Comparing Berlioz with the Big Guys!

[Benny]

Is it just my impression? Hector Berlioz is seldom mentioned in the same breath as the really BIG composers of the nineteenth century: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Dvorak.... And when he is the reference invariably consists of one work, his Symphonie Fantastique. How do you compare his whole opus to that of the Big Guys?

[Benny]

OK. Any thoughts about Glazunov?

[some guy]

Um, Benny. Berlioz is one of the big guys.

You apparently haven't been reading the right books or listening to the right people! 

[Benny]

On the basis of what evidence, some guy? Here? I don't see it. The nineteenth century belongs to the German-Austrian composers, as far as I can tell from this music forum, and others. My impression is that whenever forum contributors compare Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and company, they overlook Berlioz. Am I wrong?

[Lilas Pastia]

Is it just my impression? Hector Berlioz is seldom mentioned in the same breath as the really BIG composers of the nineteenth century: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Dvorak.... And when he is the reference invariably consists of one work, his Symphonie Fantastique. How do you compare his whole opus to that of the Big Guys?

The Fantastique is invariably mentioned because it's one of the most oft-performed works in concert halls around the world. Berlioz was not as prolific as others and some genres did not interest him (no chamber music, no solo piano works, no concerto*), and in others he did not make the life of promoters or pefrormers very easy (in his operas for example). OTOH there's a case for placiug his Requiem among the most esteemed choral works ever written, and Les Nuits d'été as the most beloved of all songs with orchestra. Among orchestral curtain raisers, his overtures are more often performed than those of any composer except maybe Beethoven's and Wagner's.

His importance as a musicologist, music and orchestration theoretician is probably unequalled to this day. His writings are studied in all music conservatories and as such he is placed on the same plane as Wagner or Schoenberg.

(* : Harold en Italie is not a concerto, although it started life as one).

[Sergeant Rock]

Is it just my impression? Hector Berlioz is seldom mentioned in the same breath as the really BIG composers of the nineteenth century: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Dvorak.... And when he is the reference invariably consists of one work, his Symphonie Fantastique. How do you compare his whole opus to that of the Big Guys?

Herr Doktor Professor Henning will be along momentarily to answer all your Berlioz questions.

My own opinion: he is one of the giants; so breathtakingly original I have a hard time understanding where his musical thoughts and processes sprang from. And you're right: he isn't given the same respect as the composers you mention, including here, in this forum, where he's seldom mentioned. Only the Symphonie Fantastique and Les Nuits d'été have entered the basic repertoire. He isn't even performed much in his native country.

Sarge

[Benny]

Thank you (even though my question seems to annoy you, I mean the second previous poster). He wrote some orchestral music which can be viewed as original contributions after Beethoven and his opera and religious music is also of great quality. Arguably, Harold in Italy can be viewed as musique concertante. The Te Deum is an extraordinary achievement of choral music composition. And Les Troyens measures up to the really remarkable operas of the century. I'd also recommend his symphonie funebre et triomphale. And, yes, the popular overtures. Have you heard L'Enfance du Christ?

[Benny]

Wanted to add one more work: his dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliette, op. 17. There's also Lelio but I ain't particularly fond of that one.

[eyeresist]

I've given the Fantastique several opportunities in different performances, but have never been particularly impressed. I did enjoy the Rakoczy March, though.

[Wanderer]

I've given the Fantastique several opportunities in different performances, but have never been particularly impressed.

...including this?

[Florestan]

Have you heard L'Enfance du Christ?

That's a very beautiful work, unusually small-scale and intimate for Berlioz. A real gem.

[dirkronk]

I'd also recommend his symphonie funebre et triomphale. 

I was introduced to this work by a performance on an old Nonesuch LP, licensed from a French label. Though I do not listen to it terribly often, it is a recording that invariably causes jaws to drop (including my own, even after all these years).

In fact, my jaw has frequent been in "down" position with respect to Berlioz. I still recall my first exposure to a couple of dramatic choral settings from Les Troyens over a first-class hi-fi system about two decades back. Utterly amazing.

Dirk

[(poco) Sforzando]

Is it just my impression? Hector Berlioz is seldom mentioned in the same breath as the really BIG composers of the nineteenth century: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Dvorak.... And when he is the reference invariably consists of one work, his Symphonie Fantastique. How do you compare his whole opus to that of the Big Guys?

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,247.0.html

Pay particular attention to the insightful comments by one Sforzando.

