Historical Notes

Historical Context

Notable events of the early 19th Century

1801: Britain began to rise as an industrial power

1803: The United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million

1803: Ohio became the 17th US state

1808: John Dalton theorized atoms

1821: Napoleon Bonaparte died at fifty-one

1823: The beginning of steam-powered shipping

1825: Louis the 18th died

1826: The Spanish Inquisition ended

1827: New York passed a state law emancipating slaves

1829: Andrew Jackson becomes the seventh US President

1829: Scotch tape was invented

Key themes of the era: Women's suffrage, child labor limitations, abolition, temperance, prison reform.

Notable events of 1830

The Great fire of New Orleans began

Ecuador gains its independence

'Mary Had a Little Lamb' by Sarah Josepha Hale was published

The Indian Removal Act was passed by the Congress and signed into law

The French invaded Algeria

Charles X of France abdicated the throne

The Belgian Revolution began

The first railway station opened in the United States in Baltimore Maryland.

Symphony Fantastique was written

Suggested Recordings

History of the Composer

Born: December 11, 1803
Birthplace: La Côte-St-André, Isère, France (near Grenoble)
Childhood:
- Learned to play the flute and guitar
- Became a self-taught composer
- Convinced by his father (a physician) to go into the medical field
1821-1823: Studied medicine in Paris
1826: Enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire
1830: Composition of Symphonie fantastique
1830: Premiere of Symphonie fantastique
1833: Marriage with Harriet Smithson
1834: Birth of first and only son, Louis-Thomas Berlioz
1854: Harriet Smithson (first wife) died
1854: Berlioz married Marie Recio (a singer)
1840s-50s: Berlioz experienced musical & financial success
1862: Marie Recio (second wife) died
1867: Louis-Thomas Berlioz died
Death: 1869
Deathplace: Paris, France

Compositional Inspiration & History

Symphony Fantastique:
- Portrays the dreams of a young man who, in the aftermath of a failed love affair, has taken overdosed on opium.
- Inspired by the Irish actress Harriet Smithson in her role as Ophelia.
- Early example of program music
- Known for innovation of the ideé fixe (“fixed idea”) used throughout all movements.
- Plot:
  - Mvt. 1: Depicts the delights and despairs of love.
  - Mvt. 2: The man attends a ball, where he encounters the woman he can never possess, now in another man’s arms.
  - Mvt. 3: The man attempts (and fails) to escape his passions by traveling to the countryside
  - Mvt. 4: The man imagines that he has murdered his beloved and is executed for the crime. He watches his own death.
  - Mvt. 5: The man is in hell at a witches’ sabbath, over which his beloved herself presides.
March to the Scaffold is the 4th movement of Symphonie Fantastique
- Berlioz claimed that he used music from an unfinished project to write the fourth movement in a single night.

Generics

Composed, published, and premiered in 1830
While Symphonie Fantastique is roughly an hour in length, March to the Scaffold is only about 5 minutes long.
The arrangement used for the assignments on this site, arranged by J. Cameron Law, was published in 2014