Search results
French composer Hector Berlioz wrote a number of "overtures", many of which have become popular concert works. They include true overtures, intended to introduce operas, but also independent concert overtures that are in effect the first orchestral tone poems .
The brilliant string writing (bars 1-17, 72-88, 266-282) may owe something to the example of Weber (cf. the overtures to Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon), but the overture has an exuberant vitality that is all Berlioz’s own. Overture: Le Corsaire (duration 8'6") — Score in large format (file created on 22.02.2000; revised 14.09.2001)
Le corsaire (Overture, Op. 21), Hector Berlioz. Hector BERLIOZ. About this Piece. Composed: 1844; 1852. Length: c. 9 minutes. Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: March 11, 1928, Georg Schnéevoigt conducting.
During the summer of 1831, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), that least fettered of Romantic spirits, was doing his own thing yet again, in the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome, hardly an unusual place for a French tourist to be. But he was not only examining the cathedral's artistic and architectural wonders. He was, as he informs in his compulsively ...
