Berlioz had already abandoned medicine for music, had begun to absorb the operatic works of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 - 1787) and Gaspare Spontini (1774 - 1851) from both score and stage, and had composed his own Messe solennelle—which contains the germs of many of his mature works' most sublime moments—when, at the Paris Odéon on December 7, 1824, he heard Carl Maria von Weber's Romantic opera, Der Freischütz, for the first time. True, the work was offered in a drastic adaptation by the writer, Castil-Blaze (1784 - 1857), re-christened Robin des bois. "Even in this ravaged form there was a wild sweetness in the music that I found intoxicating," Berlioz writes in the 16th chapter of his Memoirs. In the same place he tells how he pursued the great man on his last trip to Paris in 1826, just missing him at him at his teacher's, in a music shop, at the opera. Already a sick man, Weber died in London, during the production of Oberon, his last opera, on June 5, 1826. Fifteen years later, as the composer of the awesome Requiem (1837), the failed Benvenuto Cellini (1838), and the triumphant Roméo et Juliette (1839), Berlioz was tapped by Léon Pillet, director of the Paris Opéra, to prepare a production of Der Freischütz. While this involved composing recitatives for the spoken portions, it also afforded the occasion to cobble together orchestral music from Weber's Preciosa and Oberon, and orchestrate his already popular piano piece, Aufforderung zum Tanz, as L'Invitation à la valse, for the inevitable ballet. In that capacity, it was heard for the first time with the revival of what was titled Le Freyschütz on June 7, 1841, though it soon began to enjoy an independent life in concert programs throughout Europe, reaching Boston in 1856 and New York in the 1865 - 1866 season. Berlioz's orchestration has eclipsed Weber's original piano piece, and it was left to the pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky (1870 - 1938) to show what possibilities lay similarly latent in it in his "contrapuntal arrangement" of Aufforderung zum Tanz for piano solo. But it is Berlioz's orchestration which has won the hearts of listeners throughout the world—L'Invitation à la valse remains one of the most popular and consistently programmed gems in the classical repertoire.

© Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide