While Berlioz is best known as a composer, he was also a prolific writer, and supported himself for many years by writing musical criticism, utilising a bold, vigorous style, at times imperious and sarcastic.

The Grand-Ducal family supported an impressive concert hall situated at Pavlovsk station, which proved popular with the middle classes, and attracted names such as Johann Strauss II, Franz Liszt, and Hector Berlioz.

Upon his return to Rome, Berlioz posed for a portrait painting by Émile Signol ( completed in April 1832 ), which Berlioz did not consider to be a good likeness of himself.

Cherubini felt that a government-sponsored commission should naturally be offered to himself rather than the young Berlioz, who was considered an eccentric.

The performance was held in the open air on July 28, conducted by Berlioz himself, at the Place de la Bastille.

Liszt was an enthusiastic performer and supporter, and Wagner himself, after first expressing great reservations about Berlioz, wrote to Liszt saying: " we, Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner, are three equals, but we must take care not to say so to him.

" As Wagner here implies, Berlioz himself was indifferent to the idea of what was called " la musique du passé " ( music of the past ), and clearly influenced both Liszt and Wagner ( and other forward-looking composers ) although he increasingly began to dislike many of their works.

Perhaps as a result of this reading and seeing himself as an archetypical tragic hero, Berlioz began to weave personal references into his music.

The story behind this work relates to Berlioz himself and can be considered somewhat autobiographical.

Berlioz often had to arrange for his own performances as well as pay for them himself.

Berlioz took full advantage of his times as editor, allowing himself to increase his articles written on music history rather than current events, evidenced by him publishing seven articles on Gluck in the Gazette between June 1834 and January 1835.

An example of another journal of the same time is the Revue musicale, which thrived on personal attacks, many against Berlioz himself from the pen of critic François-Joseph Fétis.

Hector Berlioz himself paid tribute to the ' Father of the Viennese Waltz ' by commenting that " Vienna without Strauss is like Austria without the Danube ".

Under Boulez the orchestra recorded mostly twentieth century music – works by Bartók, Berg, Schoenberg and Boulez himself, and also Berlioz.

Hector Berlioz investigated Castor et Pollux and particularly admired the aria " Tristes apprêts ," but " whereas the modern listener readily perceives the common ground with Berlioz ' music, he himself was more conscious of the gap which separated them.

During the following decade he visited various European cities, impressing with his virtuosity not only audiences but also famous musicians such as Hector Berlioz and Paganini himself, whom he encountered at his London debut in 1834.

In 1852 he moved to Hanover, at the same time dissociating himself from the musical ideals of the ' New German School ' ( Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, and their followers, as defined by journalist Franz Brendel ) and instead making common cause with Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Berlioz used the money primarily to repay his debts, and afterwards was still left with " a handsome sum of money ", which he used to allow himself to put his full focus towards working on " a really important work ", unobstructed by his usual time-consuming obligations as a critic.

Berlioz himself was eager to see the work staged, but once he did, he conceded that the production techniques of his time were not up to the task of bringing the work to dramatic life.

Berlioz wrote the French libretto himself, based closely on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

The libretto was written by Berlioz himself from Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid ; the score was composed between 1856 and 1858.

Berlioz himself arranged for the entire score to be published by the Parisian music editors, Choudens et Cie.

The following table lists the members of the saxhorn family as described in the orchestration texts of Hector Berlioz and Cecil Forsyth, the J. Howard Foote catalog of 1893, and modern names.

Occasional literary references point to the novel and, naturally the classics and we know of family visits especially with Madame Pisani ( of whom he appears to have been extraordinarily fond ) " to view the paintings " He was, presumably, culturally no different to any other highly educated European gentleman. Invitations are to be found among the papers in the Royal Irish Academy-to M. Gounod's " Sappho ", first performed in Paris in 1851, Verdi's " Rigoletto " Il Trovatore ", " La Traviata and Les Vespres Siciliennes ", Schumann's " Manfred "; Donizetti's " Lucia di Lammermoor " and Berlioz ' " The Infant Christ ". Such advanced musical tastes and opportunities usually come early in life and by were presumably instilled in Hortense and Henry by the Pisani's rather than by Haliday's provincial and decidedly dour family. It is worth noting, but no more, that Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer, was born in Lucca, Haliday's other home town in 1859.

It began to be used in symphonic music by Hector Berlioz but he found performances frustrating in such countries as Germany where few harps and sufficiently proficient harpists were to be found.

Cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussy's La Mer, and several orchestral works by Hector Berlioz.

As time progressed, and as the Romantic period saw changes in accepted modification with composers such as Berlioz, followed by Johannes Brahms and eventually Gustav Mahler, the 20th century saw that instrumentation could practically be hand-picked by the composer.

Some of the others include Troades by Euripides, Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare, Iphigenia and Polyxena by Samuel Coster, Palamedes by Joost van den Vondel and Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz.

Gilliam made his opera debut at London's English National Opera in May 2011, directing The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz.

In one of his novels, entitled Invitatie la vals, referring to Carl Maria von Weber's " Invitation to the Dance " ( later orchestrated by Berlioz ), a comparison is made between the novel's main character and Manon Lescaut.

Weber's shorter piano pieces, such as the Invitation to the Dance, was later orchestrated by Berlioz, while his Polacca Brillante was later set for piano and orchestra by Liszt.

Weber's orchestration has also been highly praised and emulated by later generations of composers – Berlioz referred to him several times in his Treatise on Instrumentation while Debussy remarked that the sound of the Weber orchestra was obtained through the scrutiny of the soul of each instrument.

* Hector Berlioz ( 1844 ), revised in 1905 by Richard Strauss: Grand traité d ’ instrumentation et d ’ orchestration modernes ( Treatise on Instrumentation ).

" La Marseillaise " was arranged for soprano, chorus and orchestra by Hector Berlioz in about 1830.

Crop of a carte de visite photo of Hector Berlioz by Franck, Paris, ca.

Berlioz appears to have been innately Romantic, this characteristic manifesting itself in his love affairs, adoration of great romantic literature, and his weeping at passages by Virgil ( by age twelve he had learned to read Virgil in Latin and translate it into French under his father's tutelage ), Shakespeare, and Beethoven.

Berlioz also heard two operas by Gaspare Spontini, a composer who influenced him through their friendship, and whom he later championed when working as a critic.

lithography | Lithograph of Berlioz by August Prinzhofer, Vienna, 1845.

On 30 December 1831, Berlioz left France for Rome, prompted by a clause in the Prix de Rome which required winners to spend two years studying there.

Enraged, Berlioz decided to return to Paris and take revenge on Pleyel, his fiancée, and her mother by killing all three of them.

During this transition period, which gradually eased the performance of more demanding " natural " brass writing, many composers ( notably Wagner and Berlioz ) still notated brass parts for the older " natural " instruments.

Works such as the Requiem of Hector Berlioz would have been impossible to perform just a few decades earlier, with its demanding writing for twenty woodwinds, as well as four gigantic brass ensembles each including around four trumpets, four trombones, and two tubas.

Berlioz was not a child prodigy, unlike some other famous composers of the time ; he began studying music at age 12, when he began writing small compositions and arrangements.

Critical opinion was generally hostile, though Berlioz praised the work, writing that it did " does M. Bizet the greatest honour ".

In part, it is because Berlioz rejected writing the very symmetrical melodies then in academic fashion, and instead looked for melodies which were, " so intense in every note, as to defy normal harmonization ", as Schumann put it.

Berlioz began " by writing a solo for viola, but one which involved the orchestra in such a way as not to reduce the effectiveness of the orchestral contribution.