Perry Adago

Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique

1. What was the main reason Berlioz composed music? What did he
hope to share with his audiences?
The main reason Berlioz composed this peace was to express his
emotion, his joy and his sadness, everything he felt, through
music and tried to have the audience perceive it.
2. Which two literary figures influenced Berliozs compositions?
Beethoven and Goethe
3. How did Berlioz share the story of Symphonie Fantastique with
audiences prior to the premiere?
Berlioz used the ide fixe to express his idea to the audience.
4. When did Symphonie Fantastique premiere?
Symphonie Fantastique premiered in Paris in 1830
5. What is the general character of the first movement and what are
the two main sections?
The movement starts slow and then ends up allegro in sonata
form
6. What is the ide fixe? What instruments play the initial appearance
of the ide fixe?
In the opera the ide fixe is when the listener is introduced to the
theme of the artist's beloved. It is introduced using the sting
family in the first movement.
7. What is the significance about the instrumentation in Symphonie
Fantastique compared to Beethovens symphonies?
Berlioz took the normal opera form and altered it, doing 5
movements and altering the orchestra.
8. How many movements does Symphonie Fantastique? Is this usual
for a
symphony?

Symphonie Fantastique has 5 movements when most usually

have 4.
9. How might Symphonie Fantastique be compared to an opera?
It tells a story, involves mythology, and could be sung with and
aria.
10. The second movement evokes what kind of dance style?
The second movement is similar to that of a waltz, since the
second movement is supposed to take place at a ball Un Bal.
11. Does the ide fixe appear in the second movement? If so, what
instruments play it?
The ide fixe appears in the middle of the second movement,
interrupting the waltz.
12. What is the story of the third movement?
One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the
distance dialoguing with their ranz des vaches (simple melody);
this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in
the wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived,
all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of
calm and to give to his thoughts a happier coloring. He broods on
his loneliness, and hopes that soon he will no longer be on his
own ... But what if she betrayed him! ... This mingled hope and
fear, these ideas of happiness, disturbed by dark premonitions,
form the subject of the adagio. At the end one of the shepherds
resumes his ranz des vaches the other one no longer answers.
Distant sound of thunder, solitude, silence
13. What instruments are used to evoke a pastoral setting in this
movement?
Oboes play the melody back and forth.
14. What effect does Berlioz use from theater using the instrument(s)
above?
Program Music
15. What is the story of the fourth movement?

Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons

himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to
cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by
the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his
beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is
witnessing his own execution. As he cries for forgiveness the
effects of the narcotic set in. He wants to hide but he cannot so
he watches as an onlooker as he dies. The procession advances
to the sound of a march that is sometimes somber and wild, and
sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy
footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the
end of the march, the first four bars of the ide fixe reappear like
a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow when his
head bounced down the steps.
16. What are the two themes in this movement and what do they
represent in the movements?
The first few bars are that of a march: a man walking to his
death. The final part of the movement is after he has been
beheaded. It shows that the movements get progressively darker
and darker as the symphony progresses
17. Does the ide fixe appear in this movement? If so, describe how it
fits in the story.
In the third fourth movement there is an ide fixe. Before the
musical depiction of his execution, there is a brief, nostalgic
recollection of the ide fixe in a solo clarinet, as though
representing the last conscious thought of the soon-to-beexecuted man.
18. What Romantic topic does this movement deal with?
Musical cycles and song cycles (Question was confusing . Didn't
know how to answer. The fifth movement was believed to be
composed by Berlioz while he was on opium, common during the
Romantic Era).
19. Does this version of the ide fixe sound similar or different from the
other appearances? Why?

The ide fixe then returns as a prominent E-flat clarinet solo at

bar 40, in 6/8 and Allegro. The E-flat clarinet contributes a
sharper, shriller timbre than the C clarinet.
20. Why do you think Berlioz quotes the Gregorian chant Dies Irae in
the movement of Symphonie Fantastique?
Dies Irae is a poem. It describes the day of judgment, the
last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where
the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal
flames, similar to the fate of the protagonist in the story.