Louis hector berlioz biography compositions

Introduction

    This page aims to provide a chronological outline of the main events in Berlioz’s career, with a listing of his major musical and literary works, and mention of the people who played an important part in his life. The page is not meant to be a full biography of Berlioz, and fuller details are to be found on other pages of this site, such as those on Berlioz and Paris, and his travels in France and to numerous other countries, including notably Italy, Germany and Central Europe, Russia and London, to which this outline provides numerous hyperlinks. It thus serves as a chronological index of Berlioz’s career as documented and illustrated on this site.

    The text is divided into eight sections, each covering a distinctive period of Berlioz’s life:

1. 1803-1821: Childhood at La Côte

2. 1821-1832: Student years in Paris and Italy

3. 1832-1842: Musical career in Paris

4. 1842-1848: Musical career abroad (1)

5. 1848-1856: Musical career abroad (2)

6. 1856-1863: Les Troyens

7. 1864-1869: Final years

8. Posthumous events

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 1. 1803-1821: Childhood at La Côte Saint-André

1803

On 7 February Louis Berlioz, a young doctor from La Côte Saint André in the Département of Isère, and Marie-Antoinette-Josephine, daughter of Nicolas Marmion, a lawyer from Meylan, are married in her home town. She is 18 years old, he is 27.

Louis-Hector Berlioz is born at 5.00pm on 11 December at No. 83 rue nationale, La Côte Saint-André and is baptised in the chapel of the Church of Saint André (14 December). His paternal grand-father Nicolas

Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a Frenchcomposer and music critic. He was one of the greatest composers of the 19th century. His music is typical of the Romantic period: full of passion and often based on ideas outside music. He was not particularly good at playing any instrument, but he was brilliant at writing for the orchestra. Some of his most famous works include several orchestral overtures, the Symphonie Fantastique, the opera Les Troyens (The Trojans), the requiemGrande messe des morts and the song cycleLes nuits d'été (Summer Nights). He was very original as a composer, and his music was not fully appreciated until many years after his death.

Life

Childhood and student days

Berlioz was the eldest of six children. His two sisters lived to be adults, and Berlioz was always very fond of them both. His father was a doctor. The family lived in the country, north west of Grenoble.

Berlioz only went to school for a short time, when he was ten years old. The rest of his education he had from his father. He liked French and Latinliterature and travel books about faraway countries. He learned to play the flute, the flageolet and the guitar. He read a book by Rameau about harmony. He never had a piano. He just imagined the sounds of chords in his head. He was only 12 when he fell in love with a girl called Estelle who was 18. He was teased about it a lot. He started to compose some music.

When he was 17 his father said that he wanted him to be a doctor. Berlioz wanted to study music, but his father made him go to Paris to study medicine. Berlioz was to stay in Paris for the rest of his life. He studied medicine for two years, but he hated it. One day, in an anatomy lesson, he had had enough and jumped out of the window. He started to study music. His father was furious and stopped sending him money. Berlioz was very poor and started writing mu

(1803-1869)

Who Was Hector Berlioz?

Hector Berlioz turned his back on a career in medicine to follow his passion for music, and went on to compose works that showcased the innovativeness and search for expression that were hallmarks of Romanticism. His well-known pieces include the Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts. At the age of 65, Berlioz died in Paris on March 8, 1869.

Early Life

Louis-Hector Berlioz was born on December 11, 1803, in La Côte-St-André, Isère, France (near Grenoble). Hector Berlioz, as he was known, was entranced with music as a child. He learned to play the flute and guitar, and became a self-taught composer.

Heeding his physician father's wishes, Berlioz went to Paris in 1821 to study medicine. However, much of his time was spent at the Paris-Opéra, where he absorbed Christoph Willibald Gluck's operas. Two years later, he left medicine behind to become a composer.

Beginning a Career in Music

In 1826, Berlioz enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire. The next year, he saw Harriet Smithson in the role of Ophelia and became captivated by the Irish actress. His ardor inspired the Symphonie fantastique (1830), a piece that broke new ground in orchestral expression. With its use of music to relate a story of desperate passion, it was a hallmark of Romantic composition.

Following three unsuccessful attempts to win the Prix de Rome, Berlioz finally succeeded in 1830. After spending more than a year in Italy, he headed back to Paris, where a performance of his "fantastic symphony" took place in 1832. Smithson attended the concert; after meeting the woman who had haunted him, Berlioz married her the next year.

The 1830s saw Berlioz produce more of his inventive compositions, such as the symphony Harold en Italie (1834) and the impressive choral work Requiem, Grande messe des morts (1837). However, an opera, Benvenuto Cellini (1838), flopped. Berlioz was often forced to rely on music critici

French Romantic composer and conductor (1803–1869)

"Berlioz" redirects here. For other uses, see Berlioz (disambiguation).

Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy, choral pieces including the Requiem and L'Enfance du Christ, his three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict, and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust.

The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style sufficiently to win France's premier music prize – the Prix de Rome – in 1830, but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire. Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence.

At the age of twenty-four Berlioz fell in love with the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, and he pursued her obsessively until she finally accepted him seven years later. Their marriage was happy at first but eventually foundered. Harriet inspired his first major success, the Symphonie fantastique, in which an idealised depiction of her occurs throughout.

Berlioz completed three operas, the first of which, Benvenuto Cellini, was an outright failure. The second, the epic Les Troyens (The Trojans), was so large in scale that it was never staged in its entirety during his lifetime. His last opera, Béatrice et Bénédict – based on Shakes