# What do you think of H. Berlioz?



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Seems to be a very divisive composer. Some strange quotes from other composers.

“France's greatest composer” “a musician of great genius and little talent” - Ravel (also similar comment by Bizet)

"There are awkward harmonies in Berlioz that make one scream" - Boulez

Personally I think he's obviously very progressive, but don't hear the awkward harmonies. Easily my favourite Romantic composer.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

a very informative video


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> Seems to be a very divisive composer. Some strange quotes from other composers.
> "France's greatest composer" "a musician of great genius and little talent" - Ravel (also similar comment by Bizet)
> "There are awkward harmonies in Berlioz that make one scream" - Boulez
> Personally I think he's obviously very progressive, but don't hear the awkward harmonies. Easily my favourite Romantic composer.


It's interesting that the later French composers criticized him:
"Debussy called him "a monster ... not a musician at all. He creates the illusion of music by means borrowed from literature and painting"."

This article discusses the controversies surrounding his methods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz#Works


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

If I was forced to pick just one composer to listen to regularly, it would not be Messrs Boulez, Debussy & Bizet, which leaves a choice between Berlioz and Ravel with the former as a strong favourite.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

What about Faure?? Or Messiaen?


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Berlioz is perhaps the archetypal Romantic composer. I love his Requiem.

However, he is not one of my favorite Romantic composers. I prefer Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, Brahms, and Schumann, and Sibelius over him. Several other Romantic composers tie Berlioz in my estimation.

He is, perhaps, my favorite French composer.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

What really negated against Berlioz being successful in his home country was prevailing taste - the 'blood and thunder' end of the Romantic spectrum was largely at odds with what French audiences - especially Parisienne ones - wanted at that time. It may have been detrimental to his career but I admire Berlioz for sticking to his principles and writing what he himself felt inside, rather than what other people would probably have preferred to hear. 

Could he have made it by relocating to another country? Great Britain or Russia, perhaps, both of which still largely lacked a contemporary musical tradition of their own in the 1840s/50s, but it's hard to envisage the proud Berlioz toning down his 'Frenchness' in the way Handel sloughed off his German skin over a century before. 

The more frosty posthumous appraisals from various composers and musicologists are perhaps interesting to read but have absolutely no bearing on my own appreciation of Berlioz' music, which I've always liked.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Berlioz was a greater musical revolutionary than Stravinsky and should be treated with a similar "founding father" veneration.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Purely on personal taste, a couple of awesome works (first and foremost the Fantastique, but also Les Nuits d'été , Romeo et Juliette, Harold en Italie), but I found it hard to warm up to several of his most famous works (like Les Troyens and the Requiem). Not my favourite French composer by far (certainly Ravel, Debussy, Fauré and Saint-Saens come ahead of him). I'm still planning to expand on my top30 composers I did some time ago, aiming for 100 - Berlioz would probably come in somewhere around the #50 spot. Given that I love a wide range of composers, that is still pretty good.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Berlioz: he is good. I see Berlioz as a composer that goes his own way. Yes, he exemplifies the spirit of Romanticism, but I also hear in Berlioz a certain Classical sensibility and a French sophistication. I think he is a hard composer to play and while a lot of conductors, second or third rate orchestras can get the Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner or Tchaikovsky to sound (just because it is, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, or Tchaikovsky); I think that Berlioz requires a more subtle hand. In this regard, I think that the restrained Englishman, Colin Davis does a very fine job of not "over-playing" Berlioz enough to celebrate his Romantic energy without compromising that element of Classicism and French charm.

My favorites are _Harold in Italy_ which I like even more than the _Symphonie Fantastique_; the _Roman Carnival Overture_, and as many others have already mentioned, the awesome _Requiem_. Here again, in the _Requiem_, Berlioz unleashes all the forces of the apocalypse in wild fashion, but there is also the beautiful _Sanctus_, so here again, Maestro Colin Davis seems to get it just right in the recording he made with the London Symphony Orchestra.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Coach G said:


> I also hear in Berlioz a certain Classical sensibility


The opening of the Symphonie fantastique reminds me some of Mozart's sturm und drang moments:
K.345: 



and to a lesser extent K.183: 



I think Berlioz was influenced by these elements. He said of Idomeneo, "It is Greek, decidedly Greek."


