Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
THE STORY
Dreams and drug-induced hallucinations; tantrums and tenderness; murderous visions, despair, and ecstasy—Symphonie fantastique is an epic ride into the imagination of Hector Berlioz. Subtitled “Episode in an Artist’s Life,” the symphony is the semi-autobiographical tale of an artist’s self-destructive, all-consuming passion for a beautiful woman.
The Artist of the story is Berlioz himself and the beautiful woman is Harriet Smithson, an Irish actress with whom Berlioz had fallen madly in love, although they had never met.
Around the time he began work on the symphony, Berlioz described the story in his mind to a close friend:
I conceive an artist, gifted with a lively imagination, who … sees for the first time a woman who realizes the ideal of beauty and fascination that his heart has so long invoked, and falls madly in love with her…
He goes to a ball. The tumult of the dance fails to distract him…
After countless agitations, he imagines that there is some hope, he believes himself loved. One day, in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds playing a ranz des vaches to one another; their rustic dialogue plunges him into a delightful daydream…
In a fit of despair he poisons himself with opium; but instead of killing him, the narcotic induces a horrific vision, in which he believes he has murdered the loved one, has been condemned to death, and witnesses his own execution…
The next moment he is surrounded by a hideous throng of demons and sorcerers, gathered to celebrate Sabbath night … the beloved object has come to the sabbath to take part in her victim’s funeral. She is nothing but a courtesan, fit to figure in the orgy. The ceremony begins; the bells toll, the whole hellish cohort prostrates itself…
“When I have released it, I mean to stagger the musical world,” Berlioz wrote. And he did. The symphony—his first, at 26 years of age—represented his arrival to artistic maturity and pushed the genre of “program music” to a new level. Other composers (such as Beethoven, with his “Pastoral” Symphony) had written works influenced by specific places, scenery, literature, or ideas, but none had told a fully fleshed-out story through symphonic music as Berlioz did so vividly. Berlioz even pushed boundaries with instrumentation, utilizing instruments that had never before had such prominent roles in symphonic music, including the English horn and E-flat clarinet, as well as an unprecedented two harps and four timpani. In the words of music critic Michael Steinberg, the orchestra “sounds and behaves like nothing heard before.”
Despite all this, the extravagant Symphonie fantastique failed to attract Harriet Smithson’s attention—devastatingly, she didn’t even attend the premiere in 1830. But two years later, after making revisions to the work, Berlioz sent Harriet tickets for the best seats in the house for the first performance of the updated symphony. Harriet accepted and finally understood that the work was about her—and unbelievably, rather than running in the opposite direction, allowed the composer to court her.
What followed was reality too closely mirroring what Berlioz had imagined in his music—in an act of desperation, Berlioz swallowed a lethal dose of opium in front of Harriet and, hysterical, she agreed to marry him. (He then quickly produced a vial of the antidote and swallowed that, as well.)
Hector Berlioz and Harriet Smithson were married in 1833 but, unsurprisingly, the relationship did not work out—they eventually separated but remained close for the remainder of their lives.
LISTEN FOR
• The idée fixe, a theme that represents the love interest throughout the work, presented in the violins and flutes in the first movement, Rêveries – Passions
• In the second movement, Un Bal: Valse (“A Ball: Waltz”), two harps leading the lively dance
• In Marche au supplice (“March to the Scaffold”), the quite literal sounds of the execution of the Artist—the blade of the guillotine (abruptly silencing the idée fixe) and his head bouncing down the steps
• The idée fixe transformed into a grotesque parody in Songe d’une nuit de sabbat (“Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath”)—and the violins playing col legno (with the wood of the bow) to create a bone-rattling effect as the Artist is sentenced to damnation
INSTRUMENTATION
Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes (one doubling English horn), two clarinets (one doubling E-flat clarinet), four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, percussion, two harps, strings
