I. Dreams, Passions: Largo: Allegro agitato e appassionato assai
II. A Ball: Waltz: allegro non troppo
III. Scene in the Meadows: Adagio
IV. March to the Scaffold: Allegretto non troppo
V. A Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto: allegro
When one remembers that Beethoven had died only a few years before
Berlioz wrote his symphony; that Schubert also had died; that Schumann
and Wagner were not known as composers, one must regard this audacious
work of Berlioz as nothing less than marvelous. No predecessor had given
him hints for orchestration: he invented his own system; he thought and
wrote orchestrally. Liszt, Meyerbeer, Wagner, Strauss, the Russian
School, in fact, the musical world of the last century is indebted
deeply to Hector Berlioz. Without him all would have been sadly at a
loss.
One may smile in this matter-of-fact age at the frantic love of Berlioz
for the Irish actress; at the programme of the _Fantastic_ symphony,
written when he was not twenty-seven years old. But there’s no denying
the genius in this work, the genius that has kept this music alive in
spite of a few cheap or arid pages; for there is the imagination, the
poetic sensitiveness that we rightly associate with genius. If one would
gladly shorten the “Scene in the Fields,” what is to be said against
that masterpiece “The March to the Scaffold,” with its haunting,
nightmarish rhythm, its ghostly chatter of the bassoons, its mocking
shouts of brass? Or who does not find beauty in the first movement,
brilliance in the second, and a demoniacal spirit in the _finale_?
Ernest Newman has wisely said that the harmonies of Berlioz suited
exactly his aims; that however strange they may seem on paper, they are
justified when they are heard. As for the charge of failure as a
melodist, there are the songs; there is the pathetic air of Marguerite
in _The Damnation of Faust_, the “Farewell of the Shepherds” in _The
Childhood of Christ_, the grand arias in _Les Troyens_.
* * *
This symphony forms the first part of a work entitled _Épisode de la vie
d’un artiste_ (Episode in the Life of an Artist), the second part of
which is a lyric monodrama, _Lélio, ou le retour à la vie_ (Lelio; or,
The Return to Life). Berlioz published the following preface to the full
score of the symphony:
“PROGRAMME OF THE SYMPHONY
“A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination poisons
himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair. The narcotic dose, too
weak to result in death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by
the strangest visions, during which his sensations, sentiments, and
recollections are translated in his sick brain into musical thoughts and
images. The beloved woman herself has become for him a melody, like a
fixed idea which he finds and hears everywhere.
“Part I
“DREAMS, PASSIONS
“He first recalls that uneasiness of soul, that _vague des passions_,
those moments of causeless melancholy and joy, which he experienced
before seeing her whom he loves; then the volcanic love with which she
suddenly inspired him, his moments of delirious anguish, of jealous
fury, his returns to loving tenderness, and his religious consolations.
“Part II
“A BALL
“He sees his beloved at a ball, in the midst of the tumult of a
brilliant fête.
“Part III
“SCENE IN THE FIELDS
“One summer evening in the country he hears two shepherds playing a
_Ranz-des-vaches_ in alternate dialogue; this pastoral duet, the scene
around him, the light rustling of the trees gently swayed by the breeze,
some hopes he has recently conceived, all combine to restore an unwonted
calm to his heart and to impart a more cheerful coloring to his
thoughts; but _she_ appears once more, his heart stops beating, he is
agitated with painful presentiments; if she were to betray him!... One
of the shepherds resumes his artless melody, the other no longer answers
him. The sun sets ... the sound of distant thunder ... solitude ...
silence.
“Part IV
“MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD
“He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death
and led to execution. The procession advances to the tones of a march
which is now sombre and wild, now brilliant and solemn, in which the
dull sound of the tread of heavy feet follows without transition upon
the most resounding outburst. At the end, the _fixed idea_ reappears for
an instant, like a last love-thought interrupted by the fatal stroke.
