Happy Birthday, Hector Berlioz

Today is the birthday of French composer Hector Berlioz, born today in 1803. The eldest son of a doctor in La Côte-Saint-André, Hector tried to pursue a medical career himself at the University of Paris, but found the studies distasteful. However, his sojourn in Paris gave him access to a wealth of live music, and his attendance at the opera ignited a lifelong desire to study and write music. He graduated from medical school, but he immediately abandoned medicine as a career and entered the Conservatoire to formally pursue a musical career.

Berlioz was a unique voice and a progressive force in musical composition. His melodic and rhythmic constructs were very unique and often complex. He also became known for favoring large forces of performers in his works, leading to this 1847 caricature image of one of his concerts.

Berlioz’s famous contribution to the wind repertoire is his 1840 Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, a symphony written on commission by the French government to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the July 1830 Revolution.

The symphony was originally scored for a wind band of 200 players who were to accompany the procession which moved the coffins of those who had died fighting in the 1830 revolution for reburial beneath a memorial column which had been set up on the site of the Bastille. Berlioz himself led the band. The work had been such a success at the dress rehearsal that it was given two more performances.

Celebrate Berlioz’s birthday with this great recording by the Carnegie Mellon University Wind Ensemble of the Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale!