The Ultimate Romantic

Hector Berlioz was born on this day in France in 1803. Berlioz is the epitome of what you think of as a romantic (a rather out-of-control romantic at that). He had a love for romantic literature, wept at readings of poetry and at musical concerts, had many love affairs, and held very strong views on matters of art in general. There's an account of him standing up in the middle of a concert while the orchestra was playing and quite loudly and fiercely taking issue with the interpretation. In another, scarier account of his behavior, his fiancee's mother wrote to him to tell she was breaking off the engagement and that her daughter would marry another man. This enraged him so much that he plotted to kill all three of them and very nearly carried out the plan, but decided against it at the last moment... only after purchasing all the necessary weapons/poisons and disguises and starting his journey toward the area that they were all residing. Yikes!

Yet he is considered one of the most important composers of his time, partly because of his forward-looking musical ideas. Along with Wagner and Liszt, he is one of the three composers that had the most profound effect on 19th century musical romanticism. Probably his most famous work is his Symphonie Fantastique, a 5-movement symphony with a pretty wild program that is somewhat autobiographical. Read the link for a really fascinating description of the piece, and watch/listen to the 4th and 5th movements. For the best listening, though, I'd really recommend a high-quality CD recording (like this one) played on a good speaker-system - it won't disappoint you! This work is really an amazing piece of orchestration, with many new and bold approaches to different textures and sounds.