Talk:Hector Berlioz

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[edit] To the attention of Wspencer11 (ref. Berlioz)

The so-called vansalismyou mention was nothing more than helpful corrections on some of the titles, whose French typographic rules you seem to ignore : L'Enfance du Christ, not L'enfance du Christ. Les Nuits d'été, not Les nuits d'été. Just two examples...)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tiglou (talk • contribs) 19:33, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

      he was a very kind man

Several times his affections were unrequited: Irish Shaespearean actress Harriet Smithson and pianist Madame Pleyel, whom set out to murder while residing in Rome under a Prix de Rome scolarship.

Is this stating that he set out to murder them or that they set out to murder him? As it is stated now it appears to be an incomplete sentance. IE:

Irish Shaespearean actress Harriet Smithson and pianist Madame Pleyel, whom set out to murder while residing in Rome under a Prix de Rome scolarship, ...

That appears to be the subject of the sentance, with an introduction of two new people. But there does not appear to be a predicate. I'm almost positive though that the sentance was supposed to state that someone set out to murder the other(s). Does anyone know the answer?

Robert Lee

He set off at some point with the intention of murdering Marie Moke, who he had been in love with but who was engaged to the piano maker Pleyel (hence "Madame Pleyel"). He was then going to commit suicide. Of course, Berlioz being Berlioz, he probably got drunk, or had too much coffee, or overslept or something, and it never came to pass. I'll try to sensify the article. --Camembert


Dear Camembert,

Somehow I can't quite stomach the idea of R&J as a "secular cantata". It is too sexy for that label. Can we delete that bit and leave it described just as "dramatic symphony"? Also Damnation is staged occasionally (I saw it once at the opera), so it is not really "unstaged", only seldomn so. -- Viajero 15:46 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, "secualar cantata" does sound rather dry, I agree. I just wanted to give some impression of how the peice worked, if you know what I mean. I'll remove it and have another go. --Camembert

[edit] Pronunciation please?

Preferably IPA? —Keenan Pepper 22:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[berljoz] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.192.57.32 (talk) 11:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dances des sylphes

I'm doubtful of the claim that L'Éléphant from The Carnival of the Animals is derived from Dances des sylphes, for two reasons:

  1. It is called "Ballet des sylphes", not "Dances des sylphes."
  2. Ballet des sylphes doesn't sound much like L'Éléphant to me. --220.237.67.125 08:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm investigating this; the Dover reprint of the full score of Carnivale des animaux points out the resemblance to Ballet des sylphes, which it describes is also mixed with "a dash of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Dream Scherzo". I have scores of all three pieces so I'll make an effort to thoroughly compare them ;-) Philip Legge phi1ip@netscape·net 07:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
CONFIRMED. The principal theme of L’Éléphant is Saint-Saëns', but the subsidiary theme 16 or so bars into the piece is indeed Berlioz's, and it is the main idea of Ballet des sylphes. Philip Legge phi1ip@netscape·net 00:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Divorce from Smithson

I've read that they divorced nine years after the marriage in 1833; no dates were included. On Smithson's article here, the date is given as 1940, and there is a note that parts are taken from Britannica. Anybody have a better idea about the actual date? I'd hate to leave this inconsistency there. the symphony page and Berlioz page have nine years listed, and the Smithson page has 1840.

Berlioz separated from Harriet Smithson in 1844. (That's in the current New Grove article.) There's nothing about a divorce date, but it would be reasonable to infer it would be 1844 or later. Hope that helps! Antandrus (talk) 17:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I have tagged this article as needing cleanup. I feel that much of it is written in a too-casual style, and also that a number of passages are rather poorly organized. If I have time I will work on it myself, but I encourage others to dive in too! --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 02:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I am in favour of removing the 'potted biography' infobox. This has been done for Frédéric Chopin and I have proposed it for Ludwig van Beethoven. --Kleinzach
I will try to work on this article in the near future. Apart from a basic clean-up, it needs expanding and referencing properly. And yes, get rid of the infobox (but keep the picture). --Folantin 09:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I've attempted to do this, though the picture is a bit smaller than i woiuld have wished. - Kleinzach 10:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


  • This article is so bad and choppy, and I'm such a big fan of Berlioz, that I consider it my personal duty to do a rewrite. I'll post the rewrite on this page, and we can decide if we want to use it instead of the current version. --Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 20:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added category

Why do we need a separate category for operas along with one for all his composiitons? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Categories exist for the operas of all composers. Actually it's unusual to link to categories at all in the text but Berlioz doesn't not have a list of works, as far as I can see. Usually we have a list on the biographical page, or a sub-page off it. Any suggestions? - Kleinzach 15:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Improvements

Renamed this section to something more useful, as the older question is no longer neccessary. It's pretty apparent that we want to get this article to FA status, and we're almost to the point where every section has been extensively revised (only one or two to go). Once we've done this, the major concern will be sourcing fully - to pre-empt the findings of a review, I've put "citation needed" tags on statements that I cannot source using Google results - they are generally quotes (they were in the original pages that I worked from before I started revising my sections) - if anyone could find a source, or replace the specific parts with something with roughly the same meaning, but sourced, that would be great. Another important thing is to check that all the images are fair use. I uploaded a fair few myself, but I'm not 100% sure that I trust myself to have done it properly.

