Berlioz the Revolutionary
The article I found for today’s blog post is titled “On the 100th anniversary of his death, Berlioz Still Sounds New: Berlioz still sounds new”. The article is from March 9th, 1969 from the New York Times.
Berlioz is a completely new composer to me as of this unit, but he’s probably my favorite composer we’ve learned about so far. If you read my last blog post, you remember my challenging the teaching of lots of old, dead white men in music school, but that’s only if these people seem to bring nothing to the table for me. This is obviously my personal opinion, but I don’t feel like I gain a lot of outlook on music history learning about composers like Beethoven, but learning about Berlioz was actually very interesting. His Symphonie Fantastique challenged so many norms at the time, and I admire him for that. I also personally feel his style is much more interesting than most older composers, likely because he was breaking these traditions.
The way the article started was very interesting. It started off describing the conditions surrounding his death, and it painted a very sad picture. He never really reached much success during his lifetime, but did receive a lot of hatred for his work. Later, his music was re-examined and people realized he was essentially the founding father of Romanticism; he broke down the barriers for younger composers. For example, the article talks about how he used new ways of harmony and forbidden chord progressions, so it was really completely new for western classical music. Even though these types of chord progressions and harmony are common now, I can imagine how shocking it would be to hear dissonance like in Symphonie Fantastique if you hadn’t heard much dissonance before. It also did have some pretty interesting chord progressions, especially in comparison to older classical composers.
The main point of the article is to honor Berlioz and the steps he made to change music, and the point that “after 100 years he still sounds new” is absolutely true in my opinion. Starting in his childhood he challenged norms, because while his father wanted him to be a doctor, he chose to compose. An interesting fact the article brought up is that Berlioz didn’t really play any instruments super well, which is actually somewhat inspiring. He was always focused on composing rather than playing himself, so although he could play a lot of instruments, he wasn’t a master at any of them. This unusual aspect of his life probably laid the foundation for the unusual music he created. He also, according to many accounts, was extremely passionate, which really shows through in his music.
Learning about Symphonie Fantastique has made me wonder if I’ll ever experience anything like that in my lifetime. A completely new style of music feels almost impossible at this point, because there is so much music out there it feels difficult to create anything that’s really new. Maybe there is already a new form of music but it isn’t popular yet. I’ve always wondered this. Challenging social norms through music is really common now, but it’s usually by the lyrics or the music video, not the style of music itself. I hope some sort of new revolutionary style of music comes out sometime soon, but it feels like we’re stuck right now. Trends in music seem to recycle themselves, so even if a “new” style of music becomes popular, it’s usually something that has already been done. I’m very interested to see if anything like this happens while I’m alive. Overall, I enjoyed learning about Berlioz and I admire his lust for change.
