm in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and even Russia. In 1848 he was engaged by Jullien as conductor at Drury Lane, but the enterprise proved a disastrous failure. In 1855 he fulfilled another engagement in London as conductor of the New Philharmonic Society. It is pleasant to think that Berlioz, who was much attached to England, and had a profound veneration for Shakespeare, has owed the posthumous rehabilitation of his fame chiefly to the efforts of musicians resident in that country. Sir Charles Hallé, a friend of Berlioz's earlier years, produced his Dannation de Faust at Manchester in 1880, since when it has made its way into the répertoire of all the chief choral societies of the kingdom; and Mr Manns, at the famous Saturday concerts of the Crystal Palace, has been equally assiduous in familiarising English audiences with the colossal masterpieces of the French composer. Between 1855 and 1869, in which year Berlioz died, the course of his life presents no special features. He had practically abandoned composition, the only work produced in this period being his opera Les Troyens, performed with moderate success in 1863. The complete list of Berlioz's works is comprised within the limits of twenty-six opus-numbers; but this scanty array affords no clue to the magnitude of their dimensions. After his Faust, which is, perhaps, deservedly his most popular work, his most successful achievements are his symphonies, Roméo et Juliette, Harold en Italie, and the Symphonie Fantastique; his overtures, Carnaval Romain, Benvenuto Cellini, and Waverley; his charming opera, Beatrice et Bénédict; his sacred trilogy, L'Enfance du Christ; and finally, his great Messe des Morts—the requiem written for the obsequies of General Damrémont in 1837—and his Te Deum, in the Judex of which Berlioz rises to his greatest height. A great deal of Berlioz's best literary work is buried in the files of the Débats; but his published writings amount to several volumes, including his Soirées d'orchestre, À travers Chants, Les Grotesques de la Musique, his Mémoires (published in 1865), and finally, his well-known treatise on orchestration, which has been translated into English, and is a standard work on the subject. The characteristics of Berlioz's compositions are too remarkable to be discussed in a brief summary. His conceptions were grandiose rather than great, and in carrying them out he sometimes narrowly escaped an abrupt lapse from sublimity to bathos. He delighted overmuch in extravagantly exciting effects; but his sense of orchestration was so abnormally acute that, as an English critic has observed, no matter what the effect was, it was sure to sound exactly as he intended it. In delicate orchestral embroidery he stands alone—witness the 'Queen Mab' scherzo in his Roméo et Juliette, and the accompaniment to the chorus of spirits of the air in Lélio. Though accused of being a revolutionary in music, he entertained the most touching and enthusiastic reverence for Beethoven, Weber, and Gluck. Of an imperious and uncompromising disposition in his official and professional relations, he was nevertheless on terms of close intimacy with a great number of his contemporaries, amongst whom may be mentioned Liszt, Heine, Balzac, Stephen Heller, and Ernst. Schumann at once recognised his great talent, and published eulogistic analyses of his works in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Berlioz was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1839, and was elected a member of the Institute at Paris in 1856. He was also librarian of the Conservatoire. The name is pronounced Berliozz, not Berlioh. See the notice by Daniel Bernard prefixed to his Correspondance inédite (Paris, 1879); his Life and Letters (trans. by Mainwaring Dunstan, 1882); his Autobiography (Eng. trans. 1884); and lives by Jullien (Paris, 1888), and S. R. Thompson (1895).