Classical Music for Holy Week & Easter

By |2024-03-23T20:27:01-05:00March 23rd, 2024|Categories: Antonio Vivaldi, Audio/Video, Easter, Hector Berlioz, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Though Handel's "Messiah" rightly reigns supreme as the king of music for Easter, there are many other seasonal masterpieces that deserve to be heard more often. Here are ten lesser-known classical works that brilliantly depict the dramatic events of Holy Week and Easter Sunday. 1. "Resurrexit" from the Messe Solennelle, by Hector Berlioz (1824) The [...]

Glory to Dido! The Operas of Hector Berlioz

By |2024-03-08T06:30:43-06:00March 7th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

"They are finally going to play my music." —Hector Berlioz, on his deathbed Though Hector Berlioz's operas are still little known today—even to the opera-going public, who are much more likely to find the dramas of Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, and Mozart on the program—the increasing recognition of their many glories is slowly making them less [...]

Finding Faith in the Manger: Berlioz’s “Infancy of Christ”

By |2023-12-24T23:23:09-06:00December 24th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Music, Timeless Essays|

Hector Berlioz was a professed atheist, but could anything as tender and touching as "L’Enfance du Christ" have been written by a man who did not believe? And what of Berlioz’s closing line to the work: “Oh my soul, what remains for you to do but shatter your pride before so great a mystery?" The [...]

Requiem for Hector Berlioz

By |2023-03-07T14:25:40-06:00March 7th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

"I feel I am dying," Hector Berlioz wrote in one of his last letters. "I no longer believe in anything." Indeed, by 1869, Berlioz was a frustrated man who had long ago given up his Catholic faith and who had largely given up composing. For many years, the limited and intermittent success of his compositions had [...]

Immortal Beloved: Musical Love Letters From the Great Composers

By |2023-02-13T20:23:11-06:00February 13th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Gustav Mahler, Hector Berlioz, Love, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Richard Wagner, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

Love has inspired countless composers, some of whom have written pieces dedicated to, or directly inspired by, their own beloveds. Here are ten of the best musical love letters ever composed. 1.  Wagner: Siegfried Idyll Though his reputation rests on his big, long, and loud mythological operas, Richard Wagner was also capable of composing on a [...]

Berlioz’s Long-Lost “Solemn Mass” for the Holy Innocents

By |2023-12-26T15:47:02-06:00December 27th, 2022|Categories: Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

The premier of 22-year-old Hector Berlioz's "Messe Solennelle" in 1825 was one of the most remarkable musical debuts ever by a composer, and the score's rediscovery 167 years later in a church attic is one of the most astounding events in musicological history. The fact that we today have this setting of the Mass by [...]

Learning to Love Berlioz

By |2024-01-05T13:58:00-06:00December 10th, 2022|Categories: Audio/Video, Hector Berlioz, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Hector Berlioz relished the spectacular sounds that could be achieved with massive orchestral forces, but he was much more than a musical showman. His gift for melody, his mastery of orchestration, his genius for musical drama, his bold originality, and the uniqueness of his style place him in the front ranks of the great composers. [...]

Finding Faith in the Manger: Berlioz’s “Infancy of Christ”

By |2022-01-06T12:37:24-06:00December 10th, 2021|Categories: Audio/Video, Catholicism, Christmas, Hector Berlioz, Music, Timeless Essays|

Could anything as tender and touching as "L’Enfance du Christ" have been written by a man who did not believe? One hopes that professed atheist Hector Berlioz was able to find the Christmas that he portrayed so beautifully. The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote that “The major poetic idea in the world is and always [...]

“Le Corsaire”

By |2020-12-10T15:11:14-06:00December 10th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Hector Berlioz, Music|

Le corsaire (The Corsair), Op. 21 is an overture composed while Berlioz was on holiday in Nice in August 1844. It was first performed under the title La tour de Nice (The Tower of Nice) on 19 January 1845. It was then renamed Le corsaire rouge (after James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Red Rover) and finally Le corsaire (suggesting Byron's poem The Corsair).* Berlioz scholar [...]

“Farewell, Proud City”: Dido’s Lament For Carthage

By |2021-01-10T17:40:41-06:00June 19th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Hector Berlioz, Music|

When Berlioz's "Trojans" reaches its last half-an-hour, with Dido’s rage, misery, and then calm acceptance of utter loss amid the final doomed realization of Rome’s triumph—one finds oneself on a level that shuns most other opera’s attempts at classical transcendence. Based on Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid, Hector Berlioz composed his four-hour Les Troyens in the style [...]

Hector Berlioz and the Art of Musical Storytelling

By |2023-12-10T17:23:30-06:00December 30th, 2019|Categories: Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Michael De Sapio, Music|

Music with extra-musical subtexts has existed for a long time, but it was the Romantics who first combined story and music in a close synthesis. Their pioneer was Hector Berlioz, who dove into the art of musical storytelling with a daring never before seen, yet with an artistic integrity rarely achieved since. Berlioz first saw [...]

Berlioz’s “Te Deum” & Chateaubriand’s “Genius of Christianity”

By |2022-12-10T17:56:04-06:00November 13th, 2019|Categories: Christianity, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Michael De Sapio, Music|

Hector Berlioz's version of the "Te Deum" surpasses them all in its colossal scale. The French composer has often been accused of bombast, but here the gigantic forces required are completely fitting for this cosmic hymn of praise. “[I]t was enthusiasm itself that inspired the Te Deum...[A]mid clouds of smoke and yet reeking blood, a [...]

The Halloween-ness of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”

By |2021-10-26T16:23:15-05:00October 30th, 2019|Categories: Audio/Video, Halloween, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series|

It’s October, Halloween is approaching and I am obsessed with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Blame it on the title and mood of the symphony’s fifth movement: “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.” Could any title be more deliciously spooky? It’s this movement, and this symphony, that make classical music people nod in recognition at the sound of Hector Berlioz’s [...]

Go to Top