Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)

Debussy's ten-minute tone poem for orchestra takes its inspiration from the eponymous poem by Stephane Mallarme, and was meant to be the prelude to a ballet choreographed by Valery Nijinsky. Though the ballet is rarely performed, Debussy's prelude has proven to be nothing short of one of the most important watershed works in modern music history. Ambiguous in its meter, capricious in tonality, and full of the impressionistic colors which were Debussy's unique legacy, the prelude is a loose montage of scenes from a torpid afternoon in which the mythical faun vainly pursues a pair of elusive wood nymphs. He reaches them only in a sensual, dream-filled slumber in which he is united with them and nature. The language in both the textual and musical poems is suffused in light, unrealized passion, and vivid languor.

The famous opening flute solo is representative of the faun, who plays his pan-pipe in the woods. From the beginning our sense of tonality is tricked and tricked again, as the flute oscillates between the two notes of a tritone; the melody hints briefly at E-major, but then the orchestra enters in B-flat major, the most unexpected key possible. There is a silent bar as the music seems to ponder this turn of events, before trying again. Wandering interjections from horns and harp wreathe the flute, padded by soft strings. The harmonies wander, but every time it seems to be reaching a point of arrival, of realization or resolution, the goal shifts or evaporates altogether.

With the entrance of a solo clarinet and muttering celli, the shadows of the nymphs appear, and the consequent pursuit and flight are shown by fleeting, unresolved scales, muted brass, and tantalizing pizzicati. As the music grows more animated and passionate, the orchestration grows lush and colorful, but the sweetest moments are also the most hushed and delicate, undulating just underneath the surface. This is the ethereal world that persists to the end of the piece, drifting in between enchanted yearning and fleeting luxuriousness. And what to make of the resolution: clear, unambiguous E Major, a certainty which has eluded us the entire piece? The faun escapes to sleep, forsaking his pursuit, but realizes his desires in the other world of slumber: “Farewell to you... I go to see the shadow you have become.”

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (IV & V)

Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, notable for its program and its innovative instrumentation, features a dream of a very different sort of love: that of an artist driven to despair, whose opium-induced dream features the object of his love in increasingly grotesque, desperate contexts. The real-life inspiration for Berlioz's masterpiece was an Irish actress named Harriet Smithson, with whom he fell desperately in love after seeing her play the role of Ophelia in a 1827 production of Hamlet. After many years of receiving his unrequited love, eventually she saw the Symphonie Fantastique performed in 1832, and fell in love with him. Though their marriage ended unhappily, they never lost their affection for each other.

The fourth and fifth movements of the programmatic “symphony” follow a diverse set of three movements in which the artist finds himself in all types of situations but continues to be haunted by the image of his beloved in every context, a persistent musical idée fixe characterized by passion but “endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love.” In desperation after finding his love unrequited, the artist drugs himself with opium, and the fourth and fifth movements form the substance of the resulting dream. In it, he has killed his beloved and been convicted and sentenced to death; he is forced to take part as both victim and onlooker at his own execution, an inexorable march to the guillotine witnessed by an enthusiastic crowd. In his final moments the haunting idée fixe returns once more, a final vision of love cut brutally short by the blade, followed by his head bouncing down the steps and the cheering of the enthralled crowd.

With the concluding movement, the artist's funeral is twisted into a witches' sabbath, “a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters” who materialize in a flurry of ghostly groans, outbursts, cackling, and other ominous noises. The clarinet once more introduces the beloved's melody, but no longer shy or noble, it gallops in with wicked, vulgar glee: she has come to attend the witches' sabbath, and a “roar of delight” meets her arrival and inaugurates the witches' round dance. This grotesque orgy is followed and augmented by the tolling of funeral bells along with the well-known Dies irae (Day of Wrath) chant, presented by bassoons and tuba. The round dance returns in a fugue form, resolute but marred by uneven phrases and outbursts of twisted, mirthless brass. At its apex is combined with the Dies irae in an increasingly wild and frantic rampage that whirls relentlessly to its only possible conclusion: glorious, devastating triumph.