Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André, near Grenoble, in December 1803, the son of a country doctor who initially intended him for the same profession. He moved to Paris in 1821 to study medicine before transferring to the Conservatoire to study composition with Le Sueur and Reicha. He won the Prix de Rome in 1830, having submitted on his fifth attempt, and the same year completed the *Symphonie fantastique* — a work whose programmatic ambition and orchestral imagination established his reputation almost overnight.

His major works followed: *Harold en Italie* (1834), *Roméo et Juliette* (1839), the *Grande messe des morts* (1837), *La damnation de Faust* (1846), *L’enfance du Christ* (1854), and the operas *Benvenuto Cellini* (1838) and *Les Troyens* (composed 1856–58, only partly performed in his lifetime). He worked extensively as a music critic, writing for the *Journal des débats* for nearly thirty years, and his treatise on orchestration of 1844 became the standard reference for generations of composers after him.

Berlioz spent his last years in declining health and isolation, his works more admired abroad — particularly in Germany and Russia — than in France. He died in Paris in March 1869. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his symphonic and operatic work in twentieth-century British and continental performance.