Open Writing

Berlioz (1803-1869) – Symphonie Fantastique

Why do some things become “classics”, whilst others are dismissed as merely “dated”? The answer probably lies in the subject: if this has no relevance to succeeding generations, your putative masterpiece is destined for history’s dustbin. On this basis alone, there is probably no musical work of more enduring relevance than the Symphonie Fantastique – doesn’t its graphic but inexplicit portrayal of nightmarish descent into madness and oblivion remain the supreme warning against the dangers of drug abuse?

In musical history, Berlioz sticks out like a sore thumb. He possessed, to an alarming degree, an extraordinary theoretical and practical musical talent, although the real secret of his success was his extreme sensitivity to stimuli, both literary and pictorial, and an uncanny knack of translating images into music. Berlioz was both the fuse that sparked the Romantic and the powder-keg whose explosive genius reverberated deafeningly through – and beyond – that entire period.

As in all the best success stories, his beginnings were hardly auspicious. This son of a provincial doctor was expected to follow in Papa’s footsteps, duly arriving in 1821 at the Paris medical school. Within a year, though, he was instead taking music lessons and had begun composing. In 1827, he went to see Hamlet, and was smitten by a “thunderstroke” – both the power of Shakespeare’s drama and the beauty of the actress, Harriet Smithson.

Berlioz, then still unknown, went into “peacock” mode, working overtime to become famous and thereby get noticed by the object of his affections. Achieving the former but not the latter brought abject depression, but in true artistic fashion Berlioz capitalised on it, transcribing his amatory misadventure into a vivid poetic vision, from whence came the import and structure of the Symphonie Fantastique. Ironically, he eventually did meet and marry the lady – of course, it all ended in tears, but that’s another story.

He continually revised this programme, mainly by moving the taking of the narcotic dose from after the Scene aux Champs to the very beginning, to reinforce the unity of his dramatic and symphonic scenarios. Relaxing his imposition that “This programme should be distributed to the audience . . . as it is indispensable for a complete understanding . . .” to apply only when the Symphonie is performed in tandem with Lelio indicates his growing confidence in the music as a purely symphonic structure.

But, what of the music itself? The five-movement layout he cribbed from Beethoven, but absolutely everything else is mind-bogglingly original. His wholesale application of an idee fixe, a melody developed musically and dramatically throughout the symphony, had far-reaching consequences. Even the melody’s shape was an astonishing departure: following the relatively conventional slow introduction the idee fixe, bristling with hairpins and sharp elbows, oozing more emotional implications than a psychiatry textbook, at once conveys the comeliness and caprice of the beheld and the intense ardour provoked in the beholder.

Berlioz’s epoch-making orchestration was far more toe-curling in its day than even Stravinsky’s. There are new sonorities, like the ophicleides (nowadays usually tubas – sometimes a bass trombone is used to try to restore some of the originally-intended rasp) or harps (Berlioz required a pair on each side), or indeed the cornet (second movement). More radically, there are new combinations and attack-effects, like the strained emaciation of isolated high woodwind and strings in Scene aux Champs, or the plethora of lurid “special FX” (in particular the woodwind “droops”!) in the last two movements. Especially, there’s the ground-breaking use of percussion, given a proper “speaking part” for the very first time.

But for me, the most devastating aspect is the unrivalled strategic engineering. “Generale” Berlioz marshals his forces with greater skill than any Napoleon, creating an inexorable, unnerving, cumulative impact that can still, figuratively speaking, blow away audiences. How many of today’s analogous blockbuster movies will manage that 170 years hence?

Hopefully to underline that enduring relevance I’ve risked modernising Berlioz’s programme, and (putting my neck on the fourth movement’s block!) I’ve “corrected” an apparent mismatch between music and storyline.

The Argument:

A manic-depressive rock musician gets the hots for this girl, but she just doesn’t want to know. Feeling really low, he tries to o/d on some iffy stuff he got at a gig. But he messes up, passes out, and takes a bad trip. Wild dreams burn his brain. Everything becomes music. The girl becomes a tune that he can’t shake off. Everywhere he turns, she’s there . . .

That’s a modern street-speak approximation to Berlioz’s original: “A young musician of morbid sensitivity. . . poisons himself with opium in . . . despair caused by frustrated love. The dose. . . while too weak to [kill him], plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions . . . His . . . feelings and memories are translated in his feverish brain into musical . . . images. His beloved becomes . . . a melody . . . which he meets and hears everywhere”.

1. Reveries – Passions (Largo – Allegro agitato e appassionato assai)

At first, it’s OK. He hears the music of his moods – the lows and the highs he always had; then the mind-blowing buzz of first seeing her, his desperation, his jealous rages, and a strange yearning. Exhausted, the dream peters out in a mystical haze.

2. Un Bal (Valse: Allegro non troppo)

He’s creeping through gloomy, swirling mists, up to a brilliantly-lit window. Gazing in at the posh people having a ball, he makes out the girl weaving amongst the swaying crowds. She approaches the window. She can’t see him, but he could almost reach out and touch her. He stumbles away, taunted by the sounds of revelry.

3. Scene aux Champs (Adagio)

Two shepherds, separated by a vast valley, pipe mournful messages through the pastoral gloaming. Sitting on warm grass, he drowsily deliberates on how they mirror his own loneliness. “Except, she doesn’t return my calls”. Far off through the trees he sees a couple strolling. One of them is her, and she’s with . . . A sudden surge of jealousy brings him upright. Glowering, fists clenching, thoughts of revenge boil up. Then, wearily, he sinks to his knees. As the sun sets, the nearer shepherd pipes again. In response, from the other side come only ominous rumbles of thunder, then – nothing.

4. Marche au Supplice (Allegretto non troppo)

The insidious narcotic’s claws dig deeper. Having exacted his vengeance, he is being trundled to the Scaffold, urged on by enthusiastically jeering crowds of former fans. As his neck is forced onto the bloodstained block, his tortured gaze falls on the howling horde. Horrified, he sees her standing among the mob. The blade falls. The crowd roars.

5. Songe d’une Nuit de Sabbat (Larghetto – Allegro)

His brain fries: amid a witches’ sabbath his undead corpse stirs, jostled by croaking, shrieking shades. Quivering with unimaginable terror, he sees the most loathsome hag cavort into view. Vile crones shriek approval as his damned soul screams in realisation: this Abomination is her, here to celebrate his funeral. Cracked bells toll morbidly. Tiers of demons, witches and hobgoblins parody the majestic Dies Irae, prelude to a disgusting orgy. Then all becomes still, unquiet, expectant. Flickering shades flit by, the horde arises, and thirteen thunderstrokes announce his doom. Crooked crones haloed by fluttering bats, and the Abomination, drag him before their master. A sulphurous pit yawns. To jubilant howls, Hell claims another lost soul.

From our perspective, there’s a curious irony. Certain “raves” are distinctly like pantomimic enactments of this witches’ sabbath, so maybe a modern rock musician would find it not so much alarming as exhilarating. But – I hesitate to say – Berlioz’s music has much the same effect on concert audiences, doesn’t it?

© Paul Serotsky