Hector Berlioz
Berlioz was trained as a musician late and never as a pianist, and his music is thought in terms of the orchestra from the start. He treats instruments as characters: a solo cor anglais answered by an offstage oboe, four timpani played together as a chord, bells against the Dies irae in the brass.
The Symphonie fantastique (1830) is a symphony with a story attached: an artist, an obsession, a ball, a country scene, a march to the scaffold, a witches' sabbath. The story is carried by one melody, the idée fixe, which stands for the beloved and returns in every movement, changed each time by its surroundings. Following that tune through the five movements is the key to the work.
Formally the first movement is a sonata form with a slow introduction, the second a waltz, the third a slow ternary scene, the fourth a march, and the finale a free design built on the Dies irae chant and a fugue. Berlioz uses the Classical forms where they suit him and drops them where the story needs something else.
What to listen for
- The idée fixe: learn it in the first movement's allegro, then catch it in the ball, the fields, the scaffold and, distorted on a shrill clarinet, in the finale.
- Instrumental colour used as a structural signal: the bells, the col legno strings, the two harps in the waltz.
- The Dies irae, a medieval chant for the dead, quoted in the finale by the low brass and then sped up.
- Silence and distance: the offstage oboe in the third movement, the pause before the fall of the blade in the fourth.
Source: Hector Berlioz