Dreams Of A Witches Sabbath

[Nickie Koskinen]

Symphonie fantastique: pisode 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 program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is an important piece of the early Romantic period. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December 1830.

Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral."

He sees himself at a witches' sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath ... Roar of delight at her arrival ... She joins the diabolical orgy ... The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.

Berlioz wrote semi-autobiographical programme notes for the piece that allude to the romantic sufferings of a gifted artist who has poisoned himself with opium because of his unrequited love for a beautiful and fascinating woman (in real life, the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, who in 1833 became the composer's wife). The composer, who revered Beethoven, followed the latter's unusual addition in the Pastoral Symphony of a fifth movement to the normal four of a classical symphony. The artist's reveries take him to a ball and to a pastoral scene in a field, which is interrupted by a hallucinatory march to the scaffold, leading to a grotesque satanic dance (witches' sabbath). Within each episode, the artist's passion is represented by a recurring theme called the ide fixe.

The Symphonie fantastique is a piece of programme music that tells the story of a gifted artist who, in the depths of hopelessness and despair because of his unrequited love for a woman, has poisoned himself with opium. The piece tells the story of the artist's drug-fuelled hallucinations, beginning with a ball and a scene in a field and ending with a march to the scaffold and a satanic dream. The artist's passion is represented by an elusive theme which Berlioz called the ide fixe, a contemporary medical term also found in literary works of the period.[1] It is defined by the Dictionnaire de l'Acadmie franaise as "an idea that keeps coming back to mind, an obsessive preoccupation".[n 1]

Berlioz provided his own preface and programme notes for each movement of the work. They exist in two principal versions: one from 1845 in the first edition of the work and the second from 1855.[3] These changes show how Berlioz downplayed the programmatic aspect of the piece later in life.

The Composer's aim was to develop, in their musical aspects, different situations in the life of an artist. The plan of the instrumental drama, deprived of the aid of words, needs to be explained in advance. The following programme must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an Opera, serving to bring pieces of music the character and expression that motivates them.

The following programme must be distributed to the audience whenever the fantastic symphony is dramatically performed and followed, accordingly, by the monodrama of Llio, which ends and completes the episode in the life of an artist. In such a case, the invisible orchestra is placed on the stage of a theatre behind the lowered curtain. If the symphony is performed in isolation in a concert, this arrangement is no longer necessary; it is even possible to dispense with distributing the programme, retaining only the title of the five movements. The symphony (the author hopes) can to offer in itself a musical interest independent of any dramatic intention.

Berlioz wanted people to understand his compositional intention, as the story he attached to each movement drove his musical choices. He said, "For this reason I generally find it extremely painful to hear my works conducted by someone other than myself."[7]

Attending a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet on 11 September 1827, Berlioz fell in love with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who played the role of Ophelia. His biographer Hugh Macdonald writes of Berlioz's "emotional derangement" in obsessively pursuing her, without success, for several years. She refused even to meet him.[8][9] He sent her numerous love letters, all of which were unanswered.[10]

The Symphonie fantastique reflects his obsession with Smithson. She did not attend the premiere, given at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December 1830, but she heard Berlioz's revised version of the work in 1832 at a concert that also included its sequel, Llio, which incorporates the same ide fixe and some spoken commentary.[11] She finally appreciated the strength of his feelings for her. The two met shortly afterwards and began a romance that led to their marriage the following year.[12]

The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that emotional affliction which a famous writer[n 3] calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal being of which his imagination dreamed, and he becomes madly in love with her. By a singular oddity, the cherished image never presents itself to the artist's mind except in connection with a musical idea, in which he finds a certain passionate, but noble and timid character like that which he attributes to the beloved object.

This melodic reflection and its model pursue him incessantly like a double ide fixe. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in all the movements of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first allegro. The passage from this state of melancholic reverie, interrupted by a few fits of unprovoked joy, to that of a delirious passion, with its movements of fury, jealousy, returns of tenderness, tears, and religious consolations, is the subject of the first movement.[17]

Structurally the movement derives from the traditional sonata form found in all classical symphonies. A long, slow introduction leads to an Allegro in which Berlioz introduces the ide fixe as the main theme of a sonata form comprising a short exposition followed by alternating sections of development and recapitulation.[18] The ide fixe begins:

The artist is placed in the most diverse circumstances of life, in the midst of the tumult of a festival, in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature. But everywhere, in the city, in the fields, the cherished image comes to present itself to him and stirs up trouble in his soul.[17]

The second movement is a waltz in 3

8. It begins with a mysterious introduction that creates an atmosphere of impending excitement, followed by a passage dominated by two harps; then the flowing waltz theme appears, derived from the ide fixe at first,[20] then transforming it. More formal statements of the ide fixe twice interrupt the waltz.

The movement is the only one to feature the two harps. Another feature of the movement is that Berlioz added a part for solo cornet to his autograph score, although it was not included in the score published in his lifetime. It is believed to have been written for the virtuoso cornet player Jean-Baptiste Arban.[21] The work has most often been played and recorded without the solo cornet part.[22]

One evening, finding himself in the country, he hears two shepherds playing a ranz des vaches on their pipes. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the slight rustling of the trees gently stirred by the wind, some hopes that he has lately found reason to conceive, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed calm, to give to his ideas a more cheerful colour. He reflects on his isolation; he hopes his loneliness will soon be over. But what if she betrays him!... This mixture of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness, disturbed by some dark forebodings, form the subject of the adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds resumes the ranz des vaches; the other no longer responds. Distant sound of thunder ... solitude ... silence...[17]

Berlioz salvaged this theme from his abandoned Messe solennelle.[23] The ide fixe returns in the middle of the movement, played by oboe and flute. The sound of distant thunder at the end of the movement is a striking passage for four timpani.[23]

Having grown sure that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too small to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed the one he loved, that he is condemned, that he is being led to execution, and that he is witnessing his own guillotining. The procession advances to the sounds of a march sometimes dark and fierce, sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a muffled sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the ide fixe reappear like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.[24]

Berlioz claimed to have written the fourth movement in a single night, reconstructing music from an unfinished project, the opera Les francs-juges.[23] The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds, for which he directs: "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 proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures that later show up in the last movement.

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