Symphonie fantastique

Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un artiste ... en cinq parties (Fantastical Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts) Op. 14 is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is an important piece of the early Romantic period, and is popular with concert audiences worldwide. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire in December 1830. The work was repeatedly revived after 1831 and subsequently became a favourite in Paris.
Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, 'Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.'[1][2][3]
In 1831, Berlioz wrote a lesser known sequel to the work, Lélio, for actor, orchestra and chorus. Franz Liszt made a piano transcription of the symphony in 1833 (S.470).
== Contents ==
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* 1 Instrumentation
* 2 Outline
** 2.1 First movement: "Rêveries – Passions" (Reveries – Passions)
** 2.2 Second movement: "Un bal" (A Ball)
** 2.3 Third movement: "Scène aux champs" (Scene in the Fields)
** 2.4 Fourth movement: "Marche au supplice" (March to the Scaffold)
** 2.5 Fifth movement: "Songe d'une nuit du sabbat" (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath)
* 3 Harriet Smithson
* 4 Use in popular culture
* 5 Media
* 6 Notes
* 7 References
* 8 External links
== Instrumentation[edit] ==
The score calls for a total of over 90 instruments, the most of any symphony written to that time. Specifically:
* 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (one doubling cor anglais), 2 soprano clarinets (one doubling E♭ clarinet), 4 bassoons
* 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones (alto, tenor, and bass), 2 tubas/ophicleides
* 2 pairs of timpani, cymbals, suspended cymbal, tenor drum, bass drum, bells (sounding C and G)
* 2 harps
* strings (Berlioz specified at least 15 1st violins, 15 2nd violins, 10 violas, 11 celli and 9 basses on the score)
Though the Symphonie fantastique calls for only a fairly large orchestra, such conductors as Zubin Mehta and Gustavo Dudamel have conducted performances of the work with orchestras of over 200 players.
== Outline[edit] ==
The symphony is a piece of program music that tells the story of "an artist gifted with a lively imagination" who has "poisoned himself with opium" in the "depths of despair" because of "hopeless love." Berlioz provided his own program notes for each movement of the work (see below). He prefaces his notes with the following instructions:[4]
There are five movements, instead of the four movements that were conventional for symphonies at the time:
# Rêveries – Passions (Reveries– Passions)
# Un bal (A Ball)
# Scène aux champs (Scene in the Fields)
# Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
# Songe d'une nuit du sabbat (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath)
=== First movement: "Rêveries – Passions" (Reveries – Passions)[edit] ===
In Berlioz's own program notes from 1845, he writes:[4]
idée fixe melody
"The first movement is radical in its harmonic outline, building a vast arch back to the home key; while similar to the sonata form of the classical period, Parisian critics regarded this as unconventional. It is here that the listener is introduced to the theme of the artist's beloved, or the idée fixe. Throughout the movement there is a simplicity in the way melodies and themes are presented, which Robert Schumann likened to 'Beethoven's epigrams' [1] ideas that could be extended had the composer chosen to. In part, it is because Berlioz rejected writing the more symmetrical melodies then in academic fashion, and instead looked for melodies that were 'so intense in every note as to defy normal harmonization', as Schumann put it. -Hector Berlioz: The Complete Guide[1]
The theme itself was taken from Berlioz's scène lyrique "Herminie", composed in 1828.[1] [7]
=== Second movement: "Un bal" (A Ball)[edit] ===
Again, quoting from Berlioz's program notes:[4]
The second movement has a mysterious-sounding introduction that creates an atmosphere of impending excitement, followed by a passage dominated by two harps; then the flowing waltz theme appears, derived from the idée fixe at first,[8] then transforming it. More formal statements of the idée fixe twice interrupt the waltz.
The movement is the only one to feature the two harps, providing the glamour and sensual richness of the ball, and may also symbolise the object of the young man's affection. Berlioz wrote extensively in his memoirs of his trials and tribulations in having this symphony performed, due to a lack of capable harpists and harps, especially in Germany.
Another feature of this movement is that Berlioz added a part for solo cornet to his autograph score, although it was not included in the score published in his lifetime. The work has most often been played and recorded without the solo cornet part.[9] Conductors Jean Martinon, Sir Colin Davis, Otto Klemperer, Gustavo Dudamel, and Leonard Slatkin have employed this part for cornet in performances of the symphony.
