Symphony Fantastique by Hector Berlioz; Pierre Monteux; NDR Sinfonieorchester Turnabout (TV-S 34616) Publication date 1964

 

BERLOZ

SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE, Op. 14

PIERRE MONTEUX

(1875-1964)

conducts the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg

BERLIOZ, in his Memoirs, has a good deal to say about the Symphonie Fan-

tastique. He writes that it was written under Goethe’s influence, and he describes his

method of work: “very slowly and laboriously in some parts, incredibly quickly and

easily in others. The Scene aux Champs worried me for three weeks; over and over

again I gave it up; but the Marche au Supplice was dashed off in a single night. Of

course they were afterwards touched and retouched.”

‘the great French composer goes on to describe how an orchestral conductor

named Bloc determined that the new symphony should be heard, and helped arrange

a concert at the Theatre des Nouveautes, in 1830. “The directors”, wryly notes Berlioz,

“attracted by the eccentricity of my work, agreed, and I invited eighty performers

to help, in addition to Bloc’s orchestra. On my making enquiries about accommoda-

tion for such an army of executants the manager replied, with the calm assurance of

ignorance, “Oh, that’s all right. Our property man knows his business”. The day of

rehearsal came, and so did my hundred and thirty musicians — with no place to

put them. I just managed to squeeze the violins into the orchestra, and then arose

an uproar that would have driven a calmer man than myself out of his senses. Cries

for chairs, desks, candles, strings, room for the drum, etc., Scene shifters tore up

and down, improvising desks and seats, Bloc and I worked like mad — but it was all

useless; a regular rout; a passage of the Beresina. However Bloc insisted on trying

two movements to give the directors some idea of the whole. So, all in a muddle,

we struggled through the Ball Scene and the Marche au Supplice, the latter calling

forth frantic applause. But my concert never came off. The directors said that they

had no idea so many arrangements were necessary for a symphony. Thus my hopes

were dashed, and all for want of a few desks . . .” The symphony, however, did

achieve performance a few months later, at the Paris Conservatoire.

Much ink has been spilled over this score, a stupendous stroke of genius, con-

sidering that there was no precedent for it; none at all. Beethoven and Schubert,

but a few years dead, had never conceived anything like it; neither had their pre-

decessors; and the romantics had not yet come on the scene. The music must have

fallen upon contemporary ears like a thunderclap. No composer up to that time had

showed anywhere near an equal instinct for the orchestra; none had bound his

music with a story to such an extent. Weber and others had composed programme

music, and even Beethoven had taken a fling at it; but the Symphonie Fantastique

is the work that really set off the whole school of programme music which was to

culminate with Liszt and Strauss. The sounds of the Fantastique, and their relation

to a programme that was supplied by the composer, were novel and daring. They

shocked the conservative listeners at the Conservatoire, just as they thrilled the

avant-garde, of which Berlioz soon became the acknowledged musical leader.

The programme of the symphony deals with a young musician in love. By not

too peculiar a coincidence. Berlioz was madly in love at the time with a young

English actress named Henrietta Smithson. In his recent biography of the composer,

Jacques Barzun suggests that really there is little relation between the symphony

and Miss Smithson. Barzun’s case is not very strong. Even if the programme is not

purely autobiographical — Berlioz, for instance, never was an opium addict — it is

close enough to the facts for the parallel to be inescapable.

Notes by Charles STANLEY

Cover © VOX PRODUCTIONS, INC.

TMK(S) ® TURNABOUT + Marca(s) Registrada(s) * Printed in U.S.A.

VOX PRODUCTIONS, INC., 211 E. 43rd Street, New York. N.Y. 10017

Prefacing the programme of the symphony is the note: “A young musician of

unhealthy sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself

with opium in a paroxysm of lovesick despair. The narcotic dose he has taken is too

weak to cause death, but it has thrown him into a long sleep accompanied by the

most extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, his feeling, and his mem-

ories and utterance in his sick brain in the form of musical imagery. Even the Be-

loved One takes the form of a melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever re-

turning and which he hears everywhere.

First Movement: DREAMS, PASSIONS

At first he thinks of the uneasy and nervous condition of his mind, of somber

longings, of depression and joyous elation without any recognizable cause, which he

experienced before the Beloved One had appeared to him. Then he remembers the ardent

love with which she suddenly inspired him: he thinks of his almost insane anxiety of

mind, of his rising jealousy, of his reawakening love, of his religious consolation.

Second Movement: A BALL

In a ballroom, amidst the confusion of a brilliant festival, he finds the Beloved One

again.

Third Movement; SCENE IN THE MEADOWS

It is a summer evening. He is in the country, musing, when he hears two shepherd

lads who play, in alternation the ranz des vaches (the tune used by Swiss shepherds

to call their flocks). This pastoral duet, the quiet scene, the soft whisperings of the

trees stirred by the zephyr wind, some prospects of hope recently made known to him,

all these sensations unite to impart a long unknown repose to his heart and to lend

a smiling colour to his imagination. And then She appears once more. His heart stops

beating, painful forebodings fill his soul. “Should she prove false to him!” One of

the shepherds resumes the melody, but the other answers him no more . . . Sunset . . .

distant rolling of thunder . . . loneliness . . . silence . . .

Fourth Movement: MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD

He dreams that he murdered his Beloved, that he has been condemned to death

and is being led to execution. A march that is alternately somber and wild, brilliant

and solemn, accompanies the procession . . . The tumultuous outbursts are followed

without modulation by his measured steps. At the last the fixed idea returns, for a

moment a last thought of love is revived — which is cut short by the death blow.

Fifth Movement: DREAM OF A WITCHES’ SABBATH

He dreams that he is present at a witches’ revel, surrounded by horrible spirits,

amidst sorcerers and monsters in many fearful forms, who have come together for his

funeral. Strange sounds, groans, shrill laughter, distant yells, which other cries seem

to answer. The Beloved melody is heard again, but it has lost its shy and noble character;

it has become a vulgar, trivial, grotesqae dance tune. She it is who comes to attend the

witches’ meeting. Riotous howls and shouts greet her arrival . . . She joins the infernal

orgy . . . bells toll for the dead .. . a burlesque parody of the Dies Irae... the Witches,

round dance ... The dance and the Dies Irae are heard together.