thumb|alt=portrait of white man in early middle age, seen in left profile; he has bushy hair and a neckbeard but no moustache.|Berlioz by [[August Prinzhofer, 1845]]
Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, conductor and critic. 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<!--FOUNDERED IS CORRECT HERE, NOT THE "FLOUNDERED" TWO EDITORS SO FAR HAVE MISTAKENLY ATTEMPTED TO INSERT-->. Harriet inspired his first major success, the Symphonie fantastique, in which an idealised depiction of her occurs throughout as an idée fixe.
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 Bénédictbased on Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothingwas a success at its premiere but did not enter the regular operatic repertoire. Meeting only occasional success in France as a composer, Berlioz increasingly turned to conducting, in which he gained an international reputation. He was highly regarded in Germany, Britain and Russia both as a composer and as a conductor. To supplement his earnings he wrote musical journalism throughout much of his career; some of it has been preserved in book form, including his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844), which was influential in the 19th and 20th centuries. Berlioz died in Paris at the age of 65.
Life and career
1803–1821: early years
Berlioz was born on 11 December 1803, the eldest child of (1776–1848), a physician, and his wife, Marie-Antoinette Joséphine, née Marmion (1784–1838). Nevertheless, he was greatly encouraged by the vociferous approval of his performers, and the applause from musicians in the audience, including his Conservatoire professors, the directors of the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, and the composers Auber and Hérold.
Berlioz's fascination with Shakespeare's plays prompted him to start learning English during 1828, so that he could read them in the original. At around the same time he encountered two further creative inspirations: Beethoven and Goethe. He heard Beethoven's third, fifth and seventh symphonies performed at the Conservatoire, and read Goethe's Faust in Gérard de Nerval's translation. Goethe's work was the basis of Huit scènes de Faust (Berlioz's Opus 1), which premiered the following year and was reworked and expanded much later as La Damnation de Faust.
1830–1832: Prix de Rome
Berlioz was largely apolitical, and neither supported nor opposed the July Revolution of 1830, but when it broke out he found himself in the middle of it. He recorded events in his Mémoires:
The cantata was La Mort de Sardanapale, with which he won the Prix de Rome. His entry the previous year, Cléopâtre, had attracted disapproval from the judges because to highly conservative musicians it "betrayed dangerous tendencies", and for his 1830 offering he carefully modified his natural style to meet official approval.
thumb|upright=0.7|alt=drawing of young white woman, with short dark hair, in plain early 19th century dress|[[Marie Pleyel|Marie ("Camille") Moke, later Pleyel]]
By now recoiling from his obsession with Smithson, Berlioz fell in love with a nineteen-year-old pianist, Marie ("Camille") Moke. His feelings were reciprocated, and the couple planned to be married. In December Berlioz organised a concert at which the Symphonie fantastique was premiered. Protracted applause followed the performance, and the press reviews expressed both the shock and the pleasure the work had given. Berlioz's biographer David Cairns calls the concert a landmark not only in the composer's career but in the evolution of the modern orchestra. Franz Liszt was among those attending the concert; this was the beginning of a long friendship. Liszt later transcribed the entire Symphonie fantastique for piano to enable more people to hear it.
Shortly after the concert Berlioz set off for Italy: under the terms of the Prix de Rome, winners studied for two years at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome. Within three weeks of his arrival he went absent without leave: he had learnt that Marie had broken off their engagement and was to marry an older and richer suitor, Camille Pleyel, the heir to the Pleyel piano manufacturing company. Berlioz made an elaborate plan to kill them both (and her mother, known to him as "l'hippopotame"), and acquired poisons, pistols and a disguise for the purpose. although events showed that he may have had a lucky escape: within five years of marrying Marie, Camille Pleyel left her and publicly denounced her scandalous conduct and persistent infidelity. and he enjoyed his meetings with Felix Mendelssohn, who was visiting the city, but he found Rome distasteful: "the most stupid and prosaic city I know; it is no place for anyone with head or heart."
Vernet agreed to Berlioz's request to be allowed to leave the Villa Medici before the end of his two-year term. Heeding Vernet's advice that it would be prudent to delay his return to Paris, where the Conservatoire authorities might be less indulgent about his premature ending of his studies, he made a leisurely journey back, detouring via La Côte-Saint-André to see his family. He left Rome in May 1832 and arrived in Paris in November.
1832–1840: Paris
On 9 December 1832 Berlioz presented a concert of his works at the Conservatoire. The programme included the overture of Les Francs-juges, the Symphonie fantastique – extensively revised since its premiere – and Le Retour à la vie, in which Bocage, a popular actor, declaimed the monologues. The concert was such a success that the programme was repeated within the month, but the more immediate consequence was that Berlioz and Smithson finally met.
By 1832 Smithson's career was in decline. She presented a ruinously unsuccessful season, first at the Théâtre-Italien and then at lesser venues, and by March 1833 she was deep in debt. Biographers differ about whether and to what extent Smithson's receptiveness to Berlioz's wooing was motivated by financial considerations; but she accepted him, and in the face of strong opposition from both their families they were married at the British Embassy in Paris on 3 October 1833.
thumb|upright|alt=drawing of youngish white man in formal evening costume, carrying a violin|Paganini, by [[Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres|Ingres]]Paganini, known chiefly as a violinist, had acquired a Stradivarius viola, which he wanted to play in public if he could find the right music. Greatly impressed by the Symphonie fantastique, he asked Berlioz to write him a suitable piece. Berlioz told him that he could not write a brilliantly virtuoso work, and began composing what he called a symphony with viola obbligato, Harold in Italy. As he foresaw, Paganini found the solo part too reticent – "There's not enough for me to do here; I should be playing all the time"
Until the end of 1835 Berlioz had a modest stipend as a laureate of the Prix de Rome. Although he complained – both privately and sometimes in his articles – that his time would be better spent writing music than in writing music criticism, he was able to indulge himself in attacking his bêtes noires and extolling his enthusiasms. The former included musical pedants, coloratura writing and singing, viola players who were merely incompetent violinists, inane libretti, and baroque counterpoint. He extravagantly praised Beethoven's symphonies, and Gluck's and Weber's operas, and scrupulously refrained from promoting his own compositions. His journalism consisted mainly of music criticism, some of which he collected and published, such as Evenings in the Orchestra (1854), but also more technical articles, such as those that formed the basis of his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844).
Berlioz secured a commission from the French government for his Requiem – the Grande messe des morts – first performed at Les Invalides in December 1837. A second government commission followed – the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale in 1840. Neither work brought him much money or artistic fame at the time,
thumb|left|alt=advertising poster giving title, date and venue of operatic premiere|Poster for the premiere of [[Benvenuto Cellini (opera)|Benvenuto Cellini, September 1838. Berlioz's name is not mentioned.]]
One of Berlioz's main aims in the 1830s was "battering down the doors of the Opéra". In Paris at this period, the musical success that mattered was in the opera house and not the concert hall. Robert Schumann commented, "To the French, music by itself means nothing". Berlioz worked on his opera Benvenuto Cellini from 1834 until 1837, continually distracted by his increasing activities as a critic and as a promoter of his own symphonic concerts. A few days later Berlioz was astonished to receive a cheque from him for 20,000 francs. Paganini's gift enabled Berlioz to pay off Harriet's and his own debts, give up music criticism for the time being, and concentrate on composition. He wrote the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette for voices, chorus and orchestra. It was premiered in November 1839 and was so well received that Berlioz and his huge instrumental and vocal forces gave two further performances in rapid succession.