Repeat three times a six note rush upwards from the depths of hell in the cellos and basses. Repeat three times church bells descending on octave. Repeat three times the “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath) sacred chant. First time played by the sacrilegious tubas in slower, steady notes. Third time outrageously fast in the dancing, mocking woodwinds. On the left side of Franken’s painting, a beautiful woman looms larger than anyone else. Like Berlioz’s beloved, his idee fixe, she is about to be transformed. She might become the naked woman to her a left who signs a document with a demon at her side. Or that white ghostly apparition of a witch way up high in the sky on a broomstick playing Berlioz’s idee fixe, on a mocking, squeaky, e flat clarinet accompanied by farting, snorting bassoons. She might join in the dance with the two naked witches behind her when Berlioz’s round dance for witches begins, its wild dark energy fugue in 6/8 time punctuated by orchestral explosions. Just 3 years after Beethoven’s death, Berlioz has imagined his own death, too. (A bad opium trip? The Romantic imagination?) I imagine that’s his skull on the lower right-hand side beneath four woman turning witches saying spells. Maybe the beloved becomes one of them, or maybe she is transformed into the naked woman hovering behind them wearing an animal mask while swinging a long scythe. Love or woman or witch can stop time or chop off anyone’s head. Demons everywhere in the painting scoff and taunt in delight as Berlioz’s staccato strings descend chromatically in triple pianissimo cackles of laughter.
*The references to Berlioz’s innovative musical orchestrations, which Bernstein called “a psychedelic trip,” are not always in strict chronological order as they appear in the final movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Performance of final movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. Bernstein is the conductor.
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Frans Francken’s “The Witches Sabbath” from Wikimedia Commons.
