Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)
Performed by The Toledo Symphony on October 17 & 18, 2025

“But let me tell you, you are not acquainted with love, although you say you feel it strongly. That’s not the rage, the fury, the delirium which takes possession of all our faculties and makes us capable of anything.”

– Hector Berlioz

Berlioz is a composer with a somewhat unusual musical background. His father was a medical doctor near Grenoble, and it was generally accepted and expected in the family that young Hector would follow his father’s career path, so his musical talent was largely overlooked. He was given some instruction on guitar and flute, but his training was less than rigorous.

Berlioz attended medical school briefly in Paris before enrolling, in 1826, in music classes that prepared him for the composition program at the Paris Conservatory. In 1830, he won the Prix de Rome on his fourth try for his La Mort de Sardanapale, a cantata annotator Michael Steinberg describes as “long forgotten.” Unlike La Mort de Sardanapale, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is primarily memorable for its inventiveness. The first of his four symphonies, Symphonie displays some musical elements that were and still are quite shocking. Steinberg suggests, “His unorthodox musical background surely contributed to his nonconformist musical language.”

Symphonie fantastique is a programmatic work – that is, it follows and is explained by a story. In this case, the narrative was much longer and more detailed than audiences would have been used to. Programmatic works had certainly been written before (Steinberg cites Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony), but “the images [in Symphonie fantastique] are depicted with such vibrant specificity as to become downright cinematic.”

No doubt Berlioz was inspired by Beethoven’s conviction that a symphony could be kindled by a poetic idea, as he’d heard both the Third and Fifth symphonies not long before composing Fantastique.) This nudges at the delineation between abstract representation and literal depiction – an idea still being explored today.

Another thing that is new in Berlioz’s work is that his program doesn’t merely tell a story about a series of events (although it does that too) but ventures to describe states of mind. Steinberg explains that the Symphonie fantastique is “an extraordinary example of self-exploration and self-expression, a work of autobiography.”

Berlioz took inspiration for his Symphonie fantastique from two main sources: the author François-René Chateaubriand, and from William Shakespeare. In September 1827, Berlioz attended a performance of Hamlet in Paris. There he saw the Irish actress, Harriet Smithson. It was love at first sight – for him! He also fell in love with the poetry of Shakespeare. Even though the plays were performed in English, a language Berlioz barely understood, he wrote, “I come now to the supreme drama of my life … Shakespeare, coming up on me unawares, struck me like a thunderbolt.”

Berlioz’s love for Harriet Smithson went unrequited at first, and her violent rejection devastated him. Finally, he became engaged to nineteen-year-old Camille Moke. This romance wasn’t destined to last, though, and Berlioz went to Italy for a short time, only to find on his return that Camille had left him for another man. Berlioz promptly plotted the couple’s murder, which would be followed by his own suicide, but apparently only got as far as Nice before coming to his senses and abandoning the plan. And anyway, he was still in love with Harriet, with whom he had yet to actually spend any time in person.

In April 1830, Berlioz wrote to his friend, the poet Humbert Ferrand, that he’d written “the last note” of his Symphonie fantastique. The work follows the story of a man who sees and falls hopelessly in love with a woman who seems to be everything he’s ever wished for. He thinks of her obsessively and, despairing of ever being loved in return, tries to poison himself with opium. Under the influence of the drug, he dreams that he’s been condemned to death for murdering his beloved and watches his own execution. Finally, witches – one of which is his beloved – dance on his grave, celebrating his death.

Berlioz himself tells us that his intent was not only to “tell stories or paint pictures … but rather to explore emotions.” He does this masterfully and displays huge creativity in the process. One way he shows his creative genius is through his inclusion throughout the symphony of the Idée fixe. This is somewhat similar to Richard Wagner’s use of leitmotifs – the main difference between them being that while a leitmotif is used to represent a person, place, or idea and generally appears as itself in various contexts, Berlioz’s Idée fixe is subject to thematic transformation. That is, he plays with the thematic material, molding and shaping it to fit the context of each use.

