Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms (pronounced [joːˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]; 7 May 1833  – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.

Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works; he also worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.^[1]

Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined art for which Johann Sebastian Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.

Life[link]

Early years[link]

Brahms's father, Johann Jakob Brahms (1806–72), came to Hamburg from Dithmarschen, seeking a career as a town musician. He was proficient in several instruments, but found employment mostly playing the horn and double bass. In 1830, he married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen (1789–1865), a seamstress never previously married, who was seventeen years older than he was. Johannes Brahms had an older sister and a younger brother. Initially, they lived near the city docks, in the Gängeviertel quarter of Hamburg, for six months, before moving to a small house on the Dammtorwall, a small city in the Inner Alster.

Photograph from 1891 of the building in Hamburg where Brahms was born. Brahms's family occupied part of the first floor, behind the two double windows on the left hand side. The building was destroyed by bombing in 1943.

Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training. He studied piano from the age of seven with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Owing to the family's poverty, as a boy Brahms played in dance halls and brothels – some of the seediest places in Hamburg – surrounded by drunken sailors and prostitutes that often fondled the boy as he played.^{[citation needed]} Early biographers found this shocking and played down this portion of his life. Modern writers have pointed to this as a reason for Brahms's later inability to have a successful relationship for marriage, etc., his view of women being warped by his experiences.^[2] Recently, Brahms scholars Styra Avins^[3] and Kurt Hoffman have suggested that this legend is false. Since Brahms himself clearly originated the story, however, some have questioned Hoffman's theory.^[4][5]

For a time, Brahms also learned the cello.^[6] After his early piano lessons with Otto Cossel, Brahms studied piano with Eduard Marxsen, who had studied in Vienna with Ignaz von Seyfried (a pupil of Mozart) and Carl Maria von Bocklet (a close friend of Schubert). The young Brahms gave a few public concerts in Hamburg, but did not become well known as a pianist until he made a concert tour at the age of nineteen. (In later life, he frequently took part in the performance of his own works, whether as soloist, accompanist, or participant in chamber music.) He conducted choirs from his early teens, and became a proficient choral and orchestral conductor.

Meeting Joachim and Liszt[link]

Brahms in 1853

He began to compose quite early in life, but later destroyed most copies of his first works; for instance, Louise Japha, a fellow-pupil of Marxsen, reported a piano sonata, that Brahms had played or improvised at the age of 11, had been destroyed. His compositions did not receive public acclaim until he went on a concert tour as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi in April and May 1853. On this tour he met Joseph Joachim at Hanover, and went on to the Court of Weimar where he met Franz Liszt, Peter Cornelius, and Joachim Raff. According to several witnesses of Brahms's meeting with Liszt (at which Liszt performed Brahms's Scherzo, Op. 4, at sight), Reményi was offended by Brahms's failure to praise Liszt's Sonata in B minor wholeheartedly (Brahms supposedly fell asleep during a performance of the recently composed work), and they parted company shortly afterwards. Brahms later excused himself, saying that he could not help it, having been exhausted by his travels.

Brahms and Schumann[link]

Joachim had given Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and after a walking tour in the Rhineland, Brahms took the train to Düsseldorf, and was welcomed into the Schumann family on arrival there. Schumann, amazed by the 20-year-old's talent, published an article entitled "Neue Bahnen" (New Paths) in the 28 October 1853 issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik alerting the public to the young man, who, he claimed, was "destined to give ideal expression to the times."^[7] This pronouncement was received with some scepticism outside of Schumann's immediate circle, and may have increased Brahms's naturally self-critical need to perfect his works and technique. While he was in Düsseldorf, Brahms participated with Schumann and Albert Dietrich in writing a sonata for Joachim; this is known as the "F–A–E Sonata" (German: Frei aber einsam). He became very attached to Schumann's wife, the composer and pianist Clara, fourteen years his senior, with whom he would carry on a lifelong, emotionally passionate relationship. Brahms never married, despite strong feelings for several women and despite entering into an engagement, soon broken off, with Agathe von Siebold in Göttingen in 1859. After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement in a mental sanatorium near Bonn in February 1854, Brahms was the main intercessor between Clara and her husband, and found himself virtually head of the household.

After Schumann's death, Brahms hurried to Düsseldorf and for the next two years lived in an apartment above the Schumann's house, and sacrificed his career and his art for Clara's sake. The question of Brahms and Clara Schumann is perhaps the most mysterious in music history, alongside that of Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved". Whether they were actually lovers is unknown, but their destruction of their letters to each other may point to something beyond mere privacy.^[8]

Detmold and Hamburg[link]

After Schumann's death at the sanatorium in 1856, Brahms divided his time between Hamburg, where he formed and conducted a ladies' choir, and Detmold in the Principality of Lippe, where he was court music-teacher and conductor. He was the soloist at the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1859. He first visited Vienna in 1862, staying there over the winter, and, in 1863, was appointed conductor of the Vienna Singakademie. Though he resigned the position the following year, and entertained the idea of taking up conducting posts elsewhere, he based himself increasingly in Vienna and soon made his home there. From 1872 to 1875, he was director of the concerts of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; afterwards, he accepted no formal position. He declined an honorary doctorate of music from University of Cambridge in 1877, but accepted one from the University of Breslau in 1879, and composed the Academic Festival Overture as a gesture of appreciation.

He had been composing steadily throughout the 1850s and 60s, but his music had evoked divided critical responses, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 had been badly received in some of its early performances. His works were labelled old-fashioned by the 'New German School' whose principal figures included Liszt and Richard Wagner. Brahms admired some of Wagner's music and admired Liszt as a great pianist, but the conflict between the two schools, known as the War of the Romantics, soon embroiled all of musical Europe. In the Brahms camp were his close friends: Clara Schumann, the influential music critic Eduard Hanslick, and the leading Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. In 1860, Brahms attempted to organise a public protest against some of the wilder excesses of the Wagnerians' music. This took the form of a manifesto, written by Brahms and Joachim jointly. The manifesto, which was published prematurely with only three supporting signatures, was a failure, and he never engaged in public polemics again.^[9]

Years of popularity[link]

It was the premiere of A German Requiem, his largest choral work, in Bremen, in 1868, that confirmed Brahms's European reputation and led many to accept that he had conquered Beethoven and the symphony. This may have given him the confidence finally to complete a number of works that he had wrestled with over many years, such as the cantata Rinaldo, his first string quartet, third piano quartet, and most notably his first symphony. This appeared in 1876, though it had been begun (and a version of the first movement seen by some of his friends) in the early 1860s. The other three symphonies then followed in 1877, 1883, and 1885. From 1881, he was able to try out his new orchestral works with the court orchestra of the Duke of Meiningen, whose conductor was Hans von Bülow. He was the soloist at the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1881, in Pest.

Brahms frequently travelled, both for business (concert tours) and pleasure. From 1878 onwards, he often visited Italy in the springtime, and he usually sought out a pleasant rural location in which to compose during the summer. He was a great walker and especially enjoyed spending time in the open air, where he felt that he could think more clearly.

Brahms's grave in the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery), Vienna.

In 1889, one Theo Wangemann, a representative of American inventor Thomas Edison, visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make an experimental recording. Brahms played an abbreviated version of his first Hungarian dance on the piano. The recording was later issued on an LP of early piano performances (compiled by Gregor Benko). Although the spoken introduction to the short piece of music is quite clear, the piano playing is largely inaudible due to heavy surface noise. Nevertheless, this remains the earliest recording made by a major composer. Analysts and scholars remain divided, however, as to whether the voice that introduces the piece is that of Wangemann or of Brahms.^[10] Several attempts have been made to improve the quality of this historic recording; a "denoised" version was produced at Stanford University which claims to solve the mystery.^[11]

In 1889, Brahms was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg, until 1948 the only one born in Hamburg.^[12]

Later years[link]

In 1890, the 57-year-old Brahms resolved to give up composing. However, as it turned out, he was unable to abide by his decision, and in the years before his death he produced a number of acknowledged masterpieces. His admiration for Richard Mühlfeld, clarinetist with the Meiningen orchestra, moved him to compose the Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115 (1891), and the two Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120 (1894). He also wrote several cycles of piano pieces, Opp. 116–119, the Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op. 121 (1896), and the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122 (1896).

