Which Frenchman composed the 'Symphonie Fantastique'?
"French Bibliothèque du film (BiFi) contains an earlier draft plan for the film which envisaged a less realistic, more fantastic treatment of the story, entitled ""La Symphonie du rêve"", with Pierre Fresnay in the central role. The cast included several members of the Comédie-Française (Barrault, Saint-Cyr, Seigner, Berthau, Delamare, Fonteney). Barrault took part in a BBC2 programme in 1969 on the centenary of the composer's death, as Berlioz again, and in the autobiographical Lélio, sequel to the symphony. Shortly after the film was released, Goebbels, having learnt of it, was displeased, considering it too patriotic and determined to summon the"
"Concerto Fantastique Concerto Fantastique is an orchestral composition in four movements by the American composer Ralph Shapey. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who first performed the work under the composer on November 21, 1991. It was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Music. ""Concerto Fantastique"" has a duration of roughly one hour and is composed in four movements: The first movement, ""Variations,"" is dedicated to the University of Chicago, at which Shapey was on faculty from the mid-1960s until his retirement in 1991. The second movement, ""Elegy,"" is dedicated to the late Chicago-based philanthropist"
"was more impressive. We were entirely unanimous on that point, and we did not expect to be overruled."" Concerto Fantastique Concerto Fantastique is an orchestral composition in four movements by the American composer Ralph Shapey. The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who first performed the work under the composer on November 21, 1991. It was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Music. ""Concerto Fantastique"" has a duration of roughly one hour and is composed in four movements: The first movement, ""Variations,"" is dedicated to the University of Chicago, at which Shapey was on faculty from"
"through several sections, most of them imitative. The layout is as follows: Racquet's ""Fantaisie"" is a unique piece in the entire French keyboard repertory; nothing like it was ever written again in France. Charles Racquet Charles Racquet (1597–1664) was a French organist and composer, best known for his monumental organ ""Fantaisie"". He came from a large family of Parisian organists and himself was appointed organist of Notre Dame de Paris at an early age, in 1618. He held the post until shortly before his death and was succeeded by another member of the Racquet family. He also served as musician"
"Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include ""mélodies"", solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite ""Trois mouvements perpétuels"" (1919), the ballet ""Les biches"" (1923), the ""Concert champêtre"" (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera ""Dialogues des Carmélites"" (1957), and the ""Gloria"" (1959) for soprano, choir and orchestra. As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was"
"but wanted to buy the synopsis of his opera, ""Le Vaissau fantôme"", to be put to music by a French composer, Louis-Philippe Dietsch. Wagner sold the work for five hundred francs, and returned home in 1842. The French composer Hector Berlioz had come to Paris from Grenoble in 1821 to study medicine, which he abandoned for music in 1824, attending the Conservatory in 1826, and won the ""Prix de Rome"" for his compositions in 1830. He was working on his most famous work, the ""Symphonie Fantastique"", at the time of the July 1830 revolution. It had its premiere on 4"
"Charles Tournemire Charles Arnould Tournemire (22 January 1870 – 3 or 4 November 1939) was a French composer and organist, notable partly for his improvisations which were often rooted in the music of Gregorian chant. His compositions include eight symphonies (one of them choral), four operas, twelve chamber works and eighteen piano solos; but he is remembered largely for his organ music, the best known being set of pieces ""L'Orgue Mystique"". Born in Bordeaux, Tournemire moved in adolescence to Paris, and there became one of César Franck's three youngest students. (The other two were Henri Büsser and a Belgian, Guillaume"
"Charles Racquet Charles Racquet (1597–1664) was a French organist and composer, best known for his monumental organ ""Fantaisie"". He came from a large family of Parisian organists and himself was appointed organist of Notre Dame de Paris at an early age, in 1618. He held the post until shortly before his death and was succeeded by another member of the Racquet family. He also served as musician to Marie de' Medici (a post that his father Balthazar occupied earlier) and to Anne d'Autriche, the Queen Mother. Racquet was very highly regarded by his contemporaries: his pupils included the famous lutenist"
