Hector Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique Essay -- Composer Music Berlioz

Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique Hector Berlioz wrote the Symphonie fantastique at the age of 27. He based the program on his own impassioned life and transferred his memoirs into his best- known program symphony. The story is about a love sick, depressed young artist, while in his despair poisons himself with opium. His beloved is represented throughout the symphony by the symbolic idee fixe. There are five movements throughout symphony. The program begins with the 1st movement: Reveries, Passions symbolizing the artist's life prior to meeting his beloved. This is represented as a mundaness and indefinable searching or yearning, until suddenly, he meets her and his longing abruptly ceases and is replaced by volcanic love. The soaring melody becomes the Idee fixe and is introduced in this section. The 2nd movement: A Ball. This movement is representative of the gala ball where he once again sees his beloved. This section is a dance movement in three-part form. The Idee fixe reappears in waltz time. The 3rd movement: Scene in the Fields. This section represents a tranquil interval. It is a summer evening in the country and he hears two shepherds piping. The tranquil moment of the quiet summer evening alone with the pastoral duet fills his heart with an unfamiliar calm. Suddenly she appears and her appearance causes an emotional response of sorrowful loneliness. The 4th movement: March To the Scaffold. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, he is condemned to die and is being lead to the scaffold. At the end of this movement the Idee fixe reappears for a short instance and the reappearance becomes symbolic of the last thought of love that is interrupted by the axe. The 5th movement: Dream of a Witch?s Sab... ...ty has arisen and then suddenly, all is quiet and the Idee fixe, the sweet melody of the clarinet is heard . Without warning the axe has fallen, the sweet clarinet melody is cut off by the crash of a symbol and then the coda. My Impression Harriet Smithson should be proud to have this symphonie written about her. The symphonie fantastique fourth movement relates a quality of energy that is consistant with inapropriate mood changes that can sometimes be captured when in a dream-like state. The march to the scafold begins to become disoriented when rather then a death march, it starts to develop a pompous overtone, and become more or a grand prominade, but this is part of the composer?s genous. He composed the music to what would be the disjunct qualities of a dream-like state. This music relates an abstractness that is symbolic of the mind in a semi- conscious state.