Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz (December 11, 1803 – March 8, 1869) was a French Romantic composer, conductor, music critic and author, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844). He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. He also composed around 50 songs.
Between 1830 and 1840, Berlioz wrote many of his most popular and enduring works. The foremost of these are the Symphonie fantastique (1830), Harold en Italie (1834), the Grande messe des morts (Requiem) (1837) and Roméo et Juliette (1839). Later operatic works include Benvenuto Cellini and Les Troyens (The Trojans). His autobiography, Memoirs, was completed in 1865.
(Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_B.... Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License:)
“A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.”
“Il faut collectionner les pierres qu'on vous jette. C'est le début d'un piédestal.”
“...imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.”
“He was dying all his life.”
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."[Letter, November 1856]”
“The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck. ”
“Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love. ”
“Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.”