While completing the Op. 121 songs, Brahms developed cancer (sources differ on whether this was of the liver or pancreas). His condition gradually worsened and he died on 3 April 1897, aged 63. Brahms is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.

Tributes[link]

Later that year, the British composer Hubert Parry, who considered Brahms the greatest artist of the time, wrote an orchestral Elegy for Brahms. This was never played in Parry's lifetime, receiving its first performance at a memorial concert for Parry himself in 1918.

Music of Brahms[link]

	Intermezzo, Op. 116, No. 4 Intermezzo, Op. 117, No. 1 Intermezzo, Op. 117, No. 2 Intermezzo, Op. 117, No. 3 Intermezzo, Op. 76, No. 7
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Double Concerto in A minor, 2nd movement Double Concerto in A minor, 3rd movement Cello Sonata in F, Op. 99, 1st movement Cello Sonata in F, Op. 99, 2nd movement Cello Sonata in F, Op. 99, 3rd movement Cello Sonata in F, Op. 99, 4th movement Wiegenlied (Op. 49) Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1915)

Brahms plays his Hungarian Dance No. 1 Hungarian Dance No. 1 Recorded on 2 December 1889

Works[link]

Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos (No. 1 in D minor; No. 2 in B-flat major), a Violin Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and two companion orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.

His large choral work A German Requiem is not a setting of the liturgical Missa pro defunctis but a setting of texts which Brahms selected from the Lutheran Bible. The work was composed in three major periods of his life. An early version of the second movement was first composed in 1854, not long after Robert Schumann's attempted suicide, and this was later used in his first piano concerto. The majority of the Requiem was composed after his mother's death in 1865. The fifth movement was added after the official premiere in 1868, and the work was published in 1869.

Brahms's works in variation form include, among others, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel and the Paganini Variations, both for solo piano, and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn (now sometimes called the Saint Anthony Variations) in versions for two pianos and for orchestra. The final movement of the Fourth Symphony, Op. 98, is formally a passacaglia.

His chamber works include three string quartets, two string quintets, two string sextets, a clarinet quintet, a clarinet trio, a horn trio, a piano quintet, three piano quartets, and four piano trios (the fourth being published posthumously). He composed several instrumental sonatas with piano, including three for violin, two for cello, and two for clarinet (which were subsequently arranged for viola by the composer). His solo piano works range from his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of character pieces. Brahms was a significant lieder composer, who wrote over 200 songs. His chorale preludes for organ, Op. 122, which he wrote shortly before his death, have become an important part of the organist's repertoire.

Brahms strongly preferred writing absolute music that does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative, and he never wrote an opera or a symphonic poem.

Despite his reputation as a serious composer of large, complex musical structures, some of Brahms's most widely known and most commercially successful compositions during his life were small-scale works of popular intent aimed at the thriving contemporary market for domestic music-making; indeed, during the 20th century, the influential American critic B. H. Haggin, rejecting more mainstream views, argued in his various guides to recorded music that Brahms was at his best in such works and much less successful in larger forms. Among the most cherished of these lighter works by Brahms are his sets of popular dances—the Hungarian Dances, the Waltzes, Op. 39, for piano duet, and the Liebeslieder Waltzes for vocal quartet and piano—and some of his many songs, notably the Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4 (published in 1868). This last was written (to a folk text) to celebrate the birth of a son to Brahms's friend Bertha Faber and is universally known as Brahms's Lullaby.

Style and influences[link]

Brahms in mid-career

Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works – in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. Thus many admirers (though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and "pure music", as opposed to the "New German" embrace of programme music.

Brahms venerated Beethoven: in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. Brahms's First Symphony bears strongly the influence of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, as the two works are both in a formidable C minor, and end in the struggle towards a C major triumph. The main theme of the finale of the First Symphony is also reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, and when this resemblance was pointed out to Brahms, he replied that any ass – jeder Esel – could see that. In 1876, when the work was premiered in Vienna, it was immediately hailed as "Beethoven's Tenth". However, the similarity of Brahms's music to that of late Beethoven had first been noted as early as November 1853, in a letter from Albert Dietrich to Ernst Naumann.^[13][14]

A German Requiem was partially inspired by his mother's death in 1865 (at which time he composed a funeral march that was to become the basis of Part Two, Denn alles Fleisch), but it also incorporates material from a symphony which he started in 1854 but abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt. He once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann". The first movement of this abandoned Symphony was re-worked as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto.

Brahms also loved the Classical composers Mozart and Haydn. He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and edited performing editions. He studied the music of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz, Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel, and, especially, Johann Sebastian Bach. His friends included leading musicologists, and, with Friedrich Chrysander, he edited an edition of the works of François Couperin. Brahms also edited works by C. P. E. and W. F. Bach. He looked to older music for inspiration in the art of counterpoint; the themes of some of his works are modelled on Baroque sources such as Bach's The Art of Fugue in the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1 or the same composer's Cantata No. 150 in the passacaglia theme of the Fourth Symphony's finale.

The early Romantic composers also had a major influence on Brahms, particularly Schumann, who encouraged Brahms as a young composer. During his stay in Vienna in 1862–63, Brahms became particularly interested in the music of Franz Schubert.^[15] The latter's influence may be identified in works by Brahms dating from the period, such as the two piano quartets Op. 25 and Op. 26, and the Piano Quintet which alludes to Schubert's String Quintet and Grand Duo for piano four hands.^[15][16] The influence of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Brahms is less obvious, although occasionally one can find in his works what seems to be an allusion to one of theirs (for example, Brahms's Scherzo, Op. 4, alludes to Chopin's Scherzo in B-flat minor;^[17] the scherzo movement in Brahms's Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 5, alludes to the finale of Mendelssohn's Piano Trio in C minor).^[18]

Brahms considered giving up composition when it seemed that other composers' innovations in extended tonality would result in the rule of tonality being broken altogether. Although Wagner became fiercely critical of Brahms as the latter grew in stature and popularity, he was enthusiastically receptive of the early Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel; Brahms himself, according to many sources (Swafford, 1999), deeply admired Wagner's music, confining his ambivalence only to the dramaturgical precepts of Wagner's theory.

Brahms wrote settings for piano and voice of 144 German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life. His Hungarian Dances were among his most profitable compositions.

Brahms and religion[link]

Brahms's personal views tended to be humanistic and sceptical, though one of his musical influences was undoubtedly the Bible as rendered in German by Martin Luther. His Requiem employs biblical texts to speak words of comfort to the bereaved while generally omitting statements concerning salvation or immortality. Composer Walter Niemann declared "The fact that Brahms began his creative activity with the German folk song and closed with the Bible reveals... the true religious creed of this great man of the people." Biographers and critics more often understand Brahms's appreciation of Lutheran tradition as cultural more than existential.^[19] When asked by conductor Karl Reinthaler to add additional sectarian text to his German Requiem, Brahms responded, "As far as the text is concerned, I confess that I would gladly omit even the word German and instead use Human; also with my best knowledge and will I would dispense with passages like John 3:16. On the other hand, I have chosen one thing or another because I am a musician, because I needed it, and because with my venerable authors I can't delete or dispute anything. But I had better stop before I say too much."