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

He's like Franck for me - I love him even if it's based on a small number of pieces I revere rather than his work overall. For Berlioz the Requiem comes above all - hard to write anything for choral music as unhinged and turbulent as the Lacrymosa.

The Colin Davis/Dresden version is great but has a disappointing soloist in the Sanctus. The London version isn't bad but the soloist is excessively uh, "operatic" if I remember my versions right? It also uses a boys choir- I happen to love the timbre of boys' choirs in sacred music but that's not everyone's cup of tea. I don't like the Munch as much as others, but the soloist (Leopold Simoneau) is astoundingly good.






I think Bernstein's version is the best overall, even if other versions have better specific parts.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Fabulin said:


> Berlioz was a greater musical revolutionary than Stravinsky and should be treated with a similar "founding father" veneration.


Could you explain what you mean with this. Where does Stravinsky come into it and isn't Berlioz generally more revered than Stravinsky anyway?

I have a funny relationship with Berlioz. Some of his music is amazing but I find an awful lot to be a little boring ... or, more precisely, to have stretches of music that is a little boring with occasional flashes of genius. So, he may have been a revolutionary but I am not sure he is in my top flight of composers.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

Les nuits d'ete is enough for me to love him


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I didn’t think there was another Berlioz other than H.!


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

I think Berlioz is underrated around these parts. His Requiem is one of my favourite Requiems, the Fantastique is, well, fantastic, Les Troyens is glorious. Other great works by him are Romeo et Juliette and Les Nuits d'ete. But above all of them stands La Damnation de Faust.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I like a great deal of French music but not much by Berlioz with only Harold In Italy, a few overtures, and les nuits d'été in my library.

Among French composers I prefer all of Debussy, Ibert, Delibes, Offenbach (Greman by birth but composed and lived in Paris), Milhaud, Franck, Saint Saens and Satie to him.

He wrote one of the top symphonies, one of the best viola concertos, a top song cycle, Le Troyens and La damnation de Faust, and a requiem some people like. It's all good stuff if you like romanticism.

I had him No. 32 in my composer rankings -- between Saint Saens and Bartok -- behind Saint Saens (31), Debussy (22) and Ravel (19) among French composers. I'd say that places him about right.

For me, as another poster said, his downside is he is too big most of the time.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Berlioz is one of my favorite French composers along with Ravel, Dutilleux, and Chausson.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

There seem to be several reasons why Berlioz is almost reduced to a one or three works composer. 
First of all, the French apparently don't much care for one their greatest composers. Sure, there was Monteux but the big recording projects that put Berlioz on the map were with Munch/Boston (Munch was from Alsace but when this belonged to Germany and he was culturally German and fought for the German side in WW I) and Colin Davis/London. 
Then there is the practical point that many of Berlioz' works are huge. With Meyerbeer gone from the repertoire Les Troyens is probably the longest and largest opera regularly played that is not by Wagner. The choral works demand huge forces, R & J and Faust are strange hybrids that do not really have an obvious place in our music business. 
Finally, I think he is quite uneven (admittedly, I don't know the operas and choral works more than superficially). Even "Harold" has IMO some lengths and some trivial bits and does not work as well as Fantastique. 

My favorites are Faust and R & J but the overall form of the latter without rôles for the protagonists is just too strange to become popular (and I am not sure it succeeds as a whole) and while Faust is great it's closest to an oratorio in form but operatic in content, an uneasy mix, I guess. I also have the impression that a lot of typical Verdi/Puccini/etc. opera buffs don't care for Berlioz operas.
And it might also be hurting Berlioz a bit that we nowadays avoid excerpts whereas an orchestral suite with 4 or five movements from R & J, including the Mab scherzo and the love scene (both are superior to the similar movements of the Fantastique) used to be more common in earlier times (or at least I have somehow around three recordings of such excerpts)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

My experience is that he usually begins a lot of stuff, but things tend to go nowhere, and there seems to be a lack of structure or tightness to it. You can learn to appreciate it and the episodical elements of ~modernity in it, but it can also remain frustrating at times.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Given the time in which he lived, I find him quite advanced. Many of his contemporaries retained too much classicism for my taste.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

progmatist said:


> Many of his contemporaries retained too much classicism for my taste.


