Hector Berlioz was born at 5pm on Sunday, 11 December 1803 in the small village of La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère. His father, Louis-Joseph Berlioz was a hardworking town physician who advocated such progressive cures as hydrotherapy and

Picking unpublished poems from the manuscripts of his neighbor romantic poet and writer Théophile Gautier, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) created his song group (not a cycle) Les nuits d’été (The Nights of Summer). Completed in 1841, the songs, written for mezzo

When Claude Debussy was working on his opera, Pelleas et Melisande, he wrote “Berlioz was never, properly speaking, a musician of the theater.” Debussy’s comment mirrored the thoughts of contemporary critics and scholars who suggested that Berlioz was more successful

Hector Berlioz (1803 – 1869) had a difficult path to success. He tried time and time again to win the highest award France gave for music, the Prix de Rome, but he could only win it by modifying his style

Whether we like it or not, Hector Berlioz is primarily associated with a single composition. Everybody knows his Symphonie Fantastique, but his religious works, the dramatic legends, his songs and even his operas are rarely scheduled for performance, and they

When Hector Berlioz went to see a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Paris in 1827, he could hardly have guessed that it would turn into a life-changing experience!

Hector Berlioz was particularly fond of poking fun at so-called musical critics who had neither the education nor the natural ability to pass judgment on a composition. Of course, he had been mercilessly criticized for “his strange composition consisting of