There is reason to believe that Brahms was a religious freethinker. Being a star of his age, he would frequently say deceptive things to the public. This means that the most reliable accounts on Brahms's innermost feelings may come from the people in the close circle around him. Among these was the devout Catholic Antonín Dvořák, the closest Brahms ever came to having a protégé. In a letter, Dvořák disclosed his concerns regarding Brahms's religious views: "Such a man, such a fine soul—and he believes in nothing! He believes in nothing!"^[20]

The question of Brahms and religiosity has been controversial and elicited accusations of fraud. One example is the book Talks With Great Composers, released in the 1950s by Arthur Abell, which contains an unconfirmed interview with Brahms and Joseph Joachim, replete with biblical references. The interview has been declared fraudulent by Brahms biographer Jan Swafford.^[5]

Influence[link]

Brahms's point of view looked both backward and forward; his output was often bold in its exploration of harmony and rhythm. As a result, he was an influence on composers of both conservative and modernist tendencies. Within his lifetime, his idiom left an imprint on several composers within his personal circle, who strongly admired his music, such as Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Robert Fuchs, and Julius Röntgen, as well as on Gustav Jenner, who was Brahms's only formal composition pupil. Antonín Dvořák, who received substantial assistance from Brahms, deeply admired his music and was influenced by it in several works, such as the Symphony No. 7 in D minor and the F minor Piano Trio. Features of the 'Brahms style' were absorbed in a more complex synthesis with other contemporary (chiefly Wagnerian) trends by Hans Rott, Wilhelm Berger, Max Reger and Franz Schmidt, whereas the British composers Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar and the Swede Wilhelm Stenhammar all testified to learning much from Brahms's example. As Elgar said, "I look at the Third Symphony of Brahms, and I feel like a pygmy."^[21]

Ferruccio Busoni's early music shows much Brahmsian influence, and Brahms took an interest in him, though Busoni later tended to disparage Brahms. Towards the end of his life, Brahms offered substantial encouragement to Ernő Dohnányi and also to Alexander von Zemlinsky. Their early chamber works (and those of Béla Bartók, who was friendly with Dohnányi) show a thoroughgoing absorption of the Brahmsian idiom. Zemlinsky, moreover, was in turn the teacher of Arnold Schoenberg, and Brahms was apparently impressed by two movements of Schoenberg's early Quartet in D major which Zemlinsky showed him. In 1933, Schoenberg wrote an essay "Brahms the Progressive" (re-written 1947), which drew attention to Brahms's fondness for motivic saturation and irregularities of rhythm and phrase; in his last book (Structural Functions of Harmony, 1948), he analysed Brahms's "enriched harmony" and exploration of remote tonal regions. These efforts paved the way for a re-evaluation of Brahms's reputation in the 20th century. Schoenberg went so far as to orchestrate one of Brahms's piano quartets. Schoenberg's pupil Anton Webern, in his 1933 lectures, posthumously published under the title The Path to the New Music, claimed Brahms as one who had anticipated the developments of the Second Viennese School, and Webern's own Op. 1, an orchestral passacaglia, is clearly in part a homage to, and development of, the variation techniques of the passacaglia-finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.

Brahms was honoured by the German Hall of Fame, the Walhalla memorial. On 14 September 2000, he was introduced there as the 126th "rühmlich ausgezeichneter Teutscher" and 13th composer among them, with a bust by sculptor Milan Knobloch.^[22]

Personality[link]

Like Beethoven, Brahms was fond of nature and often went walking in the woods around Vienna. He often brought penny candy with him to hand out to children. To adults, Brahms was often brusque and sarcastic, and he sometimes alienated other people. His pupil Gustav Jenner wrote, "Brahms has acquired, not without reason, the reputation for being a grump, even though few could also be as lovable as he."^[23] He also had predictable habits, which were noted by the Viennese press, such as his daily visit to his favourite "Red Hedgehog" tavern in Vienna, and his habit of walking with his hands firmly behind his back, which led to a caricature of him in this pose walking alongside a red hedgehog. Those who remained his friends were very loyal to him, however, and he reciprocated with equal loyalty and generosity.

Brahms had amassed a small fortune in the second half of his career, around 1860, when his works sold widely. But despite his wealth, he lived very simply, with a modest apartment – a mess of music papers and books – and a single housekeeper who cleaned and cooked for him. He was often the butt of jokes for his long beard, his cheap clothes and often not wearing socks, etc. Brahms gave away large sums of money to friends and to aid various musical students, often with the term of strict secrecy. Brahms' domicile was hit during World War II, destroying his piano and other possessions that were still kept there for posterity by the Viennese.^[2]

Johann Strauss II (left) and Johannes Brahms (right) photographed in Vienna

Brahms was a lifelong friend of Johann Strauss II, though they were very different as composers. Brahms even struggled to get to the Theater an der Wien in Vienna for the premiere of Strauss's operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft in 1897 before his death. Perhaps the greatest tribute that Brahms paid to Strauss was his remark that he would have given anything to have written The Blue Danube waltz. An old anecdote recounts that when Strauss's wife Adele asked Brahms to autograph her fan, he wrote the first few notes of the "Blue Danube" waltz, and then wrote the words "Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms!" underneath.

Brahms was an extreme perfectionist. He destroyed many early works – including a Violin Sonata he had performed with Reményi and violinist Ferdinand David – and once claimed to have destroyed 20 string quartets before he issued his official First in 1873. Over the course of several years, he changed an original project for a symphony in D minor into his first piano concerto. In another instance of devotion to detail, he laboured over the official First Symphony for almost fifteen years, from about 1861 to 1876. Even after its first few performances, Brahms destroyed the original slow movement and substituted another before the score was published. (A conjectural restoration of the original slow movement has been published by Robert Pascall.) Another factor that contributed to Brahms's perfectionism was that Schumann had announced early on that Brahms was to become the next great composer like Beethoven, a prediction that Brahms was determined to live up to. This prediction hardly added to the composer's self-confidence, and may have contributed to the delay in producing the First Symphony. However, Clara Schumann noted before that Brahms's First Symphony was a product that was not reflective of Brahms's real nature. She felt that the final exuberant movement was "too brilliant", as she was encouraged by the dark and tempestuous opening movement she had seen in an early draft. However, she recanted in accepting the Second Symphony, which has often been seen in modern times as one of his sunniest works. Other contemporaries, however, found the first movement especially dark, and Reinhold Brinkmann, in a study of Symphony No. 2 in relation to 19th century ideas of melancholy, has published a revealing letter from Brahms to the composer and conductor Vinzenz Lachner in which Brahms confesses to the melancholic side of his nature and comments on specific features of the movement that reflect this.

International Johannes Brahms Competition[link]

Further reading[link]

• Deiters/Newmarch. (1888). Johannes Brahms: A Biographical Sketch. Fisher Unwin (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00479-4)
• Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, ISBN 0-19-816234-0 by Brahms himself, edited by Styra Avins, translated by Josef Eisinger (1998). A biography by way of comprehensive footnotes to a comprehensive collection of Brahms's letters (some translated into English for the first time). Elucidates some previously contentious matters, such as Brahms's reasons for declining the Cambridge invitation.
• Brahms, His Life and Work, by Karl Geiringer, photographs by Irene Geiringer (1987, ISBN 0-306-80223-6). A biog and discussion of his musical output, supplemented by, and cross-referenced with, the body of correspondence sent to Brahms.
• Charles Rosen discusses a number of Brahms's imitations of Beethoven in Chapter 9 of his Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (2000; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-17730-4).
• Brahms by Malcolm MacDonald is a biography and also discussion of virtually everything Brahms composed, along with chapters examining his position in Romantic music, his devotion to Early Music, and his influence on later composers. (Dent 'Master Musicians' series, 1990; 2nd edition Oxford, 2001, ISBN 0-19-816484-X
• Johannes Brahms: A Biography, by Jan Swafford. A comprehensive (752 pages) look at the life and works of Brahms. (1999; Vintage, ISBN 0-679-74582-3)
• Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms, by Reinhold Brinkmann, translated by Peter Palmer. An analysis of Symphony No.2 and meditation of its position in Brahms's career and in relation to 19th century ideas of melancholy. (1995, Harvard, ISBN 0-674-51175-1)
• Johannes Brahms, His Work & Personality, by Hans Gal (Translated by Joseph Stein). Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1963.
• The Music of Brahms, by Michael Musgrave. Oxford, 1985 ISBN 0-19-816401-7

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Johannes Brahms

• Brahms Institut, Lübeck Academy of Music
• The Lied and Art Song Texts Page created and maintained by Emily Ezust Texts of the Lieder of Brahms with translations in various languages.
• "What's late about late Brahms?": an article in the TLS by Peter Williams, 7 November 2007
• Brahms at the Piano. Information about the recording made by Thomas Edison in 1889 of Brahms playing part of his Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor.
• Johannes Brahms: list of works from http://www.johannesbrahms.org
• Photo of Brahms as a young man in 1853
• Brahms Listening Guides. A collection in progress of detailed guides to the composer's works, linked to specific recordings but also including measure numbers
• Listings of live performances at Bachtrack
• johannes brahms biography
• Works by or about Johannes Brahms in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Johannes Brahms in the German National Library catalogue (German)

