STEREO ss 15006
SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE Op
STS 15006
Berlioz
PLAY THIS RECORD ONLY ON STEREOPHONIC EQUIPMENT
SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE Op. 14
ATAULFO ARGENTA
CONDUCTING THE
PARIS CONSERVATOIRE ORCHESTRA
STS 15006
Side No. 1
First Movement Réveries, passions (Largo — Allegro
agitato ed appassionato assai)
Second Movement Un Bal (Valse: Allegro non troppo)
Third Movement Scène aux champs (Adagio) (Part 1)
Side No. 2
Third Movement Scène aux champs (Adagio) (Concluded)
Fourth Movement Marche au supplice (Allegretto non troppo)
Fifth Movement —Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat
(Larghetto — Allegro)
Berlioz at twenty-four had fallen in love with Shake»
peare and with one of his interpreters, the actress Harriet
Smithson. She paid Berlioz no attention. He was torn between
love and dislike; other essays in love were disappointing,
and the composer found Harriet a fit subject for a programme
symphony which should show the effects of love and opium
on the hypersensitive nature of a lover.
Berlioz happened to have a good deal of music on hand,
some of which was to have gone into an opera. This he used
Up, in a way by no means unusual with composers, in the
Fantastic Symphony of 1830, which he described as "An
Episode in the Life of an Artist”. Therein he proposed to
depict the progress and results of his “infernal passion” for
Harriet.
The story is as follows. A young musician of extteme,
morbid sensibility and fervent imagination is brought to
despair by love. He takes opium, seeking death, but finds
only the weird visions of the drugged. What he now feels and
recalls in the wildness of his sick brain is expressed in
music. His beloved is a melody, a recurring idea (idée fixe)
that everywhere haunts him, changed in aspect according to
the nature of the surroundings and the particular dramatic
feeling of the moment.
First Movement: Réveries, passions (Largo — Allegro agitato
. ed appassionato assai)
He remembers his uneasy feelings, the indefinable,
impassioned periods, the vague wishes, uncentred elation
and moodiness, which made up his state before he saw her.
Then, the tremendous passion she inspired, the torments of
jealousy, the returning tenderness, the consolation through
religion.
Thus Berlioz the self-dramatiser. The first theme is
one he had written as a boy, in his first love. Here it stands
for the musician’s melancholy. A little agitation develops,
and then the air retums.
The Allegro introduces the idée fixe, a long melody
with climactic rises and tender droops, very typical of the
composer’s style. Berlioz had put it into a cantata not long
before. This section may be considered as expressing his
volcanic love; and if an occasional device now seems rather
melodramatic, we should remember the composer’s extreme
nervous sensitiveness and the fact that he was attempting
a new style. Yet he keeps largely to the old classical “first
movement” form, with its two main themes; only, the second
one is obviously derived from the first, in a manner common
enough in Haydn.
Second Movement: Un Bal (Valse: Allegro non troppo)
The lover finds his maiden at a ball, in the excitement
of the brilliant assembly. The atmosphere of gay stir, social
meeting and greeting, of light chatter, is set up before the
main waltz theme enters. It is possible that this was origi-
nally evolved for a ballet on the subject of Faust. The theme
of the beloved is heard after a sudden modulation, shaped
after the fashion of the dance-figuration. She passes like a
shade through the company. We notice that her theme does
not remain rigid, but is altered throughout the work in accord-
ance with its significance, and that of the movement.
The lover, after the first greeting, has lost sight of the
maiden — perhaps through her wilfulness. He has one more
glimpse and perhaps a word with her (clarinet, supported by
horn) before the waltz ends. As she is for the most part out
of his sight, we may feel the lover's sense of losing her —
presumably to another admirer.
Third Movement: Scène aux champs (Adagio)
The lover wanders into the country on a summer eve.
Two shepherds exchange calls on their reed-pipes. The
peaceful scene calms the troubled heart which had lately
begun to entertain some hope. But her image appears, and
he is tormented afresh, fearing that she will deceive him.
There is no answer to his questioning and the scene closes
in solitude and silence.
