Page 215 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

In this monstrous finale, Berlioz creates his personal vision of hell. A crowd of witches is summoned to dance around the corpse of the artist on its way to the inferno. Eerie sounds are produced by the strings, using mutes, and by the high woodwinds and French horn, playing glissandos. A piercing clarinet enters with a horrid parody of the idée fixe (Example 12.3) as Harriet Smithson, now in the frightful garb of a wicked old hag, comes on stage.
Example 12.3 > the idée fixe made ugly
clarinet
LiSTeN TO . . . Example 12.3 online.
LiSTeN TO . . . Example 12.4 online.
Figure 12.5
Witches’ Sabbath by Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) bears
the same title as the finale of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Both create images of the bi- zarre and macabre so dear to the hearts of Romantic artists.
&8œœJœJJJ
jŸŸŸ
6 j jœ #œjœ #œjœ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ. œœ Œ‰Œ∏œJJœ
She is greeted by a joyous fortissimo outburst by the full assembly as all proceed to dance to the now perverted idée fixe. Suddenly the music becomes ominously quiet, and in one of the most strikingly original moments in all of clas- sical music, great Gothic church bells are heard. Against this solemn backdrop sounds the burial hymn of the medieval Church, the Dies irae (Example 12.4), played by ophicleides (tubas) and bassoons. (In recent years, the Dies irae has been used to signal doom and gloom in movie thrillers including The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleeping with the Enemy, and The Shining.)
Example 12.4 > Dies irae chant
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tubas and bassoons ˙
bf> > > > > > >. > > > > >
[Di - es i - rae di - es il - la sol - vet sae [Day of anger, day of wrath, on which the ages will be changed to ash]
bb ˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙. ˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.˙.œ.œœ >>>>>>J
Not only is the orchestration sensational, the musical symbolism is sacrilegious. Just as the painter Goya (Figure 12.5) parodies the Catho- lic Mass in his Witches’ Sabbath—making babies serve as communion wafers—so Berlioz creates a mockery of one of the most venerable Gre- gorian chants of the Catholic Church. First, the Dies irae is played by the horns twice as fast (a process called rhythmic diminution). Then the sacred melody is transformed into a jazzed-up dance tune played by a shrill, high clarinet, the entire scene now becoming a blasphe- mous black mass. At one point Berlioz instructs the violins to play col legno (with the wood)—to strike the strings, not with the usual front of the bow, but with the wooden back, creating a noise evocative of the crackling of hellfire.
To the audience that first heard the Symphonie fantastique on De- cember 5, 1830, all of this must have seemed incomprehensible: new instruments, novel playing effects, simultaneous melodies in different keys, and a form that is not traditional, like sonata–allegro or rondo, but rather grows out of the events in a program that reads like the screenplay
- clum in fa - vil
- la]
hector berlioz (1803–1869) and the program symphony 193 Copyright 201 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
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