Needless to say, Berlioz’s Idée fixe represents Harriet and his feelings toward her. Each movement or episode is titled (again, like Beethoven’s “Pastoral”). The first, Rêveries – Passions, displays the Idée fixe as the main theme, and illustrates in a general manner Berlioz’s emotional state. Un bal is the first hint at literal depiction, describing not so much the feeling of a ball but what it might be like to actually be at one. The third movement is called Scène aux champs and suggests the sweet piping of shepherds. Berlioz sets this as a lovely duet between English horn and offstage oboe. The bucolic scene is interrupted by disquieting thoughts of the beloved, and the movement is underpinned by the distant thunder of the timpani. In the Marche au supplice, or “March to the scaffold,” the protagonist enjoys final thoughts of his beloved before he is guillotined. Berlioz includes a grisly detail in the strings’ descending G minor arpeggio, played pizzicato, which represents the “dropping of a severed head.” The final movement, Ronde du sabbat, is the farthest from traditional symphonic structures of any of the movements and features a number of strange sounds. These are meant to represent noises coming from the assembled characters. When the Idée fixe and beloved arrive, the new setting is intentionally grotesque. It’s in this movement that Berlioz uses the Dies irae theme. Listen for it initially in the bells and the low brass.

Berlioz provided his own program note at the Symphonie’s premiere in 1830, adamant that “the distribution of this program to the audience, at concerts where this symphony is to be performed, is indispensable for a complete understanding of the dramatic outline of the work.”

Part One: Dreams – Passions

The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being h has imagined in his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind’s eye of the artist, it is linked with a musical thought whose character, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved.

 The melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in every movement of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first Allegro. The passage from this state of melancholy reverie, interrupted by a few fits of groundless joy, to one of frenzied passion, with its gestures of fury, of jealousy, its return of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations - this is the subject of the first movement.

Part Two: A Ball

The artist finds himself in the most varied situations – in the midst of the tumult of a party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature; but everywhere, in town, in the country, the beloved image appears before him and disturbs his peace of mind.

Part Three: A Scene in the Country

Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches in dialogue. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found some reason to entertain - all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that his loneliness will soon be over. - But what if she were deceiving him! – This mingling of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness disturbed by black presentiments, form the subject of the Adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies. – Distant sound of thunder – loneliness – silence.

Part Four: March to the Scaffold

Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned and led to the scaffold, and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now somber and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end of the march the first four measures of the idee fixe reappear, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part Five: Dream of a Witch’s Sabbath

He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of hosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial, and grotesque: it is she, coming to join the sabbath. - A roar of joy at her arrival. - she takes part in the devilish orgy. - Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae [a hymn formerly sung in the funeral rites of the Catholic Church], sabbath round-dance. The sabbath round and the Dies irae are combined.

Following the premiere of Symphonie fantastique, during which Berlioz performed on percussion, Berlioz was finally granted a meeting with Harriet, who was in the audience. She had had no idea before the premiere that the piece she would be hearing was his or that she was its primary subject, and she was moved to reconsider her earlier rejection. In a letter to Franz Liszt, Berlioz wrote: “I had a meeting with H. S. … Everything about her delights and enthralls me; when she avowed her feelings openly, I was alarmed and driven nearly mad…. There is no question of our marrying at the moment. I shall never leave her. It is my destiny. She understands me. If it is a mistake, I must be allowed to make it; it’s impossible to put up a continued resistance to emotions of this kind. Yes, I love her! I love her! And my love is returned. She told me so … she has a heart like Juliet’s; here indeed is my Ophelia. When I’m unable to see her, we write each other as many as three letters a day, she in English, I in French. Oh, my dear fellow, there is justice in heaven after all! I used not to believe it. It is to my art, to my brain, that I owe her love! My beloved symphony! She, she, H. S. was the one I needed; my existence is complete. Hers is the heart which answers to mine.”

The two were married in 1833. But the marriage was not followed by marital bliss. Berlioz’s family, to whom he was devoted, did not approve of his bride, and the couple did not speak a common language. The marriage collapsed in 1844. Harriet’s career had already been over for some time, and she had taken up drinking. Berlioz took care of her until she died in 1854 – he never did completely leave her – and around this time he composed his Mort d’Ophélie.

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is, according to musicologist Jeffrey Langford, “one of the most revolutionary works in the entire history of the genre, calling into question as it does the most fundamental assumptions of traditional symphonic rhetoric and design.” Robert Schumann said of the work, “Right side up, this symphony resembled such inverted music … at last struck with wonderment.” Felix Mendelssohn did not approve the work at all: for such a “cultured, agreeable man … he composes so very badly.” But, as Steinberg notes, “Berlioz strove to write ‘new music.’ He succeeded. The Fantastique, that most amazing of first symphonies, sounds and behaves like nothing ever heard before.”

Symphonie fantastique is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, four bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, bass drum, field drum, cymbals, chimes, two harps, and strings.