Hector Berlioz (in Montmartre Cemetery) - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Note : the only entry to the cemetery is at N48 53.123 E2 19.849.

Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, between Lyon and Grenoble. His father was a physician, and young Hector was sent to Paris to study medicine at the age of eighteen. Berlioz was horrified by the process of dissection, and, despite his father's disapproval, he abandoned his career path in medicine to study music a year later. He then attended the Paris Conservatoire, studying opera and composition.

He became identified early on with the French Romantic movement. Among his friends were writers such as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Honoré de Balzac. Later, Théophile Gautier wrote, "Hector Berlioz seems to me to form with Hugo and Delacroix, the Trinity of Romantic Art."

Berlioz is said to have been innately romantic, experiencing emotions deeply from early childhood. This manifested itself in his weeping at passages of Virgil as a child, and later in his love affairs. At the age of 23, his unrequited (at first) love for the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Constance Smithson was the inspiration for his Symphonie fantastique. In 1830, the same year as the symphony's premiere, Berlioz won the Prix de Rome.

Berlioz's letters were considered so overly passionate by Smithson that she initially refused his advances. The symphony which these emotions are said to inspire was received as startling and vivid. The autobiographic nature of this piece of program music was also considered sensational at the time, a mere 3 years after Beethoven's death. After his return to Paris from his two years study in Rome, he finally married Smithson when she had finally attended a performance of the Symphonie Fantastique. She quickly realized that it was his depiction of his passionate letters to her. However, after only a few years, the relationship quickly fell apart.

During his lifetime, Berlioz was more famous as a conductor than a composer. He regularly toured Germany and England where he conducted operas and symphonic music, both his own and music composed by others.

Hector Berlioz is buried in the Cimetiere de Montmartre with his two wives, Harriet Smithson (died 1854) and Marie Recio (died 1862).

Although neglected in France for much of the nineteenth century, the music of Berlioz has often been cited as extremely influential in the development of the symphonic form, instrumentation, and the depiction in music of programmatic ideas, features central to musical romanticism. He was considered extremely modern for his day, and he Wagner and Liszt are sometimes considered the great trinity of progressive 19th century romanticism.

The music of Berlioz enjoyed a revival during the 1960s and 1970s, due in large part to the efforts of British conductor Colin Davis, who recorded his entire oeuvre, bringing to light a number of Berlioz's lesser-known works.

In 2003, the bicentenary of Berlioz's birth, a proposal was made to remove his remains to the Panthéon, but it was blocked by President Jacques Chirac in a political dispute over Berlioz's worthiness as a symbol of a republican, since Berlioz, who regularly met kings and princes, had severely criticized the 1848 revolution, speaking of the "odious and stupid republic". Also, Berlioz had wished to remain buried close to his wife, and removing his remains would not have respected this will. In the land of his birth, Berlioz still remains something of a neglected prophet.

Description: See above. Date of birth: 12/11/1803 Date of death: 03/08/1869 Area of notoriety: Art Marker Type: Tomb (above ground) Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 09:00 - 17:30 Fee required?: No Web site: Not listed

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Date Logged Log   05/20/2010 Al-cab visited it