[MUSIC] Now we come to the iconic piece of program music, something of a thunderbolt of program music, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. Before we look at this work by Berlioz, let's discuss the various types, or genres, of program music that we might experience in a concert hall. We've listed them here on a slide. As you can see, we have a tone poem, sometimes called symphonic poem, a one movement piece for orchestra. Actually, we've already experienced this beginning of our course, Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra. We could mention Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky, Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. Then there is the genre of the program symphony, a multi-movement composition for orchestra. Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz, the Faust Symphony of Liszt, Sheherazade even, perhaps, of Rimsky-Korsakov. They would be all examples of the program symphony. And finally the dramatic overture that could open an opera, or open a play, or even open a festival. They are, again, as with the tone poem, one movement. The William Tell overture, for example, opens the opera of that name by Rossini. The 1812 Overture of Tchaikovsky commemorated the opening of a convocation in honor of that event in Russia in the 1860s. And finally, of course, Midsummer Night's Dream, well, that's an overture by Mendelssohn that opened a Shakespearean play of that same name. Well, let's start with what's arguably the strangest and most bizarre example of program music, again, Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Obviously, it's an example of a program symphony. Let's start with an excerpt from this symphony. As you listen, think about what you feel. What Berlioz is trying to depict here is a scene, a scene that is part of the program of this symphony. What is he trying to communicate here? Where are we? [MUSIC] Okay, well let's, let's fade that out here just for a moment. And let me give you a hint. Where does Berlioz take us musically? To the scene on the left, or to the scene on the right? You choose. [MUSIC] So here we have two paintings from the same period, one by Constable, the other by Goya. Which sort of atmosphere was Berlioz trying to conjure up through music, left or right? [MUSIC] Well, the atmosphere on the right. The music that you just heard is his vision of a descent into hell. And I think you'd agree that we heard descending music with strange sounds, the cacophony of hell. But before we proceed, a quick word about Hector Berlioz. Berlioz was born in the south of France and was trained in classical literature and basic science, but not in music. Of all the great composers, he was the only one who could not play the piano. He could only strum out a few chords on the guitar. His father, well, he was a village doctor. He sent the young Berlioz up to Paris to the prestigious Ecole de medecine, Medical School on the Left Bank. And it's still here today, near the Sorbonne. And here's how it looked in the 19th century. But Berlioz was no fan of the horrific dissections that he had to witness as a medical school student. And even in his memoirs, he talks about jumping out a window during one of them. So after a year, he dropped out of med school to give himself over to the study of music at the Conservatory and the Opera House, both across the river there, on the Right Bank of Paris. Here's a view of a concert in progress at the Conservatory. Although always the rebel and contrarian, Berlioz did manage to win a Prix de Rome, a composition prize. But he really preferred Paris to Rome, mostly for the music and the theater. Indeed, in the second and third decades of the 19th century, Shakespeare was taking the stage of Europe by storm. And in 1827, a group of Shakespearean actors came to Paris to play both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Berlioz went, and he was smitten. Here's where he went, to the Theater Odeon. That's the outside of it as it existed in the 19th century. Now let's go inside, as it looks today. I can personally attest, there's very little leg room in those seats. Anyway, Berli goes, Berlioz goes into this theater, sees the Shakespeare and falls in love with Shakespeare and with the leading lady, who was playing Ophelia to Hamlet, and Juliet to Romeo, the young Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Here she is in a portrait of that time. Berlioz, well, he tried to meet Harriet. He went to her dressing room. He followed after her. In modern parlance, he stalked her, almost like a crazed fan would stalk a Hollywood starlet today. And Harriet, well, she was a star, but she was terrified and rejected Berlioz. Rejected, Berlioz began to contemplate and execute an artistic response, a multi-movement symphony that told the tale of an imaginary, dreamlike, ill-fated love in which the stalker ends up killing the young woman. If nothing else, you can see that Berlioz is building here, at first, on the true story of his love for Harriet, and then his imagination takes over, a vivid ima, imagination that leads to a fantastic or, in this case, fantastical story. So fantastic, or fantastique, here, doesn't mean so much that it's great, though it is great. It's fantastic in that sense. But it's also a fantasy. Well, how did it play out, this story in a symphony? Well, eventually, Berlioz's fantastic symphony was premiered at the Paris Conservatory. And Harriet Smithson, who up to that time had no idea that she was the center of the symphony, with Harriet Smithson in attendance and listening, eventually during the performance, the premiere, she caught on. As to the symphony itself, well, it's constructed not in four, but in five movements, like a five-act play of Shakespeare. Like his Hamlet or his Romeo and Juliet. And here's something else that's new. Berlioz wrote out this program and had it printed and handed to everyone in the audience at the first performance of the finished work, the first example in the history of music of concert program notes. Program music, program notes. Let's start with the first movement, and remember, these are Berlioz's words, not mine. A young musician sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams. The subject of the first movement is the passage from this state of melancholy reverie to that of delirious passion. What was Berlioz's vision of the beloved? Well, here is the musical incarnation of her, Harriet Smithson. She becomes an obsession, a musical obsession or fixation. An Idee fixe. So let me try to play this for you. I may need my glasses to see it, maybe not, we'll see. Play the Idee fixe for you here at the keyboard. [MUSIC] Now rising sequences, maybe a little bit faster. [MUSIC] Now up to the top, he begins to come off it. [MUSIC] A typical romantic theme. It's long, it's not balanced, no two plus two phrases here, as you can see by all of the ties up there in the melody. It's rhythmically amorphous, and it's pushed upward. It's climax-oriented, pushed on passionately by the ever-rising melodic sequence, as you heard. Okay, now a bit of the second movement. Let's see where Berlioz has taken us next in his imagination. We'll hear the same melody, but now it's altered to fit the next scene of the story. But where are we? Again, where does Berlioz take us in this scene? [MUSIC] Yes, we're at a dance. Our hero is now at a party, and he sees the beloved across the room. Our beloved, the Idee fixe, is transformed, of course. The melody is now changed into a more symmetrical waltz in a clear triple meter. Now let's take a look at the third movement. Now we're in the country. The artist, our musician, hears in the distance two shepherds piping. He hopes that soon he will no longer be alone. So the way Berlioz has set this up is as follows. Onstage he has an English horn, that's presumably Berlioz himself. Offstage there is an oboe. And they engage in a dialogue. She loves me. She loves me not. Eventually, the oboe ceases to respond, ceases to answer. This leaves the musician alone and despondent, with dire consequences to come.
