Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist

Skip below to the video to see a description of the piece and its movements.

Perhaps one of the most engaging, and important pieces of music from the romantic era. Symphonie Fantastique is perhaps one of the earliest, and most detailed depictions of d*** usage in music, partly because Berlioz was under the influence of opium while writing it. Leonard Bernstein, one of the most prolific music educators of all time, says, "Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip and you wind up screaming at your own funeral."

The piece was inspired by Berlioz seeing a production of Hamlet, and falling in love with the actress who played Ophelia. He had written her several letters to which she ignored, so he upped his game and wrote this.

This piece is important because it is one of the earliest pieces of "programmatic music" to date. Basically means there is a story that the audience can follow along with and understand, while listening to the music. The story? Well, in simple terms the story goes as follows:

A young musician of extraordinary sensibility and abundant imagination, in the depths of despair because of hopeless love, has poisoned himself with opium. The d*** is too feeble to kill him but plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by weird visions. His sensations, emotions, and memories, as they pass through his affected mind, are transformed into musical images and ideas. The beloved one herself becomes to him a melody, a recurrent theme idée fixe which haunts him continually.

The music is split up into five separate movements, some of which flow seamlessly into each other

I. Rêveries – Passions (Reveries, Passions) 00:20

The opening to our story, our young man finds this beautiful woman and becomes obsessed over her. Here you can hear a recurring piece of music (you can hear at 5:46) which is meant to represent whenever our character sees this woman he loves. The piece starts with a sense of despair and longing, but immediately erupts into a much brighter tone when we hear our idee fixe (meet our woman).

II. Un bal (The Ball) 16:25

This is just a fancy little ball sequence. The waltz like composition sounds very elegant, and in here we can hear/see our woman again.

III. Scène aux champs (Scene in the Fields) 23:25

This is where things start to get intense. The opening of this movement we hear two shepherds talking to each other from hills far away from each other (hence the duet between the oboe and english horn). Berlioz beautifully paints a picture of hills and trees swaying in the wind. At the end of the piece we hear a dark rumble of what sounds like thunder, where our character starts to question his love for this woman. Does she love him back? Is she the right one? Will she be faithful? Is she even real? These thoughts overtake him and eventually overcome him. His fears somewhat deem true and the beginning of this piece (with the duets) reprises itself, this time with no one answering back...

IV. Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffolds) 40:15

This is where our character is so overcome with the pain of his thoughts, he decides to commit suicide via overdosing on opium, only it doesn't kill him; it only puts him into a deep sleep where he dreams the most unruly thoughts. Of these thoughts he dreams he has murdered the love of his life, is caught, and is to be put to death. This entire movement is a loud and heavy march, supposed to represent the march of him being publicly shamed and walked to the guillotine. At the end of this movement, as his head is being fastened into the guillotine, the loud march music is suddenly and abruptly stopped, why? We hear our idee fixe once again, played by a solo clarinet (46:30), and it sounds beautiful. Our character is once again dreaming and seeing the love of his life, only for that ounce of hope to be brutally cut off, by the amputation of his head.

V. Songe d'une nuit du sabbat (Dream of a Witches Sabbath) 47:10

After our characters death, he finds himself at his own funeral along with ghosts, witches, and other ghoulish figures. With this movement we hear tons of freakish sounds made on the strings, we even hear what was once our idee fixe, but presented in a way that is scary and meant to represent the haunting of our character for what he did to his own love.

So Gambino didn't even invent dropping mid with a screenplay to justify it

Dam I guess not

I thought Handel was lazy for doing oratorios instead of operas. This guy topped that! "Uh, just imagine I wrote some lyrics"

This s*** dont need lyrics read the program, close your eyes this s***s a movie

Btw listening to this while smacked is 10000% an amazing experience

Bamp