Symphonie Fantastique (arr. VanDoren)

From Wind Repertory Project
Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz (trans. Evan VanDoren)


Subtitle: IV: March to the Scaffold


General Info

Year: 1830 / 2021
Duration: c. 4:45
Difficulty: V (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Orchestra
Publisher: RWS Music, through C.L. Barnhouse
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - $150.00   |   Score Only (print) - $15.00


Instrumentation

Full Score
C Piccolo
Solo Flute I-II
Flute I-II
Oboe I-II
Bassoon I-II
E-flat Soprano Clarinet
Solo B-flat Soprano Clarinet I-II
B-flat Soprano Clarinet I-II-III
B-flat Bass Clarinet
E-flat Contra-Alto Clarinet
B-flat Contrabass Clarinet
B-flat Soprano Saxophone
E-flat Alto Saxophone I-II
B-flat Tenor Saxophone
E-flat Baritone Saxophone
B-flat Cornet I-II
B-flat Trumpet I-II
Horn in F I-II-III-IV
Trombone I-II
Bass Trombone
Euphonium
Tuba
String Bass
Timpani I-II
Percussion, including:

  • Bass Drum
  • Crash Cymbals
  • Marimba
  • Snare Drum


Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

Berlioz's most famous Romantic era standard, Symphony Fantastique, is a colorful, evocative musical masterpiece that continues to withstand the test of time, pleasing all audiences. In this transcription, Evan VanDoren has artfully crafted its fourth movement, March to the Scaffold, for the modern wind ensemble, taking creative care to present the work in its truest form while maximizing playability.

- Program Note from publisher


This transcription was commissioned by the Vandegrift High School Band, from Austin, Texas, under the direction of Mike Howard, for their concert at the 2021 Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference in Chicago, Illinois.

- Program Note by transcriber


Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un artiste ... en cinq parties (Fantastical Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts), Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. The symphony tells the story of an artist gifted with a lively imagination who has poisoned himself with opium in the depths of despair because of hopeless love.

Berlioz wrote these program notes for the fourth movement, March to the Scaffold:

Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. As he cries for forgiveness the effects of the narcotic set in. He wants to hide but he cannot, so he watches as an onlooker as he dies. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow when his head bounces down the steps.

Berlioz claimed to have written the fourth movement in a single night, reconstructing music from an unfinished project – the opera Les francs-juges. The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds, for which he directs: "The first quaver of each half-bar is to be played with two drumsticks, and the other five with the right hand drumsticks". The movement proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures that later show up in the last movement. Before the musical depiction of his execution, there is a brief, nostalgic recollection of the idée fixe in a solo clarinet, as though representing the last conscious thought of the soon-to-be-executed man. Immediately following this is a single, short fortissimo G minor chord -- the fatal blow of the guillotine blade, followed by a series of pizzicato notes representing the rolling of the severed head into the basket. After his death, the final nine bars of the movement contain a victorious series of G major brass chords, along with rolls of the snare drums within the entire orchestra, seemingly intended to convey the cheering of the onlooking throng.

- Program Note from Wikipedia


Media


State Ratings

None discovered thus far.


Performances

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Works for Winds by This Composer


Resources

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