In 1837, Adrien de Gasparin, the Minister of the Interior of France, asked Hector Berlioz to compose a Requiem Mass to remember soldiers who died in the Revolution of July 1830.
The premiere was conducted by François Antoine Habeneck in 1837. According to Berlioz himself, Habeneck put down his baton during the dramatic Tuba mirum (part of the Dies irae movement), and took a pinch of snuff. Berlioz rushed to the podium to conduct himself, saving the performance from disaster.
Hector Berlioz
Requiem-Grande messe des morts, H.75 Op. 5
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
The instrumental forces alone demand that we step back and look at Hector Berlioz Grand Messe des morts, Op. 5 (Requiem) a little differently than we might look at another composition -- even another large-scale, theatrical composition -- from the 1830s: in addition to the usual large orchestra and chorus, Berlioz calls for no fewer than 16 timpani and four extra brass choirs!
When the French ministry of the interior commissioned a requiem mass from Berlioz in 1837 and decreed that the conservative conductor Francois-Antoine Habeneck would lead the December 5 first performance of the work, they can hardly have had such a thing in mind (nobody had yet ever even conceived of an instrumentation like that before, certainly not for indoor use); but Berlioz, through all his many ups and downs as a composer, was never one to suppress his fiery sense of the dramatic (as fiery as his bright red hair, so the stories go), and, in the end, even Habeneck -- who, according to a not impartial Berlioz, tried his best to ruin the Requiem's premiere -- had to admire the spark of genius and the sheer spunk that it took to put that thing on paper.
Today the Requiem is Berlioz's second-most famous work, behind the Symphony Fantastique, though, as one might imagine from its performance requirements, it is not his second-most frequent visitor to the concerthall (or the cathedral, as the case might be).
Text here. History here.
Sir Colin Davis, director
Keith Lewis, tenor
Keith Lewis, tenor
When the French ministry of the interior commissioned a requiem mass from Berlioz in 1837 and decreed that the conservative conductor Francois-Antoine Habeneck would lead the December 5 first performance of the work, they can hardly have had such a thing in mind (nobody had yet ever even conceived of an instrumentation like that before, certainly not for indoor use); but Berlioz, through all his many ups and downs as a composer, was never one to suppress his fiery sense of the dramatic (as fiery as his bright red hair, so the stories go), and, in the end, even Habeneck -- who, according to a not impartial Berlioz, tried his best to ruin the Requiem's premiere -- had to admire the spark of genius and the sheer spunk that it took to put that thing on paper.
Today the Requiem is Berlioz's second-most famous work, behind the Symphony Fantastique, though, as one might imagine from its performance requirements, it is not his second-most frequent visitor to the concerthall (or the cathedral, as the case might be).
Text here. History here.
(Thanks, Peter)
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