“Part V
“WALPURGISNIGHT’S DREAM
“He sees himself at the witches’ Sabbath, in the midst of a frightful
group of ghosts, magicians, and monsters of all sorts, who have come
together for his obsequies. He hears strange noises, groans, ringing
laughter, shrieks to which other shrieks seem to reply. The _beloved
melody_ again reappears; but it has lost its noble and timid character;
it has become an ignoble, trivial, and grotesque dance tune; it is _she_
who comes to the witches’ Sabbath.... Howlings of joy at her arrival ...
she takes part in the diabolic orgy.... Funeral knells, burlesque parody
on the _Dies Iræ_. Witches’ dance. The Witches’ dance and the _Dies Iræ_
together.”
In a preamble to this programme, relating mostly to some details of
stage-setting when the _Épisode de la vie d’un artiste_ is given entire,
Berlioz also writes: “If the symphony is played separately at a concert
... the programme does not absolutely need to be distributed among the
audience, and only the titles of the five movements need be printed, as
the symphony can offer by itself (the composer hopes) a musical interest
independent of all dramatic intention.”
The score is dedicated to Nicholas I of Russia.
* * *
The symphony begins with a slow introduction, _Largo_, C minor, 4-4. Two
measures of soft preluding lead to a plaintive theme played by the
strings, _pianissimo_. This theme is a melody of romance composed by
Berlioz in his youth and recurs in modified form in each movement.
“Strange to say,” wrote Berlioz of the imagined artist, “the image of
the loved one never comes into his mind without the accompaniment of a
musical thought in which he finds the characteristic grace and nobility
attributed by him to his beloved. This double _idée fixe_—obsessing
idea—constantly pursues him; hence the constant apparition in all the
movements of the chief melody of the first _allegro_.”
The symphony is scored for two flutes (and piccolo), two oboes (and
English horn), two clarinets and E flat clarinet, four bassoons, four
horns, two cornets-à-pistons, two trumpets, three trombones, two tubas,
two pairs of kettledrums (three players) bells, snaredrum, bass drum,
cymbals, two harps, and strings.
What was the origin of this symphony? Who was the woman that inspired
the music and was so bitterly assailed in the argument sent to his
friend Ferrand? Boschot describes her as she looked in 1827: “Tall,
lithe, with shoulders rather fat and with full bust, a supple figure, a
face of an astonishing whiteness, with bulging eyes like those of the
glowing Mme de Staël, but eyes gentle, dreamy, and sometimes sparkling
with passion. And this Harriet Smithson had the most beautiful
arms—bulbous flesh, sinuous line. They had the effect on a man of a
caress of a flower. And the voice of Harriet Smithson was music.”[13]
Harriet Constance Smithson, known in Paris as Henrietta Smithson, born
at Ennis, Ireland, March 18, 1800, was seen as Ophelia by Berlioz at the
Odéon, Paris, September 11, 1827, after engagements in Ireland and
England. She appeared there first on September 6 with Kemble, Powers,
and Liston. Her success was immediate and overwhelming. She appeared as
Juliet, September 15 of the same year. Berlioz saw these first
performances. He did not then know a word of English: Shakespeare was
revealed to him only through the mist of Letourneur’s translation. After
the third act of _Romeo and Juliet_ he could scarcely breathe; he
suffered as though “an iron hand was clutching” his heart, and he
exclaimed, “I am lost.” And the story still survives, in spite of
Berlioz’s denial, that he then exclaimed: “That woman shall be my wife!
And on that drama I shall write my greatest symphony.” He married her,
and he was thereafter miserable. He wrote the _Romeo and Juliet_
symphony. To the end he preferred the “Love Scene” to all his other
music.