[c#minor]

As said before, he didn't write for all that many of the standard genres. He is still a giant, you just can't reference chamber music, ect., ect.. And he was an innovative guy. His music is very weird, in it's structure and the instruments he used. And on top of that didn't he win the Prix de Rome? That counts for something.

[DavidW]

Berlioz is a fantastic composer.  I actually can enjoy his operas, and I don't like opera!  I have a set of Munch performing his orchestral works and they are all fantastic.  Symphonie Fantastique might be mentioned all the time, but my favorite work is Romeo and Juliet.

To me Berlioz embodies the Romantic ideal better than most of his contemporaries and is one of the big guys.

[Brian]

so breathtakingly original I have a hard time understanding where his musical thoughts and processes sprang from.

Exactly. And if Berlioz still isn't given due credit to this day, it's probably because people still have a hard time getting Berlioz' music - the man was so ahead of his time that his time might still be yet to come. The Symphonie fantastique, which aside from a dozen overtures, Harold, and the Rakoczy March is my only exposure to Berlioz, is still marvelously bizarre today. "Once upon a time," the winds softly tell us, and then we are rushed into one of the most hyperromantic works ever composed. To list the various brilliances and innovations of the Symphonie, even leaving out its extraordinary ending, would take forever. But here's the thing that really gets me:

The Symphonie fantastique was written only six years after Beethoven's Ninth. No offense to Beethoven, of course, but the two works come from completely different sound worlds. Berlioz sounds decades ahead of the German master, maybe a century ahead in terms of orchestration, and his musical language is just a thing apart! Where did it come from? There certainly weren't proto-Berliozes running around Europe in the 1810s; nobody you could point to and say, "If he had lived a while longer, he'd have written something like that." Beethoven took cues from late Mozart and lessons from Haydn, certainly, but where did Berlioz come from? Is it because he never learned piano that the man literally wrote the book on orchestration? Is it because he didn't take any music lessons until after he was 20?

I didn't really appreciate how much of a genius - a total original - Berlioz was until I learned that his Fantastique had been written within a decade of the Ode to Joy. (Schubert's Sixth Symphony came six years before Beethoven's Ninth; and six years after the Ninth came Berlioz.) It was as if, in those six years, a whole epoch had passed. But of course it hadn't passed: people like Schumann, Kalliwoda, Farrenc, and I would even argue Brahms would continue writing good old straight-laced Germanic symphonies in the Beethovenian tradition, and in Beethoven's shadows, for thirty-plus years. Berlioz was a member of another era. He wasn't at the dawn of a new ultra-romantic, borderline modernist era of passionately impressionistic music. No, he wasn't at the dawn of that era; he came before it, painting with careful brushstrokes the first flickers of light on the horizon.

... Is that prose purple enough? 

[lukeottevanger]

And on top of that didn't he win the Prix de Rome? That counts for something.

Well, no, not really - look at this stellar list of winners! (Obviously the odd well-known name, but it's hard an indicator of eternal genius. Plus, lest we forget: 'l'affaire Ravel'.....)

