Alternate title: GuilloTUNEs

France’s Fourth of July takes place on the fourteenth of July – Bastille Day (or, as the French prefer to call it, the much nicer-sounding La Fête Nationale), the beginning of the French Revolution. Now technically, the real beheading party didn’t begin until a few years later, Still, the guillotine has become the iconic icon of French liberty and justice.

Which is why I bring you this – iconic French composer Hector Berlioz‘s “March to the Scaffold”, the fourth movement of his Symphonie Fanstastique. Written in 1830, after two generations of political turmoil, it is a testament to the hardiness of humanity and our need for beauty in an ugly world. This Symphony is historically important because it fueled the romantic obsession of programmatic music; it also introduced an idea Berlioz called the idée fixe – a musical motif or melody which is attached to a specific thought, person, or idea. Out of the context of the whole symphony, the idée fixe won’t have much meaning when you listen to this single movement. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it.

Programmatic music is the idea that music can convey a non-musical story or idea. Sometimes programmatic music composers can be cryptic; other times they are very specific. Berlioz is the latter! He provided this awesome, drug-inspired summary of this head-rolling movement:

Convinced that his love is unrequited, the protagonist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes somber and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Charles Ives is considered to be the first serious American composer who completely broke away from European tradition. He was an insurance salesman whose avocation was composition – he wrote music for the sheer joy of it. During most of his life, he was considered a loony, and could only get his music played if he paid the musicians himself. His music is experimental and intellectual: some people get a real kick out it, and some people just can’t stomach it. Whatever reaction you have is a perfectly valid reaction.

There are certain melodic ideas that come up over and over again throughout the history of music.  My choir members know I am famous for finding the first four notes of “How Dry I Am” in practically every piece ever written. There’s a reason for this – the shape of this phrase is beauty itself. A leap of a fourth, going from a weak beat to a stronger beat, gives the impression of suddenly turning one’s head to pay attention. Then, a simple three-note rising scale continues to lift the head – making us feel taller, alert, and engaged with the world. A bit of a stretch? Perhaps. But I believe there is something deep here that evokes a universal (or at least nearly universal) response in every human.

Another universally loved musical gesture is the melodic shape found in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Here, the melody rises a fifth (creating tension), then gentle falls back down to the starting note by gradually descending. The effect? We start from a place of bored contentment. Then, we ascend to a high note – there is tension and excitement in our lives! What will happen? Well, one note at a time, we relax until we have returned to our starting place. However – we are no longer bored, because we have just had a thrilling journey! A bit of a stretch? Perhaps. But maybe this overly-simple example can give us an idea of what makes great pieces of music, well, great.

Here is a movement from “My Homeland” by Bedřich Smetana, a gorgeous musical painting of a Czech river, Vltava. You can hear the little rushing brooks, eventually flowing into a wide expanse of water. The melody, though, is the same as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, only beginning in a minor key, and triumphantly ending in major.