Family tree of Hector BERLIOZ
Composer
Born Hector BERLIOZ
French Romantic composer
Born on December 11, 1803 in La Côte-Saint-André, France , France
Died on March 8, 1869 in Paris, France
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Unlike many other composers of the time, Berlioz was not a child prodigy; he began studying music at age 12, when he began writing small compositions and arrangements. As a result of his father's discouragement, he never learned to play the piano, a peculiarity he later described as both beneficial and detrimental. He became proficient at guitar and flute. He learned harmony by textbooks alone—he was not formally trained. The majority of his early compositions were romances and chamber pieces.
... Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Lyon. His father, a respected provincial physician and scholar, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education. His father was an atheist, with a liberal outlook; his mother was an orthodox Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.
Unlike many other composers of the time, Berlioz was not a child prodigy; he began studying music at age 12, when he began writing small compositions and arrangements. As a result of his father's discouragement, he never learned to play the piano, a peculiarity he later described as both beneficial and detrimental. He became proficient at guitar and flute. He learned harmony by textbooks alone—he was not formally trained. The majority of his early compositions were romances and chamber pieces.
Still at age 12, as recalled in his Mémoires, he experienced his first passion for a woman, an 18 year old next door neighbour named Estelle Fornier (née Dubœuf). 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.
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Geographical origins
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