Symphonie fantastique
Hector Berlioz
✒️1830 | ⏰ 52 minutes
Hector Berlioz
Born: Isère, France, 1803
Died: Paris, France, 1869
‘Can you tell me what it is, this capacity for emotion, this force of suffering that wears me out?’
Headstrong, with a turbulent emotional life, Hector Berlioz encapsulated the essence of the Romantic artist. His passions – Shakespeare, Beethoven and his love for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson (whom he later married) – became obsessions. When the mother of his previous fiancée announced that her daughter was instead going to marry the piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel, Berlioz hatched a plot: disguised as a woman, to gain entry to the house, he would kill the mother, daughter and Pleyel – and then himself. He packed pistols and even replaced his disguise outfit when he lost it en route, but dithered and, in the end, abandoned the plan.
Berlioz studied at the Paris Conservatoire and was strongly drawn to literature. Inspired by Shakespeare, he wrote the choral symphony Romeo and Juliet and the opera Beatrice and Benedict, as well as works on The Tempest and King Lear. Goethe was the motivation for the ‘dramatic legend’ The Damnation of Faust, while Harold in Italy – a symphony with solo viola (written for the virtuoso Paganini) – was modelled after Byron. The epic opera The Trojans, based on Virgil’s Aeneid, represents the pinnacle of the French grand opera tradition. Berlioz was regarded as one of the leading conductors of his day, too, and wrote criticism throughout his career. Above all, he is admired for his vivid orchestration, though his audacious outlook has won him detractors as well as loyal followers.
What's the story?
By the early 19th century, the symphony was already a robust and evolving form. Composers like Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had laid down a rich tapestry of conventions, such as structural clarity, thematic development and emotional range. Beethoven’s later symphonies, especially the Sixth and Ninth, had already begun to push boundaries, weaving in narrative, voice and a sense of the poetic.
But even in that adventurous lineage, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique stands out. A true Romantic, Berlioz blurred the line between music and story, injecting autobiography, obsession and hallucination into a genre that had never gone quite so far. The symphony, once abstract and self-contained, suddenly became a theatre of the imagination.
Why is this piece so iconic?
In 1827, Berlioz saw productions in Paris of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and immediately became obsessed with the actress playing Ophelia and Juliet, Harriet Smithson. Around the same time, he was also seized by the impact of hearing Beethoven, ‘that awe-inspiring giant’. These two passions combined in his Symphonie fantastique. He resolved to take Beethoven’s innovations still further and to emblemise his love for Harriet. If he could win Harriet’s love, he believed he would be an unstoppable force: ‘I shall become a colossus in music.’
The Symphonie fantastique was not only revolutionary in tracing a dramatic arc, but it went even further by entering the realm of autobiography. Berlioz wrote an outline of the action across its five movements, opening with ‘a young musician’ (no prizes for guessing who) daydreaming of his ideal woman, and then continuing with a dizzying ball scene, an idealised country scene, a brutal march to the guillotine, and finally a garish witches’ dance. In true Romantic spirit, Berlioz declared on the score (quoting Victor Hugo): ‘The book of my heart, written on every page.’
What is the music like?
The Symphonie fantastique was unprecedented in its vision and immediacy. Another innovation was the idée fixe – or ‘fixed idea’ – a musical phrase that acts as a signpost throughout, here representing the composer’s beloved Harriet.
In the first movement, the artist is in an opium-induced sleep. His beloved appears (the idée fixe – a rising–falling phrase first heard on violins and flutes around five minutes in). He encounters an array of emotions, from longing and melancholy to untamed passion, and from tenderness to religious consolation.
The second movement presents an elegant ball, at which the artist spies his beloved. Harps highlight the enchanted atmosphere, before the artist’s passions spin off into a frenzy. In ‘Scene in the Country’, a rustic cor anglais is answered by a distant (offstage) oboe, like cowherds duetting in the Alps. When these calls return at the end, they come with rumbling thunder (a mini-symphony for four timpanists).