Berlioz has told in his Memoirs the story of his wooing. He was madly in
love. After a tour in Holland, Miss Smithson went back to London, but
Berlioz saw her always by his side; she was his obsessing idea, the
inspiring muse. When he learned through the journals of her triumphs in
London in June, 1829, he dreamed of composing a great work, the _Episode
in the Life of an Artist_, to triumph by her side and through her. He
wrote Ferrand, February 6, 1830: “I am again plunged in the anguish of
an interminable and inextinguishable passion, without motive, without
cause. She is always at London, and yet I think I feel her near me: all
my remembrances awake and unite to wound me; I hear my heart beating,
and its pulsations shake me as the piston strokes of a steam engine.
Each muscle of my body shudders with pain. In vain! ’Tis terrible! O
unhappy one! if she could for one moment conceive all the poetry, all
the infinity of a like love, she would fly to my arms, were she to die
through my embrace. I was on the point of beginning my great symphony
(_Episode in the Life of an Artist_), in which the development of my
infernal passion is to be portrayed; I have it all in my head, but I
cannot write anything. Let us wait.”
He wrote Ferrand on April 16, 1830: “Since my last I have experienced
terrible hurricanes, and my vessel has cracked and groaned horribly, but
at last it has righted itself; it now sails tolerably well. Frightful
truths, discovered and indisputable, have started my cure; and I think
that it will be as complete as my tenacious nature will permit. I am
about to confirm my resolution by a work which satisfies me completely.”
He then inserted a description of the work. “Behold, my dear friend, the
scheme of this immense symphony. I am just writing the last note of it.
If I can be ready on Whitsunday, May 30, I shall give a concert at the
Nouveautés, with an orchestra of two hundred and twenty players. I am
afraid I shall not have the copied parts ready. Just now I am stupid;
the frightful effort of thought necessary to the production of my work
has tired my imagination, and I should like to sleep and rest
continually. But if the brain sleeps, the heart keeps awake.”
He wrote to Ferrand on May 13, 1830: “I think that you will be satisfied
with the scheme of my _Fantastic_ symphony which I sent you in my
letter. The vengeance is not too great; besides, I did not write the
_Dream of a Sabbat Night_ in this spirit. I do not wish to avenge
myself. I pity her and I despise her. She’s an ordinary woman, endowed
with an instinctive genius for expressing the lacerations of the human
soul, but she has never felt them, and she is incapable of conceiving an
immense and noble sentiment, as that with which I honored her. I make
today my last arrangements with the managers of the Nouveautés for my
concert the 30th of this month. They are very honest fellows and very
accommodating. We shall begin to rehearse the _Fantastic_ symphony in
three days; all the parts have been copied with the greatest care; there
are 2,300 pages of music; nearly 400 francs for the copying. We hope to
have decent receipts on Whitsunday, for all the theaters will be
closed.... I hope that the wretched woman will be there that day; at any
rate, there are many conspiring at the Feydeau to make her go. I do not
believe it, however; she will surely recognize herself in reading the
programme of my instrumental drama, and then she will take good care not
to appear. Well, God knows all that will be said, there are so many who
know my story!” He hoped to have the assistance of the “incredible
tenor,” Haizinger, and of Schröder-Devrient, who were then singing in
opera at the Salle Favart.
The “frightful truths” about Miss Smithson were sheer calumnies. Berlioz
made her tardy reparation in the extraordinary letter written to
Ferrand, October 11, 1833, shortly after his marriage. He too had been
slandered: her friends had told her that he was an epileptic, that he
was mad. As soon as he heard the slanders, he raged, he disappeared for
two days, and wandered over lonely plains outside Paris, and at last
slept, worn out with hunger and fatigue, in a field near Sceaux. His
friends had searched Paris for him, even the morgue. After his return he
was obstinately silent for several days.
At last Berlioz determined to give a grand concert at which his cantata
_Sardanapale_, which took the prix de Rome, and the _Fantastic_ symphony
would be performed. Furthermore, Miss Smithson was then in Paris. The
concert was announced for November 14, 1830, but it was postponed till
December 5 of that year. But Miss Smithson was not present; she was at
the Opéra at a performance for her benefit, and she mimed there for the
first and last time the part of Fenella in Auber’s _Muette de Portici_.
