Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was the first of the great Romantics, and it is Romanticism that animates his music and runs riot throughout his life. Above all, he was a man of passion. What he hated, he grasped firmly by the hair; what he loved, he almost crushed in his fervor. The supreme romance in his life stimulated the creation of his first major composition, the autobiographical Symphonie Fantastique. And the story it tells is of his obsessive romance with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. To simply say that he fell in love would be like saying that the ocean has some water in it. Rather, it was a force of nature that all but drove him out of his mind. Ironically, it was the music itself which ultimately conquered her.

Hector's musical embodiment of the supreme love of his life, Harriet Smithson, was the "idee fixe" theme of the autobiographical Symphonie Fantastique.

SOME OTHER BERLIOZ PAGES: Matthew Tepper's Le feuilleton fantastique d'Hector Berlioz!   Doug Asselbergs' Berlioz page   Stefan Antwarg's Berlioz page   Phillip Rutherford's Berlioz Shrine   Jason C. Lee's Berlioz Class Project

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