Symphonie Fantastique - Berlioz (1803-1869)

Rêveries - Passions: Un bal: Scène aux champs: Marche aux supplice: Songe d’une nuit de sabbat

Anyone looking for the stereotypical romantic view of a creative artist should search no further than Hector Berlioz. In 1827 at the age of twenty three, he saw the Irish actress Harriet Smithson in a Shakespeare play at the Paris Opera and fell obsessively and violently in love with her. In his memoirs he describes how he wandered the streets in a delirious state contemplating the seemingly hopeless passion which Miss Smithson's cold response induced. He was still in turmoil two years later when he wrote, "I am still unknown. But when I have written an immense instrumental work which I am now meditating; I intend to go to London to have it performed. Let me win success before her very eyes!" However, the first performance, which was not particularly successful, was given in Paris in 1830. Berlioz took refuge in Italy where he substantially revised his score before its London première in December 1832. Harriet Smithson was there; she and Berlioz were introduced and subsequently married. Originally called "Episode in the life of an artist", the Symphonie Fantastique describes how his love for a women engenders the wildest emotions even to the extent of the killing of his idolatrice. Using an astonishingly innovative approach to the orchestra to express his wildly romantic musical ideas, Berlioz penned a masterpiece which has proved to be an overwhelming influence on future composers. He considered it so essential that his romantic ideas for the Symphonie Fantastique should be known and understood that he stipulated that his own dramatic plan of the composition should be distributed to the audience at every performance.

“The composer's aim has been to develop, in musical terms, various episodes in the life of an artist. The plan of the instrumental drama, since it lacks the assistance of words, needs to be outlined in advance. The following programme should therefore be thought of as the spoken text of an opera, serving to link pieces of music, whose character and expression it motivates. Part 1: Reveries - Passions The composer imagines that a young musician, affected by that moral sickness identified by a famous author as the vague des passions (surge of passions) sees, for the first time, a woman who encapsulates all the charms of the ideal being dreamed of in his imagination. He becomes infatuated by her to distraction. By a singular strangeness, the cherished image always comes to the artist's mind linked with a musical idea, of a rather passionate, though noble and modest, nature, such as characterises the object of his affections. Both the ideal and its melodic reflection pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe (obsession). This explains the constant reappearance, in all of the symphony's movements, of the melody with which the opening Allegro begins. The transformation of this state of melancholy day-dreaming ,interrupted by a few moments of irrational joy, to one of delirious passion with swings of fury, jealousy, renewed tenderness, tears and religious consolations is the subject of the first movement.

Part 2: A Ball The artist is placed in the most diverse of life's situations, amongst a festive crowd in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature; but everywhere, in the town, in the fields, the cherished image comes to him and troubles his soul.

Part 3: Scene in the Country One evening, finding himself in the country, he hears two shepherds distantly responding to one another with a ranz de vaches (cowherds’ call). This pastoral duet, the setting of the scene, the light rustling of the trees gently stirred by the wind, certain new-found reasons for hope, all conspire to give his heart an unaccustomed calm and to colour his thoughts more happily. He reflects on his isolation; he hopes soon to be no longer alone. But if she were to deceive him! This mixture of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness, troubled by certain dark premonitions, form the subject of the Adagio. At its end, one of the shepherds repeats the cow-call; the other no longer answers . . . the distant sound of thunder . . . solitude . . . silence. . . .

Part 4: March to the Scaffold Having become certain that his love is not recognised, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dosage of the drug, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed the woman he loved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold, and that he witnesses his own execution. The procession advances to the sounds of a march, sometimes dark and savage, sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which the loudest outbursts are immediately followed by the dull sound of grave footsteps. The first four bars of the idée fixe reappear at the end of the march, like a final recollection of love which is interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part 5: Dream of a Sabbath Night He sees himself at a Witches' Sabbath in the midst of a frightful gathering of phantoms, sorcerers and monsters of all kinds, assembled for his funeral rites. Strange sounds, moans, bursts of laughter, far-off cries to which others seem to respond. The beloved melody reappears once more, but it has lost its noble and modest character; it has become no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque; she is coming to the Sabbath. A howl of joy at her arrival. . . . She joins in the diabolic orgy. . . . The funeral knell sounds followed by a burlesque parody of the 'Dies irae' and the Witches' Round Dance. Finally the Round Dance and the 'Dies irae' are heard together”.

Hector Berlioz translated by Peter Owens (By kind permission of Eulenberg Edition)

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