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Legacy

Pencil drawing of Berlioz, by Alphonse Legros, c.1860

Although neglected in France for much of the 19th century, the music of Berlioz has often been cited as extremely influential in the development of the symphonic form, instrumentation, and the depiction in music of programmatic ideas, features central to musical Romanticism. He was considered extremely progressive for his day, and he, Wagner, and Liszt are sometimes considered the great trinity of progressive 19th century Romanticism. Richard Pohl, the German critic in Schumann's musical journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, called Berlioz "the true pathbreaker", Liszt was an enthusiastic performer and supporter, and Wagner himself, after first expressing great reservations about Berlioz, wrote to Liszt saying: "we, Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner, are three equals, but we must take care not to say so to him." As Wagner here implies, Berlioz himself was indifferent to the idea of what was called the "la musique du passé" (music of the past), and clearly influenced both Liszt and Wagner (and other forward-looking composers) although he increasingly began to dislike many of their works. Wagner's remark also suggests the strong ethnocentrism characteristic of European composers of the time on both sides of the Rhine. Berlioz not only influenced Wagner through his orchestration and breaking of conventional forms, but also in his use of the idée fixe in the Symphonie fantastique which foreshadows the leitmotif. Liszt came to see Berlioz not only as a composer to support, but also to learn from, considering Berlioz an ally in his aim for "A renewal of music through its closer union with poetry".

During his centenary in 1903, while recieving attention from all leading musical reference books, he was still not generally accepted as being one of the great composers. Some of his music was still in neglect and his following was smaller than other, mainly German, composers. Even half a century did not change much, and it took until the 1960s for the right questions to be asked about his work, and for it to be viewed in a more balanced and sympathetic light. One of the pivotal events in this fresh ignition of interest in the composer was a performance of Les Troyens by Rafael Kubelík in 1957 at Covent Garden. The music of Berlioz enjoyed a revival during the 1960s and 1970s, due in large part to the efforts of British conductor Sir Colin Davis, who recorded his entire oeuvre, bringing to light a number of Berlioz's lesser-known works. An unusual (but telling) example of the increase of Berlioz's fame in the 60s was an explosion of forged autographs, manuscripts, and letters, evidently created to cater for a much greater interest in the composer. Davis's recording of Les Troyens was the first near-complete recording of that work. The work, which Berlioz never saw staged in its entirety during his life, is now a part of the international repertoire, if still something of a rarity. Les Troyens was the first opera performed at the newly built Opéra Bastille in Paris on March 17, 1990 in a production claimed to be complete, but lacking the ballets.

In 2003, the bicentenary of Berlioz's birth, his achivements and status are much more widely recognised, and his music is viewed as both serious and original, rather than an eccentric novelty. Newspaper articles reported his colourful life with zeal, very many festivals dedicated to the composer were held,, readings of his books and a French dramatised television biography all helped to create a lot of exposure to the composer's life and music - far more than the previous centenary anniversary. Numerous recording projects were begun or reissued, and broadcasts of his music increased. Prominent Berlioz conductor Colin Davis had already been in the process of recording much of Berlioz's music on the LSO Live label, and has continued this project to this date with a L'enfance du Christ recording issued in 2007. The internet was also a factor in the celebrations, with the comprehensive hberlioz.com site (which has been online since 1997) being an easily available source of information to anyone interested in the composer. The 'Berlioz 2003' celebrations, organised by French academic institutions, also had a promenent website, listing events, publications and gatherings whose domain has now lapsed. There was also a site maintained by the Association nationale Hector Berlioz.

A proposal was made to remove his remains to the Panthéon, and while initially encouraged by French President Jacques Chirac, it was postponed by him, claimed to be because it was too shortly after Alexandre Dumas was moved there. He may have also been influenced by a political dispute over Berlioz's worthiness as a republican, since Berlioz, who regularly met kings and princes, had severely criticized the 1848 Revolution, speaking of the "odious and stupid republic". There were also objections from supporters of Berlioz, some of whom claimed that Berlioz was an anti-establishment figure and would have no interest in such a ceremony, and that he was happy to be buried next to his two wives in the location he has been in for almost 150 years. Since Chirac retired as President, the future of Berlioz's resting place is still unclear.

