Overview
Week 3 Listening Discussion PROMPT:
- Go to the Keeping Score Berlioz page (link: http://www.pbs.org/keepingscore/berlioz-symphonie-fantastique.html (Links to an external site.)) and read the summary to assist you in responding to these prompts below.
- Berlioz’s "Symphonie Fantastique" was so novel and so shocking—for its program and its music—that it immediately caused an uproar, in the press, from other composers, even from Berlioz’s friends. Many, finding the story distasteful, were aghast that a composer would put into music something so explicitly autobiographical. What can these reactions tell us about what Berlioz was trying to do? Was he a typical Romantic artist wearing his heart on his sleeve? Or was he an obsessed, crazy man using music for some diabolical purpose.
- Using the Keeping Score Berlioz website from the link above, how do you think Harriet Smithson is represented in Symphonie Fantastique?