A pseudo autobiographical work of a rather fascinating man.
Some background info which is sort of hilarious (courtesy of Robert Greenberg, mostly)
On September 11, 1827, Berlioz, attended a Parisian performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The play was performed in English, a language Berlioz did not speak at the time. He followed the action from a crude translation. Nevertheless, he was bowled over, and not just by the play, but by a certain actress in the cast. Her real name was Harriet Smithson, despite the fact that Berlioz insisted calling her Henriette.
Thus smitten, Hector Berlioz, stage door Johnny par excellence, spent the next few months trying to bring himself to Smithson's attention. Accurately speaking he became a Harriet Smithson fanatic, a stalker, infatuated to the point of psychosis. On Februray 6, 1830, two and a half years after seeing Smithson, Berlioz wrote:
"After a period of calm, I have just been plunged again into the tortures of an endless and unquenchable passion, without cause, without purpose. She is still in London and yet I seem to feel her all around me. I hear my heart pounding and its beats set me going like the piston srokes of a steam engine. Each muscle of my body trembles with pain - useless, frightening, unhappy woman, If she could - for one moment - coceive all the poetry, all the infinity of such a love, she would fly to my arms, even if she must die from my embrace.
No words could describe what I suffered. Even Shakespeare has never painted the horrible gnawing of the heart, the sense of utter desolation, the worthlessness of life, the torture of one's throbbing pulses, and the wild confusion of one's mind. The disgust of life, and the impossiblity of suicide. The great poet has done no more in Hamlet than to count suffering as amongst the most terrible evils of life. I had left off composing, my mind was paralyzed as my passion grew. I could only suffer."
Yikes, get a grip guy, and this is all without having actually met her.
Movement One
Passions: The author imagines that a young musician afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the "wave of passions" sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her.
Translation: Berlioz saw "Henriette" Smithson.
Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind's eye of the artist, it is linked with a musical idea (http://youtu.be/P0jhkYx2x5Y?t=5m24s) whose character, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to his beloved. This melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly.
In other words the theme represents Harriet, and will appear and reappear in every one of the five movements. I've read that the ending of this movement represents a male orgasm. Extramusical projected nonsense from the listener based on the text, or randy Berlioz? I'll leave that for you to decide.
Movement Two (15:20)
A Ball: 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 (http://youtu.be/P0jhkYx2x5Y?t=17m25s and http://youtu.be/P0jhkYx2x5Y?t=20m28s).
Translation: He stops moping around and decides to go out to try and forget about Harriet, but her image haunts him everywhere he goes, her face superimposed on everything, from advertising billboards to the neighbourhood dog.
Movement Three (21:40)
Scene in the Fields: 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 ...
Translation:
Berlioz: She loves me. She loves me not. Will she ever love me? She can never love me.
Harriet: "Sorry, what did you say your name was again?"
Movement Four (38:50)
March to the Scaffold: Convinced that his love is unappreciated, 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. As he cries for forgiveness the effects of the narcotic set in. He wants to hide but he cannot so he watches as an onlooker as he dies. 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 loveinterrupted by the fatal blow when his head bounced down the steps.
Translation: I'm tripping out, yo!
Movement Five (45:40)
Dream of the Night of the Sabbath:
He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath ... Roar of delight at her arrival ... She joins the diabolical orgy ... The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae), the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae. (Skeleton dance!!)
Translation: In modern times Miss Smithson might have got a restraining order against Mr Berlioz, instead they got married.
Melodramatic, pathetic, witty, creative, original, in all ways brilliant. Berlioz was a character all right.
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