Three Pieces from La Damnation de Faust

Ballet des Sylphes

Menuet des Follets

Marche hongroise

Every great composer has a sound which, though not necessarily new, is at least distinctive. Berlioz is always distinctive and often new as well. It would be difficult to find a precedent, even in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, for the Dance of the Sylphs in The Damnation of Faust: A slender line of waltz-time melody is quietly drawn by eight muted first violins over rustling harmonies on six second violins and eight violas and a sustained pedal-point on three cellos and four basses; after the intervention of perhaps slightly Mendelssohnian figuration on woodwind, the melody is resumed on still fewer strings against the most delicate touches of colour on two harps.

The originality of the Minuet of the Will-o’-the-wisp is partly in its scoring, with piccolos and oboes moving brightly in thirds over darker woodwind and brass sonorities, and partly in the intrusion of eerie harmonies, scary crescendos and alien Presto material into a conventional, courtly dance form. The Hungarian March, an arrangement of the patriotic Rácóczy-Indulo originally made for a concert tour in Hungary early in 1846, is not so much new as irresistible - and least resistible of all in the brilliant coda added by Berlioz when he incorporated the piece in The Damnation of Faust later in the year.

Menuet des Follets

Ballet des Sylphes

Marche hongroise

Every great composer has a sound which, though not necessarily new, is at least distinctive. Berlioz is always distinctive and often new as well. The originality of the Minuet of the Will-o’-the-wisp in The Damnation of Faust is partly in its scoring, with piccolos and oboes moving brightly in thirds over darker woodwind and brass sonorities, and partly in the intrusion of eerie harmonies, scary crescendos and alien Presto material into a conventional, courtly dance form.

It would be difficult to find a precedent, even in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, for the Dance of the Sylphs: A slender line of waltz-time melody is quietly drawn by eight muted first violins over rustling harmonies on six second violins and eight violas and a sustained pedal-point on three cellos and four basses; after the intervention of perhaps slightly Mendelssohnian figuration on woodwind, the melody is resumed on still fewer strings against the most delicate touches of colour on two harps.

The Hungarian March, an arrangement of the patriotic Rácóczy-Indulo originally made for a concert tour in Hungary early in 1846, is not so much new as irresistible - and least resistible of all in the brilliant coda added by Berlioz when he incorporated the piece in The Damnation of Faust later in the year.