=== Third movement: "Scène aux champs" (Scene in the Fields)[edit] ===
From Berlioz's program notes:[4]
The two "shepherds" Berlioz mentions in the notes are depicted with a cor anglais(English horn) and an offstage oboe tossing an evocative melody back and forth. After the cor anglais–oboe conversation, the principal theme of the movement appears on solo flute and violins. Berlioz salvaged this theme from his abandoned Messe solennelle.[7] The idée fixe returns in the middle of the movement, played by oboe and flute.[10] The sound of distant thunder at the end of the movement is a striking passage for four timpani.[7]
=== Fourth movement: "Marche au supplice" (March to the Scaffold)[edit] ===
From Berlioz's program notes:[4]
Berlioz claimed to have written the fourth movement in a single night, reconstructing music from an unfinished project – the opera Les francs-juges.[7] The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds, for which he directs: "The first quaver of each half-bar is to be played with two drumsticks, and the other five with the right hand drumsticks".[11] The movement proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures that later show up in the last movement. Before the musical depiction of his execution, there is a brief, nostalgic recollection of the idée fixe in a solo clarinet, as though representing the last conscious thought of the soon-to-be-executed man.[12] Immediately following this is a single, short fortissimo G minor chord – the fatal blow of the guillotine blade, followed by a series of pizzicato notes representing the rolling of the severed head into the basket.[citation needed] After his death, the final nine bars of the movement contain a victorious series of G major brass chords, along with rolls of the snare drums within the entire orchestra, seemingly intended to convey the cheering of the onlooking throng.[1]
[13]
=== Fifth movement: "Songe d'une nuit du sabbat" (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath)[edit] ===
From Berlioz's program notes:[4]
This movement can be divided into sections according to tempo changes:
* The introduction is Largo, in common time, creating an ominous quality through dynamic variations and instrumental effects, particularly in the strings (tremolos, pizz, sf).
* At bar 21 the tempo changes to Allegro and the metre to 6/8. The return of the idée fixe as a "vulgar dance tune" is depicted by the C clarinet. This is interrupted by an Allegro Assai section in cut common at bar 29.
* The idée fixe then returns as a prominent E-flat clarinet solo at bar 40, in 6/8 and Allegro. The E-flat clarinet contributes a sharper, more shrill timbre than the C clarinet.
* At bar 80, there is one bar of alla breve, with descending crotchets in unison through the entire orchestra. Again in 6/8, this section sees the introduction of tubular bells and fragments of the "witches' round dance".
* The "Dies irae" begins at bar 127, the motif derived from the 13th-century Latin sequence. It is initially stated in unison between the unusual combination of four bassoons and two tubas.
* At bar 222, the "witches' round dance" motif is repeatedly stated in the strings, to be interrupted by three syncopated notes in the brass. This leads into the Ronde du Sabbat (Sabbath Round) at bar 241, where the motif is finally expressed in full.
* The Dies irae et Ronde du Sabbat Ensemble section is at bar 414.
There are a host of effects, including eerie col legno in the strings – the bubbling of the witches' cauldron to the blasts of wind. The climactic finale combines the somber Dies Irae melody with the wild fugue of the Ronde du Sabbat.
: The aim of the second kind of imitation, as we have said before, is to reproduce the intonations of the passions and the emotions, and even to trace a musical image, or metaphor, of objects that can only be seen.[citation needed] The continual interruption of the Dies irae motif by the strings symbolizes this continual fight of death until the movement and piece eventually, as we all do given in to the Dies irae theme and our eventual but necessary deaths.
He later adds:
: ...Emotional (imitation) is designed to arouse in us by means of sound the notion of the several passions of the heart, and to awaken solely through the sense of hearing the impressions that human beings experience only through the other senses. Such is the goal of expression, depiction or musical metaphors.[13][citation needed]
As part of this he uses an example of cyclical structure – an idea drawn from Beethoven's use of similar rhythmic structures in his Fifth Symphony,[14] and the idea of musical "cycles", such as a "song cycle". Berlioz did not know of Mendelssohn'sOctet, which also uses this device.[citation needed]
== Harriet Smithson[edit] ==
	This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2013)
After attending a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet on 11 September 1827 Berlioz fell in love with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson who had played the role of Ophelia. He sent her numerous love letters, all of which went unanswered. When she left Paris they had still not met. He then wrote the symphony as a way to express his unrequited love. It premiered in Paris on 5 December 1830; Harriet was not present. She eventually heard the work in 1832 and realized his genius. The two finally met, and they were married on 3 October 1833. Their marriage became increasingly bitter, and eventually they separated after several years of unhappiness.[15]
== Use in popular culture[edit] ==
Symphonie fantastique was featured in the films "The Shining," "Sleeping with the Enemy," and was the basis for the short film Last Night's Symphonie (2014), a dark comedy that re-imagines the story of the symphony. Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the film tells the story of a young man who enjoys a wild night out on the town with an adventurous young woman, only to face the consequences once the fantasy ends and reality kicks in. The film is part of the Filmelodic film series, an ongoing series of stories drawn from classical music and screened with live musicians.
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