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‘Songe d’une nuit de Sabbat’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2023
Before deciding on his programme, Berlioz was thinking of basing a symphony on Goethe’s Faust. The ‘Sabbath Night’ is inspired by the Walpurgisnacht vision of the beloved transformed into a witch. The movement continues Berlioz’s exploration of new orchestral sonorities to represent his nightmare scenario. Another instrument new to the symphony orchestra is a pair of deep bells; for which, as they would not often be available, he wrote the part to be played on pianos. His handling of the usual instruments, woodwind, brass, percussion, and strings, is no less original. The bells chime, the Dies irae plainchant is played and caricatured. The idée fixe is transformed into a vulgar jig suitable for a witches’ Sabbath, and the ‘Ronde’ begins as an academically correct fugue, its subject combined at the climax with the plainchant.
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