- Biography
- Symphonie Fantastique
- Overture King Lear
- Harold in Italy
- Romeo and Juliet
- Overture Roman Carnival
- Overture The Corsair
- Hungarian March
- The Damnation of Faust
- The Trojans
Biography
Berlioz has for many years been portrayed as being something of a wild, passionate mysterious Frenchman whose music has never really been understood.
He is most famous for his Symphonie Fantastique, but he did write a number of other very fine works that can be heard both on the concert platform and on record.
As a boy, Berlioz showed a keen interest in music, and whilst his parents were keen for him to have piano lessons he preferred the flute and the guitar and became quite proficient on both these instruments.
His father was a doctor and was responsible for his son’s education, which is why the young boy was never really given the encouragement to pursue a career in music.
Instead he was bundled off to medical school in Paris, very much under sufferance.
He disliked studying medicine and, after falling out with his parents on a number of occasions, eventually entered the Paris Conservatoire to follow his interest in music.
Being a man of great determination, he set his sights on winning the coveted Prix de Rome, a goal he achieved in 1830.
He was a great lover of going to the opera, concerts and plays and it was during a visit to the theatre that he first saw the young actress Harriet Smithson, with whom he later fell in love and whom he married some years later, in 1833.
Harriet was the source of much inspiration for Berlioz, in particular for his famous work the Symphonie Fantastique, which was first performed in December 1829.
Berlioz was immensely proud of this work and commented that the piece was ‘entirely autobiographical in intent’.
It is one of the most famous examples of a piece of ‘programme music’, incorporating all kinds of emotions and scenes within the piece including macabre visions of witchcraft, passion and pastoral reveries.
In contrast to this work, the great violin virtuoso of the day Paganini (also a fine viola player) commissioned Berlioz to write a piece for viola and orchestra.
However, Paganini was not greatly impressed with the result, to the point of not even wanting to play the solo part in the first performance.
Viola players these days, though, are delighted to have this four-movement work, Harold in Italy, in their repertoire.
In his lifetime, Berlioz never really achieved much success with his works, which is why he was never well off financially.
His operas Benvenuto Cellini and Les Troyens were failures, as was La Damnation de Faust, a concert work that is occasionally staged.
Berlioz is now remembered for a handful of truly excellent pieces and for being a romantic idealist who influenced a number of other composers through his fairly radical approach to composition, both formally and orchestrally.
Symphonie Fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique Op. 14: Reveries
1830, Symphonies, Orchestral
This work, originally written with a 200-piece orchestra in mind, was inspired by Berlioz’s obsession with an English actress, Harriet Smithson, who had been performing Shakespearean tragedies in Paris. After attending a performance of Romeo and Juliet, with Smithson in the role of Juliet, Berlioz declared:
‘I shall marry that woman, and on that drama I will write my greatest Symphony.’
The work is a ‘symphonic story’ about an artist who falls obsessively in love with a woman who lives up to all his ideals yet, whenever he pictures her in his mind’s eye, her image is accompanied by a melody. The work is all set in the artist’s feverish and love-sick imagination.
Originally called ‘Episode in the Life of an Artist (Grand Fantastic Symphony in Five Parts)’, the symphony revolves around the ‘beloved’s melody’, which emerges in various transformations in each of the five movements. It begins with ‘Reveries and Passions’, where the artist is filled with fiery love and jealous passions, and ends with ‘Dream of a Witches Sabbath’, where, poisoned with opium, he dances with her in a devilish orgy to his own death.
Overture King Lear
Overture King Lear Op. 4
1831, Overtures
The Romantic fascination with madness and Berlioz’s personal love of Shakespeare are combined in this overture, which savours the storms of Lear’s rage, grief and insanity. It has a violent principal theme that recalls the opening Lear motif, accompanied by a sweet lyrical phrase from the first violins. The music grows ever wilder as it approaches its climax and end.
Harold in Italy
Harold in Italy Op. 16: ‘Pilgrim’s March’
1833, Symphonies, Orchestral
One of Berlioz’s greatest works, its full title is ‘Harold in Italy, Symphony in Four Movements for Viola and Orchestra’. It was originally intended as a viola concerto to be played by Paganini, the virtuoso violinist, who had become a close friend of the composer after a particularly triumphant performance of his ‘Symphonie Fantastique’. However, not being a player of the instrument, Berlioz was unable to produce a viola part that satisfied Paganini and, in fact, rather disappointed the violinist, who left for Nice and did not talk to Berlioz for three years.
The work continued regardless, with Berlioz attempting to portray through the viola part a ‘melancholy dreamer’ in the style of Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’ – hence the title of the work.
