The Hector Berlioz Website - Berlioz photos and portraits 14

The Hector Berlioz Website

Berlioz Photo Album : Colleagues, friends and others (6)

Colleagues and other people associated with Berlioz

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

The German poet Heinrich Heine was a friend of Berlioz and memorably called him “a colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle, such as is said to have existed in the primeval world. … There is for me in Berlioz’s music something primitive, if not antediluvian; it sets me thinking of gigantic species of extinct animals, of mammoths, of fabled empires with legendary sins, of many impossibilities piled on top of each other; these magic strains remind us of Babylon, of the hanging gardens of Semiramis, of the wonders of Nineveh, of the daring monuments of Mizraïm, such as we see on the paintings of the Englishman Martin.” (See Berlioz’s Memoirs, Postscript, and Berlioz on his musical style.)

Heine was born in Düsseldorf and died in Paris. He is buried at Montmartre Cemetery, where Berlioz is also buried.

Émile Deschamps (1791-1871)

A friend and collaborator, the French poet Émile Deschamps turned Berlioz’s prose into verse for his Dramatic Symphony Roméo et Juliette. In this connection Berlioz writes: “After a fairly long period of indecision, I settled on the idea of a choral symphony, with vocal solos and choral recitatives, for which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet would provide the sublime but perennially fresh subject. I wrote a prose draft of all the text that was intended for the vocal interludes between the instrumental pieces. Émile Deschamps, obliging as ever, turned this text into verse with the exceptional fluency that is his, and I started work. ” (Memoirs, Chapter 49; see also Romeo and Juliet.). Strophes 2 and 3 of Berlioz’s Le Trébuchet are also by Deschamps.

A copy of this picture is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Baron Hans Guido von Bülow (1830-1894)

The German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer was in his youth a protégé of Liszt whom Berlioz met in Weimar. He married Liszt’s daughter Cosima, who later left him to marry Wagner.

Bülow became one of the most active supporters of Berlioz in Germany and facilitated his visit to Dresden in 1854. Berlioz also thought highly of him. In a letter to Liszt dated 31 March 1854 (CG no. 1717), he writes “I also hear that M. von Bülow is in Dresden, and I shall be delighted to see him again; I know how highly you regard him, and it is not everywhere that you find sitting on milestones artists of his calibre who are prepared to extend to you the hand of friendship”.

Together with Liszt, Bülow made changes to Berlioz’s first opera Benvenuto Cellini, which came to be known as the Weimar version. At some point in the 1860s it was Bülow who introduced the young Danish musician Asger Hamerik to Berlioz.

Wolfgang Robert Griepenkerl (1810-1868)

A German critic and writer on music, Griepenkerl had a cordial friendship with Berlioz and encouraged his musical career in Germany. The two men first on 9 March 1843 in Brunswick where Berlioz had just given a concert. In 1843 he published a pamphlet entitled Ritter Berlioz in Braunschweig (Sir Berlioz in Brunswick), in which he vehemently responded to negative critiques of Berlioz’s music.

The above portrait has been scanned from our own copy of Ritter Berlioz in Braunschweig.

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