“Symphonie Fantastique” Background
“Symphonie Fantastique” is one of the Hector Berlioz great orchestra; through its movements, it relays the message of an artist’s self-destructive passion towards a woman. In “Symphonie Fantastique” vividly displays the artist’s various issues are including obsession, dreams, tantrums, in addition to moments of tenderness, suicidal visions, murder, ecstasy as well as despair. “Symphonie Fantastique” is a reflective self-portrait of Hector Berlioz. Berlioz was a great artist, born in a small town near the French Alps; his father was a doctor and his mother a devout catholic. Berlioz discovered music at twelve years of age, in time he becomes a skillful flautist, while playing the guitar as well as the drums. As a teenager he suffered isolation having bouts of uncontrollable moods, together with fantasies concerning his love as well as his loss, Berlioz life provided him with ample composing material to develop his life work. Berlioz adored an Irish actor Harriet Smithson; therefore, “Symphonie Fantastique” was one of Berlioz’s attempts to draw Harriet’s attention…show more content… “Symphonie Fantastique” and “Romeo et Juliette” showed a great departure from the traditional symphonies of his time, as Berlioz an artist expressed his work, freely going against the rigidity and the formality of the orthodox classical learning. In addition, in these symphonies Berlioz drew great inspiration from Shakespeare as well as Beethoven in order to create instrumental dramas that portray the intensity of human passion. In the dramas, romance is a crucial ingredient where other themes revolve around. Instruments were a crucial part of the Berlioz work where the music relayed the various emotions and attitudes of the protagonists found in his creative work