The symphony made a sensation; it was attacked and defended violently,
and Cherubini answered, when he was asked if he heard it: “_Ze n’ai pas
besoin d’aller savoir comment il né faut pas faire_.”
After Berlioz returned from Italy, he purposed to give a concert. He
learned accidentally that Miss Smithson was still in Paris; but she had
no thought of her old adorer; after professional disappointments in
London, due perhaps to her Irish accent, she returned to Paris in the
hope of establishing an English theater. The public in Paris knew her no
more; she was poor and at her wit’s end. Invited to go to a concert, she
took a carriage, and then, looking over the programme, she read the
argument of the _Fantastic_ symphony which with _Lélio_, its supplement,
was performed on December 9, 1832. Fortunately, Berlioz had revised the
programme and omitted the coarse insult (“She is now only a courtesan
worthy to figure in such an orgy”) in the programme of the _Sabbat_;
but, as soon as she was seen in the hall of the Conservatory, some who
knew Berlioz’s original purpose chuckled, and spread malicious
information. Miss Smithson, moved by the thought that her adorer, as the
hero of the symphony, tried to poison himself for her, accepted the
symphony as a flattering tribute.
Tiersot[14] describes the scene at this second performance in 1832. The
pit was crowded, as on the great days of romantic festival
occasions—Dumas’s _Antony_ was then jamming the Porte Saint-Martin—with
pale, long-haired youths, who believed firmly that “to make art” was the
only worthy occupation on the earth; they had strange, fierce
countenances, curled mustaches, Merovingian hair or hair cut brushlike,
extravagant doublets, velvet-faced coats thrown back on the shoulders.
The women were dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion, with
coiffures _à la girafe_, high shell combs, shoulder-of-mutton sleeves,
and short petticoats that revealed buskins. Berlioz was seated behind
the drums, and his “monstrous antediluvian hair rose from his forehead
as a primeval forest on a steep cliff.” Heine was in the hall. He was
especially impressed by the _Sabbat_, “where the Devil sings the mass,
where the music of the Catholic church is parodied with the most
horrible, the most outrageous buffoonery. It is a farce in which all the
serpents that we carry hidden in the heart raise their heads, hissing
with pleasure and biting their tails in the transport of their joy....
Mme Smithson was there, whom the French actresses have imitated so
closely. M. Berlioz was madly in love with this woman for three years,
and it is to this passion that we owe the savage symphony which we hear
today.” It is said that, each time Berlioz met her eyes, he beat the
drums with redoubled fury. Heine added: “Since then Miss Smithson has
become Mme Berlioz, and her husband has cut his hair. When I heard the
symphony again last winter, I saw him still at the back of the
orchestra, in his place near the drums. The beautiful Englishwoman was
in a stage box, and their eyes again met: but he no longer beat with
such rage on his drums.”
Musician and play actress met, and after mutual distrust and
recrimination there was mutual love. She was poor and in debt; on March
16, 1833, she broke her leg, and her stage career was over. Berlioz
pressed her to marry him; both families objected; there were violent
scenes; Berlioz tried to poison himself before her eyes; Miss Smithson
at last gave way, and the marriage was celebrated on October 3, 1833. It
was an unhappy one.
“A separation became inevitable,” says Legouvé.[15] “She who had been
Mlle Smithson, grown old and ungainly before her time, and ill besides,
retired to a humble lodging at Montmartre, where Berlioz,
notwithstanding his poverty, faithfully and decently provided for her.
He went to see her as a friend, for he had never ceased to love her, he
loved her as much as ever; but he loved her differently, and that
difference had produced a chasm between them.”
After some years of acute physical as well as mental suffering, the once
famous play actress died, March 3, 1854. Berlioz put two wreaths on her
grave, one for him and one for their absent son, the sailor. And Jules
Janin sang her requiem in a memorable _feuilleton_.