Roméo et Juliette, Op. 17: La Reine Mab, ou la Fée des Songes

Program notes

About the Work

In Act One of Shakespeare’s play, Romeo’s friend Mercutio teases him with a long speech about Queen Mab, the fairies’ midwife, who rides by night in a tiny chariot through the minds of sleepers and brings each of them the dream that suits them. Berlioz had wanted to turn this speech into an orchestral scherzo long before he wrote Roméo et Juliette. In his Memoirs he recalls mentioning the idea to Felix Mendelssohn in Rome in 1831, and then worrying that Mendelssohn, who had already written his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, would get there first.

In the symphony the scherzo comes straight after the love scene, as a complete change of air. It is among the most difficult pieces Berlioz ever asked an orchestra to play, and he went on refining it: after hearing the symphony from the audience in Vienna in 1846 he gave the movement a new and longer ending.

What to Listen For

The marking is Prestissimo, and almost everything is quiet. The strings play with mutes, divided into many parts, while the double basses are silent for long stretches, so that the music seems to have no weight at all. Short phrases dart between strings and woodwinds, break off in sudden silences and start again.

In the middle the pace relaxes. A plaintive melody floats over high, glassy harmonics from the violins and the harps. When the fast music returns it brings new colours with it. Listen near the end for a faint, bell-like chiming: these are antique cymbals, a pair of very small tuned cymbals that Berlioz specified for this movement. The scherzo vanishes as lightly as it arrived.