If you were to ask anyone from the Baby Boomer generation about the first drug trip set to music, the answer would be “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” from 1967 by the Beatles. But 137 years before Lennon and McCartney, French composer Hector Berlioz set a drug trip to music. For the Beatles the drug was LSD; for Berlioz it was opium.
Berlioz titled the symphony, “Episode in the Life of an Artist”. The Artist, obsessed with The Beloved, takes an opium trip in which he has a series of dreams. The musical idea that drives it is one theme, representing The Beloved. At the time the Irish actress Harriet Smithson was the fixation of Berlioz’ obsession. Here is Leonard Bernstein explaining the theme.
Bernstein explains the idee fixe
The first movement, “Reveries and Passions”, starts with a long C minor introduction leading to a sonata exposition. The idee fixe is stated as a bare melody (5:15) and later is taken up by the full orchestra (7:38). The recap (10:44) is a joyous statement of the theme. Like a storm that has blown itself out, it ends quietly and solemnly.
The second movement (13:47), “A Ball”, is a waltz in A Major where the idee fixe shows up in 3/4 time (16:03).
The third movement (21:04), “In the Country”, in F Major, begins with a shepherd piping and answered by another shepherd in the distance. The idee fixe is unaccompanied when first heard (23:16). The movement is serene and peaceful at first, but disturbed by thoughts of The Beloved, leading to a violent climax (29:19). The woodwind theme that follows offers tranquility and desolation. At the end, the shepherd pipes (34:36); in the distance, there is only the rumble of thunder in answer.
The fourth movement (37:53), “March to the Scaffold”, features The Artist, who hallucinates that he has murdered The Beloved and is being marched to his date with France’s National Razor to be shortened by the length of a head. What is amazing is just what Berlioz achieves with something as simple as a run down a minor scale. It’s horror and grotesque ritual combined. At the end, the idee fixe is truncated by drum rolls – along with The Artist’s head. You’d think it would all end here. But wait! Berlioz goes into sudden death overtime!
The fifth movement (42:36), “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath”, starts with strange murmurings in the forest from the orchestra. Then the idee fixe (43:58), a lewd travesty of itself, appears on the clarinet. It’s HER! She’s still alive! Dressed like the Whore of Babylon, or Lady Gaga, she flounces in. The witches’ round dance starts and stops, interrupted first by bells, then by tubas which sound the Dies irae, the Day of Wrath, from the Requiem Mass. A brass choir takes up the church theme. The round dance begins again in C Major, and is worked up as a canon. It is combined with the Dies irae, which is jazzed up. It all ends rousingly. The “trip” is over.
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Bernstein conducting the National Orchestra of France
Good evening, Publius, and thanks for the Halloween Musical Special. ((HUGS)
Don’t do drugs.
You’ll end up like a thug.
You’ll make your mother sad,
and make your father mad.
Don’t do drugs.
Drugs are bad.
I once attended a live performance of this, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, in which the guy on the bells was a half-beat LATE on his first entrance. He quickly caught up, but since I knew the piece by heart, I quickly switched my attention to Leonard, whose visage carried such a portrait of wrath and murder that this Witches Sabbath was even scarier than the original!
One of my all-time favorites, and i used to get the orchestral score out of the Boston Public Library and conduct it as it played on my Dad’s BIG stereo(Altec Lansing Voice-Of-The-Theater Speakers that were the “Sound of Cinarama”)