Symphonie Fantastique Analysis

Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is a remarkable representation of musical Romanticism for many reasons. First, it is profoundly influenced by literature. The story of the symphony is inspired from multiple literary sources, including Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an
English Opium Eater and Goethe's Faust. In contrast to earlier symphonies, it follows an extramusical narrative devised by the composer, thus making it an early example of program symphony - an orchestral work in the form of a symphony and bearing a descriptive title or program. The program of the Symphonie fantastique concerns the Artist (understood to be
Berlioz himself who was at the time deeply in love with a Shakespearean actress named
Harriet Smithson), who, unhappy in love, swallows
cymbals, suspended cymbal, tenor drum, bass drum), bells (sounding C and
G), two harps, and strings. Each of the five movements has a different orchestral requirement.
Berlioz wanted an orchestra of 220 performers, but only had 130 at the premiere.
Like most romantic composers who were interested more in expression than in form, Berlioz freely adapted classical formal designs to suit his romantic needs, allowing the sequence of the program to govern the structure of his work. The symphony's movements are unified dramatically by the recurrence in each movement of a theme called the idée fixe (fixed idea), a melodic reference to the Beloved (Harriet), which changes shape (rhythm, harmony, tempo, meter, and instrumentation) altering its character for programmatic reasons. Thematic transformation of the idée fixe throughout the symphony dramatically reflects changes in the
Beloved's personality and in the Artist's concept of