Sheet music[link]

• Complete collection of scores at the Brahms Institut in Breitkopf & Härtel or Simrock editions; work details
• Brahms’ scores – selection of printable works.
• www.kreusch-sheet-music.net Brahms's piano works
• Free scores of Brahms Lieder and orchestral works in GIF format from the Variations Project at Indiana University. Last accessed 14 August 2008.
• Free scores by Brahms at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Johannes Brahms in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Works by Johannes Brahms at Project Gutenberg
• Free scores by Johannes Brahms in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores Mutopia Project

Recordings[link]

• Free audio MP3 of some Brahms's works OnClassical – Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, 1.0 licensed
• Johannes Brahms – Violin Sonatas MP3 Creative Commons Recording
• Fünf Gesänge, Op. 104 (Brahms): Free MP3s (Op. 42, Op. 93a, Op. 104 and Op. 52)
• Kunst der Fuge: Johannes Brahms – MIDI files Daily limit of 5 files.
• Works by Brahms performed on virtual organs
• Classic Cat – Brahms – mp3s
• Performances of works by Johannes Brahms in MIDI and MP3 formats at Logos Virtual Library

Crop of a carte de visite photo of Hector Berlioz by Franck, Paris, ca. 1855

Hector Berlioz^[1] (pronounced: [ɛktɔʁ bɛʁˈljoːz]; 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians.^[2] He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.^[3]

Life and career[link]

Early years[link]

Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André^[4] in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. His father, a respected^[5] provincial physician^[6] and scholar, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education.^[5] His father, Louis-Joseph Berlioz, was an atheist,^[6] with a liberal outlook;^[7] his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was an orthodox Roman Catholic.^[5][6] He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood.^[8] The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.^[7]

Berlioz was not a child prodigy, unlike some other famous composers of the time; he began studying music at age 12, when he began writing small compositions and arrangements. As a result of his father's discouragement, he never learned to play the piano, a peculiarity he later described as both beneficial and detrimental.^[9] He became proficient at guitar, flageolet and flute.^[7][10] He learned harmony by textbooks alone—he was not formally trained.^[7][10] The majority of his early compositions were romances and chamber pieces.^[10][11]

While yet at age 12, as recalled in his Mémoires, he experienced his first passion for a woman, an 18-year-old next door neighbour named Estelle Fornier (née Dubœuf).^[5][12] Berlioz appears to have been innately Romantic, this characteristic manifesting itself in his love affairs, adoration of great romantic literature,^[13] and his weeping at passages by Virgil ^[7] (by age twelve he had learned to read Virgil in Latin and translate it into French under his father's tutelage), Shakespeare, and Beethoven.

Student life[link]

Paris[link]

Drawing of Harriet Smithson as Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet

In March 1821, he graduated from high school in Grenoble, and in October, at age 18, Berlioz was sent to Paris to study medicine,^[6][14] a field for which he had no interest and, later, outright disgust after viewing a human corpse being dissected.^[5][6] (He gives a colorful account in his Mémoires.)^[15] He began to take advantage of the institutions he now had access to in the city, including his first visit to the Paris Opéra, where he saw Iphigénie en Tauride by Christoph Willibald Gluck, a composer whom he came to admire above all, jointly alongside Ludwig van Beethoven.

He also began to visit the Paris Conservatoire library, seeking out scores of Gluck's operas and making personal copies of parts of them. He recalled in his Mémoires his first encounter with Luigi Cherubini, the Conservatoire's then music director. Cherubini attempted to throw the impetuous Berlioz out of the library since he was not a formal music student at that time.^[16][17] Berlioz also heard two operas by Gaspare Spontini, a composer who influenced him through their friendship, and whom he later championed when working as a critic. From then on, he devoted himself to composition. He was encouraged in his endeavors by Jean-François Le Sueur, director of the Royal Chapel and professor at the Conservatoire. In 1823, he wrote his first article—a letter to the journal Le corsaire defending Spontini's La vestale. By now he had composed several works including Estelle et Némorin and Le passage de la mer Rouge (The Crossing of the Red Sea) – both now lost – the latter of which convinced Lesueur to take Berlioz on as one of his private pupils.^[5]

Despite his parents' disapproval,^[13] in 1824 he formally abandoned his medical studies^[6] to pursue a career in music. He composed the Messe solennelle. This work was rehearsed and revised after the rehearsal but not performed until the following year. Berlioz later claimed to have burnt the score,^[18] but it was re-discovered in 1991.^[19][20] Later that year or in 1825, he began to compose the opera Les francs-juges, which was completed the following year but went unperformed. The work survives only in fragments;^[21] the overture has been much recorded and is sometimes played in concert.

In 1826 he began attending the Conservatoire^[14] to study composition under Le Sueur and Anton Reicha. He also submitted a fugue to the Prix de Rome, but was eliminated in the primary round. Winning the prize would become an obsession until he finally won it in 1830, with his new cantata every year until he succeeded at his fourth attempt. The reason for this interest in the prize was not just academic recognition. The prize included a five year pension^[22]-much needed income for the struggling composer. In 1827 he composed the Waverly overture after Walter Scott's^[14] Waverley novels. He also began working as a chorus singer at a vaudeville theatre to contribute towards an income.^[6][12] Later that year, he attended a production by a traveling English theater company at the Odéon theatre with the Irish-born actress Harriet Smithson playing Ophelia and Juliet in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. He immediately became infatuated by both actress^[13] and playwright.^[14] Prone to violent impulses, Berlioz began flooding her hotel room with love letters which both confused and terrified her. Predictably, his advances on her went nowhere.^[6]

In 1828 Berlioz heard Beethoven's third and fifth symphonies performed at the Paris Conservatoire – an experience that he found overwhelming.^[23] He also read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust for the first time (in French translation), which would become the inspiration for Huit scènes de Faust (his Opus 1), much later re-developed as La damnation de Faust. He also came into contact with Beethoven's string quartets^[24] and piano sonatas, and recognised the importance of these immediately. He began to study English so that he could read Shakespeare. Around the same time, he also began to write musical criticism.^[6]

He began and finished composition of the Symphonie fantastique in 1830, a work which would bring Berlioz much fame and notoriety. He entered into a relationship with – and subsequently became engaged to – Camille Moke, despite the symphony being inspired by Berlioz's obsession with Harriet Smithson. As his fourth cantata for submittal to the Prix de Rome neared completion, the July Revolution broke out. "I was finishing my cantata when the revolution broke out", he recorded in his Mémoires, "I dashed off the final pages of my orchestral score to the sound of stray bullets coming over the roofs and pattering on the wall outside my window. On the 29th I had finished, and was free to go out and roam about Paris 'till morning, pistol in hand".^[25] Shortly later, he finally won the prize^[26][27] with the cantata Sardanapale. He also arranged the French national anthem La Marseillaise and composed an overture to Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was the first of his pieces to play at the Paris Opéra, but an hour before the performance began, quite ironically, a sudden storm created the worst rain in Paris for 50 years, meaning the performance was almost deserted.^[28] Berlioz met Franz Liszt who was also attending the concert. This proved to be the beginning of a long friendship. Liszt would later transcribe the entire Symphonie fantastique for piano to enable more people to hear it.

Italy[link]

Lithograph of Berlioz by August Prinzhofer, Vienna, 1845. Berlioz considered this to be a good likeness.

