Hector Berlioz
Works

In his 1983 book The Musical Language of Berlioz, Julian Rushton asks "where Berlioz comes in the history of musical forms and what is his progeny". Rushton's answers to these questions are "nowhere" and "none". He cites well-known studies of musical history in which Berlioz is mentioned only in passing or not at all, and suggests that this is partly because Berlioz had no models among his predecessors and was a model to none of his successors. "In his works, as in his life, Berlioz was a lone wolf". Forty years earlier, Sir Thomas Beecham, a lifelong proponent of Berlioz's music, commented similarly, writing that although, for example, Mozart was a greater composer, his music drew on the works of his predecessors, whereas Berlioz's works were all wholly original: "the Symphonie fantastique or La Damnation de Faust broke upon the world like some unaccountable effort of spontaneous generation which had dispensed with the machinery of normal parentage".

Rushton suggests that "Berlioz's way is neither architectural nor developmental, but illustrative". He judges this to be part of a continuing French musical aesthetic, favouring a "decorative" – rather than the German "architectural" – approach to composition. Abstraction and discursiveness are alien to this tradition, and in operas, and to a large extent in orchestral music, there is little continuous development; instead self-contained numbers or sections are preferred.

Berlioz's compositional techniques have been strongly criticised and equally strongly defended. It is common ground for critics and defenders that his approach to harmony and musical structure conforms to no established rules; his detractors ascribe this to ignorance, and his proponents to independent-minded adventurousness. His approach to rhythm caused perplexity to conservatively-inclined contemporaries; he hated the phrase carrée – the unvaried four- or eight-bar phrase – and introduced new varieties of rhythm to his music. He explained his practice in an 1837 article: accenting weak beats at the expense of the strong, alternating triple and duple groups of notes and using unexpected rhythmic themes independent of the main melody. Macdonald writes that Berlioz was a natural melodist, but that his rhythmic sense led him away from regular phrase lengths; he "spoke naturally in a kind of flexible musical prose, with surprise and contour important elements".

Berlioz's approach to harmony and counterpoint was idiosyncratic, and has provoked adverse criticism. Pierre Boulez commented, "There are awkward harmonies in Berlioz that make one scream". In Rushton's analysis, most of Berlioz's melodies have "clear tonal and harmonic implications" but the composer sometimes chose not to harmonise accordingly. Rushton observes that Berlioz's preference for irregular rhythm subverts conventional harmony: "Classic and romantic melody usually implies harmonic motion of some consistency and smoothness; Berlioz's aspiration to musical prose tends to resist such consistency." The pianist and musical analyst Charles Rosen has written that Berlioz often sets the climax of his melodies in relief with the most emphatic chord a triad in root position, and often a tonic chord where the melody leads the listener to expect a dominant. He gives as an example the second phrase of the main theme – the idée fixe – of the Symphonie fantastique, "famous for its shock to classical sensibilities", in which the melody implies a dominant at its climax resolved by a tonic, but in which Berlioz anticipates the resolution by putting a tonic under the climactic note.

Even among those unsympathetic to his music, few deny that Berlioz was a master of orchestration. Richard Strauss wrote that Berlioz invented the modern orchestra. Some of those who recognise Berlioz's mastery of orchestration nonetheless dislike a few of his more extreme effects. The pedal point for trombones in the "Hostias" section of the Requiem is often cited; some musicians such as Gordon Jacob have found the effect unpleasant. Macdonald has questioned Berlioz's fondness for divided cellos and basses in dense, low chords, but he emphasises that such contentious points are rare compared with "the felicities and masterstrokes" abounding in the scores. Berlioz took instruments hitherto used for special purposes and introduced them into his regular orchestra: Macdonald mentions the harp, the cor anglais, the bass clarinet and the valve trumpet. Among the characteristic touches in Berlioz's orchestration singled out by Macdonald are the wind "chattering on repeated notes" for brilliance, or being used to add "sombre colour" to Romeo's arrival at the Capulets' vault, and the "Chœur d'ombres" in Lélio. Of Berlioz's brass he writes:

Brass can be solemn or brazen; the "Marche au supplice" in the Symphonie fantastique is a defiantly modern use of brass. Trombones introduce Mephistopheles with three flashing chords or support the gloomy doubts of Narbal in Les Troyens. With a hiss of cymbals, pianissimo, they mark the entry of the Cardinal in Benvenuto Cellini and the blessing of little Astyanax by Priam in Les Troyens.
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