Berlioz was inspired by Lord Byron’s Childe Harold but did not follow that narrative precisely. (Julian Rushton suggests that Berlioz relished the conflict between audiences' generic expectations and his musical reality.). Berlioz fulfilled his obligation for 1831 with his Rob Roy Overture, for which critical opinion has been sharply divided. As in the Fantastic Symphony, a principal theme (the viola’s opening melody), is reproduced throughout the work. So while the Mémoires serve as a fully accurate and compelling portrait of Berlioz's memories, self-image and convictions, the facts he purports to recite may not be wholly reliable. Yet, Lang notes, it spawned inherent friction, as the descriptive elements of Berlioz's literary plan were the antithesis of symphonic abstraction and deflected the natural flow of the music. Although Berlioz desperately had sought the Prix de Rome, once he got to Rome he wrote in his Mémoires that his life there was "a continual martyrdom – one's beautiful musical dreams are dispelled by grim and hopeless reality; every day brings fresh disappointment – while other arts flourish, displaying their manifold beauties, music alone is degraded to the level of a poor hunted slave." The relationship unravels in the second movement, though – at first an augmented Harold theme blends harmoniously with the pilgrim song, next becomes disruptive with triplet rhythm, and then turns downright annoying, as rapid arpeggiated chords (emulating the guitar Berlioz liked to strum on his mountain walks) are played sul ponticello [near the bridge] for a gratingly nasal, whiny tone that sours the peaceful meditation of the solemn prayer like a rowdy child in church. ", Although traditional in comparison to the five-movement Symphonie Fantastique (and the seven-movement vocal Romeo et Juliet), Harold shares with the former work an idée fixe, As for literary inspiration, Berlioz claimed that his new work was written in the style of Lord Byron's immensely popular 1812-18 epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Perhaps, to his lasting credit, Paganini recognized a fellow visionary who could lift his artistry to new heights. Curiously, despite Berlioz's present regard as the quintessential French composer of his time, we have few recordings of Harold by French conductors. While they routinely included violas in orchestra string sections, composers of the Romantic era displayed none of the interest in the viola as a solo instrument that had enriched music of the 18th century and would revive in the 20th. Dedicated to "Ianthe", it describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man, who is disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry and looks for distraction in foreign lands. This is also the best quality transfer from the old 78rpm recordings. While the second rendition emphasizes the work's classicism through its unyielding pace (except for acceleration at the very end of the first and last movements), the earlier concert adds an extra measure of energetic abandon and a more subtle flexibility of tempo and phrasing, and its sheer visceral impact is enhanced by a powder-dry acoustic without even a hint of echo or concert-hall atmosphere. Never one to wallow in emotional excess, Munch delivers the fastest Harold on record at a breathless 38 minutes, only in part by omitting the first movement exposition repeat (which would have added about 1¼ minutes). A Davis-led 1975 Philips LP with the London Symphony Orchestra and Nobuko Imai is sharper, quicker, more rhythmically taut, and less solo-dominated. Perhaps recalling the work's origin, Davis's first 1963 recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI) features the acclaimed Yehudi Menuhin who, like Paganini, was a famed violinist. endobj In any event, this is a sturdy, thick, heavily-textured Germanic reading, as would be expected from the Berlin Philharmonic – illustrating Paganini's insistence (seconded by Liszt) that Berlioz was the true artistic heir of Beethoven. Berlioz was inspired by Lord Byron’s Childe Harold but did not follow that narrative precisely. The main theme of … Somewhat akin to the Symphonie fantastique (1830) in its quasi-autobiographical cast and employment of a unifying idée fixe, Harold finds Berlioz imagining himself in the role of Byron's Harold for the purpose of recounting his own experiences in Italy. The work’s Byronic title is more than just a gesture to fashion. Primrose appeared yet again in 1958 in the first stereo Harold with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony (RCA). The tale of the creation of Harold in Italy has often been told, yet it remains a fascinating confluence of celebrity, musical roots, literary inspiration and, above all, the composer's own quixotic personality. After the finale leaves reminiscences of the earlier movements behind, the viola is utterly silent, as if Berlioz, having conjured an onslaught of evil and rebellion, finds himself too timid to join in – or, as if, as Hugh Macdonald put it, Berlioz was temperamentally a stranger to his own wishful imaginings. Indeed, the performance is ardently romantic, bristling with energy as Bernstein strains to wrest the utmost fervor out of his forces. Berlioz wrote, “My intention was to write a series of orchestral scenes, in which the solo viola would be involved as a more or … Many historians regard the most significant formal innovation in Berlioz's three great symphonies (I'm purposely excluding his turgid, ceremonial 1840 Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale) to have ushered in an era of program music. After attending a December 1838 performance, sapped by the illness that already had taken his voice and before long would take his life, Paganini dragged the composer back on stage, knelt