Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
by Chris Vaneman
Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869)
Some of our readers – let’s call them “the luckier readers” – still have a beach vacation ahead of them this fall or winter. Many more have hopes of one next spring or summer, and either way, almost all of us find ourselves in need of a Beach Read now and then. Most academic curriculums don’t seem to address the Beach Read as such, but, whether or not it merits designation as a literary genre, every reader knows what I’m talking about. A Beach Read is a book that might be a little cheesy, might be a little unbelievable, but is addictively jam-packed with romance, danger, and shocking plot twists.
Well, you could do much worse for your next Beach Read than Hector Berlioz’s Memoirs. Compiled by the composer near the end of his life, printed at his own expense and distributed to 1200 of his friends in 1865, and broadly published after his death four years later, the Memoirs are as colorful, as scandalous, and as hard to believe as anything Danielle Steele had to offer. Featuring romance, heartbreak, scandal, obsession, attempted murder, cross-dressing, and drug use, in addition to some stuff about music, the Memoirs are riveting and probably mostly true.
In them we read of Berlioz the young French medical student, who in the 1820’s encounters the music of the still-living Beethoven, resolves to be a composer, and, despite no performing skill or musical training to speak of, talks his way into the Paris Conservatory. We read of Berlioz the unrequited lover, who, after seeing the Irish actress Harriet Smithson in a production of Hamlet in 1827, becomes obsessed by unrequited love to the extent of renting an apartment opposite the stage door of the theatre where she’s appearing, so he can see her coming and going. Like Charlie Brown with his Little Red-Haired Girl, he can never bring himself to actually meet Harriet, instead using her (along with a hefty dose of opium, hallucinogen of choice in the 19th Century) as Muse for his first great work, the Symphonie Fantastique, in 1830. And we read of the triumphant 1832 Paris performance of the Symphonie, to which a mutual acquaintance has invited Harriet – who falls in love with and marries the composer, despite neither of them actually speaking the other’s language.
And those are some of the parts that we know are actually true, unlike, for instance, the episode where Berlioz has a maid’s costume tailored so that he can wear it as a disguise so he can shoot another woman who jilted him. But Berlioz was utterly committed to the Romantic idea that the greatest art is that born directly from and directly reflecting the most passionate and dramatic life circumstances.
Whatever its inspiration, in the Symphonie Berlioz definitively established the genre of “program music,” instrumental music that depicts explicitly a particular story or idea. Unlike, say Beethoven, who had explored the idea in some of his pieces, Berlioz went so far as to have the story printed and distributed to each audience member, and Berlioz’s program is printed verbatim (though translated) on the following pages.
It would take pages to detail the Symphonie Fantastique’s other musical innovations, but innovations as such are of very limited value if they aren’t in the service of powerful art. The Symphonie could hardly be more powerful, and every listener, novice and expert alike, can feel Berlioz’s story as he paints it in sound. And – even to a music lover like me – musical analysis can never be a Beach Read like Berlioz’s story can.