1

Henry Spencer

Dr. Brooks Toliver

Music History Survey: Classical/Romantic

April 28, 2017

Berlioz’s “Miniature Orchestra”

In this paper I will discuss how Hector Berlioz’s (1803-69) knowledge of the Romantic

Period guitar affected his compositional style. Berlioz knew the rules of academic counterpoint

well; he formally began to study composition at the Paris Conservatory in 1826, but in many in-

stances the composer consciously made compositional decisions which broke with traditional

rules, thus creating instances which were maddening to some of his contemporaries and the mark

of genius to others. Because Berlioz’s primary harmonic instrument happened to be the guitar,

instead of the keyboard, as was so common for orchestral composers during the time, in what

ways could the guitar’s idiomatic features and playing techniques, alongside the unique musical

education he received, have informed his compositional choices? Contentions do exist between

Berliozian scholars as to the degree of influence which knowing the guitar could have exerted

upon the composer’s orchestral writing. Nevertheless, if it is obvious from composers’ works,

whom studied keyboard, that their music clearly observes pianistic tendencies, as seen in the

study of orchestral music from composers as far ranging from Robert Schumann (1810-1856) to

Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915), the study of a guitarist’s compositional output should unveil a
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similar respective design 1. Needless to say, the guitar was a meaningful instrument to one of his-

tory’s most well-remembered composers; and a further knowledge of Berlioz’s relationship with

the Romantic Period guitar will fruit a greater understanding of the artist’s music.

Using the guitar as an alternative to the keyboard provided Berlioz’s fingers with unor-

thodox harmonic solutions that would permeate his compositional style 2. Berlioz’s music educa-

tion, prior to entering the Parisian academic circles, centered upon the musical resources he had

available, a flageolet, drum, and most importantly, a guitar. With this instrument he would use

“to teach himself the various chords, resolution of discords… [so] set forth in [Charles-Simon]

Catel’s [(1773-1830)] treatise [on harmony]” 3. Furthermore, growing up in the town of La Côte-

Saint-André near Grenbole in southern France did not afford Berlioz the opportunity to visit

opera houses, nor hear an orchestra play, let alone a piano. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47), by

contrast, had written his Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream at around the same age of 16

years, as when Berlioz first heard a symphony perform during his first trip to Paris in 18214. The

resulting limited musical atmosphere surely produced within Berlioz a much greater degree of

reliance on the guitar as a harmonic tool. His first guitar teacher, a man named Dorant, came

from Paris in 1819, bringing with him a wave of excitement for the guitar which had swept over

the city in the preceding decades 5. Soon after, the young student was soon compelled to begin

writing his own music because of the limited scores available in rural France and also for surpas-

sing what Dorant was capable of teaching him 6. Throughout Europe’s concert halls, salons, and

1
Rushton, J. The Musical Language of Berlioz, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963, p. 57.
2
Dallman, Paul. Influence and Use of the Guitar in the Music of Hector Berlioz, Thesis: The University
of Maryland, 1972, pg. i.
3
Wotton, T.S. Hector Berlioz. London, 1935; repr. 1970, p. 59.
4
Ibid. p. 7.
5
Berlioz, H. Mémoires d’Hector Berlioz. Paris, 1870; P. Citron, Paris, 1969; English trans., ed. D. Cairns,
London, 1969, p. 11.
6
Ibid, pp. 10-11.
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all the way to the hillsides, the region’s musical climate was experiencing a “guitaromanie”, Vir-

tuosi such as Fernando Sor (1778-1839), Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), Zani de Ferranti (1801-

1879), dubbed the “Paganini of the guitar” by critics, and even Niccolò Paganini himself (1782-

1840), whom considered “giving up the violin” in place for a guitar-driven career, were each tak-

ing the stage, drawing critical acclaim, and writing music to be published for the at-home-ama-

teur and aspiring professionals 7. All the while, Paris had found herself as the epicenter for this

guitar activity, thus offering the perfect cultural atmosphere for Berlioz to discover the guitar 8.

Beyond rural France and the composer’s early musical education, the guitar accompanied

Berlioz throughout his travels of the Italian countryside as the 1830 Prix de Rome champion 9.