Such as a symphony with 4-5 fairly traditional type movements but fancy titles?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Enthusiast said:


> Where does Stravinsky come into it and isn't Berlioz generally more revered than Stravinsky anyway?


I would say no, Berlioz is not generally more revered than Stravinsky. I think Stravinsky is definitely more revered with many considering him the best composer of the 20th century. One regularly encounters Stravinsky's name in top ten lists put out by publications, (or the one where composers ranked I believe Stravinsky was ranked second only to Bach). I don't recall ever seeing Berlioz making a top ten list.

I agree with the comments suggesting Berlioz has some fine moments and great ideas, but compositionally is a little uneven. I don't consider him as great as Debussy or Ravel. Closer to Satie status, an idea man that was influential, but not exceptionally skilled.

If we compare Berlioz to someone like Saint Saens the latter showed more skill but the former was more innovative and imaginative, and in my view more interesting.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Mendelssohn supposedly said that Berlioz tragedy was that in all his attempts to become raving mad he never succeded... He certainly staged himself and his life as a romantic drama... 
For all his flaws I'd say that Berlioz strove higher than any other composer between Beethoven and Wagner (and also higher than Debussy or Ravel). To what extent he was successful is probably more debatable than in many other cases but this general feature makes it difficult to compare his music with a "modest perfectionist" like Ravel.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Berlioz is more forward-thinking than "revolutionary", if that makes sense (Debussy is probably more a true "revolutionary", Wagner as well). It's hard to pick out who was directly influenced by him (Wagner, maybe?) but he does anticipate the places where romantic music was going to go in the rest of the 19th century.


In many ways he was classical, too- he was the last Gluckian!


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Kreisler jr said:


> Such as a symphony with 4-5 fairly traditional type movements but fancy titles?


Traditional movement structure endures to this day. I'm referring to the style of the classical era.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*What do you think of H. Berlioz?*

I am indifferent to his music, as is the case for most 19th century Romantic (especially orchestral) music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

To me, rating Berlioz in any normal way or as we do other composers is meaningless or beside the (any) point. His life, being, and whatever work he accomplished is startlingly unique and if he had not been, there would be a hole in the world and we would be sadder for it even without knowing what we were missing. He seems like a kind of counterpart to his contemporary, Victor Hugo. Bold and colorful, one of a kind, an inexplicable phenomenon. His Symphonie Fantastique is the closest music came to Hugo's Hunchback.

Funny to hear myself saying all that, since I don't listen to him all that much.


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## Superflumina (Jun 19, 2020)

One of my favorite composers, certainly top 10. Almost every work with an orchestra that he wrote is a masterpiece. Les Troyens is also one of my favorite operas.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

An acquaintance of mine described him as "the musical equivalent of expanded polystyrene."
There are fragments in most of his works that are great, but then, the rest...
But he is at least incredibly distinctive in his sound; a woodwind chord by Berlioz could never be mistaken for anyone else. Maybe that's what Boulez was objecting to?
Almost the only piece of his I don't get irritated by, listening to the whole thing, is the Te Deum. Nearly everything else I only want to hear a bit of it.
I've heard the Requiem live twice, and it's a bit of fun for the sheer logistics of it, but musically doesn't really stick with me, I must say.
I did hear Blomstedt conduct the Leipzig GW in Fantastique in 2018, which was probably the best live Berlioz I ever heard (which has been quite a bit, surprisingly).


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

What do you think of Bizet's remark about Berlioz?
"He's a genius with no talent."


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

fbjim said:


> It's hard to pick out who was directly influenced by him (Wagner, maybe?) but he does anticipate the places where romantic music was going to go in the rest of the 19th century.


Is it? Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky, other Russians, Debussy and Respighi via Rimsky, Richard Strauss, Bernard Herrmann


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Itullian said:


> What do you think of Bizet's remark about Berlioz?
> "He's a genius with no talent."