Main issue we'll encounter when we are happy enough with the article to submit it for FA review - we'll probably get a lot of pressure to condense the article, which will be scraping 100kb by the time it's finished. I don't consider it neccessary to remove anything, as this isn't a gradual accumilation of material that wasn't organised or structured - it's been completely re-written over the past few weeks. It's detailed because Berlioz's life was detailed. Another problem with condensing is this:

If the biography was smaller and the other sections larger, other sections could possibly be moved to new articles (such as "Berlioz as a writer" or whatever), but those sections are much smaller than the biography, and I think that it is unprecedented for there to be a seperate page with a "full" biography, with a cut-down one on the main page with the other articles as an overview. I did exclude as much as I could when writing the biography, but his life was interesting and eventful, and to remove much of it would fail to give an adequate overview of his life, perhaps to the extent of being inaccurate.

Anyway... just a worry I have, hehe... If anybody knows about these things better than me, maybe they could provide reassurance or a work-around the article size problem Lethe 22:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, Life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven seems to be a possible model... Lethe 12:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wordinessnessness

There is alot of wordy writing in this article that make it difficult to read and follow. As long as it's okay with everyone, I'll be making edits to try and make the article flow better (without removing or changing any info). If you feel I've degraded the article, feel free to undo my edits, but please leave me a note as to where/why you did so. Thanks---Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 20:49, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A proposal

Here's the real problem with Wikipedia: multiple authors trying to cooperate. Right now the article has little sense of direction. It is organized chronologically, but makes little logical sense. Although, there's plenty of great references and a wealth of facts.

Even the very first section provides a good example:

"...The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.[8] Berlioz did not begin to study music until the age of twelve...

It discusses his family, and then, without warning, moves onto his musical studies. There is no transition, no break in the text, or any logical separation of these two completely different aspects of his Early Life. This makes it very difficult to read. By the fault of nobody in particular (in fact I think this has been caused by an overwhelming response to this article, and dozens of users putting there two cents in), the article has become a huge pile of ideas in facts, organised in a manner that leaves much to be desired. I initially began to rewrite some of these, but then realized that the entire article needs to reorganised (you'll notice back in April I vowed to do something similar, but to no effect- the article at the time lacked depth and factual material, which it's now gained). So, here's the proposal:

A user volunteers to rearrange a certain section, so that it makes better sense. (keeping in mind that no facts should be removed or changed)

If enough people do this, then the entire article will flow in a logical, orderly manner.

Allow me to take an initiative by editing the "Italy" section.

(there's also some random instances of present tense in the article, while the rest of it is past)

--Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 02:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeedie, I was definitely working chronologically and I can see your point (thank you for the other rephrases as well, they are all improvements) - it could definitely be a lot more 'readable'. I'll try to follow your lead, and see if it works out :-) Lethe 12:54, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I finished the Italy section up. You can take a look if you like (I have a feeling some of the links and references got messed up when I transferred the text from MS Word to Wiki) I'll do more this weekend. -At the moment I've got tests in school :+).--Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 21:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I'll fix a few redirects, brackets, etc in it in a minute, but it seems good. The only thing I would suggest changing would be the two very short paragraphs near the end. Lethe 23:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Could you check if my current work in progress change to Decade of Productivity improved it much? I found it quite difficult, oddly. Also, what dating format are we going to use? Due to the full rewrite required, I converted them to uniformity using the UK date/month order (opposed to US month/date), and we'll have conflicts between sections if one isn't decided on. Lethe 00:13, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Your work in Midlife is A-okay. I found that section to be the most chaotic, so I can see why you're having difficulty. It's coming along fine though. You're right, we do need consistent dates, so British sounds fine to me (personally I haven't much preference). In reference to the Italy section, I haven't necessarily followed a coherent paragraph structure. Rather, I simply broke the article into sections containing relative information. Instead of combining them, I think we should try to add more information to each section. (Thanks for fixing my links by the way)

Also, my apologies in this rather late response. I've had quite a bit of work on my end lately and haven't had much time for Wiki editing. I might be able to knock out another section this weekend, but we'll see what happens. Happy editing, --Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 01:58, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Italian Carbonari

Is there any real point to the mention of the Carbonari in the Italy section? It doesn't state any long term effects or influences from the incident. If someone can add some info to it to explain its relevance, that would be very useful. --Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 03:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I added it to reinforce the whole "swashbuckling good time" thing, but it is pretty periphery. He did spend some time with them shooting at a target on the ship's deck, talking etc - so it was more than just a "hello", but I didn't add any more to prevent the bio from becoming immoderately long. Lethe 23:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple Minor Edits

Hi, I was just reading through this article and spotted a bunch of little errors. Most of them were words or sentences written in the present tense instead of the past tense. Have we had an editor whose first language wasn't English perhaps? I fixed all the ones I found. I also edited this sentence, "Fétis would later contribute to the debasement of the reputation of the Gazette when this journal failed and was absorbed by the Gazette, he found himself on the editorial board.[92]" but I don't understand it as it is even with my rewrite. Since the source is a book and not online, I couldn't check it to figure out what was meant by that sentence. Can someone else help with that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.255.202.210 (talk) 07:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

That is a rather convoluted sentence! The one about Schumann in between two sentences about French journals is also a bit odd. It essentially means that due to Fétis becoming a member of the editorial board of the Gazette after the Revue Musicale closed down, the Gazette began to adopt the biased and inflammatory style which the Revue cultivated under Fétis. Lethesl 07:01, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This article is getting a little long

There's a tremendous amount of good material here, so it would be a shame to cut any of it. What about folowing a simmilar format to Sergei Rachmaninoff—namely, a detailed article on Berloiz's life linked to a main article with summaries on his life and work? Jonyungk (talk) 00:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)