On 30 December 1831, Berlioz left France for Rome, prompted by a clause in the Prix de Rome which required winners to spend two years studying there. Although none of his major works were actually written in Italy, his travels and experiences there would later influence and inspire much of his music. This is most evident in the thematic aspects of his music, particularly Harold en Italie (1834), a work inspired by Lord Byron's Childe Harold. Berlioz later recalled that his, "intention was to write a series of orchestral scenes, in which the solo viola would be involved as a more or less active participant [with the orchestra] while retaining its own character. By placing it among the poetic memories formed from my wanderings in Abruzzi, I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron's Childe-Harold."^[29]

While in Rome, he stayed at the French Academy in the Villa Medici. He found the city distasteful, writing, "Rome is the most stupid and prosaic city I know; it is no place for anyone with head or heart."^[7] He therefore made an effort to leave the city as often as possible, making frequent trips to the surrounding country. During one of these trips, while Berlioz enjoyed an afternoon of sailing, he encountered a group of Carbonari. These were members of a secret society of Italian patriots based in France with the aim of creating a unified Italy.^[30]

During his stay in Italy, he received a letter from the mother of his fiancée informing him that she had called off their engagement. Instead her daughter was to marry Camille Pleyel (son of Ignaz Pleyel), a rich piano manufacturer. Enraged, Berlioz decided to return to Paris and take revenge on Pleyel, his fiancée, and her mother by killing all three of them. He created an elaborate plan, going so far as to purchase a dress, wig and hat with a veil (with which he was to disguise himself as a woman in order to gain entry to their home).^[31] He even stole a pair of double-barrelled pistols from the Academy to kill them with, saving a single shot for himself.^[31] Planning out his action with great care, Berlioz purchased phials of strychnine and laudanum^[31] to use as poisons in the event of a pistol jamming.

Despite this careful planning, Berlioz failed to carry through with the plot. By the time he had reached Genoa, he realised he left his disguise in the side pocket of a carriage during his journey. After arriving in Nice (at that time, part of Italy), he reconsidered the entire plan, deciding it to be inappropriate and foolish.^[31] He sent a letter to the Academy in Rome, requesting that he be allowed to return. This request was accepted,^[12] and he prepared for his trip back.

Before returning to Rome, Berlioz composed the overtures to King Lear in Nice^[8] and Rob Roy,^[10] and began work on a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique, Le retour à la vie (The Return to Life),^[32] renamed Lélio in 1855.

Upon his return to Rome, Berlioz posed for a portrait painting by Émile Signol (completed in April 1832), which Berlioz did not consider to be a good likeness of himself.^[33]

Berlioz continued to travel throughout his stay in Italy. He visited Pompeii, Naples, Milan, Tivoli, Florence, Turin and Genoa. Italy was important in providing Berlioz with experiences that would be impossible in France. At times, it was as if he himself was actually experiencing the Romantic tales of Byron in person; consorting with brigands, corsairs, and peasants.^[7] He returned to Paris in November 1832.

Decade of productivity[link]

Between 1830 and 1840, Berlioz wrote many of his most popular and enduring works.^[20] The foremost of these are the Symphonie fantastique (1830), Harold en Italie (1834), the Grande messe des morts (Requiem) (1837) and Roméo et Juliette (1839).

Painting of a young Berlioz by Émile Signol, 1832.

On Berlioz's return to Paris, a concert including Symphonie fantastique (which had been extensively revised in Italy)^[34] and Le retour à la vie was performed, with among others in attendance: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Heinrich Heine, Niccolò Paganini, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, George Sand, Alfred de Vigny, Théophile Gautier, Jules Janin and Harriet Smithson. At this time, Berlioz also met playwright Ernest Legouvé who became a lifelong friend. A few days after the performance, Berlioz and Harriet were finally introduced and entered into a relationship. Despite Berlioz not understanding spoken English and Harriet not knowing any French,^[12] on 3 October 1833, they married in a civil ceremony at the British Embassy with Liszt as one of the witnesses.^[8] The following year their only child, Louis Berlioz, was born – a source of initial disappointment, anxiety and eventual pride to his father.^[7] Unfortunately for Berlioz, he was soon to discover that living under the same roof as the Beloved was far less appealing than worship from afar. Their marriage proved a disaster as both were prone to violent personality clashes and outbursts of temper.

In 1834, virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini commissioned Berlioz to compose a viola concerto,^[14] intending to premiere it as soloist. This became the symphony for viola and orchestra, Harold en Italie. Paganini changed his mind about playing the piece himself when he saw the first sketches for the work; he expressed misgivings over its outward lack of complexity.^{[citation needed]} The premiere of the piece was held later that year. After initially rejecting the piece, Paganini, as Berlioz's Mémoires recount, knelt before Berlioz in front of the orchestra after hearing it for the first time and proclaimed him a genius and heir to Beethoven.^[35][36] The next day he sent Berlioz a gift of 20,000 francs,^[8][12] the generosity of which left Berlioz uncharacteristically lost for words.^[37] Around this time, Berlioz decided to conduct most of his own concerts, tired as he was of conductors who did not understand his music. This decision launched what was to become a lucrative and creatively fruitful career in conducting music both by himself and other leading composers.

Berlioz composed the opera Benvenuto Cellini in 1836. He was to spend much effort and money in the following decades trying to have it performed successfully. Benvenuto Cellini was premiered at the Paris Opéra on September 10, but was a failure due to a hostile audience.^[26][32] One of his most enduring pieces followed Benvenuto Cellini—the Grande messe des morts, first performed at Les Invalides^[38] in December of that year.^[39] Its gestation was difficult; because it was a state-commissioned work^[27][36] much bureaucracy had to be endured. There was also opposition from Luigi Cherubini, who was at the time the music director of the Paris Conservatoire. Cherubini felt that a government-sponsored commission should naturally be offered to himself rather than the young Berlioz, who was considered an eccentric.^[5] Regardless of the animosity between the two composers, Berlioz learned from and admired Cherubini's music,^[40] such as the requiem.^[41]

Thanks to the money Paganini had given him after hearing Harold, Berlioz was able to pay off Harriet's and his own debts and suspend his work as a critic. This allowed him to focus on writing the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette for voices, chorus and orchestra. Berlioz later identified the "love scene" from this choral symphony, as he called it, as his favourite composition.^{[citation needed]} (He considered his Requiem his best work, however: "If I were threatened with the destruction of the whole of my works save one, I should crave mercy for the Messe des morts".)^[42] It was a success both at home and abroad, unlike later great vocal works such as La damnation de Faust and Les Troyens, which were commercial failures. Roméo et Juliette was premiered in a series of three concerts later in 1839 to distinguished audiences, one including Richard Wagner.

The same year Roméo premiered, Berlioz was appointed Conservateur Adjoint (Deputy Librarian) Paris Conservatoire Library. Berlioz supported himself and his family by writing musical criticism for Paris publications, primarily Journal des débats for over thirty years, and also Gazette musicale and Le rénovateur.^[10] While his career as a critic and writer^[14] provided him with a comfortable income, and he had an obvious talent for writing, he came to detest^[20][26][43] the amount of time spent attending performances to review, as it severely limited his free time to promote his own composition^[14] and produce more compositions. Despite his prominent position in musical criticism, he did not use his articles to promote his own works.^[32]

Mid-life[link]

Painting of Berlioz by Gustave Courbet, 1850.

After the 1830s, Berlioz found it increasingly difficult to achieve recognition for his music in France. As a result, he began to travel to other countries more often. Between 1842 and 1863 he traveled to Germany, England, Austria, Russia and elsewhere,^[10][13] where he conducted operas and orchestral music – both his own and others'. During his lifetime, Berlioz was as famous a conductor as he was as a composer.^[43]

In 1840, the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale was commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the July Revolution of 1830. Owing to a strict deadline, it was performed only days after it was completed. The performance was held in the open air on July 28, conducted by Berlioz himself, at the Place de la Bastille. The piece was difficult to hear owing to the crowds and timpani of the drum corps. This was later remedied by a concert performance a month later, and Wagner voiced his approval of the work.^[36] The following year he began but later abandoned the composition of a new opera, La nonne sanglante; some fragments survive.^[44]

In 1841, Berlioz wrote recitatives for a production of Weber's Der Freischütz at the Paris Opéra and also orchestrated Weber's Invitation to the Dance to add ballet music to it (he titled the ballet L'Invitation à la valse,^[45] and the original piano piece has often been mistitled as a result). Later that year Berlioz finished composing the song cycle Les nuits d'été for piano and voices (later to be orchestrated). He also entered into a relationship with singer Marie Recio who would become his second wife.

