Even for the innovative French Romantic composer par excellence, Hector Berlioz, this work is an odd fish -- a symphony, composed for an orchestra with no stringed instruments, and designed to be played in an outdoor ceremonial procession.
The Symphonie funèbre et triomphale was the last of the composer's four symphonies to be written, and was first performed in 1840 during a commemoration ceremony for the dead of the 1830 July Revolution. Berlioz composed the work as a result of a commission from the government for the official commemoration. He personally disliked the regime, but couldn't resist the commission fee of 10,000 francs.
The symphony was written for a large military band. Two years later, Berlioz added parts for the strings in the second and third movements, and a choral part for the finale -- but these are optional.
This was one of the most-performed works of Berlioz during his lifetime, but has since sunk into obscurity and become an extremely rare bird. Frankly, I'm not surprised. It's a very large work, 35 minutes playing time, and not likely to attract the interest of bands as part of their regular repertoire, while the requirement for large extra numbers of wind and brass instruments puts it into the expensive luxury category for symphony orchestras.
Nor is this a case of a great masterpiece scorned. The second movement, entitled Funeral oration, is simply an adaptation of an aria from the abandoned opera Les francs-juges, with a tenor trombone taking on the vocal part. It has its moments, but overall is not one of the composer's greatest inspirations. The finale, entitled Apotheosis, is a spectacular, showy quick march, but for my money it doesn't stand up well to repeated hearings -- and the tacked-on choral ending is frankly an embarrassment, both for its lame text, and for the rumpty-tumpty musical materials. I can hardly believe that it comes from the same pen as the magnificent and timeless Requiem.
It's even harder for me to credit that Richard Wagner, of all people, considered passages in the finale to be among the most sublime music he had ever heard (but this was the Wagner of the composition of Tannhaüser -- I don't imagine that the Wagner of Tristan, the Ring, and Parsifal would agree!).
It's even harder for me to credit that Richard Wagner, of all people, considered passages in the finale to be among the most sublime music he had ever heard (but this was the Wagner of the composition of Tannhaüser -- I don't imagine that the Wagner of Tristan, the Ring, and Parsifal would agree!).
When I turn to the opening Funeral March, it's another story altogether. The drums establish the remorseless march rhythm, and the wind and brass instruments then join in spinning out some of the most memorable extended melodies Berlioz ever created.
One of the key features is the way in which Berlioz created phrases made up of irregular numbers of bars per phrase; not for him the classically poised structure made entirely of 4-bar and 8-bar phrases. Instead, you can hear a 4-bar phrase followed by a short 2-bar phrase, and then the next one lasts for 9 bars, and so on. It's this endlessly flexible assortment of phrase lengths over an unchanging rigid march rhythm that gives the Funeral March its distinctive character.
Well, that and the orchestration. There are a number of passages where a group of instruments playing high up in their register are balanced by another group playing down at the lower end -- and no one else in between. I suspect this was done deliberately, to try to keep the sound as open and uncongested as possible for the outdoor procession, but the remarkable and unique tone colours are by no means an incidental by-product.
The music is also, within its self-imposed limits, highly dramatic. As an example, consider the lengthy crescendo passage built entirely on a sequence of succinct 3-beat phrases with the first beat of each bar silent except for the drums. At each new phrase, the tension is ratcheted up by a new configuration of the brief phrase or by the addition of new instruments. Finally the orchestra lands on a single phrase repeated over and over, louder and bigger at each repetition, yet all in the same key. Just when you're convinced that the music must crash into a return of the original march in the tonic key of F minor, it swerves instead into another remote key while the full band thunders out yet more repetitions of the little phrase, punctuated at each bar by mighty crashes on multiple cymbals.
The march ends with a cadence of five massive chords, punctuated by prolonged rolls on multiple drums, and followed by a gentler chord of resolution onto the tonic F minor without drums.
One way I judge music is by its earworm potential, and this march is one of the most persistent earworms I know. But more than this, it is also an artistic and emotional triumph, as a solution to the problem of providing appropriate high-quality music for such a public ceremonial purpose.
One of the key features is the way in which Berlioz created phrases made up of irregular numbers of bars per phrase; not for him the classically poised structure made entirely of 4-bar and 8-bar phrases. Instead, you can hear a 4-bar phrase followed by a short 2-bar phrase, and then the next one lasts for 9 bars, and so on. It's this endlessly flexible assortment of phrase lengths over an unchanging rigid march rhythm that gives the Funeral March its distinctive character.
Well, that and the orchestration. There are a number of passages where a group of instruments playing high up in their register are balanced by another group playing down at the lower end -- and no one else in between. I suspect this was done deliberately, to try to keep the sound as open and uncongested as possible for the outdoor procession, but the remarkable and unique tone colours are by no means an incidental by-product.
The music is also, within its self-imposed limits, highly dramatic. As an example, consider the lengthy crescendo passage built entirely on a sequence of succinct 3-beat phrases with the first beat of each bar silent except for the drums. At each new phrase, the tension is ratcheted up by a new configuration of the brief phrase or by the addition of new instruments. Finally the orchestra lands on a single phrase repeated over and over, louder and bigger at each repetition, yet all in the same key. Just when you're convinced that the music must crash into a return of the original march in the tonic key of F minor, it swerves instead into another remote key while the full band thunders out yet more repetitions of the little phrase, punctuated at each bar by mighty crashes on multiple cymbals.
The march ends with a cadence of five massive chords, punctuated by prolonged rolls on multiple drums, and followed by a gentler chord of resolution onto the tonic F minor without drums.
One way I judge music is by its earworm potential, and this march is one of the most persistent earworms I know. But more than this, it is also an artistic and emotional triumph, as a solution to the problem of providing appropriate high-quality music for such a public ceremonial purpose.