Works

See also: List of works by Hector Berlioz

First page of original Symphonie fantastique (1830) manuscript

Musical works

The five movement Symphonie fantastique, partly due to its fame, is considered by most to be Berlioz's most outstanding work, and the work had a considerable impact when new. It is famous for its innovations in the form of the programmatic symphony. The story behind this work relates to Berlioz himself and can be considered somewhat autobiographical.

In addition to the Symphonie fantastique, some other orchestral works of Berlioz currently in the standard orchestral repertoire include his "légende dramatique" La damnation de Faust and "symphonie dramatique" Roméo et Juliette (both large-scale works for mixed voices and orchestra), and his concertante symphony (for viola and orchestra) Harold en Italie, several concert overtures also remain enduringly popular, such as Le Corsaire and Le Carnaval romain. Amongst his more vocally-oriented works, the song cycle Les nuits d'été and the oratorio L'Enfance du Christ have retained enduring appeal, as have the quasi-liturgical Te Deum and Grande Messe des morts.

The unconventional music of Berlioz irritated the established concert and opera scene. Berlioz often had to arrange for his own performances as well as pay for them himself. This took a heavy toll on him financially and emotionally. The nature of his large works - sometimes involving hundreds of performers - made financial success difficult. His journalistic abilities became essential for him to make a living and he survived as a witty critic, emphasizing the importance of drama and expressivity in musical entertainment. It was perhaps this expense which prevented Berlioz from composing more opera than he did. His talent in the genre is obvious, but opera is the most expensive of all classical forms, and Berlioz in particular struggled to arrange stagings of his operas. due to conservative Paris opera companies unwilling to perform his work.

Literary works

While Berlioz is best known as a composer, he was also a prolific writer, and supported himself for many years by writing musical criticism, utilising a bold, vigorous style, at times imperious and sarcastic. He wrote for many journals, including Le Rénovateur, Journal des Débats and Gazette musicale. He was active in the Débats for over thirty years until submitting his last signed article in 1863. Almost from the founding, Berlioz was a key member of the editorial board of the Gazette as well as a contributor, and acted as editor on several occasions while the owner was otherwise engaged. Berlioz took full advantage of his times as editor, allowing himself to increase his articles written on music history rather than current events, evidenced by him publishing seven articles on Gluck in the Gazette between June 1834 and January 1835. An example of the amount of work he produced is indicated in his producing over one-hundred articles for the Gazette between 1833 and 1837. This is a conservative estimate, as not all of his submissions were signed. In 1835 alone, due to one of his many times of financial difficulty, he wrote four articles for the Monde dramatique, twelve for the Gazette, nineteen for the Débats and thirty-seven for the Rénovateur. These were not mere scribbes, but in-depth articles and reviews with little duplication, which took considerable time to write.

Another noteworthy indicator of the importance Berlioz placed on journalistic integrity and even-handedness were the journals which he both did and did not write for. During the middle of the 1830s the Gazette was considered an intellectual journal, strongly supporting the progressive arts and Romanticism in general, and opposing anything which it considers as debasing this. Exemplified in its long-standing criticism of Henri Herz, and his seemingly endless stream of variations on opera themes, but in to its credit, it also positively reviewed his music on occasion. Its writers included Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac and George Sand. The Gazette wasn't even uniformly praising of Berlioz, although recognised him as an important and serious composer. An example of another journal of the same time is the Revue musicale, which thrived on personal attacks, many against Berlioz himself from the pen of critic François-Joseph Fétis. At one point, Robert Schumann was motivated to publish a detailed rebuttal of one of Fétis' attacks on Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique in his own Neue Zeitschrift für Musik journal. Fétis would later contribute to the debasement of the reputation of the Gazette when this journal fails and is absorbed by the Gazette, and he finds himself on the editorial board.

