X. PROGRAM MUSIC
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Journal Entry #2
Which Romantic composer have
you enjoyed the most so far? Why?
Program Music – instrumental music
associated with a story, poem, idea,
or scene.
Nonmusical ideas (characters, emotions,
events) are usually specified by the title
or by the composer’s explanatory
comments in the concertgoer’s program
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet
Smetana’s Moldau
Program Symphony – composition
in several movements
Concert Overture – one movement,
usually in sonata form
Tone Poem – one-movement
composition
Incidental Music – intended to be
performed before and during a play
XI. HECTOR BERLIOZ
1803-1869
First French Romantic composer
Daring
Great orchestra conductor
Sent to medical school, but shocked
parents by leaving – “filled with
horror” by the dissecting room
Quickly filled in gaps of musical
knowledge
Studied at Paris Conservatory
Analyzed scores
Haunted opera house
composed
Memorized many operas and became
enraged if conductors tampered with
the orchestration
Known to stand during a performance
and shout, “Not two flutes, you
scoundrels! Two piccolos! Two
piccolos!”
Fell madly in love with a
Shakspearean actress named Harriet
Smithson.
Wrote her such wild and impassioned
letters that she thought he was crazy.
She eventually left Paris without
agreeing to meet him
His Symphonie Fantastique was
written to depict his “endless and
unquenchable passion”
Parisians startled by its novel
orchestration, vivid depiction of the
weird and diabolical
Symphonie won the highest award of
the Paris Conservatory and was
presented in a concert.
Harriet Smithson in audience…
They met after the concert, married a
year later
Separated after only a few years.
People wouldn’t often perform his
music. Turned to music journalism to
support himself.
More popular outside France.
Respected by Liszt and Wagner
He was usually passed up for
conducting jobs, died somewhat
bitterly and conflicted at age 65.
BERLIOZ’S MUSIC
Unique sound
Abrupt contrasts between high and
low instruments, snarling brass,
rumbling percussion
Constant dynamic fluctuations
Many tempo changes
New, imaginative orchestration
Often assembled hundreds of
musicians to create enormous power
Mostly composed for orchestra or
orchestra with chorus + vocal soloists
LISTENING TO BERLIOZ
Symphonie Fantastique, Fifth Movement:
Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
(1830)
5-movement symphony, the epidomy of
Romanticism.
Reflects the 26-year-old composer’s
unrequited passion for Harriet Smithson
Idée fixe – fixed idea used to represent the
beloved, appears in all 5 movements
Books pg. 321