Hector Berlioz notable work Symphonie fantastique
Symphonies
Berlioz wrote four large-scale works he called symphonies, but his conception of the genre differed greatly from the classical pattern of the German tradition. With rare exceptions, such as Beethoven's Ninth, a symphony was taken to be a large‐scale wholly orchestral work, usually in four movements, using sonata form in the first movement and sometimes in others. Some pictorial touches were included in symphonies by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and others, but the symphony was not customarily used to recount a narrative.All four of Berlioz's symphonies differ from the contemporary norm. The first, the Symphonie fantastique (1830), is purely orchestral, and the opening movement is broadly in sonata form, but the work tells a story, graphically and specifically. The recurring idée fixe theme is the composer's idealised (and in the last movement caricatured) portrait of Harriet Smithson. Schumann wrote of the work that despite its apparent formlessness, "there is an inherent symmetrical order corresponding to the great dimensions of the work, and this besides the inner connexions of thought", and in the 20th century Constant Lambert wrote, "Formally speaking it is among the finest of 19th-century symphonies". The work has always been among Berlioz's most popular.Harold in Italy, despite its subtitle "Symphony in four parts with viola principal", is described by the musicologist Mark Evan Bonds as a work traditionally seen as lacking any direct historical antecedent, "a hybrid of symphony and concerto that owes little or nothing to the earlier, lighter genre of the symphonie concertante". In the 20th century critical opinion varied about the work, even among those well-disposed to Berlioz. Felix Weingartner, an early 20th century champion of the composer, wrote in 1904 that it did not reach the level of the Symphonie fantastique; fifty years later Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor found it "romantic and picturesque ... Berlioz at his best". In the 21st century Bonds ranks it among the greatest works of its kind in the 19th century.The "Dramatic Symphony" with chorus, Roméo et Juliette (1839), is still further from the traditional symphonic model. The episodes of Shakespeare's drama are represented in orchestral music, interspersed with expository and narrative sections for voices. Among Berlioz's admirers the work divides opinion. Weingartner called it "a style-less mixture of different forms; not quite oratorio, not quite opera, not quite symphony – fragments of all three, and nothing perfect". Countering accusations of lack of unity in this and other Berlioz works, Emmanuel Chabrier replied in a single emphatic word. Cairns regards the work as symphonic, albeit "a bold extension" of the genre, but he notes that other Berliozians including Wilfrid Mellers view it as "a curious, not entirely convincing compromise between symphonic and operatic techniques". Rushton comments that "pronounced unity" is not among the virtues of the work, but he argues that to close one's mind on that account is to miss all that the music has to give.The last of the four symphonies is the Symphonie funebre et triomphale, for giant brass and woodwind band (1840), with string parts added later, together with optional chorus. The structure is more conventional than the instrumentation: the first movement is in sonata form, but there are only two other movements, and Berlioz did not adhere to the traditional relationship between the various keys of the piece. Wagner called the symphony "popular in the most ideal sense ... every urchin in a blue blouse would thoroughly understand it".
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