(Hector Berlioz: born in la Côte Saint-André, France, December 11, 1803; died in Paris, March 9, 1869)
Berlioz, a sincere and ardent admirer of the genius of Shakespeare, wrote his overture to "King Lear" at Nice and at Rome in the spring of 1831. Although the work bears an early opus number, it stands, in order of composition, between theSymphonie fantastique(Op. 14-a, 1830) andLélio(Op. 14-b, 1831-1832).
Berlioz had seen hisinnamorata, Henrietta Smithson,[14]play Shakespearian rôles at theOdéon, Paris, in 1827. He was profoundly impressed. "Shakespeare," he wrote afterwards, with characteristic fervor, "coming upon me thus suddenly, struck me as with a thunderbolt. His lightning opened the heaven of art to me with a sublime crash, and lighted up its fullest depths. I recognized truedramatic grandeur, beauty, and truth." Four years later he wrote the "King Lear" overture.
Berlioz has supplied no programme or elucidation of the music. It is entitled simply,Ouverture du Roi Léar (Tragédie de Shakespeare), leaving the hearer to decipher unaided its precise significance. Is it a character study of the figure of the harassed and desperate king? Are definite incidents, definite phases, of the tragedy, depicted in the music? Or is the overture a preparatory mood-picture, an introduction designed to awaken in the hearer emotions appropriate to the play? Mr. Edward Dannreuther, writing, with presumable deliberation, in the "Oxford History of Music," declares that "in this piece the form of expression ... is vivid enough for a tragic opera which might be named 'Lear, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia'; so vivid, indeed, that, given the general designation, even an unimaginative hearer is likely to take the composer's meaning, and to find the proper names for the themes."
What, in brief, are the general emotional characteristics of the music? The opening is threatening, portentous, fate-burdened.[15]There are briefmoments of tenderness—a pathetic tenderness. The mood changes suddenly—the expression-mark in the score isdisperato ed agitato. The music is now furious, turbulent, wildly passionate, interrupted by intervals of quietness, of suspended intensity—a quietness that is piteous, poignant, momentous. The end is convulsive, storm-swept; and one is here reminded of Hazlitt's description of the mind of Lear, "staggering between the weight of attachment and the hurried movements of passion, like a tall ship driven about by the winds, buffeted by the furious waves; ... or it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirlpool that foams and beats against it, or like the solid promontory pushed from its basis by the force of an earthquake."
It is possible to see in this music a picture of Lear, "stretched to the last moment upon the rack of this tough world"; of Cordelia, "unmingled tenderness and strength, sunshine and rain at once"; of Goneril and Regan, types of "the ravening egoism in humanity which is at war with all goodness." Or one may recall the words of Coleridge as most pithily characterizing the overture of Berlioz: "What isLear? It is storm and tempest—the thunder at first grumbling in the far horizon, then gathering around us, and at length bursting in fury over our heads—succeeded by a breaking of the clouds for a while, a last flash of lightning, the closing in of night, and the single hope of darkness."