Adapted from the program notes for Symphonie Fantastique, written by Jane Girdham
Berlioz is recognized for his imaginative and expressive use of orchestral instruments, and his
interest extended into writing a treatise on orchestration, which was first published in 1844 and
later updated by Richard Strauss. In the Symphonie Fantastique (1830) he introduced
instruments not yet familiar in symphonic music: two harps in the waltz, an English horn (a
deeper oboe) in the third movement, and a high E-flat clarinet and bells in the finale. He also
used the same two obsolete instruments that Wagner used in Rienzi: an ophicleide, and (in the
finale) a serpent. Here the serpent’s traditional association with choral music made it
particularly appropriate for playing the Dies Irae chant because of, in Berlioz’s own words
(translated by Theodore Front), “its cold and awful blaring.”
Berlioz’s care over instrumental color also extended to performing technique. He often gave
detailed instructions in his scores as to how instrumentalists should play their instruments. For
instance, string players are given specific instructions such as “very sharp tremolo,” and timpani
players (four of them are needed in the last movement) are told at times to use wooden drum
sticks, at others sponge-headed ones.
Berlioz was a young composer living in Paris when he attended a performance of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet in English (which he did not speak), with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson playing
Ophelia. He was immediately obsessed with her, even though he was not able to meet her for
several years. His Symphonie Fantastique is intimately bound up with his as yet unrequited
love. Berlioz was determined that his audience should understand the very personal story of
each movement, so he wrote a narrative for the audience to read at the premiere in 1830. The
1845 version is given here, in a translation by Nicholas Temperley.
Note
The composer’s intention has been to treat various states in the life of an artist, insofar
as they have musical quality. Since this instrumental drama lacks the assistance of
words, an advance explanation of its plan is necessary. The following program,
therefore, should be thought of as if it were the spoken text of an opera, serving to
introduce the musical movements and to explain their character and expression.
First Movement
DAYDREAMS – PASSIONS
The composer imagines that a young musician, troubled by that spiritual sickness which
a famous writer [Chateaubriand] has called le vague des passions [the vagueness of
passion], sees for the first time a woman who possesses all the charms of the ideal being
he has dreamed of, and falls desperately in love with her. By some strange trick of
fancy, the beloved vision never appears to the artist’s mind except in association with a
musical idea, in which he perceives the same character–-impassioned, yet refined and
diffident–-that he attributes to the object of his love.
This melodic image and its model pursue him unceasingly like a double idée fixe.
That is why the tune at the beginning of the first allegro constantly recurs in every
movement of the symphony. The transition from a state of dreamy melancholy,
interrupted by several fits of aimless joy, to one of delirious passion, with its impulses of
rage and jealousy, its returning moments of tenderness, its tears, and its religious
solace, is the subject of the first movement.
Second Movement
A BALL
The artist is placed in the most varied circumstances: amid the hubbub of a carnival; in
peaceful contemplation of the beauty of nature–-but everywhere, in town, in the
meadows, the beloved vision appears before him, bringing trouble to his soul.
Third Movement
IN THE MEADOWS
One evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds playing a ranz des
vaches [alphorn call; literally “rows of cows”]; this pastoral duet, the effect of his
surroundings, the slight rustle of the trees gently stirred by the wind, certain feelings of
hope which he has been recently entertaining–all combine to bring an unfamiliar peace
to his heart, and a more cheerful color to his thoughts. He thinks of his loneliness; he
hopes soon to be alone no longer… But suppose she deceives him! … This mixture of
hope and fear, these thoughts of happiness disturbed by dark forebodings, form the
subject of the adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des
vaches; the other no longer answers… Sounds of distant thunder… Solitude… Silence…
Fourth Movement
MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD
The artist, now knowing beyond all doubt that his love is not returned, poisons himself
with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to take his life, plunges him into a sleep
accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed the woman he
loved, and that he is condemned to death, brought to the scaffold, and witnesses his
own execution. The procession is accompanied by a march that is sometimes fierce and
somber, sometimes stately and brilliant: loud crashes are followed abruptly by the dull
thud of heavy footfalls. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe recur
like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal stroke.
Fifth Movement
SABBATH NIGHT’S DREAM
He sees himself at the witches’ Sabbath, in the midst of a ghastly crowd of spirits,
sorcerers, and monsters of every kind, assembled for his funeral. Strange noises,
groans, bursts of laughter, far-off shouts to which other shouts seems to reply. The
beloved tune appears once more, but it has lost its character of refinement and
diffidence; it has become nothing but a common dance tune, trivial and grotesque; it is
she who has come to the Sabbath… A roar of joy greets her arrival… She mingles with
the devilish orgy… Funeral knell, ludicrous parody of the Dies irae, Sabbath dance. The
Sabbath dance and the Dies irae in combination.
What Berlioz’s own narrative fails to tell is the sheer originality of the symphony. Its five
movements follow the traditional plan of the four-movement symphony but with two “dance”
movements, the Ball (II) and the March to the Scaffold (IV). Five movements were not
unprecedented: Beethoven himself had used five in his “Pastoral” Symphony No. 8, also to suit
his program. But where Beethoven represented the sounds of nature, Berlioz created
characters and a plot that develop throughout the work. The musician (Berlioz himself) is
obsessed with the Beloved but his love eventually turns sour, while the Beloved, who is
represented throughout the movements by a melody (or idée fixe) that gradually changes
character from ideal to macabre, turns from being an object of adoring passion into a cackling,
manic witch.
After a slow introduction to the first movement, the unattainable Beloved’s melody is
introduced as the main melodic material. It is romantic, expressive, and long-breathed, and the
object of the musician’s desires. The second movement, a waltz, places the musician at a ball,
where he glimpses her every so often amid the swirling dancers. The slow movement is set in
the country, where two shepherds (English horn and off-stage oboe) call distantly to each other
before the mood gradually turns dark as he remembers her less happily. At the end, the
shepherd calls out again, now with no reply.
The last two movements portray opium-induced nightmares. The Beloved is absent from the
inexorable march of the musician to the scaffold (he has killed her) until the guillotine is about
to fall, as if his last thoughts before his head rolls are of her. Finally in the last movement she is
transformed into an ugly cackling witch on a shrill E-flat clarinet as their devilish rituals begin.
Phrases of the Dies Irae from the Requiem Mass are heard, first low and straightforwardly, then
cruelly turned into an ungainly dance parody. Eventually a Round Dance begins in fugal style,
growing in density and volume, sweeping the orchestra towards the end.
