Berlioz for kids: his life, his music, and what to play first

Hector Berlioz was a French composer who lived from 1803 to 1869. He was sent to Paris to become a doctor and became a composer in its place. He had wild ideas and wanted a huge orchestra to carry them out. His Symphonie fantastique tells a story in five parts, and nothing like it had been heard before. The best first piece for a child is his Hungarian March, four minutes that start soft and end in a blaze.

Quick facts

• Born: 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, in southeastern France
• Died: 1869, in Paris, France
• Era: Romantic
• Played: guitar and flute
• Known for: the Symphonie fantastique, the Roman Carnival Overture, the Hungarian March, and a book on how to write for the orchestra

The life in short

Berlioz was a doctor’s son from a small town. He learned the flute and the guitar as a boy. He never learned the piano well, which was rare for a composer. He worked out his music in his head.

At 17, he was sent to Paris to study medicine. The dissecting room horrified him. He spent his evenings at the opera and his days in the library of the music school, copying scores.

He told his father he was quitting medicine. His father cut off his money. Berlioz sang in a theater chorus and wrote for newspapers to pay his rent.

At 23, he saw a play by Shakespeare and fell in love with the Irish actress in the leading role, Harriet Smithson. She did not answer his letters. He poured his feelings into a symphony.

That piece, the Symphonie fantastique, was first played in 1830. In the same year, he won France’s top prize for young composers, after several tries. Two years later, Harriet came to a concert and learned the symphony was about her. They married the next year. The marriage was not happy.

Berlioz struggled in Paris all his life. Audiences in Germany, Russia, and England cheered his music more than the French did. He earned his living as a music critic and as a conductor on tour.

What the music sounds like

Berlioz thought big. He wanted more of everything: more players, more kinds of instruments, and more contrast between soft and loud. One of his pieces calls for four extra brass bands placed around the hall.

He was a master of color. He knew what every instrument could do and found new sounds no one had tried. He wrote a famous book on the subject that composers studied for 100 years.

His music often tells a story. In the Symphonie fantastique, one tune stands for the woman the artist loves. It comes back in every movement, changed each time.

Pieces to play first

Hungarian March, from The Damnation of Faust. A march on a Hungarian tune. It begins far away with a trumpet call and grows until the whole orchestra thunders.

“March to the Scaffold,” from the Symphonie fantastique. A grim, stamping march from the fourth part of the story, where the artist has a nightmare. For older children.

“Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” from the Symphonie fantastique. Bells toll, low brass play an old church chant, and the violinists tap their strings with the wood of the bow. See spooky classical music for kids.

Roman Carnival Overture. An English horn sings a slow love song. Then the orchestra breaks into a whirling Italian dance.

“The Shepherds’ Farewell.” A gentle chorus from his Christmas piece about the childhood of Jesus. It shows how quiet he could be.

Things to do together

Crescendo march. Play the Hungarian March. Start crouched and tiptoeing. Grow taller and stamp harder as the music grows.

Find her tune. Play the opening minutes of the Symphonie fantastique and learn the long, yearning tune. Then listen for it, twisted into a squeaky dance, in the last movement.

Wood on strings. In the witches’ movement, listen for the rattling sound of bows tapping strings. Tap a pencil on a table edge to copy it.

Design an orchestra. Berlioz dreamed of an orchestra of more than 400 players. Ask your child how many of each instrument they would put in theirs.

Print and play

Fill in a composer study notebook page for Berlioz. Read about the instruments he loved in instruments of the orchestra for kids. For more music with a story, read classical music that tells a story. For the era he lived in, read Romantic era music for kids.

For more composers from the same country, read French composers for kids. For more composers by era, see classical composers for kids.