Hey folks! Sorry I've been so silent recently, it's been hella busy, and pretty stressful these past two weeks especially. I'll go into more detail next week, which is reading break. But for now...
INTERNATIONAL HECTOR BERLIOZ AWARENESS DAY IS UPON US!
Ah yes, today is the day we think about that special someone we all know. That someone for which we dearly yearn, but know we can never have. The someone who makes us feel happy in our melancholy, but is simply an idea, a concept of perfection. The someone whose face we see in a crowded ball. The someone whose laugh we hear in an empty, peaceful field. The someone who is the last thought we have before our hallucinated execution. And the someone who mocks us from the middle of a demonic orgy in the same hallucination, while an E-flat clarinetist plays the only solo that could ever hope to beat the first movement of Sacre du Printemps for "most obnoxious E-flat clarinet line ever." And in honour of this noble day, I present you... today's top twenty Hector Berlioz facts!
Hector Berlioz performed Steve Reich's Piano Phase on an elastic band wrapped around a tissue box. Both parts.
Hector Berlioz is the answer to Charles Ives' question.
Antonio Vivaldi has the second-largest output of any A-list composer because every sound Hector Berlioz ever made is considered part of his magnum opus.
Eric Whitacre refuses to refer to his compositional style as anything but "aspiring Berliozian."
Hector Berlioz once had a period where he was afraid his composition wasn't up to par, so he went by the pen name "Gustav Mahler."
Tchaikovsky is to melody what Hector Berlioz is to melody.
The Second Viennese School only existed because Arnold Schoenberg was fed up over how Hector Berlioz was the maximum attainable level of tonality.
Historical records show that the victor of every war in history is the side which had more performances of Symphonie Fantastique during the duration of the bout.
Hector Berlioz is your father. Actually.
Each string on Hector Berlioz's guitar is made of a strand of pure sound willed into solid form.
The ring in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen was made out of a lock of Hector Berlioz's hair that happened to fall into the Rhine and solidify.
Camille Pleyel was cut from the final scene of Inferno because Dante was afraid of angering Hector Berlioz with the sight of the name.
Playing Un Bal while courting your significant other has a 200% success rate, in that both the target person and the second-on-the-list will instantly become infatuated with the performer.
Hector Berlioz rarely plays the flute anymore, due to the strain it puts on weather patterns to move an entire atmosphere's worth of air.
Chopin, Liszt, Sibelius, the Mighty Five, and other nationalist composers wrote in their country's style because it meant they wouldn't be compared to (and fail to match) Hector Berlioz.
Frederick Chopin once re-gifted a copy of Treatise on Instrumentation. That's really all I need to say.
The average person is 400% more likely to leave their significant other for someone named "Harriet Smithson" than someone with any other name.
If you play Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 backwards, it sounds like someone saying "Hector Berlioz ist der Übermensch" ad nauseum.
The Ronde du Sabbat has topped every positively-inclined top 10 list ever written, regardless of the requirements of being on the list.
And finally...
Felix Baumgartner's famous space dive failed to break the record distance of the last time Hector Berlioz fell in love.
Happy International Hector Berlioz Awareness Day, everyone!
