As a little boy, if he heard a touching poem, he would start crying. At the age of fourteen, he fell madly in love with a girl from his neighbors. Fifty years later, he sought and found this woman, longing for the old days.
(1803-1869) French composer, conductor, music critic, and guitarist. He is one of the most important representatives of romantic music. He was born on 11 December 1803 in Dauphiny, a small village near Grenoble. His father was a medical doctor, and he wanted his eldest child, Hector, to become a doctor as well. But when he saw that he was engaged in music with an interest that exceeded an amateur curiosity, this desire turned into pressure. Young Berlioz was enrolled in the Paris Medical School in 1821. After studying here for a year and a half, he left school with a sudden decision. The theory and composition teacher J.F. He became a student of Lesueur. Despite all his productive and original studies, he was able to enter the Paris Conservatory only three years later.
Meanwhile, his father had cut off all assistance to his disobedient son. In order to earn money, he started giving guitar, singing and flute lessons on the one hand and writing music criticism on the other. For many years, he directed all his strength to win the Rome Music Award, which was the dream of every young composer at that time. He accomplished this in his fifth attempt in 1830, with his cantata The Death of Sardariapale. On December 5 of the same year, the famous fantastic Symphony was performed for the first time and gained great success.
Under the terms of the Rome Prize, he went to Italy and worked in Rome for two years. He returned to France in 1832. At the end of this year, he gained fame with two concerts where he directed his own works. Around that time, he married Irish stage actress Harriet Smithson, whom he had pursued for years in one-sided love.
In July 1835, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on King Louis-Philippe of France, killing eighteen people. The requiem to be composed in memory of the dead was given to Berlioz through his influential friends. The first performance of the work was a great success.
He applied to be appointed as a harmony teacher at the Paris Conservatory and received a negative response on the grounds that he could not play the piano. However, after a while, he was brought to the position of assistant library clerk. Right after these disappointments, he lived the happiest days of his artistic life: Harold knelt before Berlioz to express his admiration for his Pagan who had stolen his work called In Italy, and two days later with a check for 20,000 francs, “My dear friend, Beethoven is dead, he calls it only Berlioz. He also sent a letter of praise beginning with the lines “will make you live”.
He got rid of money problems for a while and devoted his time entirely to composition studies. The dramatic symphony of Romeo and Juliette, which he dedicated to Paganini, is the most important product of this period, first being awarded the Legion d'honneur, and then being officially commissioned to write music in memory of those who died in the July Revolution, proved that Berlioz began to be adopted in his country.
He wrote the Symphony of Death and Glory for the anniversary of the Revolution. The symphony, which was performed with the participation of two hundred choristers in the ceremonies of 28 July 1840, is the greatest work written for a military band. In 1838, he took his first step into the world of opera with his work Benvenuto Cellini. This opera, whose overture received a standing ovation and other parts whistled, was staged four times.
Berlioz did not compose on large scale for six years after 1840. He toured many European countries and directed concerts. He met with celebrities such as Schumann, Wagner, Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn. In 1847 he went on a tour in Russia, where he was held in high esteem. Later he gave concerts in England. In March 1852, he made a deal as the orchestra director of the New Philharmonic Society and went to London. After a successful and productive concert season, he returned to his country. In November of the same year, a Berlioz Festival was held in Weimar, with the efforts of Liszt. Here the composer enjoyed extraordinary attention and respect. In the following years, he visited Germany many times.
On March 3, 1854, his estranged wife, Harriet Smithson, died. Seven months later he married the opera singer Marie Recio, composing the operas Les Troyens (The Trojans) and Beatrice and Benedict until 1862 when he lost his second wife. With this last opera began the exhaustion of his creative power. Despite being ill in his last years of solitude, he traveled to Vienna, Moscow, and St. He directed concerts in St. Petersburg. He was devastated by the news of his only child's death in 1867. He was crowned with a silver wreath at a festival held in his honor in the summer of 1868. He died in Paris on March 8, 1869.
Berlioz is an artist who embodies everything that the word “romanticism” reminds of in terms of thinking, behavior, lifestyle, and perspective on art. The hypersensitivity in his personality was evident even in childhood. When he was a little boy, he would have cried if he heard a touching line from Virgil. At the age of fourteen, he fell madly in love with a girl from his neighbors. Fifty years later, he sought and found this woman, longing for the old days. The emotional life of the artist, full of complex and long-lasting relationships and attachments, is like a symbol, a summary of his personality traits. How and to what extent the events he lived through affected his art is a difficult question to answer and has not been adequately researched. Nevertheless, it can be said that his emotionality and uninhibited tendencies are reflected in a musical understanding that emphasizes the direct effect and expression of emotions rather than observing the prevailing rules. This feature is one of the extremes of romance.
In addition to features such as emotional outbursts, the use of orchestras and choirs of unprecedented size, the effects of literature on music, and the great color richness especially in the orchestration technique make Berlioz a leading representative of romantic art. He succeeded in using the differences in sound colors, which he examined in detail, in musical expression with fine sensitivity. This is one of the aspects of Berlioz that influenced the composers after him the most.
The composers Berlioz was most influenced by were Weber and Beethoven, as well as Gluck. It is usual for Weber, the powerful and well-known representative of romantic opera, to create such a source of influence. Berlioz, who sincerely believes that the roots of his own art go back to Beethoven's symphonies, must have adopted the features of expression in his music as well.
Berlioz is one of the most difficult and controversial composers to evaluate. This situation should be considered as a result of his personality, intense dramatic expression, the fact that any of his works are a product that needs to be handled on its own rather than a continuation of the previous ones, and the narrative and technical diversity that can be seen in the same work. For example, his creativity in the field of melody is rich enough to challenge the habits and tastes of a trained ear.
WORKS (mainly):
Opera:
Benvenuto Celimi, 1838; es Troyens, 1855-185S,
Beatrice er Benedict, 1862,
Choral works:
Huits Seenes de Faust, 1829,
Requiem-Grand Messe des Morts, 1837,
Romeo and Juliette,
Symphonie junebre et triompbale, 1840,
La Danmation de Faust, 1846,
L'Enfance du Christ, 1854, oratorio,
Te Deum,
Voice and Orchestral Works:
La Mort de Cleopatre, 1829,
le Captive, 1834,
La Nuits d'ete, 1843, 1856,
Mort d'Ophelie, 1850,
Symphony:
Symphhome Fantastique, 1830-1831.