Conducting

The Beat Stops Here: Mark Gibson

The Symphony 1800-1900 A Norton Music Anthology Edited by Paul Henry Lang

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 Eroica in Eb Major

Schubert: Symphony in B Minor: Unfinished

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A Major

Schumann: Symphony No. 4 in D Major

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor

Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F Major

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E Major

Dvorak: Symphony No. 8 in G Major

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

Explanatory

The following program must be distributed among the audience whenever the Symphonie Fantastique is played dramatically and it is followed by the lyric monodrama Lelio, which ends and completes the episode in the life of an artist. When such a performance is given, the orchestra must be invisible and placed on the stage of a theatre behind the lowered curtain. When the symphony is given by itself in a concert, these directions are superfluous and, strictly speaking, the distribution of this program may be dispensed with. In such cases it is only necessary to retain the titles of the five movements. The composer indulges himself with the hope that the symphony will, on its own merits and irrespective of any dramatic aim, offer an interest in the musical sense alone.

Program of the Symphony

A young musician of an unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with opium in a paroxysm of love-sick despair. The narcotic dose he has taken, too weak to cause death, throws him into a long sleep accompanied by the most extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, feelings, and memories are translated, within his sick brain, into the form of musical thoughts and images. Even the beloved one has taken the form of melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever returning and which he hears everywhere.

1st movement - Dreams and Passions

At first he thinks of the uneasy and nervous condition of his soul, of somber longings, of depression and joyous elation without any recognizable cause, which he experienced before the beloved one had appeared to him. Then he remembers the ardent love with which she suddenly inspired him, his almost insane anxiety of mind, his raging jealousy, his reawakening love, his religious consolation.

2nd movement - A Ball

At a ball, amidst the confusion of a brilliant festival, he finds the loved one again.

3rd movement - In the Country

On a summer evening in the country, he hears two shepherd-lads who play the ranz des vaches [the tune used by the Swiss to call their flocks together] in the alternation. This pastoral duet, the setting, the soft whisperings of the trees stirred by the wind, some prospects of hope recently made known to him - all these sensations unite to impart an unaccustomed repose to his heart and to lend a smiling color to his imagination. And then she appears once more. His heart stops beating, painful forebodings fill his soul. “If she should prove false to him!” One of the shepherds resumes the melody, but the other no longer answers… sunset… distant rolling of thunder… loneliness… silence.

4th movement - March to the Scaffold

He dreams that he has murdered his beloved, that he has been condemned to death and is being led to the scaffold. The procession advances, accompanied by a march that is alternately sombre and wild, brilliant and solemn, in which the sound of heavy steps follows without transition upon the most tumultuous outbursts. At last the fixed idea returns for a moment as the last thought of love is cut short by the fatal stroke.

5th movement - Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath

He dreams that he is present is present at a witches’ dance, surrounded by horrible spirits, amidst sorcerers and monsters in many fearful forms, who have come to assist at his funeral. Strange sounds, graosn, shrill laughter, distant yells, which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody is heard again but it has lost its noble and shy character; it has become a vulgar, trivial and grotesque dance-tune. She it is, who comes to attend the witches’ meeting. Howls of joy greet her arrival… she joins the infernal orgy… bells toll for the dead, a burlesque parody of the Dies Irae. The witches’ round-dance. The dance and the Dies Irae are heard at the same time.

Shostakovich A Life Remembered: Elizabeth Wilson