January 5th - Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

Alright, I'm starting to slip behind a little bit so I really need to start making up for it. But for now, let's take a look at Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.

Berlioz was truly a visionary in the world of music at the time. Beethoven became very well known for changing the reasons why things are done in specific ways and how, but Berlioz really pushed it to the extreme. For instance in his Requiem, he not only had a full orchestra and added several instruments to each section including 8 bassoons, 4 tubas, and 16 timpani (!!!!), but he also added 4 off stage brass bands, and a full choir. This is a massive group, and although he had a very large orchestra here, the one used for Symphony Fantastique was quite large as well.

Why it's so important:

Berlioz can be considered like Beethoven as one of those eccentric composers. And it really comes out through this work. Symphonie Fantastique is considered program music. This simply refers to the fact that there's a story or program in which the music is depicting. Many composers have fought over whether-or-not there should be program music and throughout the Romantic Period. This work is about one man's love that goes unnoticed. In the final two movements of the work he realizes his love will never be reciprocated, gets high off of opium and witnesses a dream in which he kills his love, watches his own beheading at a guillotine, and watches his funeral filled with witches, monsters, and sorcerers. That was an incredibly brief synopsis, but here is a better more-in depth description.

One of the things that the music nerds such as myself find interesting about this work is the use of the idée fixe. Merriam-Webster defines this as an obsession and it clearly is such throughout the work. It begins as a representation of the man's love but by the last movement turns into "a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath" as Berlioz puts it. This work is truly a expression from the composer, for it was representing his relationship with Harriet Smithson.

Fun Facts:

1. This was the first of Berlioz's four symphonies.

2. Berlioz and Harriet Smithson's marriage seems to have been a disaster. Plagued by language barriers, the couple split roughly 10 years after the marriage, although Berlioz financially supported her until her death in 1854.

3. Franz Lizst transcribed Symphonie Fantastique for piano, in the hopes that more people could simple hear the work.

Being the romantic that he is, he relates love to the notion of music.

"Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love."
-Hector Berlioz

This goes back to Beethoven's ideas of music as a higher object, and most music is made to convey meanings that may not be understood through other means. It's important that we understand the potential of music, so that we can understand what these great composers did.

Here is a recording of the fourth movement, March to the Scaffold.