ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the time-bound experiences of musical power and ecstasy that lead Berlioz to his split complementarity of music and listener. It deals with momentary musical experiences, rather than the larger range of issues encompassed by 'the anxiety of influence'. Kern Holoman's 1989 biography of Hector Berlioz opens with strong praise: beginning with the Symphonie fantastique in 1830, Berlioz's music was the most consistently fresh, exciting, and forthright being produced in Europe. An anecdote recounted by Berlioz's composer-friend Stephen Heller shows the complex impact of Beethoven's music upon Berlioz. Berlioz's concluding statement in the anecdote deploys the split complementarity of 'everything' and 'nothing'. Berlioz was a prolific prose writer as well as a composer. In acknowledging an issue about who could be virile enough to come after Beethoven, who could continue appropriately from Beethoven's accomplishments in a sequential that of many critics who participated in the early reception of Berlioz's music.
