sorrows he experienced before he saw his beloved; then the volcanic
love she suddenly inspired in him, his delirious raptures, his
jealous fury, his persistent tenderness, his religious consolations.”
The beloved’s
Next the artist attends A Ball, and Berlioz sets the scene with a
Scene in the Country, the artist “broods on his
loneliness,” contemplating “two shepherds” (a dialogue of English
horn and oboe) and later the “distant sound of thunder” (played by
the timpani).
The fantastical nature of the work emerges in the March to the Scaffold,
in which the artist “dreams that he has killed his beloved, that
from the
clarinet is silenced by the startling crash of the guillotine, followed
the Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath, featuring “a hideous gathering of
shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together
for the artist’s funeral.” The symphony depicts “strange
sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter” with diabolical orchestral
Dies Irae (Day
of Wrath) plainchant melody.
The Symphonie fantastique was a dramatic leap forward in music,
an achievement that was almost inconceivable coming from
a 26-year-old student, working in a country with little symphonic
tradition, and appearing only six years after Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony. Berlioz followed with many more masterful orchestral
scores, and his treatise on instrumentation is still essential reading
for aspiring composers. The late-blooming Berlioz turned out to be
a new breed of virtuoso, one whose “instrument” was the massed
resources of the symphony orchestra.
© 2018 Aaron Grad.
64 | CHARLESTON GAILLARD CENTER: 2018-2019 SEASON PROGRAM: SPRING