Berlioz had been drummed out of the preliminary round of the Prix de Rome competition in 1826 when his entrance fugue was declared faulty. In the upshot, his teacher, the respected composer Jean-François Le Sueur (1760 - 1837), from whom he was receiving private lessons, urged him to enroll at the Paris Conservatoire. From January 1827 he studied counterpoint in the class of Antonin Reicha (1770 - 1836), a Bohemian composer and theorist whose own fugues - e.g., the fugal Etudes, Op. 97 - possess an engaging audacity belying the form's reputed dryness. Berlioz was in scant attendance - he was busy absorbing Byron and Fenimore Cooper, and composing a grand opera, Les Francs-juges, whose overture is still performed. Luigi Cherubini (1760 - 1842), composer of the formidable Medea (1797) and director of the Conservatoire, regarded Berlioz as a dangerous radical and monitored his progress closely, summing up the situation in the mot, "It isn't that Monsieur doesn't like fugue, rather, fugue doesn't like him." Nevertheless, Berlioz gleaned sufficient technique to write a passing fugue for the 1827 Prix de Rome competition, to which he was admitted, and may well have discovered from Reicha the expressive and dramatic possibilities of fugue quite apart from its species punctus contra punctus involvements. The Amen Fugue, sung by the drunken revellers of Auerbach's Keller, in La Damnation de Faust (1846), for instance, satisfies both demands. Late in July, Berlioz went en loge with three other contestants to set La Mort d'Orphée, a pseudo-operatic text in which Orpheus, grieving for Eurydice, is surprised by Bacchantes and dismembered. The combination of poetic and orgiastic themes within a legendary frame was admirably suited to his gifts, which he lavished upon it in innumerable felicities of new and startling orchestral color, including a final evocation of wind blowing through Orpheus's lyre. Writing for large orchestral and choral forces, Berlioz, even at this early stage of his career, knew exactly what he was about, though transferred to the piano - the instrument of trial - his carefully calculated effects failed to come off. The pianist, Rifaut - soon after named the Conservatoire's professor of accompaniment - was embarrassed by the novelty of the score, and the work was declared "inexécutable." Knowing his work to be viable, and stung by the impotence of his judges, Berlioz set about organizing a self-financed concert of his works for 26 May 1828 in which the "unplayable" Mort d'Orphée should be the centerpiece, though the cantata did not survive its rehearsal under the uncomprehending direction of Berlioz's friend, Nathan Bloc, and the imposing Resurrexit of his Messe solenelle had to substituted at the last minute. In his Memoirs, Berlioz claims to have destroyed the work, though the autograph was apparently given to his friend, Humbert Ferrand, and survived to achieve publication in facsimile in 1930. Thus, Berlioz had to wait until the 20th century for a vindication of his visionary La Mort d'Orphée by performances and recordings.

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