According to the programme that Berlioz penned “to introduce the musical movements and to explain their character and expression”, the Symphonie fantastique follows the obviously autobiographical narrative of a young musician who falls in love with a woman. More ideal than real, this woman is represented by a meandering theme (Berlioz called it an idée fixe) which is first heard in the violins a couple of minutes into the first movement and subsequently reappears in new forms throughout. The musician thinks about her at a ball and in the countryside – his mood constantly shifting – before he becomes convinced that his
love is unrequited and has two opium-fuelled nightmares. In the first, he has killed his beloved and is on his way to be executed; in the second, she takes part in a hellish orgy, her true colours now revealed in a grotesque reworking of the idée fixe. The composer would later revisit the programme, softening some of the language, as his own relationship with Smithson shifted ahead of their short, dysfunctional marriage in October 1833.

As one contemporary newspaper reported of the Symphonie fantastique’s first performance, even Berlioz’s unkempt hair “has something that reeks of genius.” What’s more, his cravat “is tightened as though with rage” and “his boots are muddy because his impetuous character refuses to sit still and be pulled along in a carriage.” If that combination of genius, dishevelment and bad temper sounds familiar, another writer drew a more direct comparison: “A whole Beethoven lies hidden in this Frenchman. But so wild that it needs restraint.”

Berlioz’s second symphony – Harold in Italy for orchestra and solo viola, which starts today’s concert – gestures more explicitly towards Beethoven’s influence. Its final movement directly imitates the structure of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in recalling and dismissing in turn the themes of each previous movement. And no wonder: Berlioz heard Beethoven’s final symphony performed in Paris for the first time in January 1834, just as he was starting work on Harold.

Yet the roots of Harold in Italy are also deeply entangled with the Symphonie fantastique. Winning the Prix de Rome obliged Berlioz to spend the next two years in the Italian city. The composer didn’t want to leave Paris and begged the authorities to be released from the requirement. The reason? He had fallen in love again after his disillusionment over Harriet Smithson, neatly transferring his obsession onto the talented young pianist Camille Moke. The success of the Symphonie fantastique had persuaded Moke’s mother to allow their engagement.

Berlioz was refused an exemption from the Prix de Rome’s rules. On arrival in Rome, he declared it “the most stupid and prosaic city I know” and soon left again to find out why he hadn’t heard from Camille. In Florence he discovered the truth – she had
abandoned him for the piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel – and began a brief, impassioned dash across Europe with pistols and poison before he thought the better of it and returned to Rome. Although he never enjoyed his sojourn in the city, Berlioz took the opportunity to explore Italy – travels that would go on to shape Harold.

Once Berlioz had returned to Paris in 1832, his revised Symphonie fantastique was performed, this time paired with his new work Lélio, which he had composed in Italy as a kind of sequel. The concert was attended by the virtuoso violinist
Niccolò Paganini, who was introduced to the composer and requested a new work that he could play on his Stradivarius viola. Berlioz pointed out that since he couldn’t play the viola, he wasn’t best placed to write the kind of showpiece that
he suspected Paganini wanted; but the Italian was adamant. According to Berlioz’s memoirs, Paganini insisted that

Berlioz first mentioned the piece that would become Harold in Italy in January 1834, with the commission officially announced later that month as “a new work in the genre of the Symphonie fantastique.” At that stage, its title was “The Last Moments
of Mary Stuart”. By the end of June, its four movements were completed and in late July the composer called it Harold in Italy for the first time. Just as Berlioz’s experience of Harriet Smithson performing Shakespeare had provided his Symphonie fantastique with impeccable Romantic credentials, Harold now boasted two different sources of arch-Romantic inspiration: on the one hand, the melancholy tone of Byron’s narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and on the other, the composer’s own travels in Italy.

The new symphony was premiered in November 1834 at the Paris Conservatoire – minus the great virtuoso who had commissioned it. When Paganini finally saw the work, he was disappointed. The viola neither played enough, nor was its part sufficiently virtuosic for his taste. “What you want is a viola concerto,” Berlioz reportedly snapped, “and in this case only you can write it.” Instead, the solo viola part was taken by Chrétien Urhan, who had also played in the concert at which the
Symphonie fantastique was premiered. But there were no hard feelings: when Paganini heard Harold for the first time in 1838, he was so impressed that he sent Berlioz a gift of 20,000 francs.

Harold in Italy is an even more obviously hybrid work, even harder to categorise, than the Symphonie fantastique. It has never matched the first symphony’s popularity; but its ambivalent tone may be part of the point. Berlioz had learned
his lesson from the controversies that raged over his precise, lengthy programme for the Symphonie fantastique. His short note for audiences at Harold’s premiere was matter-of-fact: