Harold in Italy

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Harold in Italy, Symphony with Viola obbligato (Op. 16) is Hector Berlioz' second symphony, written in 1834.

It was Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) who encouraged Berlioz (1803-1869) to write Harold en Italie in the first place. The musicians first met after a concert of Berlioz’s works that was conducted by Narcisse Girard, 22 December 1833, three years after the premiere of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Paganini had acquired a superb viola, a Stradivarius— "But I have no suitable music. Would you like to write a solo for viola? You are the only one I can trust for this task." So Berlioz began "by writing a solo for viola, but one which involved the orchestra in such a way as not to reduce the effectiveness of the orchestral contribution." But when Paganini saw the sketch of the allegro movement, with all the rests in the viola part, he told Berlioz it would not do, that he expected to be playing continuously. [link] So they parted, Paganini disappointed, who soon left for Nice, where he died of the cancer in his jaw that had slowly been disfiguring him.

A four-movement work, relaxed and poetic, composed round an extensive part for solo viola, Harold en Italie is a significant contribution to symphonic repetoire especially because it innovatively features solo viola, normally buried in the orchestral texture, and assigns it the dramatic role of a melancholy personality, another departure.

The symphony is inspired by the mood of a poem by Lord Byron, "Childe Harold" a fragment of epic with a quintessentially Romantic hero. "My intention was to write a series of orchestral scenes, in which the solo viola would be involved as a more or less active participant while retaining its own character. By placing it among the poetic memories formed from my wanderings in the Abruzzi, I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron’s Childe-Harold," Berlioz wrote. He did not mention that some of the material has been re-used from his discarded concert overture, Rob-Roy. The first movement ("Harold aux montagnes") refers to the scenes that Harold, the romantic and melancholic character encounters in mountains. In the second movement ("Marche des pélerins") Harold is accompanying a group of pilgrims. The third movement ("Sérénade") involves a love scene in which someone is playing a serenade for his mistress. In the forth movement, ("Orgie de brigands") Harold being spiritually tired and depressed, seeks comfort among wild and dangerous company, perhaps in a tavern. Jacques Barzun reminds us that "The brigand of Berlioz’s time is the avenger of social injustice, the rebel against the City, who resorts to nature for healing the wounds of social man."In Berlioz and His Century, noted by Freed.

In the symphony Harold's character is represented by the viola. The hesitant manner in which the viola theme repeats its opening phrase, gaining confidence, like an idea forming, before the long melody spills out in its entirety was satirized in a musical paper after the premiere, which began "Ha! ha! ha! – haro! haro! Harold!"— a cheeky touch that Berlioz recalled years later in his Memoirs.

Harold in Italy premiered with the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, Chrétien Urhan playing the viola part, Narcisse Girard conducting, badly, 23 November 1834. Berlioz' agonies as the work was mangled—though the second movement "March of the pilgrims" was encored— were part of what determined him to conduct his own music in future.

Paganini did not hear the work he had commissioned until 16 December 1838; then he was so overwhelmed by it that, following the performance, he dragged Berlioz onto the stage and there knelt and kissed his hand before a wildly cheering audience and applauding musicians. A few days later he sent Berlioz a letter of congratulations, enclosing a bank draft for 20,000 francs.

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