No work of art, however original, is created in isolation from the life and culture of its time and place. Politically and artistically, Berlioz lived in interesting times. The year of Symphonie fantastique, 1830, was a year of revolution and a key year in the development of French romanticism. In addition to reviewing the artistic scene, this chapter considers aspects of Berlioz’s musical education and earlier work. This is set in relief by comparing his ‘Fantastic’ symphony with the Reformation Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn, which was composed about the same time. Differences in their the two composers’ musical upbringing and religious views are reflected in the two symphonies, including their use of traditional musical material.

The first movement, at least on the surface, is in the traditional form Berlioz knew well from Beethoven and others and that he had used in earlier overtures: a slow opening and a long faster movement. But the opening Largo is too long to be considered a mere ‘introduction’. Rather than beginning the Allegro with a sharply defined motive suitable for development, Berlioz presents a long melody, the idée fixe, and bases most of the movement on it, breaking it down and reassembling it in various forms, including a big climax and a wistful coda. The connection of the Allegro to sonata form has been an area of disagreement ever since, considered in more detail in Chapter 10. Major revisions undertaken after the first performance changed the movement’s proportions; the original version cannot be recovered.

Symphonies that Berlioz would have known, including Beethoven’s and those of his predecessors, usually included a dance movement (the Minuet and Trio) or, especially with Beethoven, the faster movement known as ‘Scherzo’, usually placed third after a slow movement. Having decided to put the slow movement third, Berlioz replaces the Minuet or Scherzo with a waltz. He evokes the glitter of a ballroom by introducing harps to the orchestra. The idée fixe suggests that the beloved woman is there; it is transformed to fit the waltz rhythm, acting as a contrasting section and reappearing near the end. Berlioz added a brilliant coda when rewriting the whole movement from scratch during his stay in Italy (1831–2).

Symphonie fantastique, premiered in 1830, is a long symphony for its time. Its chief novelty was that it had a title and a detailed programme, supplied by the composer. It is not strictly autobiographical, although the programme’s unnamed protagonist represents Berlioz himself. He had many reasons for composing such a work, which are discussed in the Introduction. There follows a translation of the programme and an outline of the symphony, preparing later discussion of each movement. One unusual feature is his use of a single melody, the idée fixe, in each movement; it represents the image of a beloved woman. Berlioz revised the symphony over many years before publishing it, and also revised the programme for performances with its sequel, the monodrama of the protagonist’s ‘Return to Life’ (known as Lélio), premiered in 1832 in the presence of the Irish actor Harriet Smithson, who became Berlioz’s first wife.

While it was critics who wrote not none too favourably about Berlioz’s innovative symphony, his work was also noticed by composers, two of whom also wrote symphonies they called ‘fantastic’. Berlioz himself reacted to his own work by producing its sequel (Lélio, or the Return to Life); the protagonist wakes from his nightmare and, eventually, determines to return to his art. Other composers who responded in diverse ways included Franz Liszt, who transcribed the symphony for piano – the form in which it was first published – and Robert Schumann, whose essay is considered in Chapter 10. Later composers took up the challenges posed by the symphony, connecting movements by recurring themes, following the lead of Beethoven and Berlioz by adding instruments to the ‘classical’ orchestra, and composing music of demonic character, some of it using the Dies irae itself.

Returning to the cultural context in which Berlioz conceived his work, other angles of approach to the music, the programme, and the sequel have become a focus of recent approaches to Symphonie fantastique. Some recent overviews appear in biographies of Berlioz, all of which necessarily return to his own Memoirs when relating his music to his personality and life experiences. Scientific developments interested him and may have had an effect on his music, as did his study of instruments, old and new, later expounded in a treatise. Writers have reviewed aspects of the supernatural within the ‘fantastic’ and the importance of the symphony in the development of programmatic instrumental music (related to something outside itself, biographical, literary, or visual). Symphonie fantastique, while it should not overshadow Berlioz’s other works for the concert hall or the stage, remains the critical turning point in his development.

In his original programme, Berlioz called the last two movements a dream – or nightmare. Despairing of the chances of a production of his opera Les Francs-juges, he took from it a ferocious ‘Marche des gardes’ – soldiers who, in the opera, are obedient to a tyrant. The orchestra is enlarged by additional brass (trombones and ophicleide or tuba) and percussion. The main theme is presented in many guises, with much harmonic and instrumental originality. To fit the March into the symphony Berlioz added a recollection of the idée fixe at the end, where the image of the beloved woman is brutally cut off; interrupted as the protagonist dreams of his own execution by guillotine.

Berlioz takes his protagonist to countryside that was surely inspired by the region of his birth in the Dauphiné: a plain, farmland (home to the quail whose call is, perhaps, imitated), and a distant prospect of mountains. The scene is prepared by a stylized ‘cattle-call’, known as ranz des vaches, played on another instrument rarely used up to this time in a symphony orchestra, the cor anglais (Berlioz did not risk ridicule by introducing an actual alphorn). The serene pastoral reverie that follows is disturbed by the idée fixe, arousing memories of the protagonist’s hopes and fears: could she love him? But now he is alone, and his isolation is emphasized when the ranz des vaches on cor anglais, formerly answered by an offstage oboe (another innovation!), is now heard amid the threat of distant thunder.

Schumann’s essay on Symphonie fantastique was an extended critique. Much of it he admired and defended from an earlier critic, but he took exception to other aspects, including the programme and the music of the final movement. He discusses the form of the first movement Allegro, viewing it as a valid alternative structure related, but not identical, to ‘the traditional model’. The debate about the validity or otherwise of Berlioz’s procedures (which were not born of ignorance or ineptitude, as some have supposed) may never reach a conclusion agreed upon by every critic and theorist, despite the music’s positive reception by audiences; the conclusion must be that whatever its eccentricities compared to academically approved models, it ‘works’ in performance.