A flowing solo viola theme tinged with melancholy depicts Harold in a mountainous setting and later, in the Allegretto, a hymn-like melody is chanted by the strings as we find Harold amongst pilgrims singing their evening prayer.
The fourth movement is an intense Allegro frenetico entitled ‘Brigand’s Orgy: Memories of Past Scenes’, where, in between the episodes of a wild and brilliant dance, the orchestra recalls the first three movements of the symphony.
Romeo and Juliet
1838, Symphonies, Orchestral
As was the case with his Symphonie Fantastique, the inspiration for this work came from the portrayal of Shakespeare’s Juliet by Harriet Smithson (an English actress whom Berlioz later married). Berlioz was utterly overwhelmed, exclaiming:
’. . . from the Third Act on . . . suffering as if an iron fist had seized my heart, I said to myself with complete conviction: “Ah, I am lost! “’
However, it was only five years later that he had the opportunity to write the score, when he was given a large amount of money by Paganini, the virtuoso violinist who was a great admirer of Berlioz.
Romeo and Juliet is scored for chorus, vocal solos and a full orchestra, yet is not an opera but a series of discontinuous episodes from the play that particularly appealed to Berlioz, the most famous being The Love Scene, Queen Mab or the Dream Sprite and Romeo Alone – His Sadness – Concert and Ball – Festivities in the Capulet’s Palace.
Berlioz, in true Romantic style, uses swelling strings, which results in a passionate song of violas and cellos in unison that embody the spirit of all-consuming love. He allows the listener to identify the main characters of the play by the use of telling and evocative themes, the most powerful being where Juliet is first introduced to us by a graceful, reticent phrase for the oboe against a magical background of soft strings being delicately plucked. There is also a whisper of trembling, muted violins.
Ultimately, one can understand this as the work of a man who once said: ‘Love can give no idea of music; music can give an idea of love’.
Overture Roman Carnival
Overture Roman Carnival
1843, Overtures
Berlioz wrote this overture as an afterthought to serve as an introduction to the second act of his opera ‘Benvenuto Cellini’. It is used as an anticipation to a lively dance which takes place on the Piazza Colonna in Rome during the second act.
The overture starts with a wild flourish that bursts with even greater power into the main saltarello (a kind of dance) theme, which seems to fade away towards the end but then suddenly returns in dazzling orchestral colour.
Overture The Corsair
Overture The Corsair Op. 21
1845, Overtures
This is essentially an ‘adventure piece’, based on Lord Byron’s ‘The Corsair’ and a near-death experience that Berlioz had had while at sea in an intense storm. During his recovery on the French Riviera, he planned, and practically composed, this overture. Hoping to encapsulate the spirit of his own adventure with the ‘burning poetry’ of Byron, Berlioz sought to re-create in music the violent seas and horrendous conditions in which he himself had been involved.
This he successfully achieved, opening the work with a sharp ‘crack’ of two chords followed by fiery strings that alternate with agitated chords from the woodwinds. With a nod to Byron’s love of contrast, the orchestra suddenly drops to a soft and delicate volume before exploding into an extended symphonic movement and the original fiery pace. Later, a graceful curving theme emerges that is presented and developed by the violins before being woven into a more complex orchestral fabric. There is no question that the spirit of storm, adventure and Berlioz’s romantic fantasy are ingeniously captured in this work.
Hungarian March
The Damnation of Faust: ‘Hungarian March’
1846, Orchestral
Taken from his choral work The Damnation of Faust, this March is usually known as the ‘Rakoczy March’ after the Hungarian revolutionary leader, and is designed to affect audiences in the same way as ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ overwhelms listeners on the Last Night of the Proms.
The Damnation of Faust
The Damnation of Faust: ‘Dance of the Sylphs’
1846, Orchestral, Choral
When Goethe’s ‘Faust’ was first published in French in 1827, Berlioz became obsessed with the book, saying:
‘I could not put it down. I read it . . . at meals, in the theatre, in the street, everywhere.’
He was inspired to set eight episodes of the book to music, as well as the more famous ‘The Damnation of Faust’, a work in itself. It was very badly received at its first performance, practically bankrupting the composer, yet seven years after his death it became a popular and much requested piece.
The ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ is the first movevment of this work: Faust is transported to the banks of the River Elbe, where Mephisto lulls him to sleep with a lullaby. The music proceeds to introduce a chorus of gnomes and sylphs as a variation on the lullaby theme before finally becoming a waltz for the sylphs alone.
The Trojans
1858, Opera
It is a strongly held opinion that nowhere is Berlioz’s preoccupation with passion better represented than in The Trojans, based on Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’. It tells the tale of Queen Dido and Aeneas, the Trojan soldier, at Carthage after the fall of Troy.