Berlioz’s Contribution to Music
It seems strange, but Berlioz disliked Bach and Palestrina and worshiped Beethoven, Gluck and Weber. He was jealous of Wagner and did everything he could to make Tannhäuser a failure in Paris.
Berlioz invented new ways, as do our Jazz Bands today, to make the instruments produce different sounds. He put bags over the horns, hung up the cymbals and had them struck with sticks instead of clapping them together, dressed up the drumsticks in sponges, and was much pleased at the effect made when a trombone played a duet with a piccolo. He made propaganda for new instruments especially for the horn, invented by Adolphe Saxe, which was called Sax Horn, and from which descended the Saxophone, so behold Berlioz, the founder of the Jazz Band!
Where other composers would use four trombones or one, he used sixteen! In his Requiem for example, he used sixteen trombones, twelve ophicleides (cornets with extra levers or keys), eight pairs of kettle drums, two bass drums, a gong and of course, all the regular string and reed instruments. He boasted after the first performance, that a man had a fit from the excessive noise!
The Intimate Friend of Instruments
He wrote the sort of melody that showed off each particular instrument to its best advantage. He studied them as if they were human beings, and he understood their characters and temperaments, what they could do and at what they would balk. He showed the possibilities of the choirs of wood wind instruments, a rich heritage for us today. The orchestra playing a piece of his, directed by him was matchless in its effect. Effect was the keynote of his writings. As the first great master of tonal effect, he is unsurpassed, and his book on orchestration is still one of the most practical text books on the subject.
Berlioz used the idée fixe (fixed idea) or leit-motif, not as Wagner used it later, but quite definitely, twisting a theme in many ways to bring out different phases of the same subject. Thus, Berlioz founded the dramatic in music, without scenery and without words, which is the Symphonic Tone Poem.
The majority of the people did not understand him any more than they understand Stravinsky today. His greatest work was his Symphony Fantastic written in 1829, in which he used the idée fixe to tell about the life of the artist, in true program music style for which he fought and almost bled. In Harold in Italy, he makes a departure by giving to the viola, the rôle of the “leading lady” which had not been done up to his day. He often used voices with the orchestra as he did in his tone poems Romeo and Juliet, and The Damnation of Faust.
The noisy Requiem is one of the finest things he did, and his overtures, the best of which is the Benvenuto Cellini, are fine works. The oratorio, The Infancy of Christ, written in classic style, was well received, but his operas never succeeded.
He paved the way for new orchestral effects and prepared the ground for Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and all the other orchestral composers. He was a musical Byron, for he was more interesting than beautiful, more vivid than noble, a sincere poseur, faithful to his ideas and always searching for romance.