In 1842, Berlioz embarked on a concert tour of Brussels, Belgium from September to October. In December he began a tour in Germany which continued until the middle of next year. Towns visited included Berlin, Hanover, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Weimar, Hechingen, Darmstadt, Dresden, Brunswick, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Mannheim. In Leipzig he met Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann, the latter of whom had written an enthusiastic article on the Symphonie fantastique. He also met Heinrich Marschner in Hanover, Wagner in Dresden and Giacomo Meyerbeer in Berlin.^[44] Back in Paris, Berlioz began to compose the concert overture Le carnaval romain, based on^[14] music from Benvenuto Cellini. The work was finished the following year and was premiered shortly after. Nowadays it is among the most popular of his overtures.

In early 1844, Berlioz's highly influential^[6][46] Treatise on Instrumentation was published for the first time. At this time Berlioz was producing several serialisations for music journals which would eventually be collected into his Mémoires and Les soirées de l’orchestre (Evenings with the Orchestra).^[44] He took a recuperation trip to Nice late that year, during which he composed the concert overture La tour de Nice (The Tower of Nice), later to be revised and renamed Le Corsaire.^[44] With their marriage a failure, Berlioz and Harriet Smithson separated, the latter having become an alcoholic due to the collapse of her acting career.^[6] Berlioz moved in with a mistress Marie Recio. He continued to provide for Harriet for the rest of her life. He also met Mikhail Glinka (whom he had initially met in Italy and who remained a close friend), who was in Paris between 1844-5 and persuaded Berlioz to embark on one of two tours of Russia. Berlioz's joke "If the Emperor of Russia wants me, then I am up for sale" was taken seriously.^[8] The two tours of Russia (the second in 1867) proved so financially successful^[8] that they secured Berlioz's finances despite the large amounts of money he was losing in writing unsuccessful compositions. In 1845 he embarked on his first large-scale concert tour of France. He also attended and wrote a report on the inauguration of a statue to Beethoven in Bonn,^[44] and began composing La damnation de Faust, incorporating the earlier Huit scènes de Faust. On his return to Paris, the recently completed La damnation de Faust was premiered at the Opéra-Comique, but after two performances, the run was discontinued and the work was a popular failure^[47] (perhaps owing to its halfway status between opera and cantata), despite receiving generally favourable critical reviews.^[48] This left Berlioz heavily in debt^[44] to the tune of 5-6000 francs.^[48] Becoming ever more disenchanted with his prospects in France, he wrote:

Great success, great profit, great performances, etc. etc. ... France is becoming more and more philistine towards music, and the more I see of foreign lands the less I love my own. Art, in France, is dead; so I must go where it is still to be found. In England apparently there has been a real revolution in the musical consciousness of the nation in the last ten years. We shall see.^[7]

In 1847, during a seven-month visit to England, he was appointed conductor at the London Drury Lane Theatre^[44] by its then-musical director, the popular French musician Louis Antoine Jullien. He was impressed with its quality when he first heard the orchestra perform at a promenade concert.^[49] In London he also learnt that he knew far more English than he had supposed, although still did not understand half of what was said in conversation.^[49] He began writing his Mémoires. During his stay in England, the February Revolution broke out in France. Berlioz arrived back in France in 1848, only to be informed that his father had died shortly after his return. He went back to his birthplace to mourn his father along with his sisters.^[44] Meanwhile, Harriet's health was declining due to alcohol abuse and she suffered a series of strokes that left her an invalid. Berlioz paid for four servants to look after her on a permanent basis and visited her almost daily.^[44] He began composition of his Te Deum.

In 1850 he became head librarian at the Paris Conservatoire, the only official post he would ever hold, and a valuable source of income.^[44] During this year Berlioz also conducted an experiment on his many vocal critics. He composed a work entitled the Shepherd's Farewell and performed it in two concerts^[50] under the guise of it being by a composer named Pierre Ducré. This composer was of course a fictional construct by Berlioz.^[51] The trick worked, and the critics praised the work by 'Ducré' and claimed it was an example that Berlioz would do well to follow. "Berlioz could never do that!", he recounts in his Mémoires, was one of the comments.^[50] Berlioz later incorporated the piece into La fuite en Egypte from L'enfance du Christ.^[52] In 1852, Liszt revived Benvenuto Cellini^[32] in what was to become the "Weimar version" of the opera, containing modifications made with the approval of Berlioz.^[53] The performances were the first since the disastrous premiere of 1838. Berlioz travelled to London in the following year to stage it at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden but withdrew it after one performance owing to the hostile reception.^[7] It was during this visit that he witnessed a charity performance involving six thousand five hundred children singing in St Paul's Cathedral.^[54] Harriet Smithson died in 1854. L'enfance du Christ was completed later that year and was well-received upon its premiere. Unusually for a late Berlioz work, it appears to have remained popular long after his death.^[47] In October, Berlioz married Marie Recio. In a letter written to his son, he said that having lived with her for so long, it was his duty to do so. In early 1855 Le retour à la vie was revised and renamed Lélio. Shortly afterwards, the Te Deum received its premiere with Berlioz conducting. During a short visit to London, Berlioz had a long conversation with Wagner over dinner. A second edition of Treatise on Instrumentation was also published, with a new chapter detailing aspects of conducting.^[44]

Photograph of Berlioz by Nadar, January 1857

[edit] Les Troyens

In 1856 Berlioz visited Weimar where he attended a performance of Benvenuto Cellini, conducted by Liszt. His time with Liszt also highlighted Berlioz's increasing lack of appreciation for Wagner's music, much to Liszt's annoyance.^[55]

Berlioz was convinced by Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein – with whom he had corresponded for some time – that he should begin to compose a new opera. This work would eventually become Les Troyens,^[44] a monumental grand opera with a libretto (which he wrote himself) based on Books Two and Four of Virgil's Aeneid. The idea of creating an opera based on the Aeneid had already been in his mind several years,^[7] by the time Sayn-Wittgenstein had approached him, and despite a long disillusionment, his creative flame seems to have remained lit. Les Troyens proved to be a very personal work for Berlioz, as it paid homage to his first literary love, whom he still cherished- even after his discoveries of Shakespeare and Goethe.^[56] The opera was planned around five acts, similar in size to the grand opera of Meyerbeer. It was composed with the Paris Opéra in mind, a most prestigious venue. Berlioz's chances of securing a production in which his work would receive attention equal to its merits were negligible from the start – a fact he must have been aware of.^[7][56] Despite these grim prospects, Berlioz saw the work through to its completion in 1858.

The onset of an intestinal illness which would plague Berlioz for the rest of his life had now become apparent to him.^[44] During a visit to Baden-Baden, Edouard Bénazet commissioned a new opera from Berlioz, but due to the illness that opera was never written.^[44] Two years later, however, Berlioz instead began work on Béatrice et Bénédict, which Bénazet accepted;^[7] it was completed on 25 February 1862. As for Les Troyens, in 1860 the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris had agreed to stage it, only to reject it the following year. It was soon picked up again by the Paris Opéra.^[44]

Marie Recio, Berlioz's wife, died unexpectedly of a stroke at the age of 48, on 13 June 1862. Berlioz soon met a young woman named Amélie^[57] at Montmartre Cemetery, and though she was only 24, they developed a close relationship despite a 35-year age difference.^[44]

The first performances of Béatrice et Bénédict were held at Baden-Baden on 9th and August 11. The work had had extensive rehearsals for many months, and despite problems Berlioz found in making the musicians play as delicately as he would like, and even discovering that the orchestra pit was too small before the premiere, the work was a success.^[58] Berlioz later remarked that his conducting was much improved owing to the considerable pain he was in on the day, allowing him to be "emotionally detached" and "less excitable".^[58] Béatrice was sung by Madame Charton-Demeur. Both she and her husband were staunch supporters of Berlioz's music, and she was present at Berlioz's deathbed.

