Clarinet: Symphony Fantastique Analysis

Symphony Fantastique: de la vie d’un artiste, en cinq parties (Fantastical Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts) Op. 14, is a composition of music is an important piece of the early Romantic era (1810-1900). It is a programmatic symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830, and was first performed at the Paris Conservatoire in December of that same year. Berlioz is considered an archetypal romantic composer, who was seen as impetuous, intense, energetic, vivid imagination and emotionally unstable – which is greatly reflected in this particular composition of Symphony Fantatique.

The music of the Romantic era is subjective and highly personal, composers like Berlioz, sought to explore their emotions through their music. The reason of the composition of Symphony Fantastique was that Berlioz was inspired from his tempestuous and failed love affair with the actress Harriet Smithson. In the Romantic era, Shakespeare’s works was being rediscovered and performed more to the public, in 1827 Berlioz attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where he fell in love the Irish-born actress. He sent her numerous love letters, all of which were left unanswered, leading him to write Symphony Fantastique as a way to express his unrequited love for her. In 1832, Harriet heard the French composer’s work of genius, they finally met and married in October 1833. Several years later, Berlioz and Smithson separated due to their marriage becoming increasingly bitter.

Symphony Fantastique is a piece of program music, Berlioz music evokes extra-musical ideas or images in the mind of the listener by musically representing a scene, which programmatic music entails. There are five movements, instead of the usual four movements that were conventional for symphonies at the time. The dramatic symphony of 5 movements, contains a leitmotif (joining melody) and depicts an episode in the protagonists life; an artist gifted with a lively imagination, who has poisoned himself with opium in the depths of despair because of hopeless love. The programme is as follows:

Rêveries – Passions (Reveries – Passions) – C minor/C major

Un bal (A Ball) – A major

Scène aux champs (Scene in the Fields) – F major

Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold) – G minor

Songe d’une nuit du sabbat (Dream of a Night of the Sabbath) – C minor/C major

The 1st movement tells the story of a young man that falls into a drug induced haze, and in his dreams sees visions of his ‘beloved’. The mysterious-sounding introduction in A major, creates an atmosphere of impending excitement in the 2nd movement, as the young man then sees his beloved again across a crowded ballroom, but cannot reach as the swirling dancers get in the way. The 3rd movement depicts an evening in the countryside, the young man sitting down listening to 2 shepherds calling to each other when again he sees his beloved, but theres a sense of impending doom. He then dreams he has murdered his beloved and is being led to the guillotine, in the 4th movement. The 5th movement, he then dreams he has gone to hell and takes part in a savage orgy with his disfigured beloved.

The instrumentation of Symphony Fantastique was written for a huge orchestra, which make the composition distinctive and unique. The score itself calls for a total of over 90 instruments:

The ranges the Berlioz employs for many of his orchestral instruments, particularly the violins and upper woodwind, are huge, adding to the drama of Romantic music, more extreme in its instrumental colour, harmonic language, length and emotions than the preceding Classical works. Brass and woodwind sections also gained independence from the first violin section, which previously in the classical period had subservient roles. Berlioz exploits the sonorities of these instruments, giving them melodies and countermelodies to reflect his rêveries and passions of his first movement. He uses the instruments to personify particular sounds and to symbolically represent the ideas he wants the audience to see as they listen to the music.

For example: E♭ clarinet used to sound like cackling witches in the 5th movement.

In particular focus on the 4th (Marche au supplice) and 5th (Songe d’une nuit du sabbat) movements, is where I find the most strength of Berlioz composition of Symphony Fantastique, making it a successful and genius work, by constantly recycling the same idea to fit different meaning. The 4th movement was reconstructed from music of the unfinished opera, Les francs-juges, which originated as the march of the guards. The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds, which he explicitly instructs the timpani players to handle their sticks: ‘The first quaver of each half-bar is to be played with two drumsticks, and the other five with the right hand drumsticks”. The movement then proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages as the young man is led to the guillotine for murdering his beloved, in duple time (standard march time signature). Before the young man’s execution that is musical depicted, there is a brief, nostalgic recollection of the idée fixe in a clarinet solo – symbolically representing the last conscious thoughts of a dead man. That is the last time we hear the idée fixe in its original state, although in that moment it is abbreviated from the previous movements. Berlioz musically mimicries the thud of the protagonist’s head falling into the executioner’s basket. The music then leads into a succeeding musical fanfare of brass and drums, evoking the sense of a military band in a public square.

Songe d’une nuit du sabbat sets the scene for the witches sabbath, evoking strange noises, cackling and distance cries from the unstable opening and the key being unclear. The idée fixe reappears, it is transformed by an E♭ clarinet and other woodwinds by losing all ‘shyness’ and ‘nobility’ to become a parody of itself. The protagonist, in effect, avenges his own failure to win his ideal woman by transforming her into an idolatress in the Black Mass. ‘Witches’ Round-Dance’ is set up as a short fugal exposition, transfers of the dance-tune from instrument to instrument until the whole orchestra as it progresses, like the gathering circle of witches, seems to be infected with its frenzy. A sinister, chromatic version of the round-dance emerges in the bass and is treated in imitative polyphony. At the end of the music, the final grotesquerie, where the violins and violas are instructed to play col legion (playing the back of the bow, with the wood rather than the hair) to create and eerie and brittle sound, is my favourite. It is a new and creative way of making music, making Berlioz a genius.

The two end movements of Symphony Fantastique, Berlioz goal of expressing his leitmotif, depictions and musical metaphors were strongly received, along side the symbolic nature and personification of instruments. The programmatic music of each movement clearly tells the story that the French composer entails. When I was listening to the 4th movement, I was easily able to identify what was happening musically in the story; the lead up to the young mans death with the traditional duple time of a standard march, and the final thoughts of the man’s beloved with the clarinet solo before he died, and the public rejoicing with the brass/drum dominated fanfare. To then hear the atmosphere change to a creepy and hellish feeling (from a duple meter to a quadruple/triple meter, and shifts from minor to major keys), and particular instruments to create imagery of cackling witches is where I really feel the pain of his love for his lover. How the imitative polyphony and chromatics of the overall sound, makes me feel the intenseness of the young mans love, regret and pain. The instrumentation of having woodwind and brass solos made this composition distinctive as it separated itself from other classic music. Overall, effectively demonstrating the intent of the composer’s programme – his unrequited love for someone and the length he’d go to – was clear as he recycled the same leitmotif in each movement, but change slightly harmonically to shift the mood of the piece, ultimately creating the story.

I very much enjoyed listening to Symphony Fantastique, I now understand why he won a composition award in 1830 for his music. I was in awe as to how clever he composed the music, creating a musical expedition into psychedelia and love because of its overall hallucinatory and dream-like nature. Although, from conducting my research, he achieved this by allegedly being under the influence of opium. I do consider this piece of music a success in many ways; it is a perfect example of music to represent the romantic era and what the era was about, the use of having a large scale orchestra, creating new trends and pushing the boundaries in classical music (soloing woodwind/brass), its polyphonic nature and its clever shifts ing keys and time signatures to change the mood of the music.