Unit XVIII Romantic Program Music

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Unit XVIIIRomantic Program Music

• Chapter 50
• Hector Berlioz and the Program Symphony

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Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869)

• b. 1803, Grenoble, France d. 1869, Paris

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Biography

• Father was a physician who wanted Hector to
  follow in his footsteps and sent him to medical
  school to do so however, Hector was more
  interested in music than medicine and opted to
  pursue the former, much to the dismay of his
  family they cut him off.
• Berlioz was forced to give private lessons, sing
  in a theater chorus and various other chores in
  order to make his living.

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Biography

• Early on Berlioz fell under the influence of
  Beethoven's music.
• Berlioz fell madly in love with an actress,
  Harriet Smithson, who was part of a visiting
  English acting troupe.
• In 1830 Berlioz was awarded the coveted Prix de
  Rome, which carried with it a year's study in
  Rome. During that year, Berlioz composed one of
  his most famous and enduring works, the Symphonie
  fantastique.

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Biography

• Returning to Paris, Berlioz resumed a stormy
  courtship with Harriet Smithson, over the
  objection of both his parents and of hers. After
  much heartache, including an attempted suicide by
  Berlioz, they were married. After a few years of
  relative happiness and tremendous productivity,
  both his marriage and his compositional output
  cooled.

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Biography

• While Berlioz really never attained complete
  acceptance in Paris, he spent his time as one of
  the premier music critics of the nineteenth
  century. He was embittered, however, that he
  should spend his time earning money critiquing
  the music of lesser musicians while his own work
  went largely ignored.

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Music

• Operas
• Les Troyens - monumental work with libretto after
  Vergil
• Beatrice et Benedict - Berlioz' last work (at age
  49)
• Great Choral Works
• Requiem (Mass for the Dead, 1837)
• Te Deum (Hymn of Praise, 1849)
• L'enfance du Christ (oratorio, 1854)

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Orchestration

• Perhaps Berlioz' greatest contribution was his
  genius of orchestration. It was Berlioz who
  became most successful in dealing with the mixing
  of new instrumental combinations to create new
  sonorities. That is why conductor Felix
  Weingartner called Berlioz "the creator of the
  modern orchestra."

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Listening Symphony fantastique, fourth movement

• Written at the height of Berlioz' infatuation
  with Harriet Smithson. He was 27.
• Written as a "novel in tones." Contains a
  somewhat autobiographical program.

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Program

• A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent
  imagination in a paroxysm of lovesick despair has
  poisoned himself with opium. The drug, too weak
  to kill, plunges him into a heavy sleep
  accompanied by strange visions. His sensations,
  feelings, and memories are translated in his sick
  brain into musical images and ideas. The beloved
  one herself becomes for him a melody, a recurrent
  theme (idée fixe) that haunts him everywhere."

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Idée Fixe

• The "fixed idea" that symbolizes the beloved is
  subjected to variation in harmony, rhythm, meter,
  tempo, dynamics register, and instrumental color.
  

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First Movement

• "Reveries, Passions"
• The fixed idea is introduced in a soaring melody
  (see p. 291 for fixed idea) and is recapitulated
  by full orchestra at the climax of the movement.
• This movement depicts the yearning and depth of
  the lover towards his beloved.

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Second Movement

• "A Ball"
• Dance movement in ternary form.
• The fixed idea occurs in the middle section in
  waltz time as the lover catches a glimpse of his
  love.

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Third Movement

• "Scene in the Fields"
• The lover is listening to the piping of two
  shepherds when his beloved appears and pain fills
  his soul in this slow, melancholy movement.

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Fourth Movement

• "March to the Scaffold"
• He dreams he has killed his beloved and is
  marching to the scaffold, a condemned man.
• At the very end the fixed idea reappears for an
  instant, like a last thought of love interrupted
  by the fall of the axe. This is an excellent
  example of the nineteenth century love for
  depiction of the fantastic.
• See Listening Guide 30, pp. 269-270, (CD 3/12-17)

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Fifth Movement

• "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath"
• Includes the mixture of the elements of
  diabolical with a statement of the chant from the
  Dies irae of the Requiem Mass.
• This movement depicts the dance of the specters
  (including his murdered beloved) who come to
  dance at the lover's funeral.