Analysis Of Symphonie Fantastique

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Recommended: Transition from romanticism to realism

Symphonie Fantastique is an orchestral masterwork of gargantuan proportions. Composed in Paris in 1830, it set the mark for what a romantic symphony should be. With its overwhelming emotions and unabashed melodrama, it pours straight from the heart of its composer, Hector Berlioz.
Like his friends and contemporaries, such as the painter Dellacqua or the novelist Victor Hugo, Berlioz set out to explore, proclaim, and glorify his own feelings; that’s what made him a true romantic. The romantics were just a step away from the group that preceded them, the rationalists. The rationalists asserted that nature and reality were governed by concepts, provable by scientific experiment and thought. Descartes proclaimed, “I think, therefore I am”. But Berlioz proclaimed, “I feel, therefore I am”.
The first big piece in which Berlioz confessed his unique artistic vision was Symphonie Fantastique. He wrote it when he was 26 years old, and it is an epic for huge orchestra. It is about the life of an artist and his passions. Particularly, the artist’s self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman who has no idea he even exists! So unhappy is …show more content…

The object of the artist’s hopeless love is represented in the symphony by a charming theme Berlioz called the Idee Fixe, describing the phenomenon of fixation. The violins and flute float allusively and flirtatiously through the charming melody, stocked by the stealthy steps of the lower strings. Berlioz sets into play the idee fixe representing the artist’s beloved and all the other music and noises representing the artist’s frustration and despair as he tries to attract her attention at theaters, parties, and mostly inside his own head. The various sections of the orchestra play back variations on the Idee Fixe as the music intensifies. This leads to a moment of complete frenzy and collapse as one last murmur of the Idee Fixe is

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