Music for the biggest occasions: Hector Berlioz between pomp and circumstance

Perhaps, Berlioz has been the composer who knew the best way of enhancing the intrinsically playful and festive character of the Grandeur. Many passages from Berlioz’s critical essays confirm that the Beautiful for him was not the Small but the Gigantic in all its meanings. A perspective of credulous evolutionism leads Berlioz to assign only to Modernity the great circumstances to listen to great music, i.e. those occasions where the wealth of music’s new expressive means can be plainly exhibited, transforming itself in a pure feast for ears and eyes. Grandeur is not necessary for the success of a festivity; but it’s sure that grand must be the disposition of each participant to be charmed, seduced and fascinated. The self-celebration of grandeur and quantity being an end in themselves, nowadays endemic even in the most critic and objective ratings of media-systems, was already predicted by Berlioz.