"Symphony in D minor (Franck) The Symphony in D minor is the most famous orchestral work and the only mature symphony written by the 19th-century Belgian composer César Franck. After two years of work, the symphony was completed 22 August 1888. It was premiered at the Paris Conservatory on 17 February 1889 under the direction of Jules Garcin. Franck dedicated it to his pupil Henri Duparc. The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 soprano clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 timpani, cymbals, triangle, bass drum, tam-tam harp"
"Gabriel Fauré Gabriel Urbain Fauré (; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his ""Pavane"", Requiem, ""Sicilienne"", nocturnes for piano and the songs ""Après un rêve"" and ""Clair de lune"". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style. Fauré was born into a"
"his most famous work, the ""Symphonie Fantastique"", at the time of the July 1830 revolution. It had its premiere on 4 December 1830. Three Paris theaters were permitted to produce operas under Louis Philippe: The Royal Academy of Music on rue Le Peletier; the Opéra-Comique; and the Théâtre-Italien, nicknamed ""Les Bouffes"". The Royal Academy, financed by the government, was in dire financial difficulties. In February, the government handed over management of the theater to a gifted entrepreneur, Doctor Véron, who had become wealthy selling medicinal ointments. Véron targeted the audience of the newly-wealthy Parisian businessmen and entrepreneurs; he redesigned the"
"Grande Pièce Symphonique Grande Pièce Symphonique, Op.17, FWV 29, is an organ work by French composer César Franck. Written in 1860–62, it is the second and, at an average duration of 25 minutes, the largest piece from ""Six Pièces pour Grand Orgue"". It is dedicated to the composer Charles-Valentin Alkan. The ""Six Pièces"" are an important work of the composer, marking the beginning of the second period of his career and predicting the flowering in his later creative life. His long struggle on the comic opera ""Le Valet de ferme"" (1851–1853) ended with a disastrous failure of the production and"
"Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called ""modes of limited transposition"", which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime. He travelled"
"Symphonic Variations (Franck) The Symphonic Variations (""Variations symphoniques""), M. 46, is a work for piano and orchestra written in 1885 by César Franck. It has been described as ""one of Franck's tightest and most finished works"", ""a superb blending of piano and orchestra"", and ""a flawless work and as near perfection as a human composer can hope to get in a work of this nature"". It is a fine example of Franck's use of cyclic unity, with one theme growing into various others. The piano and orchestra share equally in the continuous evolution of ideas. The work is in F"
"the symphony as a concert piece, almost dormant since the appearance of Berlioz' ""Symphonie fantastique"" in 1830. (An earlier piece, the ""Symphonie espagnole"" (1875) by Édouard Lalo is a violin concerto.) Both these works, however, sought to create compositional distance from the symphonic form and sound of the German romantic idiom (exemplified by Brahms and Wagner) through several ""French"" innovations, including integrating piano (and in the case of Saint-Saëns, the organ) into the orchestra, and using a cyclic thematic style. Like the earlier works of Saint-Saëns and Berlioz, as with his own compositions, Franck also made use of a cyclic"
"King Louis XV. Jean-Joseph Mouret Jean-Joseph Mouret (11 April 1682 in Avignon – 22 December 1738 in Charenton-le-Pont) was a French composer whose dramatic works made him one of the leading exponents of Baroque music in his country. Even though most of his works are no longer performed, Mouret's name survives today thanks to the popularity of the Fanfare-Rondeau from his first ""Suite de symphonies"", which has been adopted as the signature tune of the PBS program ""Masterpiece"" and is a popular musical choice in many modern weddings. Mouret's father was a prosperous silk merchant of Avignon, an amateur violinist"
"des Carmélites and Les Mamelles de Tirésias."" At around the same time the writer Jessica Duchen described Poulenc as ""a fizzing, bubbling mass of Gallic energy who can move you to both laughter and tears within seconds. His language speaks clearly, directly and humanely to every generation."" Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include ""mélodies"", solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite ""Trois mouvements perpétuels"" (1919), the ballet ""Les biches"" (1923), the ""Concert"
