The following program must be distributed among the audience
whenever the Symphonie Fantastique is played dramatically
and it is followed by the lyric monodrama Lelio, which
ends and completes the episode in the life of an artist. When
such a performance is given, the orchestra must be invisible and
placed on the stage of a theatre behind the lowered curtain.
When the symphony is given by itself in a concert, these
directions are superfluous and, strictly speaking, the
distribution of this program my be dispensed with. In such cases
it is only necessary to retain the titles of the five movements.
The composer indulges himself with the hope that the symphony
will, on its own merits and irrespective of any dramatic aim,
offer an interest in the musical sense alone.
A young musician of an unhealthy sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with opium in a paroxysm of love-sick despair. The narcotic dose he has taken, too weak to cause death, throws him into a long sleep accompanied by the most extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, feelings, and memories are translated, within his sick brain, into the form of musical thoughts and images. Even the beloved one has taken the form of melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever returning and which he hears everywhere.
At first he thinks of the uneasy and nervous condition of his soul, of somber longings, of depression and joyous elation without any recognizable cause, which he experienced before the beloved one had appeared to him. Then he remembers the ardent love with which she suddenly inspired him, his almost insane anxiety of mind, his raging jealousy, his reawakening love, his religious consolation.
At a ball, amidst the confusion of a brilliant festival, he finds the loved one again.
On a summer evening in the country, he hears two shepherd-lads who play the ranz des vaches (the tune used by the Swiss to call their flocks together) in alternation. This pastoral duet, the setting, the soft whisperings of the trees stirred by the wind, some prospects of hope recently made known to him - all these sensations unite to impart an unaccustomed repose to his heart and to lend a smiling color to his imagination. And then she appears once more. His heart stops beating, painful forebodings fill his soul. "If she should prove false to him!" One of the shepherds resumes the melody, but the other no longer answers . . . . Sunset . . . distant rolling of thunder . . . loneliness . . . silence.
He dreams that he has murdered his beloved, that he has been condemned to death and is being led to the scaffold. The procession advances, accompanied by a march that is alternately sombre and wild, brilliant and solemn, in which the sound of heavy steps follows without transition upon the tumultuous outbursts. At last the fixed idea returns for a moment as the last thought of love is cut short by the fatal stroke.
He dreams that he is present at a witches' dance, surrounded by horrible spirits, amidst sorcerers and monsters in many fearful forms, who have come to assist at his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, shrill laughter, distant yells, which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody is heard again but it has lost its noble and shy character; it has become a vulgar, trivial and grotesque dance-tune. She it is, who comes to attend the witches' meeting. Howls of joy greet her arrival . . . . She joins the infernal orgy . . . . Bells toll for the dead, a burlesque parody of the Dies Irae. The witches' round dance. The dance and the Dies Irae are heard at the same time.
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