Hector Berlioz was born in Cote-Saint-Andre which was near Grenoble, France. His father is Doctor Louis Berlioz, a very decent physician. Louis expected him to study medicine and become a doctor as well. Berlioz did attend medical school in Paris, but at the same time, he copied and studied scores of Beethoven, Spontini, and Gluck. He shocked his family members when he dropped out of medicine for music. In Paris, he also studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Lesueur and had his first concerts of his works including Herald in Italy (program symphony), and his most famous work, symphonie fantastique.
Symphonie fantastique is about his first love, Actress Harriet Smithson. She became his wife, but his career as an actress was failing, therefore having financial problems. Harriet turned to alcohol and drugs, and later in 1841, broke up with Berlioz. Nevertheless, she was still the inspiration for symphonie fantastique that was such a great success, it even impressed Franz Liszt. Franz Liszt was a famous piano virtuoso and a witness for their marriage. After hearing symphonie fantastique, he and Berlioz became good friends. Another woman that Berlioz had an interest in was Marie Camille Moke. She was married to Pleyel, a piano manufacturer but was still very close with Berlioz.
Berlioz also had an opportunity to live and work in Italy. He had won the Prix de Rome in 1830. By the age of 40, he produced most of his works in which his fame would rest at. His music was not always as successful as symphonie fantastique. In one of his concerts for Benutto Celini, he blamed F. A. Habeneck for the failure of popularity for the work. Habeneck was the conductor and Berlioz suspected that he was the reason why Benutto Celini was cancelled.
After his failure with Harriet Smith, he found a second wife named Marie Recio. They bore a child name after Berlioz's father, Louis. Later in his life, he was also commissioned by the French government to right the Requiem. He also died in Paris, France, in 1869.
Several artists and composers influenced Berlioz's music. Three of his plays influenced Berlioz to write Romeo and Juliet, Beatrice and Benedict, and the King Leur Overture. Byron was another person who influenced him through his literacy. The work Childe Herald was based on Byron's poem about Herald. The three musicians that Berlioz admired the most were Spontini, Goethe and Beethoven. Spontini favoured titanic crescendos and his style is found in Berlioz's overtures, Dalmation of Faust draw on Goethe's Faust, and Berlioz published a biography and conducted Beethoven's music often. Beethoven influenced him because of the strength and unity found in his music. His classical melodies were always pure.
Not only was Berlioz a talented musician, he also did a lot of literary writing. The Grand Traite D'instrumentation/Treatise on Orchestration, was a direct commentary of his own orchestral writing. It goes into the practices as well as in site to instrumental practice of the time. As mentioned earlier, he published a biography of Beethoven and in addition to that, he also published an autobiography of his own childhood.
Hector Berlioz had made many contributions in Romantic music. In his concert overtures, briefly mentioned before, he was influenced by Spontini's crescendos. He was very imaginative, and varied the orchestra in his writing. The fall of rhythmic vitality with changes in time signatures are also part of the characteristics of his concert overtures. Examples of his concert overtures are his Waverley Overture, and Le Roi Lear. Berlioz's choral music contains huge resources in both vocal and orchestral forces. He was still able to find tenderness and lyricism. One of his oratorios was L'enfance du Chris. For his operas, he wrote his own librettos, examples would be Les Troyen, and Beatrice and Benedict. Berlioz's are full of clarity and grace. Hidden messages into his music forshadow tone poems of Liszt and Strauss, while using various playing techniques such as col legno, which is where a violinist hits the strings with the wood of his bow.