"Édouard Lalo Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (27 January 182322 April 1892) was a French composer. Easily his most celebrated piece is his ""Symphonie espagnole"", which consists of five movements and is a popular work in the standard repertoire for violin and orchestra. Lalo was born in Lille (Nord), in northernmost France. He attended that city's conservatoire in his youth. Then, beginning at age 16, Lalo studied at the Paris Conservatoire under François Antoine Habeneck. Habeneck conducted student concerts at the Conservatoire from 1806 onwards and became the founding conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828. (Berlioz,"
"Florent Schmitt Florent Schmitt (; 28 September 187017 August 1958) was a French composer. He was part of the group known as Les Apaches. His most famous pieces are ""La tragédie de Salome"" and ""Psaume XLVII"" (Psalm 47). He has been described as ""one of the most fascinating of France’s lesser-known classical composers"". Born in Meurthe-et-Moselle, Schmitt took music lessons in Nancy with the local composer Gustave Sandré. At the age of 19 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Gabriel Fauré, Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois, and Albert Lavignac. In 1900 he won the Prix de Rome. During"
"obsession and served as inspiration for his music. His ""Symphonie fantastique"" (""Fantastic Symphony"", 1830) portrays an opium-induced vision in which the musician's beloved appears as a recurrent musical motif, the ""idée fixe"", which like any obsession ""finds its way into every incredible situation [movement]"". The ""Fantastic Symphony's"" sequel ""Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie"" (""Lélio, or the Return to Life"", 1831) contained a song ""Le pêcheur"" (""The Fisherman""), a setting of Goethe's ballad ""Der Fischer"", the music of which included a quotation of the ""idée fixe"" that is associated with a siren who draws the hero to a watery"
"Jean Françaix Jean René Désiré Françaix (; 23 May 1912 in Le Mans – 25 September 1997 in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style. Françaix's natural gifts were encouraged from an early age by his family. His father, Director of the Conservatoire of Le Mans, was a musicologist, composer, and pianist, and his mother was a teacher of singing. Jean Françaix studied at the Conservatoire of Le Mans and then at the Paris Conservatory, and was only six when he took up composing with a style heavily influenced by"
"of the ""Symphonie fantastique""; fifty years later Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor found it ""romantic and picturesque ... Berlioz at his best"". In the 21st century Bonds ranks it among the greatest works of its kind in the 19th century. The ""Dramatic Symphony"" with chorus, ""Roméo et Juliette"" (1839), is still further from the traditional symphonic model. The episodes of Shakespeare's drama are represented in orchestral music, interspersed with expository and narrative sections for voices. Among Berlioz's admirers the work divides opinion. Weingartner called it ""a style-less mixture of different forms; not quite oratorio, not quite opera, not quite symphony"
"Fantasie in C (Schumann) The Fantasie in C major, Op. 17, was written by Robert Schumann in 1836. It was revised prior to publication in 1839, when it was dedicated to Franz Liszt. It is generally described as one of Schumann's greatest works for solo piano, and is one of the central works of the early Romantic period. It is often called by the Italian version, ""Fantasia""; the word ""Fantasie"" is the German spelling. The Fantasie is in loose sonata form. Its three movements are headed: The first movement is rhapsodic and passionate; the middle movement is a grandiose rondo"
"Francis Planté Francis Planté (2 March 1839 – 19 December 1934) was a French pianist famed as one of the first ever recording artists. He was France's most important pianist in the nineteenth century, apart from Chopin. Planté was born in Orthez. He studied piano under Antoine Marmontel, his career beginning at the age of seven in Paris. While there he met and befriended many like-minded musicians who would have a long-lasting effect on his career. These included Franz Liszt, with whom he played arrangements of two of Liszt's symphonic poems (""Les Préludes"", and ""Tasso, Lamento e Trionfo"") for 2"
"Émile Bernard (composer) Jean Émile Auguste Bernard (28 November 1843 – 11 September 1902) was a French Romantic composer and organist. Bernard was born in Marseille and studied at the Paris Conservatoire; his organ teacher was François Benoist and his piano teacher was Antoine François Marmontel. He was organist at the Notre Dame des Champs from 1885 until his retirement in 1895. He died in Paris. His ""Fantasy and Fugue"" won the 1877 prize of the Société de Compositeurs de Paris. His ""Violin Concerto"" was dedicated to and performed by Pablo de Sarasate in 1895 at the Conservatoire. Other works"
