Hector Berlioz’s column in the Journal des debats: a conception of art in the newspaper footer

Abstract

Recognized as an important composer of the French High Romanticism, the musician and columnist Hector Berlioz is nowadays remembered by his symphonies and concerts, but he is little known as a writer. Besides having published two short stories and his memoirs, Berlioz devoted himself to music criticism published in the daily press footer and in specialized reviews from 1834 to 1863. This paper presents a brief trajectory of Berlioz’s first years as a columnist and the main aspects of his music criticism in Journal des débats. Under the musical theme, these texts arise from the lyrical expression, imagination, melancholy and the writer’s passion, as a Romantic and innovative manifestation of the spirit and the poetic. Our hypothesis is that Berlioz’s criticism translates his artistic conception in an intense and fabulous way by using the writing freedom typical of the newspaper footer prose.