Hector Berlioz

Le Roi Lear (King Lear), Op. 4

Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André, France in 1803 and died in Paris in 1869. He composed this concert overture in 1831. The circumstances of the first performance are in doubt; the work was performed at the Paris Conservatoire in 1834 under the direction of Narcisse Girard, but it is possible it had been premiered as early as two years before. The score calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. Duration is approximately 15 minutes.

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As Berlioz arrived in Italy—having won the Prix de Rome on his fifth attempt—he anxiously awaited his mail. The young composer had temporarily overcome his infatuation with Harriet Smithson and had become engaged to pianist Marie Moke; Berlioz was desperate to hear from her. When a letter finally did arrive, it was from Moke’s mother, breaking off the engagement and informing him that her daughter was to marry the piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel.

Berlioz went berserk: “I was beside myself with passion, and shed tears from sheer rage; but I made up my mind on the spot what to do. My duty was clear. I must at once proceed to Paris, and kill two guilty women [the mother and daughter] and an innocent man [Pleyel]. After that it would, of course, be incumbent on me to commit suicide.” Berlioz had a dress made for himself—a disguise to gain entry to the house—and procured a wig, various ladies’ accessories, and a pair of two-shot pistols. Ever the thorough planner, he also brought poison with him in case one of the pistols misfired.

He had gotten as far as Nice he discovered he had left his disguise behind and soon thereafter abandoned his murderous plot. “And so I drink deep draughts of the sunny, balmy air of Nice,” he wrote, “and life and joy return to me, and I dream of music and the future . . . I live entirely alone. I write the overture to King Lear. I sing. I believe in a God . . . these were the three happiest weeks of my life.” Just another ho-hum month in the life of Berlioz!

He had read Shakespeare’s play a few weeks previously, near Florence: “I thought I should burst with enthusiasm,” he wrote, “and I writhed convulsively to relieve my feelings of rapture.” Berlioz never supplied a detailed program for the work: his sonata form gives impressions, not a plot. The stern opening music for low strings is almost certainly Lear, while the plaintive oboe melody can only be Cordelia. The manic Allegro that follows is nearly as hyperbolic as the composer himself, full of angular melodies, jolting harmonic shifts, shocking brass interruptions and, perhaps, a descent into madness—about which Berlioz surely knew a thing or two.

© Mark Rohr 2008