Les Troyens was dropped by the Paris Opéra with the excuse that it was too expensive to stage; it was replaced by Wagner's Tannhäuser.^[12] The work was attacked by his opponents for its length and demands, and with memories of the failure of Benvenuto Cellini at the Opéra were still fresh.^[7] It was then accepted by the new director of the recently re-built Théâtre-Lyrique. In 1863 Berlioz published his last signed article for the Journal des débats.^[44] After resigning, an act which should have raised his spirits given how much he detested his job, his disillusionment became even stronger.^[7] He also busied himself judging entrants for the Prix de Rome – arguing successfully for the eventual winner, the 21 year old Jules Massenet.^[59] Amélie requested that they end their relationship, which Berlioz did, to his despair.^[44] The staging of Les Troyens was fraught with difficulties when performed in a truncated form at the Théâtre-Lyrique. It was eventually premiered on November 4 and ran for 21 performances until December 20. Madame Charton-Demeur sang the role of Didon. It was first performed in Paris without cuts as recently as 2003 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.^[60]

Later years[link]

In 1864 Berlioz was made Officier de la Légion d'honneur. On August 22, Berlioz heard from a friend that Amélie, who had been suffering from poor health, had died at the age of 26. A week later, while walking in the Montmartre Cemetery, he discovered Amélie's grave: she had been dead for six months.^[44] By now, Berlioz was a lonely man. Most of his family and friends had died, including two of his sisters. Events like these became all too common in his later life, as his continued isolation from the musical scene increased as the focus shifted to Germany.^[7] He wrote:

Last photograph of Berlioz, 1868

I am in my 61st year; past hopes, past illusions, past high thoughts and lofty conceptions. My son is almost always far away from me. I am alone. My contempt for the folly and baseness of mankind, my hatred of its atrocious cruelty, have never been so intense. And I say hourly to Death: 'When you will'. Why does he delay?^[7]

Berlioz met Estelle Fornier – the object of his childhood affections – in Lyon for the first time in 40 years, and began a regular correspondence with her.^[44] Berlioz soon realised that he still longed for her, and eventually she had to inform him that as a married woman there was no possibility that they could become closer than friends.^[61] By 1865, an initial printing of 1200 copies of his Mémoires was completed. A few copies were distributed amongst his friends, but the bulk were, slightly morbidly, stored in his office at the Paris Conservatoire, to be sold upon his death.^[7] He travelled to Vienna in December 1866 to conduct the first complete performance there of La damnation de Faust. In 1867 Berlioz's son Louis, a merchant shipping captain, died^[10] of yellow fever^[6] in Havana.^[12] After learning this, Berlioz burnt a large number of documents and other mementos which he had accumulated during his life,^[44] keeping only a conducting baton given to him by Mendelssohn and a guitar given to him by Paganini.^[12] He then wrote his will. The intestinal pains had been gradually increasing, and had now spread to his stomach, and whole days were passed in agony. At times he experienced spasms in the street so intense that he could barely move.^[62] Later that year he embarked on his second concert tour of Russia, which would also be his last of any kind. The tour was extremely lucrative for him, so much so that Berlioz turned down an offer of 100,000 francs from American Steinway to perform in New York.^[8] In Saint Petersburg, Berlioz experienced a special pleasure at performing with the "first-rate" orchestra of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.^[8] He returned to Paris in 1868, exhausted, with his health damaged due to the Russian winter.^[12] He immediately traveled to Nice to recuperate in the Mediterranean climate, but slipped on some rocks by the sea shore, possibly due to a stroke, and had to return to Paris, where he lived as an invalid.^[12] In August 1868, he made his last trip to Grenoble where lived his sister and her family. Invited by Mayor Jean Vendre during three days of festivities for the inauguration of a statue of Napoleon, he presided a music festival.^[63]

On 8 March 1869,^[4] Berlioz died at his Paris^[46] home, No.4 rue de Calais, at 30 minutes past midday. He was surrounded by friends at the time. His funeral was held at the recently completed Église de la Trinité^[64] on March 11, and he was buried in Montmartre Cemetery with his two wives, who were exhumed and re-buried next to him. His last words were reputed to be "Enfin, on va jouer ma musique"^[43][65][66] ("At last, they are going to play my music").^[67]

Religious views[link]

Berlioz often stated in his letters that he was an atheist.^{[citation needed]} In a letter which was written shortly before his death, he wrote in regard to religion, "I believe nothing."^[68] The Catholic Encyclopedia, for its part, claims Berlioz as a Catholic, but appears to concede that he did not remain faithful to Catholicism.^[69]

Berlioz as a conductor[link]

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^[43] and brought him fame across Europe.^[10][13] He was considered by Charles Hallé, Hans von Bülow and others to be the greatest conductor of his era.^[70] 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,^[71] with their extended melodies^[43] and rhythmic complexity.^[36] He began with more enthusiasm than mastery,^[71] and was not formally trained,^[71] 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.^[70] One year later, according to Hallé, his movements were much more economical, enabling him to control more nuance in the music.^[70] 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.^[70] 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.^[70]

Despite this talent, Berlioz never held an employed position of conductor during his lifetime, forced to be content with only guest conducting. This was almost not the case. In late 1835, he was approached by the management of a new concert hall in Paris, the Gymnase Musical, and offered a position as their musical director.^[72] To Berlioz this was an ideal opportunity. Not only would it give him a large annual salary (between 6000 to 12,000 francs),^[72] but it would also give him a platform from which to perform his own music, and the music of fellow progressives. Berlioz accepted the offer, and signed the contract for the position.^[72] However, a new decree issued by the revolutionary government forced him to change his mind. The obstacle was one of the many restrictions that the revolutionary government had placed on the running of musical establishments, forbidding the performance of vocal music,^[72] so they did 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.^[72] 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^[73] and died with a copy of Berlioz's Treatise on Instrumentation on his bed.^[66] 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-Émile Inghelbrecht, Paul Paray, Charles Munch, André Cluytens, Pierre Boulez and Charles Dutoit.

Legacy[link]

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,^[74] instrumentation,^[75] and the depiction in music of programmatic and literary ideas, features central to musical Romanticism. He was considered extremely progressive for his day, and he, Wagner, and Liszt have been called the "Great Trinity of Progress" of 19th century Romanticism.^{[citation needed]} Richard Pohl, the German critic in Schumann's musical journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, called Berlioz "the true pathbreaker".^{[citation needed]} 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."^{[citation needed]} As Wagner here implies, Berlioz himself was indifferent to the idea of what was called "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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[76][77] 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".^[78]

During his centenary in 1903, while receiving attention from all leading musical reference books, he was still not generally accepted as being one of the great composers.^[54] 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,^[54] 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.^[79] The music of Berlioz enjoyed a revival during the 1960s and 1970s, due in large part to the efforts of French conductor Charles Munch and 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.^[80] 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,^[60] if still something of a rarity. Les Troyens was the first opera performed at the newly built Opéra Bastille in Paris on 17 March 1990 in a production claimed to be complete, but lacking the ballets.^[79]

In 2003, the bicentenary of Berlioz's birth, his achievements and status are much more widely recognised,^[81] and his music is viewed as both serious and original, rather than an eccentric novelty.^[54] Newspaper articles reported his colourful life with zeal, very many festivals dedicated to the composer were held,^[81][82] readings of his books^[83] and a one-hour French television dramatised biography^[84] 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,^[85] and broadcasts of his music increased.^[82] 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,^[81] also had a prominent website, listing events, publications and gatherings^[81] the domain of which has now lapsed. There was also a site maintained by the Association nationale Hector Berlioz.^[86] A proposal was made to remove his remains to the Panthéon, and while initially encouraged by French President Jacques Chirac,^[81][87] it was postponed by him, claimed to be because it was too shortly after Alexandre Dumas was moved there.^[88] He may have also been influenced by a political dispute over Berlioz's worthiness as a republican,^[66][75] since Berlioz, who regularly met kings and princes, had severely criticized the 1848 Revolution, speaking of the "odious and stupid republic".^{[citation needed]} 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.^[75] Since Chirac retired as President, the future of Berlioz's resting place is still unclear.^[88]

Peter Cornelius counted Berlioz as one of the Three Bs at the heights of classical music alongside Bach and Beethoven. Commemorations of Berlioz include the 2000-seat Opera Berlioz at the Corum arts centre in Montpellier, Berlioz Point in Antarctica and asteriod 69288 Berlioz.