The ‘March to the Scaffold’ is the artist’s last journey: he imagines he has been condemned for killing his beloved and now faces execution. The impending horror, the jeering crowd, the artist’s defiance are all on display. In the supernatural realm of the finale, the artist witnesses his own burial, surrounded by witches, ghouls and monsters. Terrifying bells accompany the Dies irae (the plainchant for the dead) in heavy brass before a scurrying theme signals the witches’ round dance. With its fevered emotions and lurid pictorialism, it is easy to hear why the conductor Leonard Bernstein (a longtime friend of the LSO) described the Symphonie fantastique as ‘the first psychedelic symphony in history’.
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Sir Antonio Pappano
Chief Conductor
After 22 years as Music Director of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Sir Antonio Pappano became Chief Conductor of the LSO. He was born just 20 miles away, in Epping, and moved to the US aged 13 but now lives in London. He has held lead positions with the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels (1992–2002) and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (2005–23). Opera is in his blood, and he brings this love of dramatic narrative and storytelling to his orchestral performances too. But he directs his players with great immediacy: his conducting style is unfiltered, impassioned and straight from the heart. A natural communicator about music, too, he has presented programmes for BBC TV. Last year he was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, having conducted at the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla last year.
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On Stage
Leader
Roman Simovic
First Violins
Nikola Pancic
Clare Duckworth
Stefano Mengoli
Ginette Decuyper
Laura Dixon
Maxine Kwok
William Melvin
Claire Parfitt
Elizabeth Pigram
Harriet Rayfield
Sylvain Vasseur
Shuyang Jia*
Dmitry Khakhamov
Dániel Mészöly
Lyrit Milgram
Julia Rumley
Second Violins
Julián Gil Rodríguez
Thomas Norris
Sarah Quinn
Miya Väisänen
David Ballesteros
Matthew Gardner
Alix Lagasse
Belinda McFarlane
Iwona Muszynska
Csilla Pogány
Djumash Poulsen
Aleem Kandour
Mitzi Gardner
Juan Gonzalez Hernandez
Violas
Eivind Ringstad
Malcolm Johnston
Mizuho Ueyama
Germán Clavijo
Thomas Beer
Steve Doman
Julia O’Riordan
Sofia Silva Sousa
Robert Turner
Michelle Bruil
Alistair Scahill
David Vainsot
Cellos
Timothy Walden
Alastair Blayden
Salvador Bolón
Daniel Gardner
Danushka Edirisinghe
Henry Hargreaves
Silvestrs Kalnins
Jae Min Kang*
Ghislaine McMullin
Peteris Sokolovskis
Joanna Twaddle
Double Basses
Rodrigo Moro Martín
Patrick Laurence
Chaemun Im
Jani Pensola
Harry Atkinson
Ben Griffiths
Hugh Sparrow
Adam Wynter
Flutes
Gareth Davies
Amy Yule
Imogen Royce
Piccolo
Patricia Moynihan
Oboes
Olivier Stankiewicz
Thomas Hutchinson
Rosie Jenkins
Cor Anglais
Jérémy Sassano
Clarinets
Sérgio Pires
Chris Richards
Chi-Yu Mo
Bass Clarinet
Ferran Garcerà Perelló
Bassoons
Rachel Gough
Daniel Jemison
Joost Bosdijk
Contra Bassoon
Martin Field
Horns
Diego Incertis Sánchez
Timothy Jones
Angela Barnes
Olivia Gandee
Jonathan Durrant
Trumpets
James Fountain
Thomas Nielsen
Adam Wright
Juan Martinez Escribano
Jack Wilson
Trombones
Simon Johnson
Rebecca Smith
Jonathan Hollick
Bass Trombone
Paul Milner
Tubas
Ben Thomson
Richard Evans
Timpani
Nigel Thomas
Patrick King
Percussion
Neil Percy
David Jackson
Sam Walton
Helen Edordu
Harps
Bryn Lewis
Elizabeth Bass
* LSO String Experience Scheme Member
Kindly supported by the Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust, the Idlewild Trust and The Thriplow Charitable Trust.
Programme Notes Edward Bhesania. Edward Bhesania is a music journalist and editor who writes for The Stage, The Strad and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
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