Berlioz’s Harold In Italy: A Critical Study

Berlioz’ s creation of Program music and his music idea are important topics in the field of romantic music research in the 19 th century.Berlioz applies the concept of "idee fixe" into his first Program symphony Symphonic fantastique,which had a huge impact on the music industry at that time.Subsequently,the second title symphony Harold en Italie adds a tone fixe on the basis of idee fixe,using the solo viola to represent the Harold themed image in Byron’s poetry collection,and incorporates the elements of concerto into the symphony genre,which makes the musical discourse and narrative technique of the Program symphony a step forward.This paper will analyze the historical context and musical language of Harold en Italie to comprehensively judge its artistic value and humanistic meaning.The first chapter of this paper puts Berlioz’ s title music creation in the overall context of romantic music and discusses the creative background of Harold en Italie.In the first section,the paper analyzes the rise and formation of the two musical concepts under the romanticism trend,absolute music and program music,and emphasize the close relationship between program music creation and literature & art.The second section focuses on the formation of Berlioz’ s own musical ideas and the practice of symphony and explores how Harold en Italie became a monologue for composers.The third section analyzes the romantic spiritual image contained in Byron’s poetry Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and the strong sympathetic response to musicians,represented by Berlioz resonance caused by the image.The second chapter of this paper focuses on music text.By analyzing the creation of thememotive of Harold en Italie,combining the poetic context described in Byron’s literature,the paper explores the musical narrative mode Berlioz’s musical composition and aims to further explain the narrative function and significance of this instrumental composition from the perspective of narrative theory.In the first section,the paper organizes and interprets the related subject forms of the protagonist’s image formation and scene description in the musical composition.The second section focuses on the techniques in thematic transformation,focusing on the adaptation among the theme and personality of "Harold" to the surrounding environment.The third chapter comprehensively evaluates the artistic value and humanistic implication of Harold en Italie from two layers.The first section focuses on the promotion effect in the innovation of the composition and the breakthrough of musical language for the special genre of program music.In the second section,the paper evaluates the humanistic implication of Harold en Italie,by placing it in the context of comprehensive art,which is composed of music and literature.