The music follows this program in detail, and supplies a host of other details to the sympathetic imagination. The opening movement contains a melody which Berlioz avers he composed at the age of twelve, when he was in love with yet another young lady, a certain Estelle, six years his senior. And in each movement occurs the ‘fixed idea,’ founder of that distinguished dynasty of leit-motifs in the nineteenth century:
In the opening movement, when the first agonies of love are at their height, this theme undergoes a long contrapuntal development which is a marvel of complexity and harmonic energy. It recurs practically unchanged in the next three movements, and at its appearance in the fourth is cut short as the guillotine chops the musician’s head off. In the last movement it undergoes the change which makes this work the predecessor of Liszt’s symphonic poems:
The structure of this work is complicated in the extreme, and it abounds in harmonic and contrapuntal novelties which are strokes of pure genius. Many a musician may dislike the symphony, but none can help respecting it. The orchestra, though not large for our day, was revolutionary in its time. It included, in one movement or another (besides the usual strings) a small flute and two large ones; oboes; two clarinets, a small clarinet, and an English horn; four horns, two trumpets, two cornets à pistons, and three trombones; four bassoons, two ophicleides, four pairs of kettle-drums, cymbals, bells, and bass drum.
A challenge to the timid spirits of the time; and a thing of revolutionary significance to modern music.
The other great dramatic symphonies of the time belong wholly to Berlioz and Liszt. The Revolutionary Symphony which Berlioz had planned under the stimulus of the 1830 revolution, became, about 1837, the Symphonie Funèbre et Héroïque, composed in honor of the men killed in this insurrection. It is mostly of inferior stuff compared with the composer’s other works, but the ‘Funeral Sermon’ of the second movement, which is a long accompanied recitative for the trombones, is extremely impressive. ‘Harold in Italy,’ founded upon Byron’s ‘Childe Harold,’ was planned during Berlioz’s residence in Italy, and executed under the stimulus of Paganini. Here again we have the ‘fixed idea,’ in the shape of a lovely solo, representing the morose hero, given to the viola. The work was first planned as a viola concerto, but the composer’s poetic instinct carried him into a dramatic symphony. First Harold is in the mountains and Byronic moods of longing creep over him. Then a band of pilgrims approaches and his melody mingles with their chant. Then the hero hears an Abruzzi mountaineer serenading his lady love, and to the tune of his ‘fixed idea’ he invites his own soul to muse of love. And, finally, Harold is captured by brigands, and his melody mingles with their wild dance.
Berlioz’s melodies are apt to be dry and even cerebral in their character, but this one for Harold is as beautiful as one could wish: