- Le Pêcheur. ‘The Fisherman’, based on a ballad by Goethe. A Lorelei-type water-spirit tempts a fisherman into the water to drown
- Choeur des ombres – Chorus of the Shades
- Chanson de brigands – Pirate Song, celebrating a life of freedom and action
- Chant de bonheur – Song of Bliss – in this case, love’s bliss
- La harpe éolienne – Memories – the artist imagines himself in a peaceful grave under a tree
- Fantasie sur la Tempête de Shakespeare – Calling on his true muses, Music and Shakespeare, the artist creates a work to honour both
Hector Berlioz Photo: Public Domain
A year after his Symphonie Fantastique, Hector Berlioz felt moved to take his artist-hero Lélio’s story further. Left in a death-like swoon at the end of Symphonie Fantastique the hero revives and recovers.
In this work, Berlioz breaks with symphonic structure entirely. Nor does he use some other familiar form, such as an opera or an oratorio. It is a monodrama, of ‘melologue’. It tells how the artist Lélio regains consciousness and begins to cast around for a meaning to his life. Is he an artist? A poet? A musician? We are to imagine the music as a window into the artist’s mind; according to Berlioz, all but the final movement should be performed behind a curtain, symbolising the separation between dream and reality.
The work grows from the simplicity of an individual voice singing a folksong with piano accompaniment, to larger forces – a choir, an orchestra, then all together. A narrator leads us through the artist’s thoughts, which echo some of the concerns of Romanticism. If to live is to suffer, should one long for the repose of death? Or yearn for love, which can be fickle or sublime? Should one seek a life of action? What could the artist learn from his close brush with death? What could he learn from nature, or from his muses in poetry and music?
Andrew Laing Photo: Supplied
The final movement is a fantasia on Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’, in which the artist finds his solution: to draw on the genius and inspiration of the past to create new art, transforming it through music. (Notes: Erica Challis)
Recorded 12 April 2019, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Graham Kennedy
