BERLIOZ, HECTOR (1803-1869), French musical corn poser, was born at Cote-Saint-Andre, near Grenoble, on Dec. 11, 1803. His father, a doctor in good practice, wished his son to fol low the same profession, and Hector studied medicine for a time, though he disliked it intensely. He had no early formal musical education, though he studied harmony and counterpoint surrepti tiously, but without much real profit until the hearing of a Haydn quartet gave him inspiration and understanding. He was sent to Paris in 1822 to complete his medical studies, and from there he announced his revolt to his father, who cut off supplies and left the young man to fend for himself. Meanwhile he had had some lessons in composition from Lesueur, then a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. He entered himself as a student in 1823, but found the teaching and the atmosphere alien to his rebellious genius. Lesueur seems to have been the only teacher for whom he felt genuine respect.
The reason was partly nostalgia for a city which he always dearly loved, though he found little appreciation there, and partly his passion for the famous Irish actress, Henrietta Smithson, who was then playing Shakespearian parts in Paris. The Episode de la vie d'un artiste, had been inspired by her, and the performance of this work, with its continuation, at the Paris Conservatoire in 1832 caused her to regard Berlioz more favourably than before. It also won the praise of Paganini, who said to the composer : "Vous commencez par ou les autres ont fini." Berlioz married Henrietta in 1833. The union was by no means a happy one, and difficulties were aggravated by poverty. She was compelled by an accident to leave the stage, and no place as professor or con ductor was available for Berlioz, in rebellion against the correct ness of the French school and a pioneer of the romantic movement. He was obliged to support himself and his family by acting as musical critic, which left him little time for composition. Yet the period between his marriage with Henrietta and their stormy separation in 184o was rich in production. To these seven years belong the dramatic symphonies, Harold en Italie, Symphonie funebre et triomphale, and Romeo et Juliette; the opera Ben venuto Cellini (183 7) ; and the Requiem, commissioned by the French Government for performance in memory of those who fell at Constantine, Algeria.
Berlioz was given the Legion of Honour, and began to write (1838) for the Journal des Debats, to which he contributed at intervals until 1863. There he conducted his polemic against thy conservative critics of the day. But official musical Paris remained obdurate. He was invited to visit Germany, where Robert Schu mann, who had analysed the Episode in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, had prepared the way for him. Henrietta declined to accompany him, and the miserable breach followed. Berlioz sup ported her until her death in 1854, but there was no renewal of affection. The visit to Germany was delayed until 1842, but was a triumphal success. In all the great musical centres Berlioz was received with enthusiasm. But in Paris he conducted the works of other composers. In 1846 his cantata, La Damnation de Faust, was played in Paris, but was coldly received. He paid visits to Austria (1845), Russia (1847), and England (four times between but recognition abroad did not compensate him for apathy at home. Benvenuto Cellini was played, at the invitation of Liszt, at Weimar in 1852, and in London in 1853; and the oratorio-trilogy, L'Enfance du Christ in Weimar in 1855. The Hymne a la France was written for an industrial exhibition in 1844; the Damnation de Faust in 1845; the Te Deum for the Paris Exhibition of 1855; the short opera, Beatrice et Benedict was produced at Baden in 1862 ; and Les Troyens a Carthage had a short run at the Theatre Lyrique in Paris in 1863.
After the death of his first wife in 1854, Berlioz married a mediocre singer, Martin Recio, who rather hindered than helped him, since she demanded leading parts in his productions. But he was inconsolable at her death in 1862. The failure of Les Troyens in 1863 was a further blow. He had a great reception in Vienna (1866) and St. Petersburg (1867), but his health was failing and he died in Paris in 1869. He had been admitted to the Academie Francaise in 1856, and in 1852 had received the one official post of his lifetime—the librarianship of the Conservatoire.
