Hector Berlioz: Master Symphonie Fantastique

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Hector Berlioz was born on December 11, 1803 in La Cote-Saint-Andre, France. He was a composer, writer and critic, though known for his musical influence he literary works are just as 6successful as his musical piece. Hector was originally going to go into the field of medicine but turned away from that to go after his love of music. Hector was not a musical talented child most well-known composers he began music at the age of twelve, his father did not encourage him to continue on practicing music so hector did not get to learn the piano but self-taught himself to play the guitar, flute and taught himself to compose music. In eighteen-twenty-sixth Hector attended the Paris Conservatoire where his inspiration for one of his greatest master …show more content…

Berlioz wrote this piece based off of passionate love for a beautiful woman, this symphony describes his obsession, with this woman he was self-destructive. Most orchestra music is based off of classical western music but Symphonie Fantastique is a love story. He had created his music that was his and no one else he is known for being original, although Beethoven had some influence on Berlioz’s work but like Berlioz, Beethoven had also created his own music. Symphonie Fantastique’s is forty-five-minute-long piece that has five different movements in it. The piece is called an idee fixe; this means a fixed idea this is due to the fact that throughout the symphony there is the same repetitive form of the notes just each in a different manner. The instruments used to perform this symphony are flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and French horns along with many other brass instruments. Symphonie Fantastique is called a programme music because it does not just describe music but it describes a story. The fourth symphony is supposedly about Berlioz having a dream that had killed his love in a moment of angry and was being carried away but the “police” to be executed and as he is being taken away a march is playing and as he thinks of his love one more time than his head was cut off. After many years of success Berlioz had moved back to Paris in 1868, he was lonely because his marriage to Smithson did not last long and his second wife had passed in 1862, and his son had also passed away. Berlioz had then died at the age of sixty-five in Paris. Berlioz may have died a lonely man but he left a new type of orchestra music, he wrote music whit his heart and it may have been destructive but it was beautiful and it helped influence music then and has still introduced more

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