Berlioz in Time, From Early Recognition to Lasting Renown

Author

Bloom; Peter

Year

2022

Publisher

Boydell & Brewer

Language

English

Link

Last Update

24-Jul-2026

Keywords

Music

Description

Berlioz grew up in the provinces of southeastern France. He was not quite eighteen when he arrived in Paris to pursue medical, then musical study. If the formative years had a lasting impact on his life and work as composer, critic, advocate, and adversary, the artistic flame itself was lit in the capital city. Half a century later, the Symphonie fantastique would come to represent the culmination of what I have elsewhere called Berlioz’s “initiation”— the fons et origo of his instrumental repertory, the trigger of his international renown.¹ The scholars and the critics, the intrepid players and the indomitable...