Paul Phillips on Symphonie fantastique
An Exchange with Paul Schuyler Phillips, Director of the Brown Orchestra, 9/18/08, concerning a discrepancy between the Kerman’s diagram of the last mvt. of Berlioz’s Symphony fantastique and the Norton Critical Score.
RRS:
Paul, my class is discussing the Symphonie fantastique today, and I'm trying to follow it both via the score and via Kerman's diagram in "Listen." since some of my students will be using each. At the climactic moment of the last movement, when the Dies Irae enters on top of the witches theme, Kerman says "trumpets play the Dies Irae for the first time.” I've always taken this on faith. But today for some reason I looked closely at the score, and all I see is huge long prolonged rests in the trumpet part while everyone else is blaring away. Do you remember this moment? Am I missing something? Would appreciate any quick answer you may have.
PSP:
Rose, Kerman’s sort of right. The spot is bar 414 (letter K) in the finale, marked “Dies Irae et Ronde du Sabbat ensemble”. All the winds (except flute & piccolo) that can play chromatically play the Dies Irae theme in octaves do so in this spot. Trumpets cannot, so they are left out, but “cornets à pistons” do. These valved brass instruments are very similar to trumpets and sound like them. Moreover, these parts are almost invariably played by trumpets, since relatively few orchestral players use cornets, but, strictly speaking, Kerman should have said “cornets play Dies Irae”. Of course, then he would have had to explain that in Berlioz’s time valved cornets had recently been invented and that trumpets were still valveless instruments that could only play the harmonic series, etc., so it’s easy to understand why he wrote what he did, even though it’s not precisely true.
RRS:
I see also another line is blank at that point, presumably the horns, and for the same reason as the trumpets (?)
PSP:
As you rightly point out, Horns 1 & 2 (in E flat) are also left out in that spot, also because they could not play the notes of the Dies Irae parts in Berlioz’s day. Since the advent of valved, chromatic brass instruments, all the notes can be played, and I’m sure that innumerable conductors have added Horns 1 & 2 and the two trumpets to this passage over the years. What has struck me about this passage is what a difference the edition makes on one’s perception of it, for in my score – the Breitkopf & Härtel /Bärenreiter Neuausgabe published in 1972 – the score page is “optimized”, as they say, meaning that lines are omitted when instruments have rests. If you were to look at that edition (which is in Orwig with the Berlioz Complete Works), you’d see on pages 152-3 that Horns 1 & 2 and the trumpets are not included on those pages, so it’s easy to overlook the fact that they don’t play there. In the score you’re reading from, it’s much more obvious that those players are sitting there with their instruments on their laps. The piccolo and flutes are included and given rests, but that’s because they join in on the violin/viola counterpoint that begins 8 bars later (b. 422), whereas the resting horns and trumpets don’t return until b. 467, six score pages later.
RRS:
Paul, my class is discussing the Symphonie fantastique today, and I'm trying to follow it both via the score and via Kerman's diagram in "Listen." since some of my students will be using each. At the climactic moment of the last movement, when the Dies Irae enters on top of the witches theme, Kerman says "trumpets play the Dies Irae for the first time.” I've always taken this on faith. But today for some reason I looked closely at the score, and all I see is huge long prolonged rests in the trumpet part while everyone else is blaring away. Do you remember this moment? Am I missing something? Would appreciate any quick answer you may have.
PSP:
Rose, Kerman’s sort of right. The spot is bar 414 (letter K) in the finale, marked “Dies Irae et Ronde du Sabbat ensemble”. All the winds (except flute & piccolo) that can play chromatically play the Dies Irae theme in octaves do so in this spot. Trumpets cannot, so they are left out, but “cornets à pistons” do. These valved brass instruments are very similar to trumpets and sound like them. Moreover, these parts are almost invariably played by trumpets, since relatively few orchestral players use cornets, but, strictly speaking, Kerman should have said “cornets play Dies Irae”. Of course, then he would have had to explain that in Berlioz’s time valved cornets had recently been invented and that trumpets were still valveless instruments that could only play the harmonic series, etc., so it’s easy to understand why he wrote what he did, even though it’s not precisely true.
RRS:
I see also another line is blank at that point, presumably the horns, and for the same reason as the trumpets (?)
PSP:
As you rightly point out, Horns 1 & 2 (in E flat) are also left out in that spot, also because they could not play the notes of the Dies Irae parts in Berlioz’s day. Since the advent of valved, chromatic brass instruments, all the notes can be played, and I’m sure that innumerable conductors have added Horns 1 & 2 and the two trumpets to this passage over the years. What has struck me about this passage is what a difference the edition makes on one’s perception of it, for in my score – the Breitkopf & Härtel /Bärenreiter Neuausgabe published in 1972 – the score page is “optimized”, as they say, meaning that lines are omitted when instruments have rests. If you were to look at that edition (which is in Orwig with the Berlioz Complete Works), you’d see on pages 152-3 that Horns 1 & 2 and the trumpets are not included on those pages, so it’s easy to overlook the fact that they don’t play there. In the score you’re reading from, it’s much more obvious that those players are sitting there with their instruments on their laps. The piccolo and flutes are included and given rests, but that’s because they join in on the violin/viola counterpoint that begins 8 bars later (b. 422), whereas the resting horns and trumpets don’t return until b. 467, six score pages later.
posted by Rose Rosengard Subotnik at 12:02 PM
0 comments
