The Resurrexit from Hector Berlioz's Messe solennelle (1825): A Case Study in Self-Borrowing Page: 7
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My father intended me to follow his own [profession], which he considered the finest in
the world. For a long while he had made no secret of his intention. I on my side had
made no secret of what I thought of it, and my vigorous expressions of dissent on one or
two occasions had not pleased him. Without being sure what I felt, I had a strong
presentiment that my life was not going to be spent at the bedsides of the sick, in
hospitals and dissecting rooms. I dared not yet admit to myself what career it was I
dreamed of, but I thought I knew for sure that no power on earth was going to make me a
doctor.14
In the end, Louis-Joseph Berlioz enticed his son into the study of medicine
through bribery. Knowing that Hector had long desired a flute "with all the latest keys
from Lyons," Dr. Berlioz offered to buy his son the instrument of his choice if he would
agree to begin "seriously working" at osteology.15 Hector agreed and studied with his
father until it was time to begin his formal medical training.
In 1822, at the age of nineteen, Hector Berlioz arrived in Paris to begin
preparation for a career, which he stated "had been forced upon [him]."16 He knew
almost immediately, however, that he would not complete his medical studies, and his
description of the first time he entered the dissecting room leaves no doubt as his
aversion to medicine:
At the sight of that terrible charnel-house-the fragments of limbs, the grinning faces and
gaping skulls, the bloody quagmire underfoot and the atrocious smell it gave off, the
swarms of sparrows wrangling over scraps of lung, the rats in their corner gnawing the
bleeding vertebrae-such a feeling of revulsion possessed me that I leapt through the
window of the dissecting room and fled for home as though Death and all his hideous
train were at my heels.17
In total, Berlioz actively pursued his medical studies for just over a year. His
coursework was interrupted twice, however, by closures of the school because of political
14 Ibid., 43.
's Ibid.
16 Ibid., 46.
17 D. Kern Holoman, Berlioz (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 24.
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Gill, Sarah M. The Resurrexit from Hector Berlioz's Messe solennelle (1825): A Case Study in Self-Borrowing, thesis, December 1999; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2249/m1/13/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .