Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

FRENCH POLISH?

1832: a very good year for Paris. Musically speaking, at least. As I said earlier - hope you were paying attention: might not even have been a bad idea to have written it down!! - anyway, as I said earlier, the musical centre of the universe seemed to be shifting towards it, or at least, as you might say, 'in black and white terms'. That is to say, Paris had suddenly become the place to be not only for opera, but also if you happened to be one of the new breed of 'pianist-composers'. And, boy, were there lots of them around! So many, no doubt, that only a handful were bound to survive. And of this handful, the greatest was no doubt Chopin. In 1832, he found himself in Paris, at around the same time as the completely potty Hector Berlioz. But before we get on to the French and the Polish, a brief update.

MDCCCXXXII. Ah, those were the days. The days that the term 'Socialism' was first used - in England and France, oddly enough -and also the year a twenty-three-year-old William Gladstone started on a distinguished political career as both MP for Newark and handy clasp-type bag. The population of Britain stood at an amazing 13.9 million while the population of the US, wait for this, was an astonishing 12.8 million. Incredible. By the time the year was out, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would be dead and gone, Sir Walter Scott would be dead and buried, and economist and social reformer Jeremy Bentham would be dead and stuffed. Constable gave the world his view of Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall Stair and the Alcotts, Bronson and Abigail gave the world their little woman, Louisa May.

Back in France, two very different composers are sharing the same heady Parisian air: Berlioz and Chopin - two very different sides of the Romantic coin. Quick toss and heads, it's Chopin.

Frederic Chopin was very much the 'sensitive' romantic one, one for whom the word romantic meant pure and subtly intense, reserved even. He was born to French and Polish parents and had studied at the Warsaw Conservatory before leaving his native Poland complete with an urn of genuine Polish earth which he kept with him to remind himself of home. (Indeed, he would end up having his urn buried alongside him when he died.) He was now fitting in perfectly with the polite Hevez votre petit doijj? Parisian salon society. They adopted him as one of their own, albeit after a somewhat shaky debut. He was introduced into the salon of Baron de Rothschild by a count, Count Radziwill, and, from then on, could do no wrong, his every note deemed to be of national importance. As the chalk to his cheese, the craie to his frontage, as it were, there was Mad Hector.

Louis-Hector Berlioz, to give him his full name, was born in the countryside near Grenoble, which lies around a hundred kilometres south-east of Lyons, on the edge of the French Alps. His father was a doctor, who would have liked nothing more than if Hector himself had signed up to the Hippocratic oath. As a result, Berlioz was shipped off to med school in Paris, but allowed to take music lessons on the side. Of course, after three years, he gave it all up and enrolled himself at the Paris Conservatoire, where he pursued music to its then limit, with all the ferocity of a dog let off the leash.

Now, Great??? is often referred to as an Arch-Romantic. Interesting, this. All this means is that he was romantic… and bonkers. Not for him the laid-back, effete, 'sketches' of Chopin. Berlioz worked in huge, colourful brushstrokes, the size of Bournemouth. MASSIVE statements that positively screamed 'LOOK AT ME, I'M ROMANTIC AND PROUD!'

Now, I know what you're thinking - I'm overdoing the bonkers bit? Well, maybe, but let me just go over the events that led to the second performance, in this year, 1832, of his Symphonie Fantastique. As early as 1827, Berlioz had fallen madly in love with the Irish actress, Harriet Smithson, having seen her as Ophelia in Hamlet. He then went after her, with all the obsession of a stalker. Followed her morning, noon and night. When his advances failed, what did he do? Become a monk? Throw himself into the Seine, while chained to his grand piano? No. He went off and wooed someone else. The someone else was a woman called Camille, and, sadly for her, she was just a pawn in Mad Hector's rather idiosyncratic game of love. He'd decided to do the jealousy thing - going after someone else, in front of the nez of his beloved, in the hope that it would make her see sense. Also, he'd just won the Prix de Rome, which was the big Paris composers' competition, and part of the prize was a stay in Rome. So, he upped and went to Rome, too. Maybe this was all part of the classic, French 'treat them mesquin, keep them tresfin\ as they say in Leeds.

His plan started to go a little awry, though, when, while in Rome, he heard that Camille had taken a lover. Damn. This buggered things up completely. How would Harriet Smithson ever be jealous if she had nothing to be jealous of? So what did he do? Well he did what any 'mad as a spoon' romantic French composer of the 1830s would do. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? He immediately headed back to Paris, disguised as a lady's maid. OF COURSE! (This is, I assure you, totally true. No © symbol here, you notice?) Well, who can honestly say that they haven't done that in their time? I know I have. Anyway, Hector le Fou only got as far as Genoa, when he somehow lost his disguise -which is a great shame, because I for one would have loved to know the outcome. Sounds like perfect material for a bedroom farce. In the end, he went back to Rome, deflated.

When he finally did return to Paris, he discovered that Smithson was in town. Oh, no - here we go again. He had to act fast. What would be the thing that would convince her that he was the best thing since sliced baguette? Fill her room with flowers? Send her a leather-bound book of the most romantic love poetry she'd ever read? No. HB - the man who was clearly one lead short of a pencil - decided he knew what would win her over. He would arrange a performance of his ridiculously large Symphonie Fantastique - the five-movement hulk of a symphony, containing four brass bands and a Dream of a Witches' Sabbath. That was bound to be the best love token she'd ever had.

But get this. It worked! She was won over! He got her! Well, I've got to say, Berlioz - and indeed Harriet - and I will clearly never see eye to eye on the subject of romance. To be fair, the Symphonie Fantastique is a tremendous work, and, also to give him his due, it does contain a 'Harriet Smithson' tune, which keeps cropping up all the way through. So she must have been quite touched. He subtitled the whole thing 'An Episode in the Life of an Artist', and the artist of the subtitle has apparently poisoned himself with opium, leading to him having all manner of strange hallucinations, which are depicted in the music - so not a million miles from what Velvet Underground were doing in the '60s. Throw in Timothy Leary, and you're about there.

At the time, as most forward-thinking works are prone to do, the Symphonie Fantastique provoked quite a few 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' reactions. Schumann hated it - with a passion - but probably the best quote about it came from the light-hearted lunch-lover, Rossini, who said 'What a good thing it isn't music' - not only one of the best quotes about the Si7, but, I think, one of the best quotes about any music. And there are these two composers: the frank Frenchness of Berlioz, the forward-pushing romantic, with the emphasis on the antic; and the Polish polish of Chopin, with his delicate, tweaking romanticism, with the emphasis on the 'twea' - the two major romantic forces in Paris at the time.