Runtime: Approx. 50 minutes

This concert’s exploration of programmatic music continues with Berlioz’s celebrated masterpiece, Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz was, for lack of a better word, a Beethoven super-fan, joining a long list of composers who revered and paid tribute to the composer, including Camille Saint-Saëns as discussed on our previous masterworks series concert. Beethoven is often considered to be the originator of the programmatic symphony with his groundbreaking depiction of various nature scenes in his Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral.” Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the Pastoral Symphony appears alongside The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s original Fantasia, and Berlioz pays homage to Beethoven in his work by adding an unusual fifth movement to the normally four-movement symphonic form, just as Beethoven did in the Pastoral.

In discussing Symphonie fantastique for his beloved Young People’s Concerts, conductor Leonard Bernstein declared it to be “the first psychedelic symphony in history…written one hundred thirty-odd years before the Beatles.” The semi-autobiographical story follows a lovesick artist who has poisoned himself with opium after his advances are rejected by the object of his adoration. In real life, Berlioz was desperately in love with Shakesperian Actress Harriet Smithson, whom he had never met but had seen performing in the role of Ophelia. He became obsessed with the actress and began to persistently send her letters, all of which she ignored until several years after the work’s premiere.

The Symphonie follows the artist down his drug-fueled rabbit hole, from a scene at a ball to the countryside where his idyllic fantasy is startlingly interrupted by a march to the scaffold for his own execution. It is then once again supplanted by a scene at a Witches’ Sabbath, the music whirling ever faster into a bacchanalia that conjures images akin to Heironymus Bosch’s famous painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Berlioz provided his own program notes, which he instructed are to be read alongside the performance like the lyrics of a song. Prior to reading his notes, it may be useful to offer a bit of insight into some of the terminology Berlioz uses, which, at the time of its writing, might have been more commonly known.

Idée Fixe – In psychology, an idée fixe is a preoccupation of the mind—an idea that one cannot help but dwell on and return to over and over despite attempts to refocus. In music, it takes the form of a recurrent melody that represents a foundational idea to the work. The melody returns throughout the piece, played by different instruments, often interrupting other melodic ideas just as intrusive thoughts pop up in our own minds.

In Berlioz’s work, the idée fixe represents the object of his obsessional love, and appears for the first time about six minutes into the work after an extended introduction. Bernstein describes it as “haunting the symphony; wherever the music goes, she keeps intruding and interrupting, returning in endless forms and shapes.” In the introduction, which sets up the premise of the story, a reluctant protagonist first spots his love and the strings and woodwinds play halting, tentative melodies that build into flourishing excitement as his interest grows. One can almost taste the excitement and passion of early love. But passion soon morphs into a melancholic yearning as the artist’s affections go unreciprocated. The introduction culminates in two great, striking chords, echoed by two softer ones, after which the idée fixe is first presented by the violins. The deftly shaped tune first rises hopefully, pauses, and then rises once more before tumbling back down, echoing the dramatic arch of the artist’s longing and ultimate disappointment. Different iterations of the idée fixe melody can be heard in each of the work’s five movements as the artist’s obsessive love continues to haunt him, even after his own death.

Dies Irae – “Dies irae” (“day of wrath”) comes to us from the Requiem Mass, but in the case of Berlioz’s work, the “Dies irae” references a particular melodic setting of the text that likely dates back to the 16th century. The short melody has become a frequently used musical symbol of doom and the macabre and is quoted in a myriad of works, from composers like Holst and Mahler to movie soundtracks for The Shining, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Lion King, and Danny Elfman’s Batman. It appears in the final movement of Symphonie fantastique, first as a haunting chorale played by the trombones and tuba, then joined by the rest of the brass, creating a stately and persistent platform on which the witches (woodwinds and percussion) gleefully dance. It returns at several points in the final movement, perhaps supplanting the original love theme as a new idée fixe.

On a somewhat happier note, Harriet Smithson did eventually take notice of Berlioz’s affections. Two years after the premier of Symphonie fantastique, Smithson attended a performance of the work’s less-performed sequel, Lélio, and realized that the compositions were indeed about her. She wrote to the composer, finally agreeing to meet him, and the two were married in 1833.

In his final summation of the work, Bernstein quips, “I can’t honestly tell you that we have gone through the fires of hell with our hero and come out nobler and wiser, but that’s the way it is with trips, and Berlioz tells it like it is…You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.”

– Valerie Sly, 2024

Read Symphonie fantastique in the composer’s own words, from the 1845 edition of the score:

Part one
Daydreams, passions

The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called the vagueness of passions (le 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.

Part two
A ball

The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, 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.

Part three
Scene in the countryside

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 coloring. 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…

Part four
March to the scaffold

Convinced that his love is spurned, 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. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes somber 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.

Part five
Dream of a witches’ sabbath

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.

– Hector Berlioz, 1945