Composer Profile - Activefolio

The Early Romantic Period 93
life ended up frustrating and unhappy. His only son died before Hector did, and
Berlioz could not recover from that tragedy. The funeral march Berlioz composed
as part of his Symphonie funèbre was the requiem used for his own funeral
after his death in Paris on March 8, 1869.
He was known as the greatest orchestrator of his time, which can be defined
as a musician who uses or combines instruments in unique ways to produce
different sounds from an orchestra. A good example of this is the “skeleton
dance” in his Fifth movement of his Symphonie Fantastique, subtitled “An Episode
in the Life of an Artist.” The string players turn their bows upside down and clack
them against the strings of their instruments to simulate the sounds of bones
and dancing skeletons (refer to “Listen to This,” below).
Among Berlioz’s major works are his monumental Symphonie Fantastique,
the Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, several overtures including La Carnaval
Romain, three operas, music to Romeo and Juliet, a Te Deum, a requiem, and
many marches and smaller works. His imagination was formidable, and he
brought many new sounds to the orchestra that other composers imitated in
future generations. Berlioz was certainly ahead of his time as an orchestrator,
employing combinations of sounds that could easily have been at home in twentieth
century works.
Listen to This
Track #11 Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique,
Fifth Movement, “Witches’ Sabbath”
B erlioz’s masterpiece, Symphonie Fantastique, is a program symphony about
a young lovesick musician who overdoses on opium in an attempt to commit
suicide. This programmatic symphony describes the dreams that the young
artist experiences. Cast in five movements, Berlioz has a specific program that
he wrote that describes the story behind each movement. Binding the work
together is a fixed musical idea, or idée fixe, which represents the girl of his
dreams. She appears in each of the first three movements in a different setting.
In the fourth movement, The March to the Scaffold, he dreams he has killed his
beloved. Near the end of the movement, just before his head is chopped off, he
sees the girl for the last time, and we hear the fixed idea. The fifth movement
The Witches’ Sabbath, begins ominously, keeping the listener in suspense. Finally,
the timpani signal a new tempo and the wild dance begins. The fixed idea returns,
but this time it is distorted and grotesque. The love of his life is dancing
and mocking him along with other witches and goblins. The dance ends suddenly
and chimes usher in a famous Gregorian chant called the Dies Irae played
by the horns and bassoons. This chant becomes a secondary theme for the
movement and returns in various guises before the movement ends. Next, Berlioz
treats us to two different fugal sections, which help to bring the movement to a
thundering climax. Shortly before the coda Berlioz introduces an interesting technique
in the strings. This technique, called col legno (or “with wood”), contributes
to the macabre effect he wished to convey. The string players turn their bows
upside down and literally play with the wooden parts of the bows. This unique
effect is used by other composers in later works, primarily to conjure up images
of ghostly skeletons dancing.