Berlioz' "Waverley Overture"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Waverley – Overture

Berlioz’s Mémoires and the accounts of him written by other people at the time he wrote this work (most probably early 1827) reveal a young man pursuing his musical vocation with the ardent, even hungry, determination of a lover. 

Having arrived some years previously from La Côte-Saint-André near Grenobles, he was still trying to make his way in the musical world of Paris. His parents had cut his living-away-from-home allowance in the hope of convincing him to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor. He was trying to gain performances of his opera, Les Francs-juges. He had been rejected in the first stage of the coveted Prix de Rome. Still he pressed on, reluctant to tell his parents too much of his difficulties for fear they would say, ‘You see – you’re killing yourself, and all for nothing.’ All this dates from around the time he wrote the Waverley Overture, which in pure musical energy reflects the determination of a budding master determined not to ‘remain at the foot of the mountain’ (as he wrote to his sister).

Waverley was therefore an appropriately dashing topic for a piece of music. The title derives from the first novel in a series by Sir Walter Scott, which concerns Edward Waverley who goes against his father’s sympathies to support Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. Berlioz wrote a series of quotes from the novel down the title page of his manuscript. These dealt with the hero’s adolescent love of solitude and melancholy reverie, his embrace of soldiering, his dancing with Flora McIvor, and so on. But it would be inadvisable to listen for programmatic exactness in this work, suffice to say that a couplet from Scott, also on the title page of Berlioz’s manuscript, suggests the overture’s Andante-Allegro structure:

Dreams of love and lady’s charms

Give place to honour and to arms.

The work begins simply, with a single oboe note followed by a descending phrase on the strings. A broad cello aria follows, leading into the Allegro. There are three main themes here (a couple of them have been described as Rossinian, but they all have the older Berlioz’s élan), and the form is basically classical sonata form, with a short development and brusque recapitulation. This is to overlook the numerous touches which mark this as a work of burgeoning originality rather than student apprenticeship. The way the timpani quietly underlines the aria theme in the Andante, the way themes seem foreshortened to speed us through sectional divisions, the tumbling via a sudden conversion to triplets into the recapitulation – these suggest a natural ability to manipulate form on Berlioz’s part.

Berlioz eventually got this work performed by putting on a concert of his works, himself, in May 1828. Between then and publication of the work he reduced the instrumentation. He had originally scored the piece for 110 instruments, further proof that this work was among the first expressions of an outsize Romantic imagination.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2012

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published  
Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, published 30 August 2013
'Traditional terms' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013