Dr. Francesca Brittan
Assistant Professor of Music,
Case Western Reserve University
Complaints levied against Hector Berlioz’s music during his lifetime (and after) were many: deafening, terrifying, “too literary,” “too imitative.” But by far the most pervasive anxiety voiced by critics revolved around Berlioz’s illegibility. In particular, his music was ungrammatical, failing to adhere to the rules of syntax, the tenets of “proper” melody, and the laws of rhythm. These were not just idle or irritated complaints but urgent ones, linked by nineteenth-century critics to fears of social unraveling and even revolutionary violence. Berlioz’s musico-linguistic perversion, as one reviewer put it, was tantamount to Jacobinism. This strand of the criticism began in earnest with the Symphonie fantastique, a work that usually claims our attention for its orchestrational innovations and autobiographical resonances. In this talk, I redirect attention to the symphony’s syntax, arguing that melodic-linguistic deformation was at the heart of the work’s radicalism. I link Berlioz’s notions of “natural” grammar (borrowed in part from Victor Hugo) to notions of “natural” sound, and the “natural” rights of man. More broadly, I examine relationships among grammar, revolution, and nineteenth-century fantasy, between musical neology and the Berliozian imaginary.
Co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian
Generously funded by the University Lectures Anonymous Fund
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