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Author
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869: French)
- father was a physician
- first started medical school, then gave up medicine for music
- loved Shakespeare and Beethoven
- had produced most of his most famous works by age 40
- Wikipedia Article
About the Piece
(much of thedescription comes from elements that were brought out by Forney and Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music, and the accompanying DVD)
- Genre is symphony
- makes use of an idée fixe that runs through the whole symphony
- descending first theme
- triumphant, bright second theme
- second theme sounds vaguely like a march
- development plays with themes: more staccato, more brass, or even inverted theme A
- includes a lot of notes from a funny sounding brass instruments (are these the ophicleides?)...sounds almost but not quite like a trumpet
Purpose
Reflections
It is interesting to me that an artist in the 19th century would write a symphony about an opium trance (this sounds eerily like the favorite topic of the 1960s and 1970s). I suppose that really was the kind of thing that happened in the Romantic era, though. Unfortunately, the whole concept of idée fixe is lost if you listen to only one movement. Also, knowing what the symphony is about helps a lot, but it isn't self-evident from the music itself (hence some introduction would be needed in a performance setting).