Le Corsaire, Overture, Op.21

There is no doubt that Berlioz knew and loved Byron’s narrative poem The Corsair. There is considerable doubt, however, about the extent of its influence on Le Corsaire Overture. The overture seems to have more to do with Nice where, after contemplating suicide in Genoa in 1831, Berlioz spent what he later described as the twenty happiest days of his life. He might have conceived some ideas for the overture in Nice at that time and it was certainly in Nice that he completed the first version of the work - called La Tour de Nice after the old Martello tower where he spent many hours looking out over the sea - thirteen years later. After the first performance, in Paris in 1845, he withdrew it, thought about it, and revised it for his first visit to London in 1851 - this time calling it Le Corsaire Rouge after the Red Rover of James Fennimore Cooper, who had recntly died. He later simplified the title to Le Corsaire, which brings us back, almost accidentally, to Byron.

It is perhaps more hepful to regard the overture as a product of the composer’s Mediterranean experience, of memories of storms at sea and of maritime adventure he had met and read about, including Byron’s corsair Conrad among others. Anyway, the point of the work is the tremendous energy invested in the brilliant violin theme in the opening bars, its immediate suppression in a quiet Adagio interlude, its explosive release in the Allegro assai, and the spontaneous impulse it gives to the material which follows - not least the graceful second subject which is introduced by violins and finally carried off by piratical cornets in the coda.

If Berlioz is more honoured in this country than in his own – which was certainly true in the past and probably still is – it is due in no small way to his friend and admirer Sir Charles Hallé, who had first got to know the composer in Paris in the 1830s. He conducted Harold en Italie in Manchester in 1855 and, although his first concert here with his own orchestra (150 years ago today) included only one small Berlioz item, he went on over the next 20 years or so to give the first British performances of works as important as the Symphonie fantastique, La Damnation de Faust, L’Enfance du Christ and Roméo et Juliette. It was the foundation of a tradition leading to the first complete Berlioz edition, the first complete recording, and the definitive rehabilitation of the epic opera Les Troyens – ­all of them British enterprises.

British enthusiasm for Berlioz was reciprocated by his passion for English literature – Shakespeare above all but also Scott and Byron, to name only those whose writings were a direct inspiration for his music. While we can be certain of Byron’s influence on Harold en Italie, however, it is difficult to work out how much his poem “The Corsair” had to do with the overture apparently named after it. Le Corsaire was, in fact, the third title Berlioz attached to it. The first version of the work, completed in Nice in 1844, was called La Tour de Nice in tribute to the old Martello tower where, with a panoramic view over the Mediterranean, he had spent what he described as the twenty happiest days of his life 13 years earlier. After the first performance of La Tour de Nice in Paris in 1845, he withdrew the score, thought about it, and revised it for his first visit to London in 1851 – this time calling it Le Corsaire Rouge after the Red Rover of James Fennimore Cooper, who had recntly died. He later shortened the title to Le Corsaire, which brings us back, almost accidentally, to Byron.

It is perhaps more hepful to regard the overture as a product of the composer’s Mediterranean experience in general, of memories of storms at sea and of maritime adventurers he had met and read about, including Byron’s corsair Conrad among others. Anyway, the point of the work is the tremendous energy invested in the brilliant violin theme in the opening bars, its immediate suppression in a quietly melodious Adagio interlude, its explosive release in an Allegro assai, the spontaneous impulse it gives to the material which follows - not least a lively but still lyrically expressive version of the Adagio melody on violins and woodwind – and the stimulus it gives to the exhilarating initiative seized by piratical cornets in the coda.

Gerald Larner © 2008