Discuss Berlioz’s Contribution to the Symphony

The advance of composing program music is the reason why most people regard Berlioz as a romantic. Having said that, Berlioz’s life featured unsuccessful love, dramatic triumphs, and dismal failures, many of the traits most romantics would be associated with. The emotional turmoil of his life is reflected in his music and this is why he was the most innovative symphonist of the early Romantic era, Wagner described his music as ‘devilishly confused musical idiom’. Symphonie Fantastique’ was the first that Berlioz wrote in a programmatic style; however ‘Harold en Italie’ is also another clear example of Berlioz’s symphonic program music. To conclude, Berlioz’s main contributions to the symphony was his creative innovations in both the introduction of the ‘idee fix’ and his advances which contributed greatly to the growth and development of the modern symphony orchestra. It could be argued that a more overarching and significant contribution was the romanticism which he clearly displays in all of his symphonies which paved the way for the later Romantic composers.