While traveling, “Berlioz’s guitar prowess…brought many requests for his playing [of] ‘impro-

vised saltarelli…as an accompaniment to [the Abruzzian villagers’ dancing]” and in return, the

composer was given “the delight of real folk music… which he would recapture in his works to

be” 10. Beyond what he wrote for the guitar and the recorded exclamations from villagers whom

heard and encouraged his playing of dance music, there is no direct indication as to how ad-

vanced Berlioz became as a player 11. Despite this fact, “from the beginning of his interest in mu-

sic he never had any inclination to become a performing instrumentalist. His sole desire was to

compose” 12. The composer’s style clearly broke from conventions and adopted parts of the bu-

colic folk music coupling it with the classic technique that was being disseminated throughout

Europe.

7
Dallman, P, UIGMHB, p. 13.
8
Ibid, pp. 10-15.
9
Berlioz, H, MHB, pp. 113-115.
10
Ibid., pp. 40-41.
11
Dallman, P, UIGMHB, p. 47.
12
Seroff, Victor. Hector Berlioz, New York: MacMillan, 1967, p. 13.
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If the guitar was Berlioz’s first harmonic instrument, what technical conventions or limi-

tations on the instrumented could have affected his sense for chord progressions and overall so-

nority. Paul Dallman suggested that by “ignoring the piano and what it dictates in its fingering…

[Berlioz’s] ear was trained by the dictates of a different ‘keyboard’… perhaps more legitimate in

adhering to true intervals and avoiding the piano’s asymmetrical distribution of accidentals”. I’m

not sure how the piano could have an “asymmetrical distribution of accidentals” throughout dif-

ferent keys, but the guitar is certainly capable of having “true” intervals. Tuning was, and still is,

often done on the instrument to facilitate the playing of a specific mode. The guitar’s strings’ are

often adjusted to provide the most in tune harmonies, e.g. flattening notes to create a more in-

tune major-third interval of a major-chord. Furthermore, the remaining guitar scores of Berlioz,

which consist of “accompaniments to romances and original pieces …. [in] the category of the-

atrical effects — serenades or songs which would be sung in a play…” were all written in either

the key of E-major or G-major 13 14. From a technical perspective, both of these keys are quite

easy for an amateur to play chord progressions in. Additionally, each key allows the opportunity

for all six-strings to be played with root position chords in the first position thus providing in-

creased sonic possibilities. Berliozian scholar Thomas Wotton suggested that Berlioz’s overall

harmonic style developed a “partiality for chords in root position [as a result of]… the greater

resonance of the three lower strings of the guitar” 15. Example 1 is from a wedding hymn in the

Opéra-comique, Béatrice et Bénédict (1858) which is notable for its demonstration of Berlioz’s

appreciation for this sort resonance. The guitar breaks off its held unison with the accompanied

13
Rushton, J. MLB, p. 57.
14
Berlioz, H. Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise: A Translation and Commentary . Cambridge University
Press: 2002, p. 87.
15
Rushton, J. MLB, p. 57.
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voices to facilitate a lower sonority 16. The ‘g#’ would not be too difficult to produce. Playing a

root position chord instead simply offered a larger sonority on the already quiet instrument.

Knowledge of and an appreciation for the guitar’s limited dynamic range brought Berlioz to the

realization that “in good guitar-writing the best sonority of the individual chord may be more im-

portant than the linear direction of the bass; hence sonority rather than line might dictate the

choice of inversions or root positions…” 17. Without an academic environment, like the one

many of his contemporaries utilized, Berlioz was left to his own devices and the creation of as

much sound as possible on them.

Example 1

Could guitar technique have informed the composer’s choices for bass movement? The

thumb on one’s plucking hand as used “to pluck the bottom three strings (e, a, d’)” was a tech-

nique cultivated during the instrument’s revival and innovation in the Classical and Romantic

Eras and has continued to present day 18. The limited tonal range of the guitar’s three bass

strings, coupled with the thumb’s functional capabilities, led Wotton to assert that this technique

16
Ibid, p. 59.
17
Ibid, p. 58.
18
Berlioz, H, BOT, p. 80.
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perhaps realized a resultant “stiffness in his baselines”, meaning that there was not as much lin-

ear motion present as would be seen in other instrumentalists’ music, namely, piano music 19. In

voice leading situations, the thumb plucking technique perhaps informed the compositional pro-

cess rather than the ear, thus generating less than conventionally accepted solutions. For in-

stance, Example 2 features Mephistopheles’ Serenade from The Eight Scenes of Faust (1828).