It's weird not to equate genius with talent. I'm thinking Tchaikovsky may have explained his position most clear (although I think wrong, and missing the point):

"Berlioz was a high-minded man who conceived beautiful things but lacked the power to fill his conceptions"

And maybe the most specifically stated, on Symphonie Fantastique, "It has many anti-artistic effects, that is, of a purely external kind: for example, the depiction of thunder by means of kettledrums alone". That part I definitely get. Like in the first movement he has these theatrical effects where Bernstein points out at 6:15 of this video. That may be what Boulez objects to also, since they don't really work in terms of harmony with the other parts. 





It's really quite modern and not in with the times. Berlioz himself didn't feel his critics were qualified to speak of his music. He once played this trick on his critics:

https://interlude.hk/hector-berlioz-plays-trick-music-critics/

http://www.tchaikovsky-research.net/en/forum/forum0182.html


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"Berlioz later wrote, "if I were threatened with the destruction of the whole of my works save one, I should crave mercy for the Messe des morts."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(Berlioz)#History


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I believe that in the TC composer rankings that Art Rock managed, I was the only person who rated Berlioz as their favourite composer. Sometimes I feel he is and sometimes I don't, but I really love his music and find him to be utterly unique. His musical personality just clicks with me, and even though I'm not listening to him as much at the moment, when I'm in a Berlioz mood there's nothing like him.


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

His works might be controversial and flawed (as pointed out by many musicians), but he was a real revolutionist that had great influence on the history of music. I generally enjoy his works.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> To me, rating Berlioz in any normal way or as we do other composers is meaningless or beside the (any) point. His life, being, and whatever work he accomplished is startlingly unique and if he had not been, there would be a hole in the world and we would be sadder for it even without knowing what we were missing. He seems like a kind of counterpart to his contemporary, Victor Hugo. Bold and colorful, one of a kind, an inexplicable phenomenon. His Symphonie Fantastique is the closest music came to Hugo's Hunchback.


A great suggestion, a Berliozian programmatic symphony on _Notre Dame de Paris_ would be huge fun! A bit like Liszt's _Faust symphony_ with one movement each for Don Frollo, Esmeralda and Quasimodo or so. And one for the Cathedral itself! Or even an opera.
But the Fantastique seems to mostly lack the historical element a Hunchback piece should have. It has the Gothic only in the horror movie sense, i.e. the last two movements would fit but the beginning is too contemporary. Berlioz could have done it, though; he has more archaic or Gluckian classicist stuff elsewhere.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> A great suggestion, a Berliozian programmatic symphony on _Notre Dame de Paris_ would be huge fun! A bit like Liszt's _Faust symphony_ with one movement each for Don Frollo, Esmeralda and Quasimodo or so. And one for the Cathedral itself! Or even an opera.
> But the Fantastique seems to mostly lack the historical element a Hunchback piece should have. It has the Gothic only in the horror movie sense, i.e. the last two movements would fit but the beginning is too contemporary. Berlioz could have done it, though; he has more archaic or Gluckian classicist stuff elsewhere.


I just learned there was a grand opera by one Louise Bertin based on the novel and titled _La Esmeralda_, with a libretto by Victor Hugo no less. It was premiered in 1836 and received six controversial performances. Strangely enough, the rehearsals were conducted by Berlioz! The reason I knew to search under the title _La Esmeralda_ was because I remembered that Rachmaninoff considered writing an opera with the same title and even sketched parts of it, if memory serves. The whole affair in 1836 was a fiasco for a number of reasons explained in the wiki article below. Apparently the best aria was Quasimodo's "Song of the Bells" and protestors yelled out during one performance that it was (they groundlessly claimed) by Berlioz and not by Bertin at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Esmeralda_(opera)


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I've got enormous respect for Berlioz but as a listener my reaction to his music gradually changed from hot to cold. Over the years, as my musical taste solidified, I did a series of culls. The only work I retained was _Harold in Italy_. I think its a pity he didn't compose anything else resembling a concerto, a genre I tend to like. The _Reverie et Caprice_ indicates he could have written a fine one for violin.

