During the Romantic period many composers made a huge impact with their music, some with traditional forms and others with new styles, such as program music. One of the composers who became a pioneer in the new program approach was Hector Berlioz with Symphonie Fantastique. As well as being a composer who worked in new, unconventional styles, he also used more traditional genres as well, among these the choral symphony and requiem mass. Ernest Newman wrote this about Hector Berlioz:
"Berlioz was himself, a solitary figure owing practically nothing to other people's music, an artist, we may almost say, without ancestry and without posterity. Mozart builds upon Haydn and influence Beethoven; Beethoven imitates Mozart and in turn influences the practice of all later symphonists. But with Berlioz... there is no one whose speech he tried to copy in his early year, and there is still no one since who tries to speak with his voice."
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