Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique

As the most famous romantic composer, Hector Berlioz with his Symphonie fantastique is always considered as the hallmark of romantic composition. In alignment with the essential qualities of romanticism at his contemporaries in related fields, painting, literature and artistic style, his music is structured full of vivid and intense emotional expression. This characteristic of music and symphony can be seen in other composers during that time most of whom befriended Berlioz: Schumann, Liszt to name just a few.

The strong yet desperate feeling infused into his Symphonie came from Berlioz’s ongoing but unfulfilling courtship to Simthon, which coupled with widely-spread social negative comments on him had later turned into a spell for him and
Berlioz divided the music into five movements, and each of the movements represent a time period. The first movement “Reveries – Passions” is when he first met Smithson, which showed his desire of love, his melancholy, and his happiness. The second movement “A Ball” showed the social scene between the upper class, where the composer met his true love. The third movement “Scene in the Field” showed an idyllic imagery. The depressed and the awful pain and longing of the composer can be felt. The fourth movement “March to the Scaffold” is a tragic march. The composer dreamed of killing his lover and he was sentence to death with the gloomy, grim, solemn, glorious march mixed with the noisy shouting. At the end of the movement, the lover theme was appear again, just like the last idea that suddenly comes to his mind before death, but was then interrupt by the deadly blow. The last movement “Dream of the Night of the Sabbath” is an absurd movement. The composer found himself in a demon’s banquet. Ghosts and monsters were gather for his funeral. Strange sound of blatant, moaning, grinning and shouting were mixed together. Then the lover theme appear again. She also attend the banquet and join the monsters. Finally, the knell rang, religious music was played, but with the roundelay of the monsters. The whole piece of music is like a story, with the description of the Berlioz, the whole process of the story can be imagined and the music
In this piece, the composer was passionate towards her lover. However, this one-sided love caught him into an awful pain and a crazy jealousy. During the ball, the field, the image of lover appeared for several times. She follows the composer everywhere and this morbid relation trapped the composer. His “love” turned into “hate”. He dreamed of himself killing his lover and sentenced death. In order to show this with music, Berlioz used lots of Brass instruments and Percussion instruments to create a gloomy scene. During this serious atmosphere, a unique tempo and a weird melody showed the abnormal psychology of the composer. Soon afterward, the whole brass section presented a new theme of loud, strong, music in tempo. Give the audience a feeling of majesty but with the sense of fierce and cruel. At the end of the movement, the solo clarinet played the lover theme again, representing that the shadow of the lover flash across the composer’s mind. However before the clarinet finish playing, the whole orchestra cut off the clarinet. During the rolling of the brass and percussion, the composer was sentenced death. After his death, he was dramatically placed in his funeral held by the ghosts and the monsters. This is a absurd movement that is full of uproar and harsh sound. The sharp vibrato played by the string mixed with the howl of the brass and the screaming of the high-pitched woodwind created a scary atmosphere for the audience. When