EPTI had an idea for a blog. It's like all the music blogs that you see (awesome people they are! I love spreading music!) but I'm going to be writing about symphonies. I want to go into detail. I want to explain why, in my opinion, this specific symphony or that symphony are so incredibly creative and mindblowing and beautiful. I think that TL is a cultured forum and I know there are a lot of classical musicians on this site, and while I've been playing as principal cellist of several orchestras, there is bound to be someone here more knowledgeable than I. I'd love feedback and dialogue! This will be a running blog in which I analyze at least one symphony very thoroughly. I'll provide a recording and -hopefully- the sheet music for you music readers to feast your eyes upon. Thanks for reading!
The Symphony. The Titan. The Mt. Everest of classical music. It's said that after Beethoven, the language of the Symphony changed completely. It took Brahms over 40 years to write his first symphony while his contemporaries were publishing theirs before their 20th birthday. The symphony varies in form and function but it has been and always will be the vanguard of classical music.
Understanding classical music is something that very few people can accomplish without specific musical training or decades of avid listening. Most people can understand the character in simpler pieces like Debussy's Claire de Lune. You can most likely see the tango dance partners furiously and passionately crossing the dance floor in Astor Piazzolla's Primavera Portena\. Benjamin Zander delivers a series of talks about appreciating classical music and the myth of 'tone-deafness'. Music is very approachable in these contexts and formats. It's incredibly enjoyable. In today's society, Haydn doesn't really capture the attention of people that aren't classical musicians. Its intricate counterpoint and delicate melodies just don't carry the listener to different places like it used to.
Danger: The BORING part ahead!
The history of the symphony in brief: Symphony derives from a Greek word meaning “an agreement or concord of sound.” Interesting! Early symphonies in the 1600 didn't even refer to what we think of the symphony today; Instead it was used as a general catch-all for structured music. Baroque music, which spans the time from 1600-1750, found symphonies in very rigid formal structure; four movements, fast slow fast slow, within which the movements must have certain key relationships, etcetera. 'Early Music' fanatics argue that this was a greater achievement than later composers of the symphony, because working within such formal structure required more theoretical and practical knowledge.
I'll elaborate more on the history of the symphony in further blogs.
For now, let's move forward.
It's time.
Time for...
Berlioz.
To begin my series on blogs, I decided to start with Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. This may be the first thing to draw debate; it's the first example of what is called 'Program' music, or a 'programmatic work.' But I also chose it for that reason; program music is always accompanied by a program explaining the music's significance. I wanted to begin with this for several reasons; first, it's a more easily accessible symphony, and serves as a great introduction for previously passive symphony listeners, and it's also quite fun and allows you to recognize elements, and feel the satisfaction of understanding. So without further ado, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.
http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/e/e8/IMSLP24830-PMLP03653-berlioz_symphonie_fantastique.pdf ← a score for the musically inclined! Free on IMSLP. Go support their work!
The first movement is titled 'Reveries'.
Let me insert the program notes immediately. This is the composer's own writing on the music.
The author imagines that a young vibrant musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer[2] has called the wave of passions [la vague des passions], sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved image never presents itself to the artists mind without being associated with a musical idea, in which he recognises a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love.
This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which launches the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations all this forms the subject of the first movement.
This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which launches the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations all this forms the subject of the first movement.
So upon reading this we expect lilting melodic phrases like love songs. Try to listen to these with a keen ear; do you hear some of them ending in slightly dark ways? Perhaps a melody that ends in a strange, foreign harmony? You can hear the voice of the sick artist, tinged with a kind of dark despair over the love that he'll never have... Then a rising, brisk passage of energetic rambling, joyfully repeated climaxes in the strings. Beautiful works. Can you see his sickly, red-rimmd eyes gripping the pen as he writes poetry to his loved one before he can finally sit back and breathe?
Let's move on to the second movement, titled 'un Bal'. French for, 'A Ball.'
The program notes from Berlioz again;
The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town or in the countryside, the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion.
The second movement has a mysterious sounding introduction that creates an atmosphere of impending excitement, followed by a harps-dominated passage, then the flowing waltz theme appears, derived from the idée fixe at first, and then transforming it. It is filled with running ascending and descending figures. The idée fixe theme interrupts the waltz twice.
The second movement has a mysterious sounding introduction that creates an atmosphere of impending excitement, followed by a harps-dominated passage, then the flowing waltz theme appears, derived from the idée fixe at first, and then transforming it. It is filled with running ascending and descending figures. The idée fixe theme interrupts the waltz twice.
When he refers to an 'idee fixe' he means a theme, either rhythmic or melodic, that returns repeatedly throughout a piece. A 'fixed idea' if you will.
The movement is the only one to feature the two harps. The harps may well symbolize the object of affection, but certainly provide the glamour and sensual richness of the ball being represented. Berlioz wrote extensively in his memoirs of his trials and tribulations in getting this symphony performed due to supply or lack of capable harpists and harps, especially in Germany although this has been more than remedied in these later days..
This movement is rather straight forward. Imagine a French ball during the 1900s. A beautiful young woman's coming out event, donned in a perfectly trimmed dress, the highlight of an aristocratic affair. This is a movement you can simply sit back and bathe yourself in. Fix the images in your mind and you'll see them come to life. (Side note: fantastic when you're high.)
Quickly I'll move onto the third movement; you can tell I want to move on towards the last 3. (This one is a two-parter. I suggest loading the second while the first plays for seamless playback.)
One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the distance dialoguing with their 'ranz des vaches'; 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 colouring. 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 ...
Oh! Finally, the tension arrives. The artist has taken a trip through the countryside. But in this innocent, placid country, his dark thoughts are brewing. His madness is taking over him. Try to hear the two shepherds calling back and forth; imagine them playing flutes or horns over great distances. Then, near the end, after the dark thoughts have been traversed, we only hear one shepherd... Some analysts believe he commits a murder here. Some say he kills the woman he loved, believing that she had betrayed him. Some say he kills one of the shepherds out of delirious rage, or perhaps he found one of them to be guilty of having the woman's heart. This is a wonderful example of you being able to write your own story with this beautiful soundtrack.
On to the fourth movement;
Oh, the drama of the fourth movement arrives.
March to the scaffold Convinced that his love is spurned, 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. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre 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 idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.
I'll let the program notes speak for themselves here as they outline clearly what is happening. His fever dreams after taking opium spawn wild visions. Pay close attention at 4:20 into the video; can you hear his head falling from the guillotine into the basket? What is this triumphant ending after watching his own murder? What could the fifth and final movement possibly bring us now?
The fifth movement program notes are actually an extensive poem labelling this movement as a 'Dies Irae'. That is latin for 'Day of Wrath' or 'Day of Judgement'. The Dies Irae is always present in a requiem, or a long composition usually written for the funeral of an important political figure or someone close to the artist. The strange dance-like sound of clarinets amidst a tumultous orchestral interludes are meant to be the dances of witches on their sabbath. Bells toll; I have an essay (for another time) about the uses of Bells in both classical and contemporary music. I believe it to be one of the most invoking and powerful instrumentations available. At about 3:40 into this video, the Dies Irae theme begins. A powerful march in the lower brass. Then it's played twice as quickly and one register higher. It becomes a powerful driving march. Then! The witches dance once more! This back and forth continues. Then at 9:38 or so the ending begins. A terrible spinning-out of control, full of fury and fire and triumph, the symphony ends. What does this ending mean? This is your interpretation.
I hope you enjoyed my blog about the symphony. If it weren't 3:30 in the morning and if I weren't eager to post this, I'd definitely write more. But I think it's long enough as it is, neh?
