Symphonie fantastique

Symphonie Fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un Artiste...en cinq parties (Fantastic Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts), Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences worldwide. The first performance took place at the Paris Conservatoire in December 1830. The work was repeatedly revised between 1831 and 1845 and subsequently became a favourite in Paris.

Instrumentation

The symphony is scored for an orchestra consisting of 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling cor anglais), 2 clarinets (1st doubling E-flat clarinet), 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, 2 ophicleides (originally one ophicleide and one serpent, but modern scores call for 2 tubas, with the 1st part normally played on bass tuba and the 2nd part based on the choice of the player), 2 pairs of timpani, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, bells in C and G, 2 harps (each part doubled), and strings.

Outline

The symphony is a piece of program music which tells the story of "an artist gifted with a lively imagination" who has "poisoned himself with opium" in the "depths of despair" because of "hopeless love." Berlioz provided his own program notes for each movement of the work (see below). He prefaces his notes with the following instructions:^[1]

The composer’s intention has been to develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so far as they lend themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely on the assistance of speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be set out in advance. The following programme must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their character and expression.

There are five movements, instead of the four movements which were conventional for symphonies at the time:

1. Rêveries - Passions (Daydreams - Passions)
2. Un bal (A ball)
3. Scène aux champs (Scene in the Country)
4. Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
5. Songe d'une nuit de sabbat (Dream of a Witches' Sabbath)

First movement: "Rêveries - Passions" (Reveries - Passions)

In Berlioz's own program notes from 1845, he writes:^[1]

The author imagines that a young vibrant musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer^[2] has called the wave of passions [la vague des passions], sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved image never presents itself to the artist’s mind without being associated with a musical idea, in which he recognises a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love. This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which launches the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations – all this forms the subject of the first movement.

idée fixe melody

The first movement is radical in its harmonic outline, building a vast arch back to the home key, which, while similar to the sonata form of classical composition, was taken as a departure by Parisian critics. It is here that the listener is introduced to the theme of the artist's beloved, or the idée fixe. Throughout the movement, there is a simplicity of presentation of the melody and themes, which Robert Schumann compared to "Beethoven's epigrams"^{[citation needed]}, ideas which could be extended, had the composer chosen to. In part, it is because Berlioz rejected writing the very symmetrical melodies then in academic fashion, and instead looked for melodies which were, "so intense in every note, as to defy normal harmonization", as Schumann put it.^{[citation needed]}

The theme itself was taken from Berlioz's scène lyrique "Herminie", composed in 1828.^[3]

Second movement: "Un bal"(A Ball)

Again, quoting from Berlioz's program notes:^[1]

The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive orgy, in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town or in the countryside, the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion.

The second movement has a mysterious sounding introduction that creates an atmosphere of impending excitement, followed by a passage dominated by two harps, then the flowing waltz theme appears, derived from the idée fixe at first^{[citation needed]}, and then transforming it. It is filled with running ascending and descending figures. The idée fixe theme interrupts the waltz twice.

The movement is the only one to feature the two harps. The harps may well symbolize the object of affection, but certainly provide the glamour and sensual richness of the ball being represented. Berlioz wrote extensively in his memoirs of his trials and tribulations in getting this symphony performed due to supply or lack of capable harpists and harps, especially in Germany.

Third movement: "Scène aux champs"(Scene in the Fields)

From Berlioz's program notes:^[1]

One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the distance dialoguing with their 'ranz des vaches'; this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier colouring. He broods on his loneliness, and hopes that soon he will no longer be on his own… But what if she betrayed him!… This mingled hope and fear, these ideas of happiness, disturbed by dark premonitions, form the subject of the adagio. At the end one of the shepherds resumes his ‘ranz des vaches’; the other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence ...

The two "shepherds" that Berlioz mentions in the notes are depicted with the English horn and offstage oboe tossing back and forth a characteristic melody. After the horn/oboe conversation has ended, the principal theme of the movement appears on solo flute and violins. Berlioz salvaged this theme from his abandoned Messe solennelle.^[3] The idée fixe returns in the middle of the movement and is played by an oboe and a flute.^[4] The sound of distant thunder at the end of the movement is an innovative passage for four timpani.^[3]

Fourth movement: "Marche au supplice"(March to the Scaffold)

From Berlioz's program notes:^[1]

Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. As he cries for forgiveness the effects of the narcotic set in. He wants to hide but he cannot so he watches as an onlooker as he dies. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow when his head bounced down the steps.

Berlioz claimed to have written the fourth movement in a single night, reconstructing music from an unfinished project, the opera Les francs-juges.^[3] The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds, for which he directs: "The first quaver of each half-bar is to be played with two drum sticks, and the other five with the right hand drum-sticks".^{[citation needed]} The movement proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures which would later show up again in the last movement. Prior to the musical depiction of his execution, there is a brief, nostalgic recollection of the idée fixe in a solo clarinet, as though representing the last conscious thought of the soon to be executed man.^[5] Immediately following this is a single short fortissimo G minor chord is the fatal blow of the guillotine blade; the series of pizzicato notes following represents the rolling of the severed head into the basket. After his death, the final nine bars of the movement contain a victorious series of G major chords played by the entire orchestra, seemingly intended to convey the cheering of the onlooking throng.