The work was originally written solo guitar and voice and is marked by letter ‘A’. The guitar’s

chord progression uses a bass line with very little movement and incorrectly resolved inversions
20
. By contrast, when the orchestration of this music was made by Berlioz in Damnation of Faust

(1846), marked by the letter ‘B’, there was significantly more linear bass line. Within the orches-

tration the winds play alongside a notated “pizzicato arpeggio” used for “in effect, a large guitar

which balances the expanded vocal resources” 21. Additionally, this example is important be-

cause it supports the idea that Berlioz did understand proper voice leading principles and that,

given the context of writing for guitar and voice, Berlioz would oftentimes allow the fingers ra-

ther than the ears to guide his compositional prowess 22. Furthermore, through using the guitar,

the composer purposefully sought to “establish local color in the Italian settings”. This type of

simple folk progression, and the guitar’s presence, would have been common 23. In conclusion,

this music and the resulting bass line perhaps ultimately came from Berlioz’s “[playing of] both

academic and folk music without compromising classic technique” 24.

Example 2

19
Wotton, T.S., HB, p. 59.
20
Rushton, J, MLB, pp. 58-59.
21
Dallman, P, UIGMBH, p. 123.
22
Ibid, pp. 58-59.
23
Dallman, IUGMHB, p. 49.
24
Ibid, p. 49
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Berlioz’s “fondness” for the use of parallel motion in diminished-seventh and first-inver-

sion chords may have grown out of the guitar’s capability for movable chord formations 25. A

harmonic education on a keyboard instrument might have offered a separate perception; wherein,

the player must be continuously alternating between the black and white keys in chromatic chord

changes. Furthermore, Rushton identified “the guitar [as] also more conducive than the piano to

modal mixture, as it is easier to relate E-major, for instance, to E-minor, than to the relative C#-

minor” 26. Berlioz music provides instances of these sorts of “guitaresque parallelism and mode-

change[s]” which resulted from these idiomatic guitar techniques 27. The fact that they arise in

Berlioz surviving guitar music and also in orchestration further gives weight to the argument

their ease of execution and that they influenced composition.

Could the melodies of Berlioz have been influenced by the guitar? Dallman is doubtful.

After his study of the surviving repertoire, he concludes that “there is no melodic writing…[and

that] he used the instrument strictly for accompaniment” 28. Indeed, in every remaining work the

guitar serves the purpose of supporting the voice using accompaniment figures. Furthermore,

25
Rushton, J, MLB, pp. 57-58.
26
Ibid, pp. 57-58.
27
Ibid, p. 58.
28
Dallman, p. 128.
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Dallman also noted that just as Berlioz began composing he was “composing melodies which ex-

hibit characteristics of his mature writing”, as evidenced by “the theme of the largo introduction

to the first movement [of Symphonie Fantastique (1830)]”, which was written at age twelve 29.

To what extent was Berlioz’s orchestration affected by his knowledge of the guitar? In

the previously mentioned work, Mephistopheles’ Serenade, Rushton displayed that there were

correctly resolved voices and inversions in the orchestral revision that were not present in the

solo guitar and voice edition. This revealed Berlioz did understand proper voice leading rules. A

separate author, Wotton, presumed that “beyond a fondness for pizzicato”, for which he at-

tempted “to create a class at the Conservatoire, in order that violinists might be taught to use fin-

gers other than the first one”, the guitar had practically no relevance on Berlioz’s orchestral style
30
. Berlioz did after all write a, if not the, first foremost treatise on orchestration, the Grand traité

d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (1844); in which the composer displayed an ex-

pert knowledge of each instrument’s utilization 31. Wotton goes on to state that “even Berlioz’s

harmony is purely orchestral”, but concedes that in “his choice of chords and possibly their occa-

sional resolution … [he] would find a subtle connexion with the fact of part of his ear-training

being derived from the guitar” 32. Rushton also concludes that Berlioz’s “early study of the guitar

was certainly productive of singularity of utterance and probably did have a permanent if limited

effect on his musical thought” 33. To support this claim, Rushton accounts for occurrences in the

