Symphonie fantastique: Movement 1 - "Daydreams - Passions"

                Movement I.  "Rêveries – Passions" ("Daydreams - Passions")

        Performed by the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor.  (14 min) 


      Berlioz' 1845 program notes for the first movement:

        "The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a
         famous writer has called the vagueness [or confusion] of passions, sees for the first
         time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was
         dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her.  By a strange anomaly, the beloved
         image never presents itself to the artist's mind without being associated with a musical
         idea, in which he recognizes a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and 
         shyness which he credits to the object of his love.

         This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. 
         This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody 
         which launches the first allegro. Thee transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, 
         interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts
         of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations – all this 
         forms the subject of the first movement."




      00:00   The musician's "sickness of spirit / confusion of passions"  Andante (slow instruction) 
 
      04:10   Gradually increases speed

      05:20   (Allegro) The woman enters (the famous idée fixe) with the musician's excited heartbeats   
                                  in the lowest strings  (mention Wagner's leitmotiv) 

        6:00   The musician's passion

        8:00   The idée fixe returns
       10:00   Even more passion from the musician     

      13:00   Seeking solace in prayer (brass  = 'amen')  1 minute