The Illinois Symphony Orchestra Plays Symphonie Fantastique

// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Jason Croft: Good evening from Urbana and the University of Illinois, it's Prairie Performances. WILL's weekly show presenting classical and jazz from the heart of the prairie in central Illinois. Prairie Performances is made possible in part by funding from the John Frayne Graduate Student Classical Music Work Experience Endowment.

[00:00:28]
Mel Miller: Good evening and welcome to Prairie Performances. I'm your host, Mel Miller. On tonight's episode, we explore Hector Berlioz's most macabre and haunting work, his Symphonie Fantastique. This piece has a bit of everything, hallucinations, nightmares, and unrequited love.

Famously, Berlioz wrote his Symphonie Fantastique after attending a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the role of Ophelia was played by actress Harriet Smithson. Following the performance, Berlioz became so enamored with Smithson he spent the following years writing letter after letter with the hope of winning her affections, but his correspondence was left unanswered. Smithson wasn't interested.

Taken by this one-sided infatuation, Berlioz wrote his semi-biographical Symphonie Fantastique about a similarly love-struck artist who, after poisoning himself with opium, experiences a series of hallucinations. All the while he's haunted by the object of his affection, who he hears in the form of a melody, the so-called idée fixe. As the artist stumbles through each hallucinated scene, a waltz at a ball, the pastoral countryside, a march to the scaffold, then finally a witch's sabbath, the tone of the piece grows darker. Perhaps the most daunting segment comes right after the toll of the chimes, where you can hear the dies irae from the Latin mass quoted in the brass.

If you can believe it, Berlioz's composition was actually a resounding success in his courting of Harriet Smithson. Two years after its premiere, Smithson attended a performance of the work and realized how strong Berlioz's feelings were for her. Finally, she agreed to meet with him, and after that, the two eventually married.

While I won't recommend writing a sacrilege symphony to woo the object of your affections, I will recommend hearing this 2017 performance of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique performed by the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Andrew Sewell. Thank you so much for listening with me this evening here on Prairie Performances. 

Prairie Performances is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm your host, Mel Miller. I hope you'll join me next time.