Program Notes & Analysis
An Episode in the Life of an Artist
In 1827, a young, unknown Hector Berlioz attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Paris. He understood little of the English being spoken on stage, but he was instantly and completely captivated by the Irish actress playing Ophelia, Harriet Smithson. His infatuation quickly spiraled into a wild, all-consuming obsession. He wrote her passionate letters, which she ignored. He rented an apartment from which he could see her windows. Consumed by this unrequited love and unable to express his passion in any other way, he did what only a great Romantic artist could do: he poured his obsession into a massive, narrative, and deeply autobiographical symphony. The Symphonie fantastique is the direct result of this real-life drama.
A Revolution in Sound and Story
The symphony's premiere in 1830 was a landmark event, thanks to two radical innovations. First, Berlioz provided the audience with a detailed written program that spelled out the symphony's story. This was a departure from the abstract nature of the classical symphony. Second, he unified the five disparate movements with a single recurring melody, which he called the idée fixe. This long, lyrical, and slightly breathless theme represents the artist’s obsession, the "beloved" herself. The genius of the work lies in how this theme is transformed in each movement to reflect the artist's evolving emotional state.
I. Reveries – Passions
According to Berlioz's program, the first movement depicts a young artist, afflicted with a "sickness of the soul," who thinks of the ideal woman. After a slow, melancholy introduction, he sees his beloved for the first time, and the orchestra introduces the main idée fixe theme. The rest of the movement is a musical depiction of the turbulent emotions she inspires in him: "volcanic love," "frenzied tenderness," "jealous fury," and "religious consolation."
II. A Ball
The artist finds himself in the midst of a glittering party. The music is a brilliant and enchanting waltz, with dazzling writing for two harps that evokes the swirling dancers and shimmering chandeliers. Midway through the waltz, the idée fixe appears in the flute and oboe. The artist has caught a fleeting glimpse of his beloved across the crowded ballroom. Her image haunts him for a moment before it is swept away again by the intoxicating whirl of the dance.
III. Scene in the Fields
Seeking peace, the artist goes to the countryside. The movement begins with a famous and beautiful duet for an English horn and an offstage oboe, imitating two shepherds piping to one another across the fields. The pastoral calm gives the artist hope. The idée fixe returns again, a pleasant memory of his beloved. But his peace is shattered by doubt. At the end of the movement, the English horn pipes its lonely tune once more, but this time, it is answered only by the distant, menacing rumble of thunder, evoked by four timpani played by multiple players.
IV. March to the Scaffold
In a fit of despair, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose is too weak to kill him, and instead plunges him into a horrific nightmare. He dreams that he has murdered his beloved and is being led to his own execution. The music is a grotesque and terrifying march. It alternates between a grim, descending theme and a wild, brilliant fanfare for the brass. In the final seconds of the movement, the march stops. A solo clarinet plays a sweet, tender fragment of the idée fixe—a last, loving thought of the beloved. This thought is brutally cut short by a single, crashing chord from the full orchestra: the fall of the guillotine's blade.
V. Dream of a Witches' Sabbath
The artist’s nightmare continues after death. He finds himself at a witches’ sabbath, a hideous gathering of sorcerers and monsters who have come for his funeral. The idée fixe appears one last time, but it is now horribly transformed. The once elegant melody is now a shrill, vulgar, and grotesque dance tune, played by a squealing E-flat clarinet. His beloved has arrived at the sabbath, revealed to be a witch. The scene grows more terrifying with the tolling of funeral bells and a demonic quotation of the "Dies irae," the ancient plainchant from the Catholic Mass for the Dead, played menacingly by the tubas and bassoons. The movement culminates in a wild fugal "Sabbath Round Dance," which combines with the "Dies irae" in a terrifying and blasphemous climax.
Revolutionary Orchestration
The Symphonie fantastique is a landmark in the art of orchestration. Berlioz, a supreme master of the orchestra, used instruments in new and unheard-of ways to create his sonic drama, including massive brass and percussion sections, the offstage oboe, and the grotesque shrieking of the E-flat clarinet. The sound world of the symphony was as revolutionary as its story.
Life Imitates Art
Years after the premiere, Harriet Smithson's career had faded, and she was in debt. She finally attended a performance of the symphony and, reading the program, realized with astonishment that this famous, scandalous work was about her. The two finally met, and in a finale worthy of the symphony itself, they fell into a passionate but ultimately disastrous marriage.
The Manifesto of Musical Romanticism
The Symphonie fantastique blew the doors off the classical tradition and established a new, deeply personal, and programmatic path for the symphony. Its influence on later Romantic composers like Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss is immeasurable. It remains one of the most original, thrilling, and endlessly fascinating works in the entire orchestral repertoire.
