Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique
19th Century composer introduces narrative composition and program notes explaining the supernatural.
Jul 27, 2006
...Continued from Part I...
The first movement opens with a dreamy progression of lush harmonies that introduces the clear, plaintive melodic fragment that represents the beloved. In the second movement, the protagonist attends a ball, portrayed through waltz music based on the beloved's theme. In the third movement, we find him in the country, a setting idealized in Romantic philosophy as free from corruption and care.
And yet the vision of his beloved haunts him even there. The fourth movement traces a fantastic dream sequence in which the protagonist finds himself at the executioner's block as the murderer of his beloved. A march rhythm traces his procession to the guillotine, and as his head is laid on the block, the beloved's theme appears again, the lover's last thought.
A quick minor chord followed by two plucked notes signals the fall of the blade, and the head bounces off the block. The final movement brings the protagonist to the midnight reveries of grotesque witches. The beloved's theme, distorted in the clarinets, and a parody of a church plainchant, the Dies Irae (or "Day of Wrath"), suggest the occult. The symphony ends as a frenzied nightmare.
In addition to just being a beautiful piece of music, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is important in the development of narrative in music. Berlioz was one of the first to include a story in the form of program notes that the audience read as it listened to the music.
His notes (scroll down) embody the fascination with the supernatural and personal emotional expression that characterizes the 19th century in all areas of the arts.
