Berlioz

Musicians are a temperamental bunch and...ummmm...just a bit eccentric. Everybody says so. Just google "temperamental musicians" and you'll find plenty of talk on the subject. Even my close friend — whose father was a professional musician and whose daughter is currently auditioning for various orchestras across the country — when telling me of some musician's recent antic, will often finish with, "But that's musicians for you." There doesn't seem to be any doubt about it; they're an emotional lot. And Berlioz was no exception.

Hector Berlioz (pronounced "BARE-lee-O's") (1803-1869), born near Grenoble France to a well-educated family, was actually slated to be a physician. His father, a physician, wanted Hector to follow in his footsteps. However, once Berlioz got to Paris to study medicine, he decided to dump the medical world for music. What changed his mind? The lure of music itself? Perhaps. Or maybe it was having to dissect a corpse. He is quoted as saying the following:

"When I walked into that horrifying house of human remains, littered with pieces of limbs (quite the alliteration...) , and saw the terrible faces and heads cut off at the neck, the bloody cesspool where we were standing, with its horrible stench, the flock of sparrows fighting each other for scraps, and the rats in the corners gnawing on bleeding vertebrae, such a feeling of terror seized me that I jumped out of the window and sprinted home as if Death and all his evil entourage were behind me."

Anyway, he didn't seem to take to it. So off he went to the Paris Conservatory to study with Luigi Cherubini, a very strict Italian composer. But he hated everything Cherubini stood for. Berlioz wanted to create a new kind of music and couldn't stand the narrow views of those who didn't understand him, and that included Cherubini.

During Berlioz' career, every aspect of music went under his microscope — the rules of melody and harmony, the structure of a symphony, the number of players in an orchestra, etc... If Berlioz thought it helped him express himself, he kept it. If not, he threw it out.

At 27 years of age, Berlioz won the Prix de Rome, a composers' scholarship that gives the recipient four years, all expenses paid, in Rome. He didn't get much musical composition done there, though. He was too wrapped up in exploring the city itself.

Another reason may have been his infatuation with a young woman back in Paris named Camille. When, after four months in Rome, Berlioz heard she had a new boyfriend, he went into a jealous rage, and decided to murder the new boyfriend. So, he bought a gun, dressed up as a woman (Huh???), and took a train back to Paris. By the time the train reached Nice, Italy, I guess he decided that killing the guy was a bit too melodramatic, so he threw himself into the Mediterranean instead.

His suicide attempt was unsuccessful, however. He got fished out. But this was only one example of his emotions spiraling out of the control.

Another time, while watching a performance of Romeo and Juliet in English, he fell madly in love with the actress playing Juliet. (Not terribly subtle, this guy.) The problem is Harriet Smithson didn't speak a word of French. But the language barrier didn't seem to bother Berlioz. He sent flowers, gifts and love notes; he traveled to where she was, hoping to bump into her, but all he succeeded in doing was scaring her to death.

His obsession with Harriet did help him to write a strange, five-movement symphony called the Symphonie fantastique, though. It's based on a story he made up about a young artist who's madly in love with an unresponsive woman. (Surprise! Surprise!) Berlioz wrote a musical theme to represent this obsession and called it an idee fixe ("fixed idea"). This melody appears in various guises throughout the symphony, providing a bit of unity to the work. The Symphonie fantastique was so different from anything that had come before it, however, that Berlioz had to write notes to the conductor, such as: "This is not a clerical error. It's supposed to sound like this. Please don't 'correct' the notes."

Anyway, for Berlioz, the Symphonie fantastique was successful because it actually worked. Harriet Smithson showed up at the premiere performance and loved it. And after the concert they met, dated, and, got married.

Because of the language barrier, it didn't last, though. Even after several years of marriage, Harriet still didn't speak any French, and Berlioz never did learn English.

See what I mean? Eccentric. But I guess that's musicians for you.