Hector Berlioz

Le Ballet Des Ombres

This title is taken from the compilation French Songs And Choruses For Mixed-Voice Choir (NOV165198) Hector Berlioz' Le Ballet Des Ombres written for SATB. Withdrawn by the composer within six months of publication in 1829. Berlioz, in fact, went to some trouble to suppress the work, rounding up and destroying all copies he could find. So successful was he that only one copy of the Ballet des ombres, in a private collection, was known to have survived at the beginning of the twentieth century, and that is now lost. Our sole source for the work is its inclusion in Malherbe and Weingartner's badly flawed edition of Berlioz's works published by Breitkopf and Härtel in theopening years of the twentieth century.