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Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14/H 48
Composers:- Berlioz, Hector
Duration: 52
Description:
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) composed Symphonie Fantastique (Fantastic Symphony), Op. 14/H48 in 1830. Tt is often described as remarkable for a composer’s first symphony given its large scale, wide range of emotions, deep program, and the fact that it constituted a musical revolution. The program, which Berlioz instructed must be to the audience at every performance, tells the story across five movements of a gifted artist who falls in love with a woman, but despairs when his love is unrequited, driving him to poison himself with opium. During the opium fueled dream, he imagines that he has killed his love and watches as he is marched to the scaffold for execution before the work concludes with his watching himself at a witches’ sabbath. The work was deeply personal to Berlioz as he himself fell deeply in love with actress Harriet Smithson after seeing her play Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Her having ignored his love letters and Berlioz himself for two years, the composer wrote Symphonie Fantastique as a way to express his obsession. The work was premiered on December 5, 1830, in Paris by the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, François Antoine Habeneck conducting. Movements: I. Rêveries – Passions (Daydreams and Passions); II. Un bal (A Ball); III. Scène aux champs (In the Country); IV. Marche au supplice (The Procession to the Stake); V. Songe d’une nuit de sabbat (The Witches’ Sabbath). Instrumentation: 2(2nd dPicc).2(2nd dEH).2(1st dEb).4: 4.2+2Crnt+CrntOblgto(opt).3.2: Timp(4):Perc(5): Hp(2): Str (9-8-7-6-5 in set).
