Sabina On The Techniques Of Hector Berlioz Music Beyond

In the art history of Europe, a number of music masters emerged, whose classic works based on great technique system have been tremendously impressing the audience for hundreds of years. Berlioz is such a great French composer.Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is the founder of French romantic music, who devoted his whole life to the creation of program music and become a productive composer of such a music type. As a famous representative composer of the then music world influenced by Romanticism, Berlioz, together with Hugo, a French romantic literature master, and Delacroix, a French romantic painter, has been hailed as three giants of French Romanticism.Being a composer, conductor and a critic, Berlioz is considered the father of the 19th century's program music and the master of orchestration. In his early years, Berlioz attended Paris Conservatory. He won Rome Prize in 1830. Symphonie Fantastique ,a narrative genre of symphonic music piece composed in the same year, is regarded as an autobiographical novel in musical form. This piece consists of 5 movements, each of which has a theme representing one of his beloved. Symphonie Fantastique has become a milestone in the history of the program music and one of the most well-known symphonies.Being an innovative composer, Berlioz was not limited by the technique of the old music genres. Based on his philosophic thinking, he laid the foundation of the romantic music. In addition to Symphonie Fantastique, his representative works include Romeo and Juliet (1839), a dramatic symphony, Degradation of Faust (1864), a chorus romance opera, Harold in Italy(1834) and so on. Together with French romantic literature, these works representing the romantic music have constituted an important part of European art history and human civilization.Berlioz has a far-reaching impact on the romantic music due to the fact that he started the trend of the then Romanticism and he provided the direction of the romantic music development by the techniques and aesthetic expression in the highly valued Symphonie Fantastique that has become an excellent example of symphonies and symphonic poems. Romain Rolland, a master of literature, commented," If the creativity is the most important things about being a genius, the composers of great genius like Berlioz the world over are no more than four or five. What is more,Ⅰbelieve that even Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel and Wagner cannot rival Berlioz who himself is music, more than a musician." Perhaps what Romain Rolland said shows his personal tastes, but we can see the enormous influence of Berlioz at that time from such comments made by a great music critic.Innovation is the life of all the art forms. Berlioz was good at deriving inspiration from classic literary works and adding the literary elements to symphony creation, thus telling stories of the poetic literature by the music language and making expressiveness of symphonies more vivid and stronger as well as improving orchestration. Such courage to explore the new grounds is of great significance to our artistic innovation.