This is lovely music, reminding us a little of Beethoven
in the “Pastoral” Symphony. Cor anglais and oboe have one
of the many tunes of the Ranz des vaches type, used by
Swiss herdsmen to gather in their animals. The strings give
out a subject flowing like a woodland brook. The appearance
of the vision is led up to by a disturbing bass passage, and
a change of key. The maiden’s theme is now reshaped. It is
not in itself menacing, but the distress it occasions is deep,
if short-lived. But pastoral peace again penetrates the
lover's soul — as Beethoven's beauty had perhaps worked in
the heart of Berlioz. Near the end the idée fixe flits again
into the mindon the flute (combined with the chief theme of
the movement). Then the mutter of the thunder (four timpani)
is heard as the only reply to the first shepherd’s melody. He
is left alone like the lover.
Fourth Movement: Marche au supplice (Allegretto non troppo)
The last two movements of the work take on a nightmare
aspect. The lover dreams that he has murdered the maiden
in a fit of jealousy, andthat he is being marched to his doom.
The full orchestra, including, originally, an ophicleide,
with a wide panoply of percussion, is now engaged. The
homs suggest the theme to come, and while the crowd
plunges on (descending scale) we can loose the imagination
upon any picture of a French Revolution type. Here are
wonderful bits of orchestration, evocative colour, rhythmic
shocks and inverted themes. The march was originally part
of the same work (Les Francs-Juges) which supplied several
other portions of this symphony; but the feeling was very
similarin both works, so there is little that is incongruous in
the transfers. Very near the end of the movement the hero,
on the scaffold, is almost swooning with horror. He has a
momentary vision of the beloved (the idée fixe, on the clari-
net), but it is cut short by the fall of the guillotine blade.
We can even imagine the head dropping into the basket
(pizzicato bass). The crowd roars its delight, and all is over.
Fifth Movement: Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat (Larghetto —
Allegro)
At least, all ought to be over: but Berlioz has yet another
bizarre fancy for us. The hero’s funeral (we may take it) is
attended by an ungodly revel of demons — a scene meet for
the obsequies of one who perished shamefully. Here the
image of the loved one still haunts him, in the fullest mean
ing of that word, for she is turned into one of the grotesque
witches, and takes her part in the orgy. The funeral bells
toll. A parody of the solemn melody of Dies irae is intoned
amid the dance. Here is the acme of the fantastic, expressed
with all the resources of a large orchestra and a burning
imagination. After the scene-setting, the beloved's theme
appears, now made “ignoble, trivial”.
As soon as she appears the hideous rout breaks into a
howl of greeting, and the theme is derided and caressed in
grisly mirth. Here, it is to be feared, Berlioz enjoyed dealing
musically with Harriet, who had proved so unworthy of his
affection.
The next section treats the Dies irae theme in burlesque,
Some wisps of the demons’ dance introduce this melody, that
of a thirteenth century piece of plainsong, part of the requiem
mass (“Day of wrath, O day of mourning”). When this has
been derided amid bell-peals, the demons celebrate their
Sabbath in a wild but well-contrived double fugue, and the
Dies irae theme is combined with it in the final section of
the work.
© 1965, The Decca Record Company Limited, London.
Exclusive U.S. Agents, London Records Inc., New York 1, N.Y.
Ataulfo Argenta was bom at Castro Urdiales, Santander,
in 1913. At the age of thirteen be entered the Conservatory
of Madrid, where he won the Kristina Nilsson Prize enabling
him to continue his musical studies in Belgium and Germany.
In the latter country he was appointed professor of the piano
at the Conservatory of Cassel before retuming to Spain at
the end of the Civil War.
In 1944 Argenta made bis debut as an orchestral con-
ductor, directing the Madrid Chamber Orchestra. The follow»
ing year he directed the National Orchestra of Madrid with
such success that in 1946 he was appointed its principal
conductor. Therèafter he appeared with outstanding success
in various European centres, including Paris, Rome and
Vienna, and also toured South America. In the summer of
1952 he directed a most successful festival of Spanish music
at Granada. His brilliant career was cut tragically short by
his sudden death at Los Molinos in January, 1958.
Cover: A detail from the altarpiece at Isenheim by H. Antonius.
Reproduced by permission of the Kolmar Museum.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
RENO BY THE DECCA RECOR
©
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