29
Ibid, pp. 129-130.
30
Wotton, T.S., HB, p. 57.
31
Berlioz, H, BOT.
32
Wotton, T,S., HB, p. 57.
33
Rushton, MLHB, p. 60.
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music that are “natural to the guitar but not to nineteenth-century norms [which] appear in Ber-

lioz’s characteristic polyphony" 34. Finally, Dallman, too, in his concise work on the subject

agreed that “the instrument’s influence manifested intense unconsciously” in his orchestral style
35
. All of these scholars summarized their perception of the problem with a respective agreement

that the subconscious manifestation of guitaristic idiosyncrasies appear in the composer’s art.

Could the styles in which Berlioz wrote for orchestra have been influenced by the in

which he wrote for the guitar? Berlioz wrote only accompaniment music for the guitar. This mu-

sic appears in three distinguishable styles: agitated, trochaic, and arpeggio 36. Each respective ap-

pears in an orchestral context. Because the three styles are “seemingly idiomatic to the guitar” it

is logical to suppose that the subconscious mastery of each accompaniment style found its way

naturally into the orchestral writing of Berlioz 37. Agitated music, as the name suggests, produces

music which is “a rhythmically animated, chordal type of accompaniment in which the chords

are broken into rhythmic patterns”. Trochaic accompaniment is derived from the “trochee foot in

poetry” where stressed pules are followed by unstressed ones 38. Finally, arpeggio style, as seen

and heard in the Mephistopheles’ Serenade from Example 1, simply provides a continues stream

of broken chord figures. The arpeggio accompaniment was most frequently used by Berlioz. It

allows the guitar, a naturally volume tapering instrument, to retain its dynamic level from the

perpetually played notes 39. Of course, Berlioz was not the only composer to utilize these tech-

niques. They are often seen in the Romantic and Classical Era’s respective guitar literatures.

34
Ibid, p. 60.
35
Dallman, P, UIGMHB, p. 121.
36
Ibid, p. 131.
37
Shreiber, Joseph, “Melodic Style in the Instrumental Works of Hector Berlioz”, Master’s Thesis, Uni-
versity of Maryland, 1968, pp. 2-5.
38
Dallman, P, UIGMHB, p. 131.
39
Ibid, p. 137.
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In conclusion, Berlioz’s unique inner ear, informed by years spent at the guitar, produced

within him an appreciation for sound outside of academia where the keyboard dictated many

rules. Idiomatic guitar techniques and features of the instrument helped develop the composer’s

basic musical education, thus promoting his unique sense of style. Moreover, Berlioz is now pre-

dominantly remembered for his innovations to the art of orchestration. Is it any coincidence that

the guitar of Fernando Sor was deemed able to produce “a complete orchestra enclosed in a small

compass” 40? Berlioz was certainly aware of the guitar’s cultural recognition as such an object, as

he referred to his own guitar as a “miniature orchestra” 41. Without the guitar, Berlioz’s orches-

tral style and life would have been markedly different. The guitar provided a much needed tool

for the composer to explore harmonies, textures, and color, all the while affirming his individual-

ity and his pursuits to never become a doctor.

40
Grunfield, Frederic, The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History of Guitars and Guitarists,
MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc: New York, 1974, p. 179
41
Berlioz, H, MHB, p. 556.
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Bibliography

Berlioz, H. Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise: A Translation and Commentary . Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 2002.

Berlioz, H. Mémoires d’Hector Berlioz. Paris, 1870; P. Citron, Paris, 1969; English trans., ed. D.

Cairns, London, 1969.

Dallman, Paul. Influence and Use of the Guitar in the Music of Hector Berlioz, Thesis: The Uni-

versity of Maryland, 1972

Grunfield, Frederic, The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History of Guitars and Gui-

tarists, MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc: New York, 1974,

Rushton, J. The Musical Language of Berlioz, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963.

Seroff, Victor. Hector Berlioz, New York: MacMillan, 1967.

Shreiber, Joseph, “Melodic Style in the Instrumental Works of Hector Berlioz”, Master’s Thesis,

University of Maryland, 1968, pp. 2-5.

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Wotton, T.S. Hector Berlioz. London, 1935; repr. 1970.