“Impact” – the forceful contact or collision of one body against another – is a particularly appropriate word to describe Hector Berlioz's effect upon his contemporaries, whether the composers of his own or of the next generation, the public, or colleagues in the press. Many in France acknowledged the genius of Berlioz the musician, but in his own time true appreciation of his achievement tended to reside mainly with a few ardent admirers, for Berlioz cultivated a style that was so distinctive, subjective, and exploratory that general audiences did not embrace the bulk of his works.

In 1870, only a year after his death, a youthful Adolphe Jullien stressed the personal character of Berlioz's music by characterizing the man and his art as one and the same: “he acts, he thinks, he lives in his works. Each page of his music is made in his own image.” Younger composers, intent on building their careers, tended to avoid the risky course of adopting wholesale his innovations and individual style. In 1871 Georges Bizet expressed both the deep admiration and the wariness symptomatic of his generation's attitude toward Berlioz as a model: