In 1844, Berlioz separated from his wife, the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, and set up housekeeping with his mistress, the Spanish mezzo, Marie Recio. His son, Louis, now ten, remained behind with Harriet. Thus, Berlioz shouldered the burden of supporting two households as his life sank into a routine of concert organizing and journalistic drudgery. The offer of 200 francs from the publisher, Bernard Latte, for a composition to be included in an anniversary issue of La Mélodie, a fashionable Album de Chant du monde musical, was a small, momentary respite which called forth Le Chasseur danois. It was included in the December 1844 issue and, soon after, published separately. To a poem by the Swedish librettist and sometime theater director, Adolphe DeLeuven (1807 - 1884)—later to resign his post at the Opéra-Comique in the scandal attending the production of Bizet's Carmen—Berlioz whips up a simple, strophic but spirited allegro con fuoco call to the hunt whose irony is revealed only in the languishing fourth and last stanza as the plea of a boy to his dead father. Berlioz orchestrated Le Chasseur danois for several highly successful concerts in Vienna over November and December 1845, and the work thereafter figures prominently in his programs.

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