The human story of Berlioz places him among the great Roman tics, and is interesting apart from his achievement of bringing romanticism into the domain of music. His Memoires (begun in London in 1848 and finished in 1865) show him as a boy in des pair over the despair of Dido, and his breath is taken away at Virgil's "Quaesivit coelo lucem ingemuitque reperta." At the age of 12 he is in love with "Estelle," whom he meets so years afterwards. The scene is described by himself (1865) with minute fidelity—a scene which Flaubert must have known by heart when he wrote its parallel in the novel L'Education sentimentale. The man—old, isolated, unspeakably sad, with the halo of public fame burning round him—meets the woman—old also, a mother, a widow, whose beauty he had worshipped when she was 18. In a frame of chastened melancholy and joy at the sight of Estelle, Berlioz goes to dine with Patti and her family. Patti, on the threshold of her career, shows him unmistakable affection. What would he not have given for such a demonstration from Estelle! "I was enchanted," he writes, "but not moved. The fact is that the young, beautiful, dazzling, famous virtuoso who at the age of 22 has already seen musical Europe and America at her feet, does not win the power of love in me ; and the aged woman, sad, obscure, ignorant of art, possesses my soul as she did in the days gone by, as she will do until my last day." The music of Berlioz disclosed something in addition to the pure romance of Schu mann—something that places him nearer in kind to Wagner. The power of Beethoven's symphonies had made a deep impression on Berlioz in his youth, and the "poetical idea" in Beethoven's creations ran riot in his mind. He thus became one of the most ardent and enlightened pioneers of what is now known as "pro gramme music." Technically he was a brilliant musical colour ist, often extravagant, but with the extravagant emotionalism of genius. He was a master of the orchestra ; indeed, his treatment of the orchestra and his invention of unprecedented effects of timbre give him a unique position in musical history; he had an ex traordinary gift for the use of the various instruments, and himself propounded a new ideal for the force to be employed, on an enormous scale. The ideal orchestra sketched out in his Traite d'Instrumentation (1844) was of proportions which can only be described as gigantic. This work, hardly appreciated during his lifetime, has had great influence on the later composers of all schools; and sufficient testimony to its value is afforded by the fact that within recent years it has been translated into German and brought up to date by none other than Richard Strauss (Peters ed., 1906).
Among Berlioz's purely literary works may be mentioned espe cially the essays on Weber, Gluck and Beethoven in the Voyage musical en Allemagne et en Italie (1845) , while others are Soirees d'orchestre (1853), Les Grotesques de la musique (1859) and A travers chants (1862) .
The critical edition of the complete compositions of Berlioz (published by Breitkopf and Hartel) is in ten series. I. Sym phonies: Fantastique, op. 14 ; Funebre et triomphale, op. 15, for military band and chorus ; Harold en Italie, op. 16, with viola solo; Romeo et Juliette, with chorus and soli. II. Overtures (ten, in cluding the five belonging to larger works). III. Smaller instru mental works of which only the Funeral March for Hamlet is im portant. IV. Sacred music : the Grande Hesse des Alerts, op. 5; the Te Deum, op. 22 ; L'Enfance du Christ, op. 25, and four smaller pieces. V. Secular cantatas, including Huit scenes de Faust, op. I ; Lelio, ou le retour a la vie, op. 146 (sequel to Sym phonie f antastique), and La Damnation de Faust, op. 24. VI. Songs and lyric choruses with orchestra, 2 vols. VII. Songs and lyric choruses with pianoforte, 2 vols., including arrangements of the orchestral songs. VIII. Operas : Benvenuto Cellini; Les Troyens (five acts in two parts, La Prise de Troie and Les Troyens a Carthage) ; Recitatives for the dialogue in Weber's Freischutz. IX. Arrangements, including the well-known orchestral version of Weber's Invitation a la danse. X. Fragments and new discoveries. BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Adolphe Jullien's books on Berlioz, Hector Berlioz, la vie et le combat (1882) and Hector Berlioz, sa vie et ses oeuvres (1888) first gave a careful account of the details of his life. See also J. Tiersot, Hector Berlioz et la societe de son temps (i9o4) ; A. Boschat, Histoire d'un romantique: Berlioz (3 vols., 'go6-13) ; Le Faust de Berlioz (Iwo), and Une Vie Romantique (1920) ; R. Rolland, Musiciens celebres (1909) ; W. H. Hadow, Studies in Modern Music (1st series, 1908) ; E. Newman, Musical Studies (1905) ; A. W. Locke, Music and the Romantic Period in France (Ig2o).