down and kissed his hand. Paris: 1848, Œuvre 16 (full score) Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, n.d., as part of Hector Berlioz Werke (1900–07), Serie I, Band II, edited by Charles Malherbe and Felix Weingartner Paul Henry Lang's sweeping Music in Western Civilization (W. W. Norton & Company 1941) is deeply insightful and personal. The first is entitled: "Harold aux Montagnes. Berlioz seized upon the viola's status as an outsider in the world of 19th century music (with which he undoubtedly identified) to fashion a fascinating, highly personalized role for it throughout Harold. At 44½ minutes, the reading is rather bland and catches fire only at the very end, as urgent accents colorfully fight the otherwise steady underlying rhythm. Berlioz's other undisputed realm of mastery is rhythm. The poem is a fragment of an epic with a quintessentially Romantic hero . 15, (1834) which he called a “Symphony in In his Mémoires Berlioz describes the scene as "a furious orgy where wine, blood, joy, rage, all combined, parade their intoxication the brass seem to vomit forth curses and to answer prayers with blasphemies; where they laugh, drink, fight, destroy, slay, violate and utterly run riot." Berlioz poured his extensive yet intuitive knowledge of instrumentation into one of the classics of music literature, his 1843 Grande Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes which explores with great thoroughness the impact of each instrument on listener perception and remains relevant. It tells a story of scenes from rural Italy centred on a pivotal character, Harold. In 1834, he composed Harold in Italy - a symphony in four movements with a part for solo viola He died in his Paris home in 1869. Lord Byron‘s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage inspired the mood of Harold. Macdonald also authored a BBC Music Guide to Berlioz's Orchestral Music (University of Washington Press 1969) and Cairns contributed a valuable article on Berlioz to The Symphony compendium edited by Robert Simpson (Penguin, 1966). And why for a solo display piece? Scènes de mélancolie, de bonheur et de joie" ("Harold in the mountains. Berlioz’s most famous Byron work is Harold in Italy, Op. For quite a while it seemed that Primrose virtually owned Harold on record. The next day, Paganini's son delivered an ecstatically flattering letter in florid Italian that began: "Beethoven spento non c'era che Berlioz che potesse farlo rivivere." The work was to be a series of Italian souvenirs in a symphonic frame. The thick sonic ambiance, which not only enhances the "French" sound of the ensemble but contributes so much to its effectiveness, may have arisen in part as an artifact of the quadraphonic format of the original release. Inspired by Byron's Childe Harold, Hector Berlioz's 'Harold in Italy' imagines a solo viola as a melancholy dreamer, journeying through the Abruzzi region of Italy and always at odds with the orchestra. Get this from a library! According to Berlioz, he tried to combine the solo lines with the orchestra, feeling sure that Paganini's incomparable execution would enable him to give the solo instrument all its due prominence. Harold in Italy, Symphony with solo viola in 4 parts ... after motifs from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. In fact, Donald Francis Tovey While often described as a modified sonata form, over half its length is a slow introduction launched with a sinuous fugue, as if to suggest the academic doldrums from which Berlioz sought escape in nature. %���� Somewhat akin to the Symphonie fantastique (1830) in its quasi-autobiographical cast and employment of a unifying idée fixe, Harold finds Berlioz imagining himself in the role of Byron's Harold for the purpose of recounting his own experiences in Italy. By placing it among the poetic memories formed from my wanderings in the Abruzzi, I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron’s Childe-Harold. The poem was called ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, (Candidate for … The poem is a fragment of an epic with a quintessentially Romantic hero . Ironically, although this movement was the most popular segment of Harold at the time (often performed alone) and thus was considered the most conservative, its slightly altered persistent repetitions now can be seen as a thoroughly modern harbinger of minimalism. Even so, for posterity, Berlioz left some quixotic and obsessively detailed instructions in his score, including placement of the players (the solo viola is to be near the harp), the type of drum-sticks to use on various phrases, the method of rolling tambourines (with the fingers), the number of beats to give in certain measures, and a caution that a gradual crescendo is to extend evenly over 115 measures. Perhaps in reaction to the emotional egoistic style of Paganini that induced the work, and consistent with his goal of teamwork among all players, Berlioz criticized Wagner's conducting as too free and acclaimed a performance of Harold in which the viola solo had fine rhythmic control and another in which the solo was played by a violinist of the orchestra "who had no pretensions to being a virtuoso." Of all the performances on record, Scherchen's comes closest to conjuring for modern listeners the sheer shock and wonderment Berlioz's audiences must have felt when first encountering his music. While its criticism is ardent, sharp and unfettered ( "It is now time to have done with all this acclamation for Mozart, whose operas are all alike and whose cool beauty is tiresome and distressing"), Pierre Citron notes that biographers have found extensive inaccuracies ranging from honest errors of recall and blurring of detail to outright fabrication. 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