Hector Berlioz page with free midi's to download

HECTOR BERLIOZ

11thDecember 1803 --- 8thMarch 1869

Hector Berlioz had a curious and indeed a tragic career, He was an innovator, and he was never understood. His operas
were  kept  off the stage by Wagner's music  dramas,  while his  symphonies and his religious works suffered under the
double  misfortune  of difficulty and  eccentricity.  He made,  himself  enemies  all along  the line.  As a student,  he was
wayward, pugnacious, and was cursed with that sardonic humour which makes foes among fools. He did not reverence
his professors at the Conservatoire, and he had a poor opinion of contemporary French and Italian composers.

Open enemies and secret ill-wishers surrounded him on every hand. He said many things that music had not said before
and he,  and he alone,  brought French music at a bound  into line with all the new work that was being done elsewhere
in poetry,  prose, and in art, but he threw away almost his last chance by the enormous demands he made upon players
and conductors. It is this which specially characterises Berlioz as a composer.

Big  things,  and particularly big,  horrible things, had a fatal fascination  for him. The ordinary  orchestra, the ordinary
chorus, the ordinary concert room, would never do for him; everything must be magnified, as it were, beyond life-size.

He once talked of an opera in which a wicked King was to arrange a burlesque of the Day of Judgment, only to have his
performance  interrupted by the real  coming of Christ and the blast  of angel trumpeters.  He heard children singing  in
St. Paul's Cathedral, and had a vision of devils burlesquing the scene in hell. His mind seemed steeped in horrors.

Wagner said of him:  "He lies  buried beneath the  ruins of his own machines."  Heine's  estimate of  him is  well  worth
quoting   "A colossal  nightingale", a lark  the size of  an eagle,  such as once existed,  they say,  in the primitive world.
Yes,  the  music  of Berlioz in  general has  for me  something  primitive,  almost antediluvian,  it  sets  me dreaming of
gigantic  species  of  long  extinct  animals,  of  mammoths,  of  fabulous empires  with  fabulous  sins,  of  all  kinds  of
impossibilities  piled  one  on  top  of  the  other,  these  magic accents  recall to  us  Babylon,  the hanging  gardens  of
Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh, the audacious edifices of Mizraim.

After all,  Belioz was one  of the big men who compel  not only admiration  in what they archive, but sympathy in what
they aim at and failed to compass.

His  very exaggerations  dispose  one  to like  him,  he was so  desperately in  earnest,  and often  where he fails he still
commands  respect due  to an  intrepid voyager in strange  lands. Hector Belioz was born at Cote St Andre in December
1803. His father was a doctor and a opium eater, and the general opinion, that to the opium eating should be attributed
much  that  was unbalanced and morbid  in the  son. The  father wanted  him to be  a doctor, but he rebelled."Become a
physician!  "he cried; "study anatomy" dissect, take part in horrible operations No! No! that would be a total subversion
of  the  natural  course of my life.  Going much against his parents  wishes,  he went  to Paris, and, amid many trials and
privations, studied at the Conservatoire.

Later on, like so many more composers,  he went to Italy to complete his training.  From Rome he was recalled in a very
amusing way. It was almost a necessity of Berlioz's nature that he should be in love, and his passions were of such heat
and fervour that they rarely failed to carry him beyond all bounds of reason.

It was so now. He heard that a frivolous and unscrupulous Parisian beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse rather
freely, was about to be married.  The news should have given  him joy,  but  instead  of that, it set up a spirit of revenge
and he hurried off to Paris with loaded pistols, not even waiting for passports.

He attempted to  cross the frontier in women's clothes, and was arrested.   A variety of contretemps occurred before he
reached the capital,  and by that time his rage had cooled and the pistols were thrown aside. The incident is thoroughly
characteristic  of Berlioz,  It  was  then  shortly after this that he saw a pretty  Irish actress on  the stage,  and then  fell
hopelessly  in love  with her. A romantic  passion it was,  and it dominated Berlioz's  life.  Harriet Smithson was  playing
Shakespeare,  and for Berlioz  she became a celestial  divinity, a lovely ideal  of art and beauty,  a personification of the
transcendent genius of the dramatist. To win her for himself, became the end and aim of Berlioz's existence.

