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Yet it took only a few years to achieve a development that produced such a great work as the "Symphonic Fantastique," the prototype of modern programme music. From first to last it was the ambition of Berlioz to widen the domain of his art.
When he did so, his passion found shape and expression in a great musical work, the Symphonic Fantastique. This is a weird and sinister composition, but very effective. It is in five movements. The first represents a young man seeing his ideal and falling in love with her, the object of this sudden affection being depicted by a tender theme on the violin. This theme pervades the entire work.
The ladies sang la Syrene, dressed their hair la Mermede, and themselves la Fantastique; which, by-the-bye, was not new; and the gentlemen wore boa-constrictor cravats and waltzed la mer Indienne a title probably suggested by a remembrance of the dangers of the sea.
The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, founded in 1828 under the direction of Habeneck, has had its hour of glory in the musical history of Paris. It was through this society that Beethoven's greatness was revealed to France. It was at the Conservatoire that the early important works of Berlioz were first given: La Fantastique, Harold, and Roméo et Juliette.
A Richard Strauss would be attracted by an almost insignificant work like the Ouverture du roi Lear; a Weingartner would single out for notice works like the Symphonic fantastique and Harold, and exaggerate their importance. But they do not feel what is intimate in him.
The language is magnificent, of wonderful clearness and simplicity; not a word too much, and not a word that does not reveal an unerring pen. Then there is the freedom of his rhythms. Schumann, who was nearest to Berlioz of all musicians of that time, and, therefore, best able to understand him, had been struck by this since the composition of the Symphonic fantastique, He wrote:
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