Can anyone tell me about anything that has to do with drugs, insanity, and La Symphonie Fantastique?

Question

I need to do a poster for a class, and my topic is Drugs, Insanity, and La Symphonie Fantastique, composed by Hector Berlioz. I need as much information as I can about this piece of music.

I would like to know what the music is about, and what happens in the music...

What drugs are involved in this piece of music, what part do they play, if Berlioz was on drugs when he wrote this...

And what Insanity has to do with this piece.

I need enough information to make a poster - help!

Answer 1

Berlioz was a regular user of opium and it is likely that he composed the Symphonie Fantastique under its influence. A strong clue is in the obsessive nightmarish programme for the symphony. It might be useful if I paste Berlioz' own programme notes for the piece:

A young musician of morbid sensitivity and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a moment of despair caused by frustrated love. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions, in which his experiences, feelings and memories are translated in his feverish brain into musical thoughts and images. His beloved becomes for him a melody and like an idée fixe which he meets and hears everywhere.

Part one - Daydreams, passions
He remembers first the uneasiness of spirit, the indefinable passion, the melancholy, the aimless joys he felt even before seeing his beloved; then the explosive love she suddenly inspired in him, his delirious anguish, his fits of jealous fury, his returns of tenderness, his religious consolations.

Part two - A ball
He meets again his beloved in a ball during a glittering fête.

Part three - Scene in the fields
One summer evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds dialoguing with their ‘Ranz des vaches’; this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the light wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier colouring; but she reappears, he feels a pang of anguish, and painful thoughts disturb him: what if she betrayed him… One of the shepherds resumes his simple melody, the other one no longer answers. The sun sets… distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence…

Part four - March to the scaffold
He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to execution. 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, the idée fixe reappears for a moment like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part five - Dream of a witches’ sabbath
He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance-tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath… Roars of delight at her arrival… She joins the diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies Irae*. The dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies Irae.

* the Dies Irae (day of wrath) is an ancient chant for the dead.

Now, I reckon this is all the evidence you need. Berlioz must have been flying to dream all this up!

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

It is thought that Berlioz composed a portion of this work under the influence of opium.

Answer 3

Nature--timber,the solar, starting to be issues esp. in Spring at the same time as everywhere colorations come out at you the fairway grass-the air I breathe. Am a nut for nature God's Handiwork and because i can in easy words stand to be coop[ed up contained in the living house for in easy words some days before I commence wigging out and characteristic been understand to placed on raincoat get umbrella and walk contained in the rain for favor to get out----Nature is my drug