BERLIOZ, HOFFMANN, AND THE GENRE FANTASTIQUE IN FRENCH ROMANTICISM A ...

348 Pages·2007·19.84 MB·English

BERLIOZ, HOFFMANN, AND THE GENRE FANTASTIQUE
IN FRENCH ROMANTICISM

A Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of Cornell University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

by

Francesca Mary Brittan

August 2007
© 2007 Francesca Mary Brittan
BERLIOZ, HOFFMANN, AND THE GENRE FANTASTIQUE
IN FRENCH ROMANTICISM
Francesca Mary Brittan, Ph.D.
Cornell University, 2007

Taking Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as its focus, this dissertation explores the idea
of a musical fantastic in nineteenth-century France. It offers a series of new readings
of Berlioz’s first symphony that trace the work’s connection to literature, politics,
visual art, and science, reconnecting it with the broader culture of the fantastic that
evolved in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. Drawing extensively
on nineteenth-century criticism, it identifies Berlioz as one of the key exponents of the
genre fantastique, a musical category closely tied to the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann,
Jacques Callot, Victor Hugo, Salvator Rosa, and Dante Alighieri, and theorized in
major journals and dictionaries of the period.
Chapter One begins by gathering together Berlioz’s own commentary on the
musical fantastic, examining its implications for form, syntax, and orchestration. It
goes on to look at reception of the Symphonie fantastique, tracing theories of the
musical fantastic as they emerge in the nineteenth-century press and at broader notions
of fantastic genius that permeate Hoffmann’s tales and French contes fantastiques.
Chapter Two examines relationships between Berlioz’s symphonic program and
emerging French psychiatric theory, identifying the idée fixe at the center of the work
as the primary symptom of a pseudo-scientific disease called monomania. It reopens
old questions surrounding the relationship between art and life in the Fantastique,
linking Berlioz’s symphonic self-fashioning with the strategies of the Romantic
confession.
Chapter Three turns to questions of sound and form in the musical fantastic,
theorizing connections between Berlioz’s distorted shapes and experimental timbres
and the aesthetics of the grotesque. Here, music is drawn into discourse with visual
culture and with notions of literary caricature and humor central to works by
Hoffmann, Gautier, Jean-Paul Richter, and Victor Hugo. Expanding outward, Chapter
Four examines the broader repertory of the genre fantastique, undermining long-
standing notions of Berlioz as an isolated and eccentric composer. It looks not only at
other fantastic symphonies but at a range of orchestral, chamber, and keyboard works
bearing the “fantastique” label. The fantastic emerges as a concrete musical category
and Berlioz as one of the pioneering figures in a vital but little-known compositional
tradition.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Francesca Brittan was born in London, England and grew up in Canada and Mexico.
She completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Musicology at the University of Western
Ontario, followed by Certificat studies in historical performance at the Royal
Conservatory in The Hague, Holland. While pursuing Master’s and Doctoral work at
Cornell University, she studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson. Currently, she holds
a Research Fellowship at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

iii
For my parents, Cora and Eric Brittan,
whose love of and belief in the fantastic have made this work possible.

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is my pleasure to acknowledge, first and foremost, the members of my dissertation
committee, whose support and generosity have carried me through this project and
through the degree at large. I have relied on Neal Zaslaw’s capacious knowledge of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century orchestras, his keen eye for historical detail, his
ability to find seemingly untraceable scores and documents, and – most importantly –
his unwavering kindness and sense of humor. Jim Webster’s expertise as an analyst
has saved me from many blunders, as has his exhaustive knowledge of the nineteenth-
century repertory. He coached me through my first attempts at editing and also leapt to
the rescue when my Soubre recording project foundered. Annette Richards’ wonderful
seminars and lectures sparked my own interest in the musical fantastic and allowed me
to generate the questions that frame this dissertation. Her scholarship has served as a
model for my own, opening up a rich set of methodologies and a fundamentally new
way of thinking about the discipline. Finally, I am grateful for Julian Rushton’s
interest in and support of this project. He has lent me his expertise on Berlioz and on
all things French, and been consistently generous toward a much younger colleague.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my family – my parents and three sisters – and to
my loving partner, all of whom have listened patiently over the years to my fantastic
ruminations. And I am especially indebted to my friends and colleagues at Cornell,
who have been like a second family. Last but not least, I would like to thank the
funding bodies that financed my research. In addition to the Graduate School and the
Department of Music at Cornell University, I was supported by the Mario Einaudi
Center for International Studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council, Canada.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH iii

DEDICATION iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

LIST OF FIGURES viii

LIST OF TABLES ix

INTRODUCTION 1

1. CONFIGURING A FANTASTIC BERLIOZ 8

Gluck, Berlioz, and the Rhetoric of the Musical Fantastic
Echoes of the Political and Philosophical Fantastic
Dante, Salvator Rosa, and the Fantastic Sublime
Hoffmann and the Literary Fantastic
Berlioz, Blaze, and the Musical École fantastique

2. FANTASY, PATHOLOGY, AND ROMANTIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY 108

Idées fixes: Uncanny Returns
The Trope of Pathology in the ‘Fantastic’ Letters
Early Psychiatry and the Formulation of a ‘Monomania’ Diagnosis
Of Monomaniacal Heroes and Fixated Artists
Pathology and the Poetics of Romantic Self-Writing

3. FANTASTIC FORM AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE GROTESQUE 168

“In Callots Manier”
Configuring the Romantic Grotesque
A Historical Tour of the French Grotesque
Victor Hugo’s Preface to Cromwell
Hugo—Boulanger—Berlioz: A Grotesque Continuum
Schumann’s Review: The Framework for a Grotesque Reading of the
Symphonie fantastique
Beyond Schumann: The Fantastique Today
vi
4. BERLIOZ IN CONTEXT:
THE GENRE FANTASTIQUE BEFORE AND AFTER 241

The Fantastique Past and Present
The Other Fantastic Symphonies
The Pièce fantastique in Mid-Century France
Berlioz in Retrospect or The Fate of the Genre fantastique

APPENDIX 300

BIBLIOGRAPHY 320

vii
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Gargoyles from the Cathedral of St. Pol de Léon. 185

Figure 2 Jacques Callot, The Temptation of St. Anthony. 188

Figure 3 Jacques Callot, The Temptation of St. Anthony, detail. 189

Figure 4 Louis Boulanger, illustration for Victor Hugo’s La Ronde du Sabbat. 205

Figure 5 Soubre, Symphonie fantastique, concert announcement. 251

viii