Berlioz, Hector

Berlioz, (Louis-) Hector

(born Dec. 11, 1803, La Côte-Saint-André, France—died March 8, 1869, Paris) French composer. He studied guitar in his early years and later studied music at the Paris Conservatoire, against his parents' wishes. His first great score was the stormy Symphonie fantastique (1830), which became a landmark of the Romantic era. Impulsive and passionate, he was a contentious critic and gadfly constantly at war with the musical establishment. Though he was the most compelling French musical figure of his time, his idiosyncratic compositional style kept almost all his music out of the repertory until the mid-20th century. His works include the operas Benvenuto Cellini (1837) and Les Troyens (1858); the program symphonies Harold in Italy (1834) and Romeo and Juliet (1839); and the choral dramas La Damnation de Faust (1846) and L'Enfance du Christ (1854). He was also known as a brilliant conductor with an unsurpassed knowledge of the orchestra; his orchestration treatise (1843) is the most influential such work ever written.