Outline
The symphony is a piece of program music that tells the story of "an artist gifted with a lively imagination" who has "poisoned himself with opium" in the "depths of despair" because of "hopeless love." Berlioz provided his own program notes for each movement of the work (see below). He prefaces his notes with the following instructions:
The composer’s intention has been to develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so far as they lend themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely on the assistance of speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be set out in advance. The following programme must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their character and expression.
There are five movements, instead of the four movements that were conventional for symphonies at the time:
- Rêveries – Passions (Daydreams – Passions)
- Un bal (A ball)
- Scène aux champs (Scene in the Country)
- Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
- Songe d'une nuit de sabbat (Dream of a Witches' Sabbath)
Read more about this topic: Symphonie Fantastique
Famous quotes containing the word outline:
“The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the business of thought to define things, to find the boundaries; thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of Art to give things shape. Anyone who takes no delight in the firm outline of an object, or in its essential character, has no artistic sense.... He cannot even be nourished by Art. Like Ephraim, he feeds upon the East wind, which has no boundaries.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)