1803 - Albert Androt
1804 - no Grand Prize awarded
1805 - Ferdinand Gasse ("first" First Grand Prize) and Victor Dourlen ("second" First Grand Prize)
1806 - Victor Bouteiller
1807 - no Grand Prize awarded
1808 - Pierre-Auguste-Louis Blondeau
1809 - Louis Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul
1810 - Désiré Beaulieu
1811 - Hippolyte André Jean Baptiste Chélard
1812 - Louis Joseph Ferdinand Herold ("first" First Grand Prize) and Félix Cazot ("second" First Grand Prize)
1813 - Auguste Panseron
1814 - P.-G. Roll
1815 - François Benoist
1816 - no Grand Prize awarded
1817 - Désiré-Alexandre Batton
1818 - no Grand Prize awarded
1819 - Fromental Halévy ("first" First Grand Prize) and P.-J.-P.-C. Massin-Turina ("second" First Grand Prize)
1820 - Aimé Ambroise Simon Leborne
1821 - L.-V.-E. Rifaut
1822 - J.-A. Lebourgeois
1823 - E. Boilly and L.-C. Ermel
1824 - A.-M.-B. Barbereau
1825 - A. Guillion
1826 - C.-J. Paris
1827 - J.-B.-L. Guiraud
1828 - G. Ross-Despréaux
1829 - no Grand Prize awarded
1830 - Hector Berlioz ("first" First Grand Prize) and Alexandre Montfort ("second" First Grand Prize)
1831 - Eugène-Prosper Prévost
1832 - Ambroise Thomas
1833 - A. Thys
1834 - A. Elwart
1835 - Ernest Boulanger
1836 - X. Boisselot
1837 - Louis Désiré Besozzi
1838 - A.-G.-J. Bousquet
1839 - Charles Gounod
1840 - F.E.V. Bazin
1841 - Aimé Maillart
1842 - A.-A. Roger
1843 - no Grand Prize awarded
1844 - Victor Massé
1845 - no Grand Prize awarded
1846 - Léon Gastinel
1847 - P.-L. Deffès
1848 - J.-L.-A. Duprato
1849 - no Grand Prize awarded
1850 - J.-A. Charlot
1851 - J.-C.-A. Delehelle
1852 - L. Cohen
1853 - P.-C.-C. Galibert
1854 - G.-N. Barthe
1855 - J. Conte
1856 - no Grand Prize awarded
1857 - Georges Bizet
1858 - S. David
1859 - Ernest Guiraud
1860 - Emile Paladilhe
1861 - Théodore Dubois
1862 - L. Bourgault-Ducoudray
1863 - Jules Massenet
1864 - Victor Sieg
1865 - Charles Ferdinand Lenepveu
1866 - Émile Louis Fortuné Pessard - "1st Harmony Prize"
1867 - no prize awarded
1868 - V.-A. Pelletier-Rabuteau and E. Wintzweiller
1869 - Antoine Taudou
1870 - Charles Edouard Lefebvre and Henri Maréchal
1871 - Gaston Serpette
1872 - Gaston Salvayre
1873 - Paul Puget
1874 - Léon Erhart
1875 - André Wormser
1876 - Paul Joseph Guillaume Hillemacher
1877 - no Grand Prize awarded
1878 - Clément Broutin
1879 - Georges Hüe
1880 - Lucien Joseph Edouard Hillemacher
1881 - no Grand Prize awarded
1882 - Georges Marty
1883 - Paul Vidal
1884 - Claude Debussy
1885 - Xavier Leroux
1886 - André Gedalge - "Second Prize"
1887 - Gustave Charpentier
1891 - Paul-Henri-Joseph Lebrun (1861-1920)
1894 - Henri Rabaud
1900 - Florent Schmitt
1901 - André Caplet (against Maurice Ravel, 3rd Prize)
1901 - Gabriel Dupont - "Second Prize"
1902 - Aymé Kunc
1902 - Roger Ducasse - "Second Prize"
1902 - Albert Bertelin - "Third Prize"
1903 - Raoul Laparra
1904 - Raymond-Jean Pech
1904 - Paul Pierné - "Second Prize"
1904 - Hélène Fleury-Roy - "Third Prize"
1905 - Victor Gallois
1905 - Marcel Samuel-Rousseau - "Second Prize"
1905 - Philippe Gaubert - "Third Prize"
1906 - Louis Dumas
1907 - Maurice Le Boucher
1908 - André Gailhard
1908 - Louis Dumas
1908 - Nadia Boulanger - "Second Prize"
1908 - Édouard Flament
1909 - Jules Mazellier
1909 - Marcelle Tournier - "Second Prize"
1913 - Lili Boulanger
1914 - Marcel Dupré
1919 - Jacques Ibert - "First Grand Prize"
1923 - Jeanne Leleu - "First Grand Prize"
1923 - Robert Bréard - "Second Prize"
1932 - Vittorio Giannini
1934 - Eugène Bozza
1938 - Henri Dutilleux
1953 - Jacques Castérède
1955 - Pierre Max Dubois
1956 - Jean Aubain, Pierre Gabaye
1972 - Gérard Grisey

[The new erato]

Here's Berlioz on Beethoven after a concert at the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in Paris in 1828. He wrote at the time: 'At another point on the horizon, I saw the immense Beethoven rising. The jolt this gave me was almost comparable to the one I had received from Shakespeare. He opened up a new world in music for me, just as the playwright had revealed to me a new universe in poetry.'

[c#minor]

wow, you talk about a stellar list! Okay, okay i will admit after seeing that list that it was a bad point. And even though Ravel should of won it (i think i am right that he submitted his String Quartet in F, coincidentally my favorite string quartet) i believe he did okay without it.

[Lilas Pastia]

The Prix de Rome was a notable passage obligé for aspiring young composers. It was also awarded by an arch-conservative panel of judges for over a century. The beginning of the 20th century saw a change of the guard. It stopped being 'rear guard' and advanced to 'middle of the road'.