 | Berlioz's program (taken from the Norton Critical Score):
Part One: Reveries-Passions The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind's eye of the artist it is linked with a musical thought whose cahracter, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved. This melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in every moment of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first Allegro. The passage from this state of melancholy reverie, interrupted by a few fits of groundless joy, to one of frenzied passion, with its movements of fury, of jealousy, its return of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations-this is the subject of the first movement.
Part Two: A Ball The artist finds himself in the most varied situations-in the midst of the tumult of a party, in the peaceful contemplation o the beauties of nature; but everywhere, in town, in the country, the beloved image appears before him and disturbs his peace of mind.
Part Three: Scene In the Country Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches in dialogue. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found some reason to entertain-all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that his loneliness will soon be over.-But what if she were deceiving him!-This mingling of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness distrubed by black presentiments, form the subject of the Adagio. At the end one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies.-Distant sound of thunder-loneliness-silence.
Part Four: March to the Scaffold Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned and led to the scaffold, and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now sombre and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamour. At the end of the march the first four measures of the idée fixe reappear, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.
Part Five: Dream Of a Witches' Sabbath He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial, and grotesque; it is she, coming to join the sabbath.-A roar of joy at her arrival.-She takes part in the devilish orgy.-Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, sabbath round-dance. The sabbath round and the Dies irae combined. |