"and Arturo Toscanini, and in the ""Petite Suite"", Henri Büsser, who had prepared the orchestration for Debussy. Many of these early recordings have been reissued on CD. In more recent times Debussy's output has been extensively recorded. In 2018, to mark the centenary of the composer's death, Warner Classics, with contributions from other companies, issued a 33-CD set that is claimed to include all the music Debussy wrote. Claude Debussy Achille-Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He"
"continuously until 1945, when it moved to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The French composer Hector Berlioz premiered his ""Symphonie fantastique"" in the conservatory's hall on 5 December 1830 with an orchestra of more than a hundred players. The original library was created by Sarrette in 1801. After the construction of the concert hall, the library moved to a large room above the entrance vestibule. In the 1830s, Berlioz became a part-time curator in the Conservatory library and was the librarian from 1852 until his death in 1869, but never held a teaching position. He was succeeded as librarian by Félicien"
"""idée fixe"" was most famously used by Hector Berlioz in his ""Symphonie fantastique""; it is generally not transposed, differentiating it from the leitmotiv, used by Richard Wagner. Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar Varèse; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He coined the term ""organized sound"" in reference to his own musical aesthetic. Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision of ""sound as living matter"" and of ""musical space as open rather"
"In 1946 the choreographer Frederick Ashton used Franck's work for a ballet, also called ""Symphonic Variations"". Ralph Vaughan Williams's ""Fantasia (quasi variazione) on the Old 104th Psalm Tune"" for piano, chorus, and orchestra (1949) has some similarities to the ""Symphonic variations"", but it lacks Franck's adherence to classical variation form. Symphonic Variations (Franck) The Symphonic Variations (""Variations symphoniques""), M. 46, is a work for piano and orchestra written in 1885 by César Franck. It has been described as ""one of Franck's tightest and most finished works"", ""a superb blending of piano and orchestra"", and ""a flawless work and as near"
"Symphony on a French Mountain Air The Symphony on a French Mountain Air (), Op. 25, written in 1886 by Vincent d'Indy, is virtually the only work by the composer that still receives regular performances today. As indicated by the title, d'Indy took the principal theme from a folk song he heard at Périer overlooking the Cévennes mountains (hence the work's alternative name, Symphonie cévenole). Originally conceived as a fantaisie for piano and orchestra, the symphony is unusual in that it is scored for a prominent (but never dominant) piano part together with orchestra, and has acquired the label sinfonia"
"in his memoirs that Franck showed a ""constant concern for the dignity of his art, for the nobility of his mission, and for the fervent sincerity of his sermon in sound... Joyous or melancholy, solemn or mystic, powerful or ethereal: Franck was all those at Sainte-Clotilde."" Unusually for a composer of such importance and reputation, Franck's fame rests largely on a small number of compositions written in his later years, particularly his Symphony in D minor (1886–88), the ""Symphonic Variations"" for piano and orchestra (1885), the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano solo (1884), the Sonata for Violin and Piano"
"his Symphony No. 3). Later came precursors of modern classical music. Érik Satie was a key member of the early-20th-century Parisian avant-garde, best known for his ""Gymnopédies"". Francis Poulenc's best known works are his piano suite ""Trois mouvements perpétuels"" (1919), the ballet ""Les biches"" (1923), the ""Concert champêtre"" (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the opera ""Dialogues des Carmélites"" (1957), and the ""Gloria"" (1959) for soprano, choir and orchestra. Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy are the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use"
"Fantasia in F minor (Schubert) The Fantasia in F minor by Franz Schubert, D.940 (Op. posth. 103), for piano four-hands (two players at one piano), is one of Schubert’s most important works for more than one pianist and one of his most important piano works altogether. Schubert composed it in 1828, the last year of his life, and dedicated it to his pupil, Karoline Esterházy. Musicologist Christopher Gibbs has characterized the work as ""among not only his greatest but his most original"" compositions for piano duet. Schubert began writing the Fantasia in January 1828 in Vienna. The work was completed"