Hector Berlioz (jan 1, 1803 – jan 1, 1869)

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Nationality: French

Rare for a composer, Berlioz played the flute and guitar but never learned piano. His father sent him to medical school, but he eventually abandoned medicine to be a composer. He developed an obsession with Harriet Smithson, whom he’d seem play Ophelia in Hamlet. While initially spurning him, she eventually accepted his courting after his engagement to a different woman fell through. Smithson turned into an alcoholic following their marriage, though, and their relationship fell apart a few years following the birth of their son. As his music was to radical to widespread support, he turned to music criticism and conducting. He was one of the first to make a career of orchestral conducting. After Smithson died in 1854, he married singer Marie Recio, with whom he had long had an affair. In his final years, Berlioz grew ill and was bitter at the lack of recognition for his music in France. He died at 65, outliving two wives, his son, and most of his family and friends.

Composition Things
Was one of the most literary composers, as many of his works were inspired by literature. He was the first composer to score a piece for an orchestra of over a hundred, and he, as a master orchestrator, invented a number of new effects and devices for this expanded orchestra.

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