Berlioz came to prominence as a flamboyant and controversial figure in the Paris of the early 1830s; above all, as the composer of the Symphonie fantastique and its sequel, the Romantically attitudinizing Le Retour à la vie (later titled Lélio). He had already embarked upon the series of concerts by which he offered his music to a growing public, acting as his own impresario. More to the point, he was now married to his Ophelia, his Juliet, the Irish actress, Harriet Smithson, and faced with the support of his ménage, to which a son would be born in August 1834. From this period dates his career as a witty and sardonic critic, an occupation which not only afforded steady income but made his name known to a far wider public than his music. Capitalizing upon his burst of fame, Berlioz contributed Le Champs as a supplement to the fashion magazine La Romance. Le Champs is yet another polite drawing room romance, notable mainly for its fluent, if unmemorable, melody and gently rocking, purling refrain. The original setting encompassed seven stanzas of a sentimental poem contrasting the delights of the countryside with the artifice of the city—in which the poet beseeches the beloved to join him—by Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780 - 1857). In 1850, for its inclusion in the collection of Feuillets d'album, Berlioz reduced the number of stanzas to four and added several deftly telling touches to the last two.

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