His first step was  to give a concert, at great expense,  at which he hoped she would be present. But, alas I the concert
turned out a fiasco, and the adored one was not there. Berlioz was in utter despair. But luck was yet to favour him and
in a most  unexpected  way. Miss Smithson  became involved in pecuniary difficulties, and, to make matters worse, she
met with an accident which prevented her again appearing on the stage.

Now was the composer's  hance.  He had no great means  of his own, yet  he at once offered  to pay all the lady's debts
and  of course,  to marry her as well.  She accepted him; but, alas with the marriage came the end of the romance.  She
who had  once been  an angel now turned  out a shrew. She had a vile temper,  was fretful and peevish,  and by  and by
became obsessed by an ungovernable jealousy, for which there was no cause. At last, unable to endure the torture any
longer Berlioz arranged a separation, and to the end provided for her wants with scrupulous fidelity.

Two of Berlioz's  greatest  works--the  "Symphonie  Fantastique" and the Romeo and  Juliet  symphony--were  directly
inspired by his  passion for Harriet Smithson.  The first won him his wife.  It won him the handsome pecuniary reward
of 20,000  francs, paid him out of sheer  admiration  by the weird, gaunt,  demon fiddler Paganini,whose "dark flowing
hair"  Leigh Hunt sings.  He  wrote in  almost  every branch of composition,  but his  skill  lay in the  marvellous way  in
which he  developed the resources of the orchestra.  In number of parts and instruments employed, his Requiem is the
most ambitious score in existence.

Writing of  his  life  in Paris in 1837, the late  Sir Charles Halle  gives this little sketch of  Berlioz,  then a young man  of
thirty-four,  "There  never  lived  a musician  who adored  his art  more  than did  Berlioz,  he was,  indeed, 'enthusiasm
personified'. To hear him speak or rave about, a real chef-d euvre such as Armida, Iphigenie,or the C minor symphony,
the pitch of his voice rising higher and higher as he talked, was worth any performance of the same and what a picture
he was at the head the orchestra, with his eagle  face and bushy hair, a air of command, and glowing with enthusiasm.
He was the most perfect conductor I ever set eyes upon, one who held absolute sway over his troops, and played upon
them as a pianist upon the keyboard.

For a  genius  of his rank,  Berlioz  had extraordinary  limitations.  He was no executant  upon any instrument (for being
able to strum a few chords on the guitar does not count), and he was painfully aware how much this was a hindrance to
him and to his knowledge of musical literature, which indeed was limited. Halle was often astonished to.find that works
familiar to every pianist were unknown to him--not merely works written for the piano, such as Beethoven's sonatas, of
which he knew but few, but also orchestral works, oratorios, etc., known to pianists through arrangements.

Perhaps  many  undoubted  crudities  in  his work  would  have been eliminated  had he been able  to hear  them  before
committing  them to  paper,  I can say  that for the  eye alone was not  sufficient to give him a clear idea of the effect of
his  musical  combinations. Berlioz  died in 1869.  He had married  a second time,  but he outlived his  wife,  and latterly
had to be taken care of by his mother-in-law.

The above was written by Cuthbert Haddon in 1916.

Last Updated on May 2025
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

(3254)"Marche Hongroise (Hungarian march)". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

NEW (4674)"Symphonie Fantastique, Mov.2". Sequenced by Wang Tao.

(3246)"Symphonie Fantastique, Mov.5, Ronde d'un Nuit de Sabbat". Sequencer Unknown.

(3247)"Le Corsaire". Sequenced by John Taylor.

Thanks to George Pollen for the music below.

"The Shepherds bid farewell to the holy family from L'Enfance du Christ". Sequenced by George Pollen.

(1109)"Symphony Harold in Italy for Viola and Orchestra 2nd Movement". Sequenced by Jason Plumlee

(1110)"Symphony Harold in Italy for Viola and Orchestra 3rd Movement". Sequenced by Jason Plumlee

(1112)"March to the Scaffold". Sequenced by Andrew Anderson.

(3245)"Hungarian March From The Damnation of Faust". Sequencer Unknown.

(1111)"Roman Carnival Overture, Opus. 9". Sequencer Unknown.

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