Fifth movement: "Songe d'une nuit de sabbat" (Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath)

From Berlioz's program notes:^[1]

He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath… Roar of delight at her arrival… She joins the diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.

This movement can be divided into sections according to tempo changes:

• The introduction is at Largo, in common time, creating an ominous quality through dynamic variations and different instrumental effects, particularly in the strings (tremolos, pizz, sf to p).
• At bar 21, the time signature changes to 6/8, and the tempo to Allegro. The return of the idée fixe as a "vulgar dance tune" is depicted in the C clarinet. This is interrupted by an Allegro Assai section in cut common at bar 29.
• The idée fixe then returns as a prominent E-flat clarinet solo at bar 40, in 6/8 and Allegro. The E-flat clarinet contributes a shriller timbre than the C clarinet.
• At bar 80, there is one bar of cut common, with descending crotchets in unison through the entire orchestra. Again in 6/8, this section see the introduction of tubular bells and fragments of the "witches' round dance".
• The Dies irae begins at bar 127, the motif derived from a Gregorian chant. It is initially stated in unison between 4 bassoons and 2 tubas.
• At bar 222, the "witches' round dance" motif is stated again and again in the strings, to be interrupted by 3 syncopated, dotted crotchets in the brass. This leads into the Ronde du Sabbat (Sabbath Round) at bar 241, where the motif is finally expressed in full
• The Dies irae et Ronde du Sabbat Ensemble section occurs at bar 414.

There are a host of effects, including eerie col legno playing in the strings, the bubbling of the witches' cauldron to the blasts of wind. It is important to remember that Berlioz's use of the word "orgy" pertains to a cultic gathering and not the more modernized meaning. The climactic finale of the symphony combines the somber Dies Irae melody with the wild fugue of the Ronde du Sabbat.

The aim of the second kind of imitation, as we have said before, is to reproduce the intonations of the passions and the emotions, and even to trace a musical image, or metaphor, of objects that can only be seen.^{[citation needed]}

He later adds:

...Emotional (imitation) is designed to arouse in us by means of sound the notion of the several passions of the heart, and to awaken solely through the sense of hearing the impressions that human beings experience only through the other senses. Such is the goal of expression, depiction or musical metaphors.^{[citation needed]}

As part of this he uses an example of cyclical structure in music, which was an idea drawn from Beethoven's use of similar rhythmic structures or shapes in his Fifth Symphony,^[6] and the idea of musical "cycles", such as a "song cycle". Berlioz did not know of Mendelssohn's Octet, which also uses this device.^{[citation needed]}

Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium^{[citation needed]}. According to Bernstein, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral."^[5]

In 1831, Berlioz wrote a lesser known sequel to the work, Lelio, for actor, orchestra and chorus.

Franz Liszt, who was on good terms with Berlioz, made a piano transcription of the work in 1833 (S.470).

Harriet Smithson

Berlioz fell in love with an Irish actress, Harriet Smithson, after attending a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet with her in the role of Ophelia, on 11 September 1827. He sent her numerous love letters, all of which went unanswered. When she left Paris they had still not met. He then wrote the symphony as a way to express his unrequited love. It premiered in Paris on 5 December 1830; Harriet was not present. She eventually heard the work in 1832 and realized that she was the genesis. The two finally met and were married on 3 October 1833. Their marriage was increasingly bitter, and they separated after several years of unhappiness.

Media

• European Archive Copyright free LP recording of the Symphonie fantastique by Willem van Otterloo (conductor) and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (for non-American viewers only) at the European Archive.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Translation of Berlioz's program note to the Symphonie fantastique
2. ^ François-René de Chateaubriand, writer and diplomat, coined the phrase la vague des passions, which was a chapter in his Génie du christianisme (1802).
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Steinberg, Michael. "The Symphony: a listeners guide to pop tarts". p. 61-66. Oxford University Press, 1995.
4. ^ Berstein, Leonard. "Berlioz Takes a Trip": Commentary on Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique
5. ^ ^{a b} Transcript to "Berlioz Takes a Trip" episode of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts
6. ^ Holomon, 102.

References

• Holomon, D. Kern, Berlioz (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University press, 1989). ISBN 0-674-06778-9.
• Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-866212-2.

External links

• Symphonie Fantastique on The Hector Berlioz Website, with links to Scorch full score and program note written by the composer
• Symphonie Fantastique: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.
• Keeping Score: Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Multimedia website with interactive score produced by the San Francisco Symphony
• Symphonie Fantastique at the Internet Archive, performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski conducting.