Influences[link]

Hector Berlioz

Literature[link]

Berlioz had a keen affection for literature, and many of his best compositions are inspired by literary works. For Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz was inspired in part by Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. For La damnation de Faust, Berlioz drew on Goethe's Faust; for Harold en Italie, he drew on Byron's Childe Harold; for Benvenuto Cellini, he drew on Cellini's own autobiography. For Roméo et Juliette, Berlioz turned, of course, to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. For his magnum opus, the monumental opera Les Troyens, Berlioz turned to Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid. In his last opera, the comic opera Béatrice et Bénédict, Berlioz prepared a libretto based loosely on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. His composition "Tristia" (for orchestra and chorus) drew its inspiration from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Shakespeare[link]

In 1827, Berlioz watched Irish actress Harriet Smithson at the Odéon theatre playing Ophelia and Juliet in Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. This led to two intense infatuations. One was to Smithson, which would result in a disastrous marriage. The other was to Shakespeare, which would become a lifelong love.^[14] He followed the rest of the 1827 season closely, until the company moved to the Salle Favart, and began learning the plays from pocket translations on sale.^[89] Though the performances were in English, of which Berlioz knew virtually none, he was still able to grasp the grandeur and sublimnity of Shakespeare's language along with the richness of the plays' dramatic design.^[90]

The timing for these performances, not just for Berlioz' career but also for French Romanticism in general, could not have been more apt. Berlioz was on the verge of producing his most Romantic works—as were the writers Vigny, Dumas, Gautier and several others in attendance that night. Shakespeare served as a model for French Romanticism,^[91] with Hugo extolling Shakespeare as a challenge to French classicism and the model for the new Romantic theater.^[90]

Shakespeare for Berlioz represented the summit of poetic utterance, with the bard's veracity of dramatic expression and freedom from formal constraints resounding in the composer's spirit. More profoundly, Shakespeare became a source, by way of its dramatic truth, for Berlioz' fundamental notion of expressive truth;^[90] this was how he could call Romeo and Juliet "the supreme drama of my life."^[92] He read from the plays constantly, often aloud for anyone who would listen. He quoted from them for the rest of his life and would associate any personal upheaval with its Shakespearian counterpart.^[93]

Berlioz was especially taken with Shakespeare's ability to pinpoint the heart of a dramatic conflict and penetrating the secrets of intense love. These secrets, Berlioz suggested in the text of Roméo et Juliette the playwright took with him to heaven. Time and again through the years, Berlioz would distill the favorite image of a play and distill it into musical terms. Roméo et Juliette may have been the first. Later came The Tempest, King Lear, a funeral march for the final scene in Hamlet, the love scene for Les Troyens (which, some claim, Berlioz took from The Merchant of Venice), and Béatrice and Benedict.^[94]

[edit] Faust

Berlioz discovered Goethe's Faust through Gérard de Nerval's translation, published in December 1827. Its impact on Berlioz was, again, profound and immediate, with the Faustian concept of man striking several chords with the composer. He described Shakespeare and Goethe in an 1828 letter as "the silent confidants of my suffering; they hold the key to my life."^[95] In any event, Shakespearian tragedy and Faustian mystique became of one type in his mind.^[96]

The Romantics[link]

Simultaneous with Berlioz's discovery of Shakespeare was his immersion in the texts of true Romanticism. These included the works of Thomas Moore, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. All three inspired Berlioz to compose works based on theirs. He also immersed himself in Chateaubriand, E. T. A. Hoffmann, James Fenimore Cooper and his compatriots Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset and Gérard de Nerval. He later added Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert and Théophile Gautier to his list of favorites; he also used Gautier's poems as texts for his song cycle Les nuits d'été.^[97]

Perhaps as a result of this reading and seeing himself as an archetypical tragic hero, Berlioz began to weave personal references into his music. It may in fact have been his love for Shakespeare, shared with the other young artist-heroes of 19th-century France, that drew Berlioz firmly into the brotherhood of Romanticism.

Music[link]

Beethoven[link]

Berlioz writes in his Memoirs,

In an artist's life one thunderclap sometimes follows swiftly on another ... I had just had the successive revelations of Shakespeare and Weber. Now at another point on the horizon I saw the giant form of Beethoven rear up. The shock was almost as great as that of Shakespeare had been. Beethoven opened before me a new world of music, as Shakespeare had revealed a new universe of poetry.^[98]

He was able to hear Beethoven's works through the performances of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, an orchestra founded by François Antoine Habeneck and his colleagues to promote modern orchestral music. The inaugural concert, on 9 March 1828, featured the French premiere of the Eroica Symphony.^[99] Despite protests from French and Italian composers,^[98] by the end of the first season Habeneck and the orchestra had also performed the Fifth Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto as well as other works.^[100]

For Berlioz the experience of hearing the Eroica brought the last and greatest revelation of the power of instrumental music as an expressive language, along with the freedom of action with which it could be expressive.^[101] He understood at once that the symphony was a dramatic form to an extent that he had not previously realized,^[102] and that in Beethoven he saw a way to the dramatic manner in which he desired to compose.

Most tellingly, hearing the Eroica inspired Berlioz to widen his horizons for the first time past opera and other vocal works and consider the expressive power of purely instrumental music.^[95] Prior to this, he had defaulted to the dominant view of the Parisian music establishment, as typified by Le Sueur: that the symphony was a lesser form of composition that Mozart and Haydn had already taken as far as possible.^[103] Berlioz would go on to find instrumental music to be far more penetrating in expression and articulation than vocal setting.^[95] "Now that I have heard that terrifying giant Beethoven", he wrote, "I know exactly where my musical art stands; the question is to take it from there and push it further."^[104]

Other composers[link]

Next to those of Beethoven, Berlioz showed deep reverence for the works of Gluck, Mozart, Méhul, Weber and Spontini, as well as respect for some of those of Rossini, Meyerbeer and Verdi.

Curiously perhaps, the adventures in chromaticism of his prominent contemporaries and associates Chopin and Wagner seemed to have had little effect on Berlioz's style.

First page of original Symphonie fantastique (1830) manuscript

	Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra. Courtesy of Musopen
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Works[link]

Musical works[link]

The five movement Symphonie fantastique, partly due to its fame, is considered by most to be Berlioz's most outstanding work,^[105] and the work had a considerable impact when first performed in 1830, 3 years after the death of Beethoven and 2 years after that of Schubert.^[5][46] 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.^[106]

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^[7] 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^[48] and emotionally. The nature of his large works – sometimes involving hundreds of performers^[107] – made financial success difficult. His journalistic abilities became essential for him to make a living and he survived as a witty critic,^[14] emphasizing the importance of drama and expressiveness 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 in part to the unwillingness of conservative Paris opera companies to perform his work.^[26]

Literary works[link]

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 the Rénovateur,^[108] Journal des débats and Gazette musicale.^[109] He was active in the Débats for over thirty years until submitting his last signed article in 1863.^[44] 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^[110] 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.^[110] An example of the amount of work he produced is indicated in his producing over one-hundred articles^[110] for the Gazette between 1833 and 1837. This is a conservative estimate, as not all of his submissions were signed.^[110] 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.^[111] These were not mere scribbles, but in-depth articles and reviews with little duplication,^[111] which took considerable time to write.

Berlioz in 1863

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.^[which?] 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.^[110] Exemplified in its long-standing criticism of Henri Herz, and his seemingly endless stream of variations on opera themes, but to its credit, it also positively reviewed his music on occasion.^[112] Its writers included Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac and George Sand.^[110] The Gazette wasn't even unanimous in its praise of Berlioz's music, although it always recognised him as an important and serious composer to be respected.^[112] 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.^[113] At one point, Robert Schumann was motivated to publish a detailed rebuttal of one of Fétis' attacks on Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique^[34] in his own Neue Zeitschrift für Musik journal.^[113] Fétis would later contribute to the debasement of the reputation of the Gazette when his journal failed and was absorbed by the Gazette, he found himself on the editorial board.^[113]

The books which Berlioz has become acclaimed for were compiled from his journal articles.^[44] Les soirées de l’orchestre (Evenings with the Orchestra) (1852), a scathing satire^[114] of provincial musical life in 19th century France, and the Treatise on Instrumentation, a pedagogic work, were both serialised originally in the Gazette musicale.^[44] Many parts of the Mémoires (1870) were originally published in the Journal des débats, as well as Le monde illustré.^[115] 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,^[114] 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."^[116] The Treatise established his reputation as a master of orchestration.^[10] 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 Saint Petersburg.^[66]

References[link]