RIP The Final Impression

Berlioz by Pierre Petit

On this day in 1869, composer Hector Berlioz died at his Paris home, No.4 rue de Calais, at 30 minutes past midday, surrounded by friends at the age of 65. Born Louis-Hector Berlioz on 11 December 1803 at No. 83 rue nationale, the family home in the French commune of La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. Perhaps best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique, Grande messe des morts (Requiem), Les Troyens, and La damnation de Faust. Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He also composed around 50 compositions for voice, accompanied by piano or orchestra. His influence was important for the further development of Romanticism.

Drawing of Harriet Smithson as Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

In March 1821, Berlioz left high school in Grenoble, and in late September, at age 18, he was sent to Paris to study medicine. He began to take advantage of the institutions to which he now had access 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, alongside Ludwig van Beethoven.

Despite his parents’ disapproval, in 1824 he formally abandoned his medical studies 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. 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, but the overture has been much recorded and is sometimes played in concert.

On 11 September 1827, he attended a production by a traveling English theatre 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 with both actress and playwright. Prone to his impulses, Berlioz began flooding Smithson’s hotel room with love letters which both confused and terrified her. His advances led nowhere.

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 – Marie Moke, despite the symphony being inspired by Berlioz’s obsession with Harriet Smithson.

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

During his stay in Italy, he received a letter from the mother of his fiancée, Camille Moke, 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). He even stole a pair of double-barrelled pistols from the Academy to kill them with, saving a single shot for himself. Planning out his action with great care, Berlioz purchased phials of strychnine and laudanum to use as poisons in the event of a pistol jamming.

Despite this careful planning, Berlioz failed to carry the plot through. By the time he had reached Genoa, he “left his disguise in the side pocket of the carriage”. After arriving in Nice (at that time, part of Italy), he reconsidered the entire plan, deciding it to be inappropriate and foolish.

Painting by Émile Signol, 1832.

On Berlioz’s return to Paris, he and Harriet were finally introduced and entered into a relationship. Despite Berlioz not understanding spoken English and Harriet not knowing any French, on 3 October 1833, they got married in a civil ceremony at the British Embassy with Liszt as one of the witnesses. The following year their only child, Louis Berlioz, was born – a source of initial disappointment, anxiety and eventual pride to his father. Unfortunately for Berlioz, he was soon to discover that living under the same roof as his beloved wife was far less appealing than worship from afar. Their marriage turned out a disaster as both were prone to violent personality clashes and outbursts of temper.

Painting by Gustave Courbet, 1850.

Harriet died in 1854. 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.

Photograph by Nadar, January 1857

Marie died unexpectedly of a stroke at the age of 48, on 13 June 1862. Berlioz soon met a young woman named Amélie at Montmartre Cemetery, and though she was only 24, they developed a close relationship despite a 35-year age difference. Amélie requested that they end their relationship, which Berlioz did, to his despair.

Last photograph of Berlioz, 1868

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. Berlioz soon realized 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.

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.

The Final Footprint

His funeral was held at the recently completed Église de la Trinité on 11 March, and he was buried in Montmartre Cemetery with his two wives, who were exhumed and re-buried next to him. Other notable final footprints at Montmartre include; Dalida, Edgar Degas, Léo Delibes, Alexandre Dumas, fils, Marie Duplessis, Theophile Gautier, Gustave Moreau, Henri Murger, Jacques Offenbach, Francis Picabia, Stendhal, François Truffaut, and Horace Vernet.

There is some debate about Berlioz’s last words. His last words were reputed to be “Enfin, on va jouer ma musique” (“At last, they are going to play my music”), but three other possible alternatives and accounts include:

Bidding farewell to a nationalist Russian composer: “One thousand greetings to Balakirev.”
Speaking to his dead wife, “Oh, Mère Recio, it is finished.”
After quoting from Macbeth’s final soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play of the same name: “‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ That is my signal.”

Drawing by Gustave Doré, published in Journal pour rire, 27 June 1850

Pencil drawing by Alphonse Legros, c.1860

Commemorations of Berlioz include the 2000-seat Opera Berlioz at the Corum arts centre in Montpellier, Berlioz Point in Antarctica and asteroid 69288 Berlioz.

For the opening of Stanley Kubrick‘s film adaptation of The Shining (1980) by Stephen King, composer Wendy Carlos re-interpreted the “Dies Irae” section of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique using a Moog Synthesizer.

Berlioz

#RIP #OTD in 1975, film director (A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant, The Diary of Anne Frank), producer, screenwriter and cinematographer George Stevens died from a heart attack on his ranch in Lancaster, California. Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles