Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique - Rameau: Suite de Hippolyte et Aricie
8/26/2016, 14 Tracks, 1:10:52
Featuring
Daniel Harding
Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Hector Berlioz
Did you know?
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Compositional Technique
Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique features an 'idée fixe,' a recurring musical thought representing the beloved, which appears throughout the work and becomes distorted in the final movement.
Composer Biography
Berlioz, the composer of Symphonie fantastique, had limited knowledge of Rameau's work but published four articles about Rameau's theoretical writings and his opera Castor et Pollux in 1842.
Composition History
Rameau's opera Hippolyte et Aricie and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique both represent significant turning points in music history.
Compositional Technique
Rameau's instrumental pieces in Hippolyte et Aricie allowed him to invent new and expressive orchestral colors, with some being familiar dances and others linked to specific, often lost, choreographies.
Composition History
Rameau's first tragédie lyrique, Hippolyte et Aricie, premiered in October 1733 when he was fifty years old, radically changing contemporary opera.
Compositional Technique
Berlioz innovated orchestrally in Symphonie fantastique by using unusual numbers of instruments, such as four harps, and rare instruments like the cor anglais and ophicleides, as well as demanding special string techniques.
Composition History
Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, premiered in December 1830, profoundly transformed symphonic writing and paved the way for major Romantic works by composers like Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt.
