The summer of 1822 was a turning point for Berlioz. Discovering that the library of the Conservatoire was open to the public, he began to spend significant time there, between his medical studies, poring over the scores of Gluck, several of whose works he had heard at the Opéra shortly after his arrival in Paris in October 1821. Close study and extensive copying fanned his eagerness to hear those works again and when the Opéra offered Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride on August 21, he drank it in, prepared and absorbing it in detail. From that time forward, medicine fought a losing battle against music in his breast, provoking a long series of confrontations with his family, the first of which took place on a visit home, to La Côte-St.-André, in autumn 1822. Upon his return to Paris in October, he enrolled again in the Faculty of Medicine, though his attendance was desultory. Despite the impact of Gluck, his own compositions followed the example of the drawing room romances he had performed and emulated at La Côte. Of these, Le Montagnard exilé—richly deserving its appellation Chant élégiaque—is one of the few to presage the audacious genius that would become apparent only by the end of the decade. Its long-spun, sensuously quivering melody for two treble—preferably female—voices accompanied by piano or harp looks forward to Ursule and Héro's great Duet Nocturne in Béatrice et Bénédict, "Nuit paisible et sereine!" The introduction of new material in the third stanza relieves the monotony of an essentially strophic setting, though the repeated material is sufficiently substantial, extensive, and idiosyncratic that it reveals its nuanced gestures and subtle balance only on several hearings. The poem, by Albert-Marie Du Boys (1804-1889), a writer, law student, and close friend of Berlioz's, describes the homesickness of a mountain boy, far from the familiar Isère, the river that gave Berlioz's home district its name. Berlioz's undoubtedly heartfelt setting was made as he steeped himself thoroughly in the intellectual and political ferment of Paris. Le Montagnard exilé was one of four romances that Berlioz published at his own expense between December 1822 and February 1823. It is fittingly dedicated to Madame la Vicomtesse Dubouchage, wife of a deputy from Isère.

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