Watching Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride Live in HD with Hector Berlioz

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714-1787) is a name associated with operatic reforms that many of us learned about in music history classes while safely tucked into large, airy lecture halls.

But for composer Hector Berlioz the music of Gluck represented a world of "infinite passion." Several times in his writings Berlioz describes performances of Iphigénie en Tauride in detailed and electrifying prose.

"Short of fainting," wrote Berlioz as a student back home to his sister, "I could not have been more moved than when I saw a performance of Gluck’s masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride." This early euphoria was captured in a fictional transformation in a book he wrote years later.

His book "Evenings with the Orchestra" is centered on discussions and storytelling among members of an orchestra while dull modern operas are being performed. No one talked during masterpieces.

On the twenty-second evening described in the book, Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride was performed. Corsino figured prominently in Evenings with the Orchestra. He was the concertmaster of the orchestra and was himself a composer. This passage, from the famous translation by Jacques Barzun, articulates the overpowering emotional impact that Berlioz found in Gluck. He takes us into the scene as it unfolds in present tense. Present tense was the 19th century version of Live in HD:

"The entire orchestra is filled with a religious respect for this immortal work and seems afraid of not being able to rise to the occasion. I notice the deep, sustained attention of the musicians as they keep their eyes on the conductor, the precision of their attack, their keen sense of expressive accent, the delicacy of their accompaniment, their ability to produce a wide range of nuances."

"The chorus also is impeccable. The Scythians’ scene in the first act rouses the enthusiasm of the select public that fills the house. Orestes is inadequate and almost ridiculous; Pylades bleats like a lamb. Iphigenia alone is equal to her role. When she comes to her aria “Unhappy Iphigenia!” whose color of antiquity, solemnity of accent, and desolate dignity of expression in melody and accompaniment recall the sublimities of Homer and the simple grandeur of the heroic ages, while filling the heart with the unfathomable sadness inseparable from the memory of a glorious but vanished past, Corsino turns pale and stops playing. He puts both elbows on his knees and buries his face in his hands, as if overwrought by inexpressible emotion."

"I can see his breathing become more and more rapid and the blood rushing to his reddened temples. At the entrance of the women’s chorus on the words 'To her lament we join our plaintive cries,' at that instant when the prolonged outcry of the priestesses blends with the voice of the royal orphan and swells with a heart-rending tumult in the orchestra, two streams of tears force their way from his eyes and he sobs so vehemently that I am compelled to lead him out of the house."

"We go outside . . . I see him home. Seated in his modest room, lit up by the moon alone, we stay a long time motionless. Corsino raises his eyes for an instant to the bust of Gluck that stands on his piano. We gaze at it. . . . The moon disappears. He sighs painfully, flings himself on his bed, and I leave. We have not uttered a single word."

Iphigénie en Tauride will be transmitted to theaters worldwide as part of the Met Live in HD Series this Saturday. See it and swoon.

Anthony Burgess On Mozart; Celestial Watercooler Conversations

Anthony Burgess imagined a "celestial colloquy" in his book that celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of Mozart's death in 1991. His book, "On Mozart," (which was also published under the title "Mozart and the Wolf Gang") opens amid activities and watercooler conversations in the afterworld.

"Stendhal:
Hector Berlioz, as a literary musician, you will perhaps appreciate the thing I have done. Here, where there is no worry about publishers, royalties, a scant readership, it is possible to practice the craft of fiction in a kind of musical purity. I have written something. Here it is -- in print. It is brief, as you see. It is an attempt to write fiction in the shape of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony -- the late one in G minor. Can one subdue human passion to musical form? Can one purge the emotions thereby? Read it. At your leisure. Or, if your bored, during the performance of this next scene or act. I would welcome your opinion."

"Berlioz:
It does not seem easy to read."

"Stendhal:
Meaning it is Stendhalian, Read it."


Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842), known by his pen-name Stendhal, is most familiar to musicians for his early biography of Rossini (Vie de Rossini, 1824); a thick book filled with colorful musical observations.

In this imagined conversation, Stendhal is riffing on the concept of "Evenings with the Orchestra," written by Berlioz. In "Evenings" Berlioz recounts tales and stories told among musicians when the are required to play boring music.

The celestial colloquy is itself interrupted by three acts of an opera about Mozart, performed in heaven to an assemble of spirits. Mendelssohn explains: "Our heavenly time is flexible, but I have to invoke clock time to achieve synchronicity. I mean that an opera is due to commence."

As flexible as heavenly time is, Berlioz does not read the "fiction in the shape of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony," until 49 pages later; or should we say 49 pages of Earthly book space later.

The passage comprises eleven pages (page 93-103) and is simply center-titled "K. 550 (1788)." Two spaces further down is a centered section marker: "First Movement." Each of the four movements from the symphony has a section marker.

The text is an attempt to superimpose scenes from the relationship of Louis XIV and and Marie Antoinette onto the music itself. The text and the design of the argument is deeply informed by elements of the structure of the music.

Two writers have begun to unravel these connections: Werner Wolf in "The musicalization of fiction: a study in the theory and history," from 1999, and more recently, "Music in the words: musical form and counterpoint in the twentieth century novel," by Alan Shockley.

Take a look at these two sources. Then we will chase this lovely writing around the sonic labyrinth to see if we can resonate in its juxtapositions.

Vikram Seth vs. Berlioz: Op. 1 no. 3

In "An Equal Music," by Vikram Seth, one of the major figures in the book, the pianist Julia, loves the Opus I No. 3 piano trio in C minor.

"She particularly loved the minor variation in the second movement, though it was almost as if the cello and violin were, in that calm melancholy, robbing her of her own prominence. Whenever she would hear it or play it or even read it in the score, she would move her head slowly from side to side. And she loved the unflamboyant close of the entire work."

(Amelia Piano Trio )

The "unflamboyant close" refers to the ending of the finale, worthy of attention because Beethoven has so many triumphant endings. An unusual figure [Db-C] sounds restlessly [5:12], and we are deflected into a picardy ending in the major with a series of rising scales in the piano part [5:21]. It is an eerie and somewhat unresolved ending. Julia favors design above technique. She is a likable character.

Hector Berlioz reported his reaction to this piece in the quasi-fiction of "Evenings with the Orchestra." But it is amped-up prose; passion bent to the point where it is louder than the music:

“One evening I heard Beethoven’s Trio in C minor: I open wide the door--come in, come in and be welcome, proud melody! Heavens! How noble and beautiful it is! Where, oh where did Beethoven find all those thousands of phrases, each more poetically characterized than the rest, each different, each original, and without even the family resemblance one finds among the melodies of masters that are known for their fertility? And what ingenious developments! What unexpected turns! How swiftly the indefatigable eagle flies! How he hovers poised in his harmonious sky! He dives into it, loses himself in it, soars, swoops again, disappears; then returns to his staring place, his eye more brilliant his pinions stronger, intolerant of rest, quivering, thirsting for the infinite!”