Born in La Côte-Saint-André in 1803, died in Paris in 1869; Hector Berlioz was a composer, conductor and writer on music. He began to study medicine in Paris and then studied composition with Jean-François Lesueur at the Conservatoire as well as counterpoint and fugue with Anton Reicha. In 1830 he won the Prix de Rome with the cantata “La Dernière Nuit de Sardanapale”; in the same year the “Symphonie fantastique” was premiered. Further works are “Harold en Italie”, the Requiem, “Roméo et Juliette” and “La Damnation de Faust”. From 1835 he wrote music criticism for the Journal des débats; as a conductor he undertook concert tours to Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Russia, among other countries. In 1856 he was elected to the Institut de France.
Hector Berlioz
Composer
