Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is
one of the most colorful characters in all of Western music—no small feat in a
room crowded with Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, and
so many others who led noteworthy, and often scandalous, lives. Yet Berlioz holds his own with any of them
musically as well as biographically, as he was an eccentric in an age of
eccentrics. A virtually self-taught composer, Berlioz took the orchestra that
he inherited from Beethoven and launched it head first into the 21st
century. Yes, the 21st century, as his ideas were so radical that
only recently are we able to appreciate them, much less try to emulate them.
Among his many achievements are the still wildly Romantic Symphonie
Fantastique, a symphony with an autobiographical program inspired by an
opium dream (emulating Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, though sounding even more
like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner); a Requiem for such immense forces
that it seems like it would implode under its own weight; and the exotic
picture postcard symphony, Harold in Italie, which sort of follows the
narrative of Byron’s poem, but in reality follows Berlioz’s own adventures in
Italy.