The books which Berlioz has become acclaimed for were compiled from his journal articles. Les Soirées de l’Orchestre (Evenings with the Orchestra) (1852), a scathing satire of provincial musical life in 19th century France, and the Treatise on Instrumentation, a pedagogic work, were both serialised originally in the Gazette musicale. Many parts of the Mémoires (1870) were originally published in the Journal des Débats, as well as Le Monde Illustré. The Mémoires paint a magisterial (if biased) portrait of the Romantic era through the eyes of one of its chief protagonists. Evenings with the Orchestra is more overtly fictional than his other two major books, but its basis in reality is its strength, making the stories it recounts all the funnier due to the ring of truth. W. H. Auden praises it, saying "To succeed in [writing these tales], as Berlioz most brilliantly does, requires a combination of qualities which is very rare, the many-faceted curiosity of the dramatist with the aggressively personal vision of the lyric poet." The Treatise established his reputation as a master of orchestration. The work was closely studied by Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss and served as the foundation for a subsequent textbook by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov who as a music student attended the concerts Berlioz conducted in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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Berlioz was known as 'the man who wrote for 1000 musicians' so he also anticipated the development of gargantuan orchestral forces, although he never sought to use such forces merely for cheap effects or noisiness - he was the first to treat the orchestra idiomatically and systematically, although he himself was not an instrumental player. According to The Great Conductors, by Harold C. Schonberg, "No composer before (Berlioz), and in all likelihood none after, not even Mahler, had such a vision of pure sound and how to go about obtaining it. He reveled in new tonal combinations, in the potentiality of every instrument, in a kind of super-music played by a super orchestra".

Berlioz as a conductor

Drawing of Berlioz conducting a choir by Gustave Doré, published in Journal pour rire, 27 June, 1850

Berlioz's work as a conductor was highly influential and brought him fame across Europe. He was considered by Charles Hallé, Hans von Bülow and others to be the greatest conductor of his era. Berlioz initially began conducting due to frustrations over the inability of other conductors - more used to performing older and simpler music - to master his advanced and progressive works, with their extended melodies and rhythmic complexity. He began with more enthusiasm than mastery, and was not formally trained, but through perseverance his skills improved. He was also willing to take advice from others, as evidenced by Spontini criticising his early use of large gestures while conducting. One year later, according to Hallé, his movements were much more economical, enabling him to control more nuance in the music. His expert understanding of the way the sound of each instrument interacts with each other (demonstrated in his Treatise on Instrumentation) was attested to by the critic Louis Engel, who mentions how Berlioz once noticed, amidst an orchestral tutti, a minute pitch difference between two clarinets. Engel offers an explanation of Berlioz's ability to detect such things as in part due to the sheer nervous energy he was experiencing during conducting.

Despite this talent, Berlioz never held an employed position of conductor during his lifetime, having to be content with conducting only as a guest. This was almost not the case, as late in 1835, he was approached by the management of a new concert hall in Paris, the Gymnase Musical, as to whether he would be interested in becoming their musical director. To Berlioz this was ideal, as not only would it give him a large annual salary (between 6000 to 12,000 francs), but it would also give him a platform from which to perform his own music, and the music of fellow progressives. He even went as far as signing the contract before fate intervened. The obstacle was one of the many restrictions that the revolutionary government had placed on the running of musical establishments. The decree in question was one which prevented all new concert halls from staging any vocal music, so that they do not compete with the influential Paris Opéra among other organisations. There were passionate arguments and attempts to circumvent this restriction, but they fell on deaf ears, and the Gymnase Musical became a dance hall instead. This left Berlioz dejected, and would prove to have been a crucial cross-roads in his life, forcing him to work long hours as a critic, which severely impaired his free time available for composition.

From then on, he conducted at many different occasions, but mainly during grand tours of various countries where he was paid handsomely for visiting. In particular, towards the end of his life, he made a lot of money by touring Russia twice, the final visit proving extremely lucrative and also being the final conducting tour before his death. This enabled him not only to perform his music to a wider audience, but also to increase his influence across Europe - for example, his orchestration was studied by many Russian composers. Not just fellow hyper-romantic Tchaikovsky, but also members of The Five are indebted to these techniques, including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, but even Modest Mussorgsky - often portrayed as uninterested in refined orchestration - revered Berlioz and died with a copy of Berlioz's Treatise on Instrumentation on his bed. Similarly, his conducting technique as described by contemporary sources appears to set the groundwork for the clarity and precision favoured in the French School of conducting right up to the present, exemplified by such figures as Pierre Monteux, Désiré-Emile Inghelbrecht, Charles Münch, André Cluytens, Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, and, above all, Colin Davis.