(Blogmeister note: this appears to have fallen into the black hole of the internet where things go to die so I’m reposting it. Weird.)
I stumbled upon this stuff looking for other stuff (which is what the internet is about; you start by trying to find a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and find yourself three hours later watching highlights of Australian Rules Football) and when I dug deeper found some fascinating things I just had to share. Hector Berlioz was a composer and conductor in the mid-1800’s who appeared to live by the creed, “If some is good, more is better and ‘too much’ is just right”. He developed what was referred to as the “concerts monstres” (monster concert) and made quite a splash with it. His first one was at the World Exposition of Industrial products in 1844 and had somewhere around 500 singers and an orchestra of 480 musicians.
Yikes.
(Louis Gottschalk tried something similar in Havana, Cuba but could only get a 450-piece orchestra together…so he added 40 pianists just ‘cause he could.)
His musical genius evidently didn’t translate to any financial talent as the payroll for the musicians turned out to be 130 francs more than the total income from ticket sales and he had to pay that out of his own pocket. Oops.
He made a name for himself putting on these massive shows, including a performance in 1855 with somewhere between 900 and 950 performers (seriously…once you get more than 100 tenors in one place all the other numbers get a little blurry) at the Church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. Given that the sanctuary is longer than a football field I suppose it all fit just fine. I guess the folks who built that place also liked the “too much is just right” idea; the organ has 8,000 pipes.
Yikes again.
The performance was his own composition, “Te Deum”, which he’d been tinkering with for years. It’s a monster, much like his concerts, and quite an experience to hear. This recording is by the Orchestre de Paris (and a lot of their friends I think; it’s somewhere up in the 900 musician range), put on the headphones and crank it up, it’s really is spectacular.
And we thought the combined choir at Dr. Fan’s concert was big…
Unrelated but interesting…as is so often true of mad geniuses he was also a little nuts. An excerpt from a biography by David Cairns:
“During his stay in Italy, he received a letter from the mother of his fiancée informing him that she had called off their engagement. Instead her daughter was to marry a rich piano manufacturer. Enraged, Berlioz decided to return to Paris and take revenge on the soon-to-be husband, his fiancée, and her mother by killing all three of them. He created an elaborate plan, going so far as to purchase a dress, wig and hat with a veil (with which he was to disguise himself as a woman in order to gain entry to their home). He even stole a pair of double-barrelled pistols from the Academy to kill them with, saving a single shot for himself. Planning out his action with great care, Berlioz purchased phials of strychnine and laudanum to use as poisons in the event of a pistol jamming. Despite this careful planning, Berlioz failed to carry the plot through. By the time he had reached Genoa, he accidentally left his disguise in the side pocket of the carriage. After arriving in Nice (at that time, part of Italy), he reconsidered the entire plan, deciding it to be inappropriate and foolish.”
See? Susie may be a little crazy but she’s not THAT crazy.
Right?
Susie?
Why aren’t you answering and why are you looking at me that way?