The Hector Berlioz Website

GRENOBLE

Introduction

Grenoble, the largest city in the Isère department, did not in Berlioz’s time have any notable musical resources. In the Grotesques de la musique Berlioz notes wrily that it did not have any philharmonic society. Unlike for example Marseille, Lyon or Lille, it never figured in any of his concert plans, and his infrequent visits to the city, once he had left La Côte Saint-André to settle in Paris, were connected purely with personal and family matters. His maternal grandparents lived in the small village of Meylan near Grenoble (now a suburb of the city), as did his mother before her marriage to Dr Louis Berlioz in February 1803. Berlioz’s older sister Nancy went to live in Grenoble after her marriage on 16 January 1832 to Camille Pal, a lawyer working in that city. Madame Estelle Fornier (née Dubœuf), Berlioz’s first love and stella montis, also lived for many years in Meylan where Berlioz as a young boy of 12 first met her, and for him Meylan was forever closely linked to his youthful love for Estelle.

After Berlioz went to Paris in October 1821 to study medicine, he paid a number of visits to Grenoble over the years: in 1831, on his way to Italy, to see his sister Nancy (15-23 January); in 1848 on his way to make a pilgrimage to Meylan after the death of his father (August and September; related at length in the Mémoires, Chapter 58); in the autumn of 1864 to see his brother-in-law Camille Pal as part of a trip to see the family of his sister Adèle in Vienne and to revisit Meylan, a story told at length in the last chapter of the Mémoires (ca. 18 September; Pal’s wife Nancy had died in 1850); again in 1865 after his trip to Geneva to visit Estelle Fornier (ca. 25-29 August). His last visit to Grenoble, in August 1868, was the only one which had a musical purpose: he had been invited to preside over a competition for a choral society. It was also the last trip he made outside Paris.

Many years after Berlioz’s death the city of Grenoble took the initiative of celebrating Berlioz and his music. Already in 1883, the city had decided to name a street named after the composer. Berlioz was born in La Côte Saint-André on 11 December 1803, and in 1903 Grenoble decided to advance the festivities for the centenary of the composer’s birth from December to the month of August. In addition to putting on two concerts, it erected a statue of Berlioz on the Place Victor Hugo.

A number of pages deal with these various events separately and provide illustrations to recreate the context in which they took place:

Berlioz’s visit in 1868
The centenary of Berlioz’s birth in 1903
The centenary of Berlioz’s birth in 1903 – official postcards
Rue Hector Berlioz
Berlioz’s Grenoble
Grésivaudan Valley

See also: The Country of Berlioz (report by Charles Maclean on the 1903 celebrations in Grenoble)

Copyright notice: The texts, photos, images and musical scores on all pages of this site are covered by UK Law and International Law. All rights of publication or reproduction of this material in any form, including Web page use, are reserved. Their use without our explicit permission is illegal.

The Hector Berlioz Website was created by Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin on 18 July 1997;
This page created on 11 December 2008; updated on 1 February 2009; enlarged on 6 December 2009, 15 November 2011, 11 December 2012, and 15 January 2013;
Revision of all the Berlioz in Grenoble pages on 1 July 2023.

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