I'm not sure why the attrition rate was particularly bad in his case. Perhaps his music has too much exuberance, but there are other composers whose music can be described as such which I like more (Bernstein is the best example I can think of).


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I would add Antonin Dvorak to the group of composers who to some extent were inspired by Berlioz.

His early 3rd symphony has many moments that could be considered Berliozean:




Some or even most of those influences came through Wagner, and so have usually been thrown into one big bag of credit to him.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I love Berlioz and not only is his music extraordinary, but he was one of the first true Romantics in that he blazed his own trail in the process. Works like _Harold en Italie_, _Roméo et Juliette_, _Les Troyens_, _L'enfance du Christ_, _Les nuits d'été_, _Grande Messe des morts_, etc. are works of astonishing beauty and fiery passion. He was one of the first composers I got into when I started to seriously listen to classical music and has remained a favorite.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Berlioz is a bit of an odd duck for me. The Requiem, Les Troyes, and La Damnation de Faust are astounding works of dramatic vitality and lyricism that grip me with their trailblazing Byronic passion; and Les nuits d’ete is one of the most searingly beautiful song cycles of all time. But I find his other famous works, especially the famous Symphonie, to be dull and bland for the most part. So overall he’s not a favorite composer, but when I’m up for something epic and echt-Romantic, he’s on my playlist. I’m trying to devote more time to his music this year, listening at least once to all of his major works. He was one of the great musical innovators, and it’s tough to imagine the other great Romantic composers blossoming without his influence. I’ve also heard that he was one of the finest literary wits among the composers - his memoirs even made it onto a compilation of “1,000 books to read before you die” that I own.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Berlioz's instruments were the flute and the guitar, which he played well. But everyone else was playing the piano, & maybe violin.
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He had psychological problems -- I mean, writing the _Symphonie Fantastique_ to score a date with Shakespearian actress Harriet Smithson, representing her as the _idee fixe_ and himself as being marched to the scaffold and then guillotined?
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His autobiography is full of lies. People know that but choose it anyway because it's a great read. Every time he had a problem with a composition he says he burnt it -- but actually he did no such thing.
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He was a genius critic whose reviews of contemporary operas are still read.
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He took risks that others didn't. The _Corsair Overture_ is all over the place harmonically, but still thought of as forward-looking.
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His treatise on orchestration is outstanding and draws on his experience as a conductor as well as composer.
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He used opium.
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He was well-respected but also had many quarrels.
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His musical style is recognizable and I like especially his overtures and for some reason _L'Enfance du Christ_.


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> a very informative video


LOVE this!!!! Thank you!


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Itullian said:


> What do you think of Bizet's remark about Berlioz?
> "He's a genius with no talent."


I think that Bizet is engaging in rhe national pastime of French composers, which is trashing the work of other French composers.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

fbjim said:


> I think that Bizet is engaging in rhe national pastime of French composers, which is trashing the work of other French composers.


It's amazing really. The critics too. No wonder thee are so many French composers who destroyed a lot of their music: Duparc, Chausson, Emmanuel, Dukas, Roger-Ducasse, Durufle.


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

Roger Knox said:


> It's amazing really. The critics too. No wonder thee are so many French composers who destroyed a lot of their music: Duparc, Chausson, Emmanuel, Dukas, Roger-Ducasse, Durufle.


that's really sad.


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

Itullian said:


> What do you think of Bizet's remark about Berlioz?
> "He's a genius with no talent."


God punished him with a very early death.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

But his Carmen is still 100x more famous than all of Berlioz' operas combined...


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

cybernaut said:


> God punished him with a very early death.


Punished? That's a matter of perspective. In a world like ours death is often welcomed.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Roger Knox said:


> It's amazing really. The critics too. No wonder thee are so many French composers who destroyed a lot of their music: Duparc, Chausson, Emmanuel, Dukas, Roger-Ducasse, Durufle.


Except Debussy, who trashed Wagner but praised Chopin due to his patriotism


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Debussy did hate Berlioz though. And he had some very mean things to say about Saint-Saens


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

cybernaut said:


> God punished him with a very early death.


Prior to the late 19th, early 20th centuries, most people died an early death. Poor hygiene alone killed multitudes.


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